WALKING ON THIN ICE

notes from the uberground

bussed to pula today (04.11.2006) to register with the police – per croatian law. most of the station was closed on saturday… the few officers there only for emergencies.  so we’ll bus back monday.  the young policeman we talked to was quite friendly.

in lodz, poland, the toilet had two buttons to press for flushing – small button for little water for liquid waste, large button for large water for solid. saves waste water.

flying from lodz to london, the uneven rough cotton ball cloud tops covering the sky end to end and cross-lit by setting sun became a gorgeous abstract texture painting of whites, golden glowing whiter whites, greys, and deep dark valleys of blacker greys never ending never beginning… then flying from london to pula, the painting changed yet remained the same with the clouds replaced by mountains, the glowing white by snow, the greys by valley shadow – the textures more brittle, extreme, but still as far as eye could see.

kathy had stuffed vine leaves in london lunch – explained to her they were pod people coprolites the pods had mummy wrapped in leaves and which they worshipped… they all sat around platters piled high with mummified vine wrapped excrescences, bowing and chanting endless chance to their god tv (which is mostly mummified coprolite modules, tho some call it sludge).

the virgin semen cell fone we bought cannot be registered because it was purchased in england and we have a u.s.a. address.  so kathy inquired where she could buy talking minutes for it in croatia, and they said nowhere. thank you virgin for screwing us.

kathy sez you gotta fight for your rights, so i asked her how come our government keeps fighting for their wrongS.

we got paid twice in krakow for reading poetry before rock concert audiences – 50 zwoltes, or about $17 u.s. dollars each time.  that makes three times i’ve been paid for poetry – made $100 once in cleveland.  a cleveland college also paid kathy this year. so between us we’ve made $209 past 12 months and/or past 60/33 years.

seems everybody young and old in poland smokes cigarettes.  huge numbers here as well.  it’s like they haven’t gotten the news.  we had to leave the last concert we read at due to being sickened by walls of smoke.

took three days to do one load of washer machine wash.  first 2 hours it sat there making odd noise.  i turned it off.  later discovered the water wasn’t on, turned water on, started again.  then had to stop cuz it went into endless soak cycle and we were being taken to a jazz concert. started it again this morning… it just sat there so after hour turned it off again, turned the knob to next cycle number, turned it back on and it worked. thus 24 hours just for the wash. hanging it out to dry was magic in chilled meditteranean sun on second floor balcony next to grape vine fields and distant crow of cock. then went to town and it rained so we came back to clothes wetter than we left.  figure sometime 3rd day tomorrow they’ll be dry.

. . . . 04.11.2006

sabina showed us about the village and pula last night, then took us to a jazz concert by a quartet called underground. half the concert was excellent – the other half was too many notes just to impress and not enough melody to move. they need to lose the saxophonist (chris speed from nyc) cuz the drummer, bassist and guitarist were superb… but they should keep the clarinetist (chris speed from nyc) cuz he’s pretty good.  listening to cd sabina loaned us – tamara obrovac with the transistria ensemble… istria is this section of croatia – pula (the largest city) has a roman amphitheater built in the 1st century – area was famous back then for the best olive oil in the world.

had squid last night.  squid heads look like demon flanged penises, the tentacle like alien disease – but it did taste good.  today tried roasted chestnuts… we each ate two and tossed the bag – so so much for “chestnuts roasting over an open fire” … so many song lyrics, so little truth.

walked by orange trees, olive trees, palm trees, persimmon trees, pepper plants, turnip plants, grape vines growing here.  a rich lush world.  croatia has the bluest sky i have ever seen.

i’m reading jared diamond’s “collapse” – a book showing how the mayans, the easter islanders, the greenland vikings plus many other civilizations perished due to cutting down all their trees.  great book, but heavy, so rather than leave a half read book behind, i’ve been ripping off the pages as i read to lighten my load and allow me to finish it.  kathy thinks it hilarious i’m ripping off and throwing away pages of a book about the perils of deforestation.

found out we have the international edition of cnn news here so will be watching the nov 7 elections to see bush’s nose rubbed in the mess he’s made…. we should shove his face in his own morass and beat him with a rolled up newspaper and say over and over “bad bush, very very bad bush.”  and then try him for crimes against humanity – he’s killed way more than saddam hussein did.  it’s always the religious zealots who kill the most innocents – and innocence.  even forgetting the 600,000 people scientists say bush has murdered, bush admits to killing 30,000 to 40,000 civilians… think about it – bush himself admits he’s killed 30,000 to 40,000 innocent human beings.  the courts just condemned saddam to death for killing fewer than 200.  bush is by far the worst president the u.s. has ever had – and he wasn’t even elected.  i hear he, cheney and rove are producing a sitcom titled “back to the fuhrer.”

. . . . 05.11.2006

5:15 a.m. – just woke from dream being kissed by dead linda mccartney at a csu art show party.  kiss was erotic, my hand on her hip shorts.  soft.  told her that was something. she said i know. told her i’d been out of the kissing game for 20 years but kathy’d come along and convinced me to rejoin. she was happy for us, said it was a worthy game. paul mccartney hugged me long and close, wanted to know my secret for making liquid copper corrosion, so i gave it to him, then whipped up a batch right there at the gallery and made a gorgeous piece.  the liquid dried a thousand times faster than real life. i gave him several copper art secret tricks, like painting the found objects black before pouring the copper liquid over them to give them an ancient sacred feel.  they had to leave but were coming back for me.  i knocked out a stranger for being too obnoxious. when he came to he asked why i’d hit a friend.  told him to think about it and he apologized.  then i woke and realized it was all dream, there would be no english fame.  my desperate desire for fame even creeps into my dreams.  the csu art show was mediocre but conceptually hip – rather like it frequently is in reality.

now begins next stage in unknown number of stages.  we have time, place, freedom, exotic locale to wander, new customs to comb, new flux to learn.  we must create, learn, grow, write… become worthy of what we set in motion, what has come our way.  we have no excuses – no relatives, no friends, no jobs to blame if we fail.

. . . . 06.11.2006

listening to kathy’s collection of philosophy lectures – mostly comes across as a mixture of cow dung and con game, but it does get the mind moving.  just heard hegel – the young hegel seemed to have a handle on living a passionate life of spirit, with an occasional step outside morality… but the old tenured professor hegel seems obsessed with serving his master the state.  all i hear seems to be missing the point.  the point is the journey, not the destination.  the point is that there is a right and wrong and we know it within – “do as you would be done” suffices.  all their blather about where the state came from seems to be a song and dance to serve their masters – the state arose because rich powerful folk created laws to allow themselves to keep what they had and steal what you have as well… then they hired thugs called police and army to enforce their rules and to keep their position and possessions.  the rich got, take, make – the poor scurry and serve, and the middle class do most the work and pay most the price. think it was buckminister fuller who said governments arose from the great pirates… the pirates realized times were changing and they needed safe ports and harbors, so they created governments.  the u.s.a. is a perfect example – we’ve attacked another country for no moral or self-defensive reason whatsoever – we attacked because we wanted their oil, we needed military bases on their soil, and we didn’t like the way they thot or looked. they were of no danger to us, whereas we are a danger to the entire world and to our own citizens as well.  our government is rich folks doing whatever the hell they want for their own personal enrichment, and the rest of us and the rest of the world are paying for it.  as i said above, bush admits to murder – but he says it’s ok cuz it’s only 30,000 to 40,000 civilians… what kind of christian does that make him?  the man is a murderer.  the man is a traitor to his country, to morality, to common sense, to decency. he’s subverted the electoral process, he’s betrayed the constitution. the man should be in jail or an insane asylum – along with cheney, rumsfeld, rice, wolfowitz, rove.

makes me think of richard farina’s book title – “been down so long it looks like up to me.”

this has been the united mutants of smith reporting from inside the outside outside the inn.

postscripts – bussed into pula today to register with police, only to be told we had to have the owners of the house we’re staying in with us. other than that, this all is magic.  sometimes i wonder why my life has been so full of good and odd and adventure.

cleveland to chicago 309 miles… chicago london 3,950 miles… london amsterdam amsterdam london 460 miles… london lodz lodz london 1,616 miles… london pula 787 miles = 7,122 miles flown first 3 months…. are we jet setters yet?

this is smith again – from the danger side of possible.

fotos by smith

flying over the adriatic sea into pula croatia

guest house

guest house

1st century roman amphitheater in pula

kathy & adriatic sea in liznjan – village we’re in

i crow croatia: streets with no names

yesterday was one of those movie days.

if you’ve noticed, in movies, there’s always a parking spot in front of the place the stars need to go, there’s always a full moon, there’s never any horseshit in the street no matter how many cowboys or cattle pass by, and there’s never frosty breath no matter how cold it is.

we got to the london airport early morning.  our check-in counter had just opened.  the security check line was empty.  within 20 minutes of arriving, we were done with the little man’s rules and on our own.  flying in to london two days earlier, it took over an hour just to get thru passport control due to increased terror of terrorists.  the true terrorists are the terror checkers, the governments that employ them, and their armies which feed the terrorists.  i see these long cattle lines in the airports as training exercizes for the jackboots, as conditioning experiments to get us used to their future brain camps.

our plane left on time – a blessing since we wanted away.  last time in london, the city was new, interesting, magic.  this time, our second time, after 8 weeks in non-english speaking countries, we found london frenetic, frantic, baseless babble.  it was painful to understand all the adverts, the crowd cackle.  too much shiny nonsense for sale.  too many bodies bouncing by.

flight was 2 hours – 2 hours less than i’d thought, so we were already over croatia when i calculated  we were halfway there.  we circled the adriatic sea, saw a ship below us parting the blue waters with white wake, and flew toward a coast of endless inlets – a scene dream drawn from foreign films.  we landed in sunlight and blue sky.

luggage was immediate, passport control quick, we were met by sabina and her parents on the other side.  by the luck of the smiths, there were native dancers, singers and players in old costumes, wandering women with baskets of free pastries, tables set with free orange juice and schnapps… they’d just inaugurated new flights into the pula airport and were celebrating.   next week, none of this would be.

our host family took us to lunch – a table filled with unknown dishes, good people, good conversation, good laughter, good view out the window of the adriatic. i ate reindeer… tastes good, even knowing santa has one less reindeer to pull his sleigh.

got to the guest house in liznjan – small fishing village of 800 to 1,500 flux – and i thought they’d made a mistake.  was expecting a small house out back, but it is large, two floors, with porch, foyer, living room, kitchen, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, balcony on second floor – mediterranean white with orange curved terra cotta roof tiles, tiled floors, tiled stairs.  kept looking around for the director and cameraman – wanted to thank the script writer. 

this is our home for next three months thanks to natalija grgorinic and ognjen raden – two croatian poets living in cleveland.  quiet, intense flux with a website celebrating collaborative writing – with a twist.  they first published me for what i’d written of mother dwarf’s death because they saw her dying and my description of it as a collaborative piece.  they’ve added excerpts from kathy’s and my blog.  they’ve published kevin eberhardt collaborating with himself rewriting poetry he wrote decades ago – they also have a kevin/smith collab.  and – they’re both in the last artcrimes and kathy’s latest edition of www.thecitypoetry.com. (o what a web we weave).  the two write as one, email as one – not sure where one stops and the other begins… a path kathy&i are beginning to walk as well.

check out their site at www.admit2.net.  they just published a new online edition.

our hosts are natalija’s sister sabina and their parents milena and branko… folk with laughter in their eyes.

this morning, after breakfast made from food they’d left us, we had morning dessert on the kitchen couch.  then we walked thru winding tree covered dirt lanes – going wrong way but once – to the village center.  talked to cats, dogs, heard a rooster crow (one of the magic sounds).  looked down the hill to the sea. stopped for coffee and sort of conversed in mixed english, german, croatian with a customer – then wound our way back thru the slightly less unknown unknown to home.

the streets here have no names – just numbers, and the numbers are not sequential.  what a metaphor for us – for our life – for where we go is not yet named.

another metaphor – we bought mark twain’s “innocents abroad” in london, for we walk in innocence as well… not to mention incence & pepperment & strawberry alarm clocks.

not a bad beginning for this phase of our journey.

this side of them

since the english anal orifices won’t let me access my own blog because they are offended by it, here’s the blog i would have blogged yesterday.  mail it to myself and go find an internet cafe not run by the mini-minds of the thot police:
 
cannot get to our blog site here in an internet cafe in england – it’s blocked as a sex site. no wonder these assholes lost the revolutionary war and every occupied colony since. the english have always leaned toward thot control – what scum must reside in their minds to want to control what others think and do. no wonder the british are george Warcrimes bush’s lap dog poodle. it is sad to be back in london even for a day after the fresh air and culture of amsterdam and krakow. we find it unpleasant to suddenly be able to understand all the blaring print adverts and the empty babble of way too many people.
 
i set off the lodz poland airport alarms yesterday by forgetting the camera and coins in my pocket. been away from the landlocked mindset too long. i keep forgetting most of the world is still anal obsessive.
 
polish breakfast in poland yesterday morning – english dinner outside london last nite – great greek lunch in london today.
 
cell fones here, there, everywhere. upperclass, lowerclass, english, dutch, polish, urban, ruraal young, old, cool, uncool – all have freaking fones glued to their ear whether in car, on foot, on bicycle, in restaurant. and, sadly, we even bought one today. it is a virgin brand, siemions model … what do virgin and semen have to do with each other?
 
kathy’s grandfather died yesterday. he was in pain, misery. rather like my own mom mother dwarf the last 9 months of her life. makes it easier on the just gone, hard on those they left. personally, i’m gonna throw a party when i die. can’t be any worse on the other side – unless they let republicans in heaven, and then i wouldn’t go anyway.

be in croatia in a few hours.  internet contact is 10 kilometers away.  will be reduced to 1 or 2 blogs per week.  thanks for reading us – it’s been fun so far.

seize you on the down size