WALKING ON THIN ICE

warning, products are habit forming – foto by smith

There’s a LOT of rage around here – I was given the middle finger twice today while driving back from picking up our new used car: I was going the speed limit so Lady could follow me in our not-even-almost-new 1994 red Honda Civic we just bought, and people got angry because I wasn’t breaking the speed limit. One SUV screeched around me, pulled in front, slammed on his brakes, and kept turning his blinking lights on and off as he repeatedly sped up and slowed down to teach me a lesson. When I turned off on the same road he did, he got scared and raced away.

We picked up our used car and drove the car’s owner and his 18 year old son over to transfer the title. The father is a gentle, well-intentioned man while the son is an 18 year old loud fast talker who was angrily tirading against insurance companies and every time his father tried to say something the son would cut him off after a couple words saying “Ya, I know that already, I understand, BUT…” and talk right over him. When we finally got back to their house the son exploded at the father saying “You’re always telling me to shut up,” and stormed off. Just before he slammed their door he yelled at his father “YOU’RE STUPID.” he’s the one who went with us on our initial test drive and his loud angry aggressive never-ending voice irritated me so much I wanted to de-tongue him and toss him from the car, leave him along side the highway with the rest of the trash.

It’s depressing but necessary to have a car again. Spent the last three years without one, and from 1992 through 2002 I also had no car – got around by bicycle and public transportation. But with Lady going to be working (we cannot live in the U.S. on my social security), we can’t get around the Cleveland public transport system without adding hours each way. Took three busses and 4 hours just to visit her Grandmother last year in a nearby suburb. If it’d taken Little Red Ridinghood that long to get to grandma’s house, the big bad wolf would have gotten bored and gone back to his lair.

On the good foot, photographer Charlotte Mann is putting out a book of Cleveland poets and is shooting us today for inclusion. We’ll each have a poem and our foto in. It’ll be published in August and the fotos will be displayed in an art show at Brandt Gallery. We’re slipping back into Cleveland’s creative wave. Of the hundreds of places I’ve lived and visited my 63 years, Cleveland has the edgiest, grittiest art/poetry scene. We went to a book reading two nights ago and there were shouts of joy when they saw we were back. You want to be liked, leave town for 3 years and then return – gives them time to forget your defects.

After the foto shoot, I went over and got a small bit of birthday stone for later, then our friends/landlords/hosts (Chiplis and Cynthia) took us out to the Thai Palace for an excellent birthday dinner. Came back to his studio after and played some great Jimi Hendrix on his jukebox while the four of us played pinball on his old machine. Chiplis has 25,000 45 rpm records in his collection. He started his collection when I gave him my old jukebox in the late 1980s, and then in 2002 when I was out of work, I sold him my 1,500 record collection. My Cleveland connections among the artists and poets is a long and interwoven affair.

And that was how I spent my 63rd birthday.

Lady driving our new used Honda Civic home – foto by smith

Lady’s first driving of new used car – foto by smith

Chiplis playing pinball in his art studio – foto by smith

detail of Chiplis’s art studio – foto by smith

detail of Chiplis’s art studio – foto by smith

church on our corner where The Deer Hunter was filmed – foto by smith

Cleveland bus – foto by smith

Much to think but not much to say yet. Trying to find a used car to buy before our week’s rental runs out (depressing) and trying to find an apartment to rent for a year or two (depressing). Life is faster, more stressful here, but the energy level is higher. Spent 4 days straight, then two friiends got me stoned twice yesterday. Today’s back to the straight and narrow.

Here’s yesterday’s taste of Cleveland.

Cleveland customer – foto by smith

Cleveland taxi – foto by smith

Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood (where we’re staying) – foto by smith

Cleveland ice – foto by smith

I’m an anti-social cranky-ass curmudgeon who’s even crankier due to this new cold and lack of grass aggravating old pain. It is truly hard to move from 80 degree sun to 8 degree winter gray. So I apologize to all those I offend, not so much for what I say but for the way it’s taken out of spirit truth need and context. I guess it’s just natural that everyone needs to defend their home city. One person complained I was dissing Cleveland. It’s not dissing, it’s reporting with fresh eyes.

There is MUCH to praise about Cleveland. In the U.S., I’ve lived in 9 states (Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Tennessee, Maryland, Michigan, Arizona, Ohio) and who knows how many cities these past 63 years, and I’ve never come across a better set of people than here in Cleveland – especially among the artists, poets and musicians. The creative level and just basically friendly people here are amazing. We’ve met fantastic people everywhere of course, and of course we know more folk here because we’ve lived here longest, but still the level of intensity in the arts here is unsurpassed in my odd out-of-the-box experiences.

And as for beauty, the great Lake Erie is awesome, looks like an ocean and deeply touches the soul. I feast my eyes on it every time we’re near, and driving back from the east side, I eagerly await coming over the rise and suddenly seeing this great expanse of water before me. It thrills and soothes me every single time I see it. That’s why I poured Cat’s and Mother Dwarf’s cremated ashes on its shore.

Culturally Cleveland has one of the top ten quality museums in the country, and its symphony orchestra is world famous and respected, probably one of the top 3 in the country. We also have the longest artist-run alternative art gallery anywhere–Spaces–perhaps one of the very few left, and certainly the only one who owns their own building.

Cleveland is way cool, always has been. A goodly number of famous musicians first became famous thanks to Cleveland, and as everyone who has ever listened to the radio knows, Cleveland Rocks (“Cleveland Rocks” is a rock song by Ian Hunter from his 1979 album You’re Never Alone with a Schizophrenic).

There’s tons more of course – the Cleveland Performance Art Festival which for ten years was the biggest performance art festival in the world, and Cleveland Cinemateque which is the grandest year-long never-ending film festival in the world.

And not to ignore the down-side, Cleveland is the poorest city in the U.S. of its size, has some of the largest unemployment in the nation, and is among the cities with the fewest days of sun a year.

Like life and everything else in the universe, it’s all constant compromise.

All that said, I’m glad to be back. I already feel the energy here. We’ll be here 1 to 3 years while we get CRIMINAL published, and then hopefully will travel more. We need to live in Thailand for awhile, want to see India, China and Nepal (I also need very much to see Greece). And I think I’d like to live in Peru and New Zealand for awhile. But Cleveland will always be our home.

So no disrespect intended. Besides anyone who knows me knows I’m part PRICKly cactus, part PRICKly porcupine, and addicted to saying what I see. If you don’t like my perceptions, perhaps it’d be best not to read me. I try to be as nice, moral and sociable as I can, but my skill-set is sometimes defective and always limited.

Cleveland / frozen Lake Erie – foto by smith

civilian control, below our kitchen window Oaxaca Mexico – foto by smith

The first thing we heard in the Houston airport when we arrived back in the U.S. was threats. The airport speaker system kept announcing the color of our national fear this day was Orange; we should be good Germans and turn in anyone we deemed suspicious to the airport authorities; it was illegal to make jokes and if the Homeland Security TSA enforcers didn’t like our jokes, we would be arrested. They also stated anyone’s luggage could be searched anywhere anytime by any airport worker, and if we objected we would be arrested. They kept announcing this over and over every few minutes. You know, basic totalitarian talk, dictator didacticism, fascist furor, Big Brother boasts. It ain’t just the Jews and the Gypsies this time, it’s everyone who ain’t rich and won’t toe the Master’s line. They’ve changed the rules of order so a person is guilty until proven innocent.

Then today in a Cleveland Family Dollar discount store of all places, every two minutes the loud speaker announced “Welcome to Family Dollar. Inside this location all actions are being monitored and recorded for your protection and safety. Thank you for shopping Family Dollar.” My protection my ass.

Welcome to the Ununited Corpo-Rat Mistakes of Amerika where you are Their’s to do with as They will.

I salute my “Masters” with a raised middle finger and a fart for Their farthings.

civilian control, town square, Oaxaca – foto by smith

civilian control, on the beach, Puerto Escondido – foto by smith

civilian control, below our kitchen window, Oaxaca – foto by smith

civilian control, outside the University, Oaxaca – foto by smith

Cold Cleveland Lady – foto by smith

It took twelve hours, four airports, three plane rides, two countries just to go from 80 degrees Fahrenheit to 8 degrees. After 15 months of southern Mexican weather that ranged from 77 to 90 degrees, the 10 to 30 degrees here in Cleveland so far is brutal enough to hurt when we go outside. Serious cold is painful whereas excessive heat is merely uncomfortable.

My eyes are screaming for color. Cleveland is gray skies, decayed dusty gray brown buildings, gray concrete, frozen great lake, and colder than Rush Limbaugh’s heart would be if the fatfuck had one.

We rented a car for a week from Budget, and got ripped off – they gave us a car with 3/4s of a tank of gas, which we will of course have to fill up upon return.

Short changing folk and plain ripping them off pretty much seems to be Corpor-Rat policy in America the greedy.

On the other hand we just returned from the Unique Thrift Store where for $46 we bought two winter coats, three sweatshirts, two sweaters, two pair black dancer tights, a huge knitted shawl, a body-length sweater coat, a suede skirt, two pullovers and a pair of women’s dress shoes. Then at Family Dollar we got two more sweat shirts for $1.80 each. When you’re new cold, you buy warm clothes fast, and it helps reduce prices when spring is three weeks away.

My body is cranky, this being my second day without grass. Having smoked for 42 years, I’m used to the endless cycle of having/not-having grass and know it takes me three days to get used to being without. The past 15 months I smoked grass and hash every day–in fact have never smoked so much so long– and the last two months added some opium. Good thing I waited until just before we left to try opium because it is highly addictive and I discovered I like it a lot. Takes away pain and is the very definition of mellow–you don’t get stoned so much as wondrously laid back. It’s rather subtle smoking, wee bit heavier eaten.

I’m in greater pain up here thanks to the discomfort of travel, the excessive cold which aggravates my arthritis, and the lack of grass (marijuana reduces both pain and inflammation). Three months ago when Lady told me she needed to move back home for family and friends, I upped my grass intake from 3 joints a day to eight–basically smoked from noon to midnight every day. Figured if I were leaving the land of free and abundant smoke, I’d best saturate my cells.

We spent today buying food, essentials, warm clothes. Went to the West Side Market which is still the best and largest food market we’ve seen anywhere in our travels inside or outside the country. Tasted some marvelous cheese and bread. Mexico has mediocre cheese and worse bread–or is it the other way around? England has marvelous cheeses, as does Italy, and of course the best of both is France.

As we were tasting the cheese, a poet we hadn’t seen in three years tapped us on the shoulder and welcomed us back. That’s the good part of coming home, the friends, poets and artists one meets living in the same city for 29 years. We’re famous in the neighborhood here, already have a featured poetry reading for the two of us in May, and can easily get an art show or two once we’re ready.

Much more stuff of course, but this is adequate for our first day of living in America again. And yes, I know America refers to South, Central and North America, and even North America is inadequate because it refers to Mexico, U.S.A. and Canada, but in Mexico they called the U.A. America, and I’ve heard Canadians do the same, so fuck the Politically Correct Police and the fascist rules they rode in on.

(As I said, I’m crankier when cold and stoneless, but will quickly get used to both and once again return to my usual positive cheerful hopeful self).

Cold Cleveland Smith – foto by smith