There is a certain toughness to some things that amazes me. Like this plant here. It sat patiently under the snow through the winter in Michigan, shrugging off the cold. Still there, basically undamaged and ready to keep growing come warm weather and rain.
Ah, I love spring…
Spring can bring out the best in people; it certainly drags them out of the house. Those first few days, before the essential beauty of warm sun and sweet breezes is relegated like so much other novel ephemera, it seems like everyone is out in the streets and most of them are smiling. The presence of so much happy humanity hits me like too many gin and tonics and makes me giddy.
Last night I sat in the park for perhaps twenty minutes. Cross-legged on the grass, just looking out over the drop of land that precedes the street; watching the occasional car go by. One-thirty in the morning and there isn’t much traffic moving through a light rain that is easier to see in the street-lights than it is to feel falling on your skin. The thoughts I had were drunk ones, full of all sorts of possibility.
wrapped around some hidden curve in the road, behind an old tree stump and under the moss is where you will find it
the pixie bordello
a place where wood nymphs sell their pleasures
and a faerie with a cheshire grin
will sell you a small brick of opium
for a hand job or some gin
most common folk would fear to enter
the dark depths of this hidden place
most mortals can not match or near
the debauchery of this faerie race
Not lost, not held hostage by insurgents. No, my excuses aren’t nearly that sexy. Just been really busy.
You see I found out a few weeks ago that my house has been invaded by black mold. Ug. So I have been earnestly searching for a house to buy (need to finally stop renting) and dealing with getting my landlord to take it seriously and get it cleaned up. Needless to say it has tapped me out and I haven’t been feeling super creative by any means.
Why has no one been so kind as to inform me that Jonathan Carroll writes books like this? I happened to pick Glass Soup up off the library shelves on a whim, and about half-way into it began wondering how the man could have published fourteen previous books without me having stumbled across them.
Is there anything more fantastic than following obscure notions about? Recently talking plant and myself were having a discussion; at least I think it was a discussion, I certainly can’t recall what it was that we were talking about, maybe he’ll leave a comment that will shed some light on this- at any rate, we wound up querying dictionary.com as to the precise definition of wild. The resulting page was so entertaining that I wound up treating it like a survey.
Today was great for reaffirming the fact that there are still all sorts of people out there who actually read books, love books, and will go out of their way to support authors. The woman in line behind me was getting choked up, teary-eyed snuffling, really just succumbing to the whole nine yards of gushing fandom as we approached.
it is there even now
peaking out from its winter shelter
still waiting in most cases
but primed for action
life does not care about
the calendars of men
the world doesn’t work that way
for all their striving
most no longer hear the sap bubbling up
or really see the buds swell
their concerns have moved on
to other ‘greater’ things
they have forgotten the melody of life
and call what they now hear noise
Always keeping my eyes peeled for those turns of phrase that I feel define what is meant by ‘cognoscenti’ and I came across this one this afternoon, reading on a park-bench before showing my face in class. This is Erich Fromm, from the essay “The Revolutionary Character”.
a humanist in the sense that he experiences in himself all of humanity, and that nothing human is alien to him. He loves and respects life. He is a skeptic and a man of faith.
Woke up this morning with a start, head aboil with an all-afired eagerness to get up and get things happening!! I pounced out of bed, landed with both feet square on the floor, took one second to stretch and find some pants, and headed for the bathroom to make those final adjustments that polite society requires of its participants.
1. Free will
2. Humor
3. Play
4. Change
Doubtless there are more, but can any hunch or theory or model or hypothesis or mythos or philosophy or system or formula or code or Ph.D. thesis or fairytale or novel or poem or religion or deity or pathognomy or whathaveyou that leaves out free will and humor and play and change be complete?
Talk loud enough, not shouting really, it’s more a matter of putting physical feeling behind your words; and people will listen. The checkout lane at the grocery store is a great place, aim a few witty words at whatever starlet has managed to land on the covers of those delightfully informative magazines that demand your attention.
I’m an inveterate eavesdropper, I think that all true students of humanity are, and today I overhead what was to become the penultimate straw in a suspended judgement that I’d been trying to withhold from dropping on one of my fellow students. Yep, she’s a whiner, among lowest of the low.
Sick of books and seminars that do nothing, self-help programs and the unceasing parade of neuvo riche gurus in their gucci suits peddling their audio cassettes?
she had a pinched face
pretty
yet tight from too much recent worry
red hair
a nice body
poured into overly large sweat pants
and a puffy nylon coat
hair pulled back
no makeup
and this slightly dazed expression
the fact that the woman in front of her
was having problems with the computer
not liking her bridge card
was adding to the stress
this world she -
because i have to call it she
in order that my lust for
and occasional annoyance at,
can be properly expressed -
is a far stranger place
than we can imagine
even faced with the physical
manifestations of her oddities,
finding a face long unseen
on a walk in the snow,
finding a new possibility,
laid without asking
at your feet
even in the midst of her wonders
we cannot understand
With the recent comments regarding dreams going on here at Lewd Cognoscenti, (see dream a little dream for me) I’ve decided to once again begin my old practice of keeping pen and notebook beside the bed. Going on night three at this point, and what amazes me again is the fact of how my ability to remember my dreams is already increasing.
Md. House Approves Paper Ballots
The Maryland House of Delegates unanimously passed legislation yesterday to ditch the state’s touch-screen voting machines for the coming election in favor of a system that uses paper ballots.
The 137 to 0 vote in the House and the endorsement of the plan this week by Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. represents a stunning turnaround for a state that was on the leading edge of touch-screen voting in 2001, and it reflects a national shift toward machines that provide a paper record.
I found a tape just the other day, one of the old micro-cassette sized deals, hidden in a box of all sorts of ephemera, this one had the word ‘Prayer’ written on the side, and as soon as I saw that, I remembered that fella, telling me this story-
