NEEDLING

(All links and text in the following post from LOOKA blog.)

Call the American Red Cross: (866) 438-4636. Donate what you can, and use this number to look for any friends or relatives who stayed behind with whom you can't get in touch.

NOLA.com posts that "there is a database being developed for people who are missing and may need to be rescued from New Orleans. Call 225-925-6626 to give officials their names. They may also have information about people already rescued. We attempted to check this number and were unable to get through (busy signal)."

Call FEMA to begin the assistance process: 1-800-621-FEMA or http://www.fema.gov.

(Call FEMA while you can, before Bush finishes his appalling process of dismantling it.)

My heart goes out to the city of New Orleans and all her people. In 1997, I lived in New Orleans for seven months. It’s one of my favorite cities. I made lots of friends there, many of whom I lost contact with when I was kicked out of the country by the INS later that year and moved to France.

Last night, a friend of mine who now lives in Austin, but happens to be one of those people I met while living in New Orleans, called me because she wanted to go out. Across from me at the table where we were sitting was a girl of 25 who had come to Austin last week on vacation with her parents. She lives in New Orleans. Her whole house was completely destroyed in the last couple of days, she said. They’re living in a motel right now. Her pregnant sister is there as well. Since they’re here all ready, and they like it here, they decided just to stay here, and to make a new life for themselves in Austin.

Marcia Ball was on stage with several other musicians. People were coming on and off the stage. They had five keyboards lined up, and a drum set in the back. They kept exchanging keyboards when new people came on stage to join in. Marcia Ball was always up there. At one point, this one woman came up and grabbed a microphone and started singing. She sang a mixture of blues. She was very good. In between songs, she explained that she and her husband had been vacationing in Austin when all this happened, but that they actually live in New Orleans. Even though they can’t go back home right now, they’re going to fly in as close to New Orleans as possible in the next day. When she was explaining all this, she wasn’t overly dramatic or melodramatic at all. She said everything matter-of-factly. The girl sitting across from me was laughing and having a good time, said she had to get out of that motel room, her parents were driving her mad, which is why she was out on her own. Nobody was crying. The woman on stage was all smiles.

These are people who just lost everything.

The Emperor looses ground. His flight to the moon seems put off for the time being. He’ll just say he did it, and forget about it. The propaganda crews will take care of the details. Design a proper moon-walking suit, just as long as it looks good on camera. That’s the trick. Make it flashy, over the top, add some big time military music, a large orchestra mind you with all the brasses the turbines the large tam-tams and a whole slew of woodwinds and chords... fireworks in the night skies, the rocket never even left ground, but nobody’s gotta know. The Emperor steps out of the cockpit, his special-unit helmet all ready in his arms, all suited up clean as a brand new nickel, his clothes never even been worn, stepping out of the rocket as if he’d just come back from the moon, his hair in a perfect hairspray get-up. The paparazzi are all up in arms, cameras stuck to their retinas, shooting it all up like the latest soap-opera queen. The Emperor Steps Back Down to Earth Safely, says the headlines – “Irony is not necessarily intended,” the editor tells his subordinate before they send the paper to the press... “but maybe it is.”

Stuck on the screenplay. Yep. Attempting to write an outline first. I’m stuck at the end of Act I. What happens next? Damnit! I need to get the hell out of dodge and go sleep in a motel somewhere. Preferably in the middle of nowhere with a couple bottles of bourbon. That should fix my problem. [Yeah... Right!] It’s the Middle that does it to one every time. You can always figure out the beginning and the end, but the middle... the middle is the stubborn step-child. The middle is the meat, what makes it all worth it – bad example since I’ve given up meat all together, but for the sake of imagery – the beginning and the end are the bread, they better be damn good, but they’re only there to wrap up the rest, to bring finality and an overall roundness to the middle. And bread is always easy to find, whereas meat, that’s a different story. I’ve been broke, down and out, eating in soup kitchens, stealing from the super market, attending free buffets during happy hours... and boy was it none of it easy, not able to afford anything. Yet, even then, I could almost always find some bread. It’s what you put inside the bread that’s hard as hell to find when you don’t have a dime.

You know I say
what I say
very little really
is all I say
just about as close to nothing
as I can gather
is all I have to say.

The dogs are quiet
the parking lot is empty
I got me a simple high
simmering lightly
on a small fire
and that’s all I can ask for
right now
and if you don’t understand
keep on
fighting your own fight
just leave me out of it
and let me sit mine out
for right now.

Did I forget to grow up? Is that my problem? This seemingly unfathomable problem steering up hell in my brains and emotions and stomping down ferociously on any attempts to think and act like a grown up? Is it nothing more than a refusal to become a sentient responsible being, a stable settled and calm member of the citizenry? Is it not now much more than just a refusal? Has it not turned itself into a head-banging against the wall stratagem of debility? Upon arriving at no solution to this non-existent problem steering up mental disruptiveness, mental blocks, and total incapacitations, and being able to come up with nothing more than a massive head-ach, I have decided that I am merely being selfishly in denial at my inability to get on with life. Am I only eighteen forever in my brains? While my body continues to falter into ageing like a stumbling idiot? Is this what’s continually and exponentially making me more and more impotent word-wise? This constant fight between my emotional abilities, my mental acceptance of who I am, and my physical self slowly declining... are they the bricks of the wall building itself up blocking out my creativity? And how do I get around this corner?

Here comes the door to my old neighborhood, mixed people of all kinds talking a thousand different languages simultaneously reverberating in my head right now... sitting at my favorite cafe having a beer watching and listening to life walking by. My favorite activity. Where, do I ask, can I partake in such an activity around here? There is no such place like a place where the populations of the world walks by in the time you can watch five minutes go around the clock. All seven continents, every mixture of ethnic soup you can imagine, all skin color schemes, every dress code, religious restriction you can think of, all this humanity passing by your eyes in a few instant... where... where can I find such a place here in Texas that I can sit on the sidewalk, order a beer for a couple of bucks, listen to the server talk in at least two languages depending on which customers he’s talking to, have him remember you and your friends... where... where other than in Paris in those neighborhoods, as few as they are, not yet pushed out of the city limits by the ever dominant yuppies and their fears? Those most wonderful places where music is in the mixture of languages being spoken. From sub-Saharan African multitude of linguistic music to the inexorable sources of China, from the old world of Jewish Poland to the old ports of Algeria, and the mountains of Kabylie, I used to sit there drinking beers all day long dreaming about nothing much. The beauty which comes out of the sweat, rage, and mere human existence of having to be forced to live together, to breath together, to do business together. The fellows from whom I bought my beer before going home were Indian, the store where I went to buy my beans, sweet potatoes, garlic – among other things – were Chinese who served a mostly Black African clientele, most of my bars and cafes were run by Kabylies – such as the hotel where I worked where I was one of the only two “white French” employees, the rest where either Algerian Arab or Algerian Kabyl. I loved this diversity of people. Recently the new arrivals to the neighborhood were from ex-Yugoslavia, like my concierges who were Serbs, many more people on the streets where from Croatia. Loads of Russians hung out in the cheap cafes as well. As long as the beer stayed cheap, I didn’t care. I loved it all... but here, I don’t see any of this kind of thing, this being together through united poverty. I don‘t see it anywhere here. I miss these sidewalks multi-laced with all these languages. I miss this being able to hang out and drink beer from morning till night hanging out on a terrace without being judged. Doing nothing but looking at the world stroll down the sidewalk. This doing nothing more than drinking beer or wine and just simply being. I miss this about Paris. (Though I realize my memory is romanticizing... and that’s a dirty trick, there’s many reasons why I had to come back to Austin, but let’s not ruin these happy thoughts...)

The red wine is almost gone. I’m stuck in this position that I don’t quite know how to explain. I do not want this blog to turn into a place where I complain all the time, where I describe ceaselessly my pathetic existence. No and no again. That’s not what I want. That’s why I haven’t written lately... because I’ve been in a self-pity mood, and I don’t want any of it. I’ve tried and failed with this form all ready with a book of poems I wrote many years ago called The Pathetic Man. It is very badly written. I’d unfortunately given a couple of copies away and it might be in somebody’s procession somewhere. (This notion is at once exciting and scary.) For example, a few years ago I stayed at my friend John in Portland for the winter. I read some of my new poems to him and his then fiancé – they are now married. (I eventually read several poems at a now unfortunately defunct rock-n-roll club called The Skinny several times that winter.) John told me he still had some copies of poems I’d given him more than ten years before! When we were roommates in Camden, Maine. He showed them to me. I looked at them. Read them as if I was discovering a door into my now mostly forgotten past – I have a horrible memory. It was at once wonderful to rediscover myself and terrifying that somebody, anybody, even a good friend such as John, would have kept these angst-riddled scribbles for so many years. It gave my ego a little boost.

Feeling nostalgic, I was just going through some old floppy disks I’ve been keeping around since the late eighties. I haven’t tried to read them in years. Two out of three don’t work. In those that do, every other file is dead. Inside the third one I popped in my floppy drive, I found a file called El Patheticus (several hundred pages long... a pre-cursor to The Pathetic Man) and I found this following “poem”, if you can call it that...

Here it is. Enjoy. Nothing has been changed. Line break, language, words, or anything else. It was written either in 91, 92, or even possibly 93. I was working as a janitor. It's fun, for me anyway, to find and read such writing, as bad as it is.

some bars i'll probably not go back to

really hot today and i've being sweating it out
i went to the office and picked up a scrubber and some wax
then
 i went to go talk to the maintenance guy
 at the blood bank
then
 i delivered some music and instrument 
 for my land lord downtown
but on the way there i ran out of gas
  on north lamar right by the 24th street intersection
so and i ran up 25th 
  then i crossed over to 24th
  and almost walked all the way to the drag
  to find a gas station
i filled my two gallon life saver
  and got a ride from this long haired guy
  in a humongous 80's beat up red buick
who told me he's run out of gas on Lamar before
  and it's the shits
  i agreed: nowhere to park off
    you gotta leave it on the road
then to make it worse
  i couldn't get to my gas tank
  because it's on the traffic side
  and all these cars kept speeding by
    probably cursing me out
i waited patiently
  thanking god 
  that some cop or wrecker hadn't towed my van away
and then this guy with a baby in the passenger seat
  in a real nice metallic blue continental
  you know
  the expensive kind
stopped and blocked traffic 
  so that i could fill up my tank
he waved at me
  and i waved back thankfully

after that i went back to the station
  and filled up the tank
and went on to deliver this music downtown
  i was just on time
but landed myself 
  right at the beginning of the heavy afternoon traffic
so i decided to stop at this bar on 4th street
  and have a cold beer to relax a bit
  and read my Philip Levine book 
  i'd just bought

i went to the back courtyard
and all the tables were full
  so i asked these people
  if i could seat down
  since they had four free seat there
the girl
  a preppie college makeup perfumed and ready for a sale
looked at me
  amazed that i'd even had the guts to ask her
and said NO
  in a oh-god-please-don't-seat-beside-me way
they're reserved, she said
  so i looked at her
  and not wanting a scene
  i sat by the plants
nobody ever came to fill there seats
  somehow
  after looking at the whole crowd for the first time
  i understood
that these were all wantta be drinkers
  and moma poppa's money in pockets socializers
  but i ignored the fact
  and opened "what work is"
  enjoying it even more so because of the irony
  of where it was being read.

i moved
  got up 
  and went inside 
  to find a free seat 
  on a leather couch
and i ordered another guiness
  and read on
until these two ladies sat by me
  and one
  a blond business sharp yuppy thing
  asked me if i might have a joint
i said that i didn't
  and kept drinking and reading
then 
  i asked her if she thought 
that maybe her friend
  who had gotten up and left for a minute
would mind if i grabbed one of her cigarettes
  to which she grabbed the pack 
  and gave me one
  then lit it for me
i went back to reading 
  after saying thank you

after a while 
  she started trying to get a hold of people
  sitting in front of us
she was still in search of a joint
she kept yelling "Hey!" and "You!"
  and was getting no response
  so i yelled "YO" 
  because i was getting annoyed
  and couldn't concentrate
  and i got the guy's attention
the guy nodded his head 
  and she got up
  thinking he had a joint
he grabbed a hammer 
  out of his back pack
  thinking that's what she was asking for
and i had to ask
  why in the hell would he have a hammer 
  in his back pack
and he said 
  with an australian accent
  that he had just found it earlier today
  
after another short while
  two dweebs in ties and starched slacks 
  came buy 
  to meet these two ladies
  and they all got up
and i thanked god and ordered another guiness
  thinking they were gonna sit somewhere else
  but they just shook hands
  and the ladies sat back down
  while the two dweebs stayed standing
  talking their gibberish
then the blond in search of a joint
  turned back to me
  and asked me 
  if i wanted another cigarette
being one to never refuse gifts from strangers 
  i accepted
  and as she was lighting my cigarette
  she said:
    "if you can find me a joint
     i'll let you have the whole pack."
i wanted to spit 
  on her nice velvety blue suit
  and tell her 
  that i wasn't no fuking bell boy
  but i didn't
i went back to my book and my beer
  and when i finished my beer
  i left without saying a word
and i noticed that one of the two dweebs 
  took my place
  and the blond 
  put her arms around him
  never once looking at me
  keeping her line of talk 
  uninterrupted.

i drove home
  and now i'm getting ready for work.

Last night after work, my battery in my car went out. Work was finally over, I was going home, knowing there was a movie – 1941, by Spielberg – waiting in my mailbox from Netflix, and it’d been such a hellish last few days, that I was looking forward to having a drink, and just chilling in front of the television. To put everything in context, let me explain a few things. Last week, my breaks went out, and I had to replace them. This weekend, my water pump went out, and I decided to get it replaced as well, though looking back, I should have just left the heap of metal at the mechanics. All in all, this has cost me a lot of money. That plus the cost of my dog’s trip to the clinic a couple of month back has cost me every penny I’ve made this summer plus every penny I will make in the following two months. I was in front of the mechanic, he had just announced the price: 500 bucks, and I was looking at him asking him, “isn’t there anyway we can make this a little less, I mean, I’m completely broke, to pay you I’ll have to max my credit card.” He just shook his head looking as sorry as he could look, telling me there was nothing else he could do, but that hopefully, when they’ll get in there for good, they won’t have to replace as many hoses and such, and that they’ll be able to lower the price. Five hours later he called me back to tell me the car was ready, and that the final price for parts and labor was: $499.14. In front of that mechanics, who seemed to be a good man, and who had a face I could trust, I decided to go along with it. To be fair to him, there’s no way in hell he could have predicted an altenator fall-out. he did however warn me that there was no way for them to know whether I had blown a gasket or not, since I’d overheated my car several times, and there wasn’t enough pressure in the water-cooling system for them to know this until AFTER they’d replaced everything, and that if there was something wrong with the rest of my engine – things not fixable – then I’d still owe them for the parts and labor regarding the water-pump. ALL THIS SAID... and this is why it is not good to be a die-hard optimist, I still went along with it, and said: OKAY, thinking... this will be it, it’ll last me till Christmas, it’s got to, then I can either buy another car, or get a job bike-riding distance from my place. When I got in my car last night after nine hours at my favorite liquor store, that I turned the ignition and that NOTHING happened... I’d been pissed, ranting for three days now, black circles forming under my eyes, not able to hold a conversation without going on a rant about how much life sucks... that I finally for the first time in what seemed like weeks, put my head down on my steering wheel and started to laugh.

It’s time for a [1 month?] sabbatical. I need a break from this blog. School is starting up in less than two weeks – Yeah!! – and we’re gearing up for the busy season at work all ready. It’s starting to feel like a chore to write here, and that’s the last thing it needs to be. I think my recent posts have reflected my lack of enthusiasm lately, so I believe it’s time I went back to my paper journal for a while. Good ol’ pen and paper! What a concept.

I’ll be back. Thanks for those of you who have been reading me. See you soon.

F.K. Needles signing off.

Things are going just fine. Listening to some fine music on American Routes. This morning, getting up early, procrastinating, not wanting to get on the computer and catch up on yesterday’s backlog. Doing this screenplay training thingy. And I realized yesterday that my Theme and my Logline were both NOT happening, and I had to rethink them. And upon doing so, I was able to write my first Treatment draft. I realized that my lead character had no real goal. There was nothing which moved him forward, and even though that is often the case in real life, in movies with a three act story line, which needs both strong character and worthy action, this is important. Screenwriting 101. I’m forcing my way through it. On my own, trying to get out of this rut. Blablabla.

I’m feeling good this afternoon. Made some home-made pico-de-galo from fresh vegies and herbs. Made lots of it to last me the whole week, so that I don’t have to eat ONLY raw lettuce for lunch. This morning, I got up all depressed and feeling sorry for myself, and what I usually do in these circumstances when I don’t have to go to work, is that I go to my local bar / cafe / coffee shop / diner for a cup of coffee and some American breakfast or just a cup of coffee or something... and this morning, I realized that I no longer drink coffee, eat meat or dairy products, nor do I indulge in refined or processed foods! What The Fuck! Where the hell does one go for an herbal tea and a cup of freshly cut fruit, a place where one can hang out, shill, and write in one’s daynotes? Nowhere, that’s where you go. Such a place does not exist. So I got in my car, went to Target, bought a kettle – I’ve been meaning to do this for weeks – then drove on to the local organic convenient store co-op. I was shopping, looking at all the vegetables, the canned beans, and so forth, and noting that the prices are really high. I still picked a half honey melon, some celery stalks – which I’m just realizing I forgot to add in my pico-de-galo – some totally natural almond butter made from raw almonds and nothing else – I love the stuff – and a couple of caffeine-free teas. I walked up to the counter feeling a little out of place. All the other customers are granola types. Scraggly beards, unshaved arm-pits, long hair, halucegenic t-shits, and so forth. So I don’t look so out of place with my sandals, worn shorts, wife-beater, and opened paisley button-up shirt. Still, for some reason I didn’t feel completely at ease. I got up to the register, starting to feel as if I didn’t belong at all, I even grabbed a worthless magazine off the rack – which I never do – for some reason. She asked me if I was a member. I said no.

“What does that mean, to be a member?”
“You get a discount.”
“Oh yeah? What do I do?”
“It’s fifteen dollars a year, or a seventy dollar lifetime membership.”
“Okay.”
“You can just pay me, or any other cashier, or save your receipts till the extra you’re paying as a non-member adds up to the annual fee.”
“Okay.”
“Are you new in the neighborhood?”
“No... I’ve been here a while... I’ve just turned vegan.”
“Same thing.”

More than ten years ago, I used to live two blocks away from that store. And it’s been that long since I’ve walked in there. I lived in a big house with lots of roommates. There was one named Brandon who we all made fun of. He had long hair, was very thin, didn’t eat any meat, was short, and always had some beans cooking on the stove. We were real asses to this poor guy. I think back about him now, more than ten years later, closer to fifteen years, when I’m myself going vegan, and how it’s difficult in this world of fast-food, refined foods, an onslaught of nonstop advertising, and the F.D.A. with their lobbied food pyramids, to eat properly... I think back and wonder if he’s still a vegan, if he still thinks back to those days when we all lived in what I’ve come to call: The Hell Hole. I lived there eleven months. I turned twenty there. I discovered all kinds of drugs there. I became an alcoholic there. This place was a major turning point for me. I wrote a screenplay about it many years ago. It’s very badly written, and hopefully, nobody will ever read it.

It was a weird feeling with that cashier. I was almost shaking. She was smiling at me with her face without any make-up whatsoever. It was the first time I verbalized what I am doing. “I just turned vegan.” It was a real big relief. Like I’d just admitted that I am an alcoholic... except better.

Early Sunday morning working on a screenplay – a project I started as an exercise on the tenth of this month, and will take to its completion on the thirty-first of this month – and listening to Tamar’s Are we there yet? (May 7, 2005) She plays some really fun stuff. I’ve never listened to her show before until the other day when I wanted to listen to Give the Drummer Some with Doug Schulkind, and she was the guest d.j.

A snake being gobbled by another snake
naturally curls itself in a tight ball

rendering Wabdabdal’s swallowing
and masticating process near impossible :

       a snake roll
       is a lot tougher to chew on
       than lets say
       a cinnamon roll or a tootsie roll.

First of all
when sandwiched between Wabdabdal’s jaws
he knows he’s done for, he knows it
yet a mordant survival instinct
a poignant need to not be eaten whole
or in parts 
kicks in to the last squeaky breath 
                             – he knows it – 
                      one last rattling sigh.

He twists himself up in vainglory
of a sailor’s eight with extra loops

pertinently knowledgeable of his powerlessness
he does his best to make Wabdabdal’s task
a real pain in the neck.

Considering a snake is all neck
and no ass
this becomes a substantial pain.

However, this is not enough.

A snake eating snake 
is unflinchingly patient
calculatedly cold and tenacious.
The odds of him spitting out his prey
are basically little to none
even if the pleasures of the flesh small
or even absent 
and the protein intake, compared to the energy dispensed
minimal… 
it’s highly doubtful, highly improbable
that a snake eating snake
will let his doomed captive go.

(A poem my friend Brian is designing a poster for. It is from my book Beer songs for the lonely that my friend Claire in Paris is publishing soon. I'm very excited about both these projects. Brian doesn't have a website, but he's working on one, and as soon as it's up I'll have a link to it. He does great work. This is all I could find on the net as an example of his work. Though the image is very small, that particular painting is at least five feet by four feet. It's a big one, and it is explosive.)

I’ve been absent. Unfortunately, I haven’t been in such a great amount of descent moods these last couple of weeks. Upon re-reading my last few posts, I half-wished I hadn’t written some of them. I even took some sections of the last post away, which I believe makes it much better, though it’s hard to make it entirely readable. That is my current excuse, as well as we are currently doing Inventory... if you’ve never worked retail, then you have no clue what this entails, if you have, then you know. Tomorrow’s the big day. Been working long hours. Quitting the coffee I must say has helped my sanity tremendously. Keeping the bearings straight, baby! Not going completely bonkers yet, sonny! Ain’t dead yet, you slick cowboy you! You ain’t seen the last of me, honey-pie... and so on and so forth... actually been sleeping nights through, not quite like a baby yet, but we’re working on it, specially on the part about getting some rest. That’s the bit I’m excited about.

Not that this has anything to do with anything, but I had some shark for dinner. Cooked in its own juices, baked in the oven at three hundred and fifty degrees. That and some simple greens, no sauces, no nothing other than all that I just said. Accompanied by a bottle of white wine from Alsace.

I’ve switched the last couple of hours watching this film I really like (Funny Bones, first suggested to me by Claire in Paris... I watched it on my laptop computer a little more than a year ago, as I was moving out of my studio in Belleville, rented it from netflix recently). Drinking a little Whitehorse blend... uhm... on the rocks with a splash of Perrier. That’s my drink, honey-sweets, potato-pie, my little red cabbage... you are like beat sugar distilled to a perfect spirit, dull as an aluminum door handle, harsh as a blow to your brains, neutral enough for all the flavors to be added effortlessly... you are a lie, if mixed accordingly, you will neither be felt nor tasted by the weak or the used-up, yet you will attack and go for the kill every time, seen or not... which is why I'm sticking to a little scotch and water...

Currently listening to Ken Freedman’s show from August the third of this very year.

Grunt grunt grunt. The old man walked into the store. He could barely walk. Five feet tall. Dressed in beige golfer’s shorts and a white polo shirt. He had some sort of bandage around his right ankle. Probably around his early eighties. He grumbled as a way of communication.

I saw him coming, getting out of his oversized Cadillac, and bee-lining towards the liquor store. Grumpy old men, there seems to be an endless ration of them. I held the door open to him.

“How you doing today,” I said.
“Gin,” he grumbled, “where’s the gin...”
“Right this way, sir.”
“Where’s the gin?” He repeated a few times, never having ever said hello or anything.

I lead the way.

“Right this way, sir.”

He followed me on his heavy foot, stumbling along as best he could. At this point, I was still being nice to him, figuring he was just another grumpy old man, one among thousands, and that I owed him some sort of respect or something. I took him to the gin section.

“I usually like this Bombay stuff,” he says.
“You like it dry or do you like the newer stuff.”
“Dry,” he said dryly with a rough throat.
He was looking at the Bombay Sapphire.
“Then you might want to go with the Bombay 86, it’s more of your classic dry gin.”
“I’ll take that one, then.”

“Where’s your cognac?”
“Right this way, sir. Here, let me take this bottle from you, I’ll go ahead and place it on the counter for your convenience.”
“Where the hell’s the cognac? The French cognac...”
“Right over here, sir...”
“Not that I want to buy anything French, those bastards... but they make the best damn cognac around, those damn French.”
“Right over here, sir,” I’m now talking on the tonal basis of cold steel. I figure it’s no use getting into it with the old geezer.

He’s grumbling to himself. He’s standing in front of all the cognacs and other brandies. I can barely understand a word he says.

“Don’t you have none of that Corboisshon’s?”
“What?”
“Corboisshon’s... are you deaph?”
“I... I’m not sure, sir... don’t think so... what is it exactly?”
“It’s some of that damn French Cognac... those damn French... I can’t stand buying their stuff, but heck, they make the best stuff you ever darn tasted in your life. Corboisshon’s!!!!”
“Well...”
“V.S.O.P.!”
“Uhm... do you mean Courvoisier?”

I point out the bottles to him.

“No...”
He grumbles, clears his throat a few times, and continues, “V.S.O.P. Corboisshon’s!! Damnit, everybody has it.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I’m at a loss.”

And he looks at the Courvoisier for good this time.

“There it is!” He exclaims. “Corboisshon!”
“Yes, sir, that’s the Courvoisier I just it pointed out to you.”

He ignores my last remark completely.

“You got this stuff in your store and you don’t even know it! What kind of store is this anyway?”
“I don’t know, sir. Will that be all?”
“Rumph.... those damn French, I hate their guts!”

And he grumbles all the way back to the counter, where I charge him for his two bottles. At the beginning, I thought about giving him hell, then I though about it, this old piece of angry shit will be dead soon. Fuck him. I rang him up and looked at him thinking, ‘You’re angry and hateful and an asshole, but soon, you’ll be dead, and I’ll still be alive, and I’ll live many more years, while your body will be the playground of worms and maggots.’

That made me feel better. I smiled at him. No a single moment throughout our encounter did this man actually look at me or listen to me. He never heard my accent – light as it is – nor calculate that I might not be an American, that I might not agree with his narrow-minded republican ideals, that I might actually even be French (the evil of all evil), the very representation of those awful people he despises so much, those awful people who make such a wonderful drink... Damn Them!

Seagulls holding catfish just out of the water, their wings flapping, the fish fighting, until the fish dies. A large city water fountain. I’m ridding into town on my big motorcycle. My super dog is running besides me. We both have sunshades on. The cool of cool, except when I get into town, I don’t recognize the roads. Did New Orleans change that much since I was last here? I veer to the left, turn on to what I think is a road, though I’m not sure because everything is under construction. I find myself ridding on a public plaza. A huge man-made water area in the middle built like I’ve never seen one before. There’s no edges, no barriers, nothing which delimitates the water area from the dry area. It flows in and out in small waves. It’s like they built the concrete flat, and then let it slop down to form a cone-like hole in the middle of plaza, which they then filled with water. Except it’s not a cone throughout as I found out, because I rode my motorcycle right through the water, still looking as cool as can be, my dog swimming besides me. It slopes down to a little deeper than waist level then it levels out and stays flat. Large catfish all over the place. It was difficult not to hit them as we rode our machine by. Seagulls diving down, and lifting them out of the water, keeping them out of the water long enough for them to die, then putting them back on the water so they could chew without having to fight. Chewing seagulls? We drove back out of the water. There was a cop standing there looking at us, but he did nothing. So we parked next to a park bench made of concrete slabs, one of many surrounding the water hole, and sat ourselves down to dry in the sun.

This is the second morning that I do not make myself a cup of coffee. Not a single drop of coffee all day yesterday. The day before that, I had two cups to start the day, and none throughout the rest of the day. I did have a chai tea, which is loaded with caffeine. But none of that yesterday. I went to the coffee shop and had some herbal tea. I’ve had a head-ache since yesterday afternoon. Let me explain my usual coffee intake. I wake up early, make a pot of coffee. I have one of those small percolators which produces two large mugs of American drop coffee. I drink the entire pot while surfing the internet, reading various newspapers, checking out some of my favorite blogs, and so forth. I take my dog out for a walk and make it back home. By this time, I look at the clock, if I still have plenty of time before having to get to work, I put a second pot of coffee on, which drips while I'm in the shower. By the time I’m out of the shower, I have two more large mugs of coffee while I surf on the internet some more. Sometimes I have some food, most of the time I don’t, though these last few days I’ve been eating fruits and various berries for breakfast. I dress, get in my car, and on the way to work, I stop at one of my daily coffee shops where I buy a small coffee – no room for cream and no sugar, please – which I either drink on location or take in my car depending on what time it is. I arrive at the store, do whatever I do there, and usually take one or two coffee breaks throughout my shift. After I clock out, I come home and switch to either beer or wine or whisky. Almost two days without coffee. It’s a tough one.

My friends from Paris, the two you saw in the picture hiding behind large bowls of noodles – Bowls for Brains! Noodles for Brains! Noodles for Bowls! Brains for Noodles! – have sent me an awesome care-package containing cd’s, books, cool engravings... music such as what I’m currently listening to by Philip Glass – just turned it on, turned it on, put it through the grinder, the wringer... having a slight moment of apprehension, as in: What’s Gonna Happen Next? (His music does that to you, amazingly enough, repetitive as it is, always seemingly going back to where it’s all ready been when in fact it’s slowly going forward, around, towards, in tight circles inside a spring which seemingly keeps going around back around itself but really doesn’t, moving slowly away from the source at a rate of umpteenth circles almost circling around the same space, one upon the other tightly held together ready to spring out any time... Are you ready?)

I haven’t written any poetry in a long time, but repetition has always been very important to me, whether the repetition of words, or of imagery, I think they somehow give you the time you need to get right down to business. I like Philip Glass for that. I wish I could do in poetry what he does in music. I cannot. But then again, I should practice more often. Now I’m ashamed to share anything with you. Nothing compares to this music. I’m sure Ezra Pound would have had something to say about the mater. Something like: Don’t quite your day job! For a long time, I worked on this long poem called Blueberry Hill and never finished it. Maybe some day. It takes place in an imaginary Maine, somewhere between Rockland and Bar Harbor. It’s the story of a man and of a woman who are in love. He is building her a house on top of a hill called Blueberry Hill. This takes place long ago before cars and computers. She is pregnant with their child. One cold snowy night before he gets back from pulling the lobster traps, she gets murdered by a horrible man. When he gets back to the campsite and sees both her body and the body of his unborn child dead in the snow, he boards up the house, and walks down to the harbor where he steps into the freezing water and drowns. But before he does that, he buries his wife and his unborn, builds a circle of stone around their grave, and blesses the ground, saying that all lovers that come to this place, will find what he has lost. The story is told by a young woman to a young man who are lying inside the circle of stone. The old house never inhabited is still standing on top of the hill, all boarded up. Big oil tankers are moving slowly far out on the harbor. But the two young people are oblivious to the world.

Maybe I’ll get back to it. Maybe I won’t.

The first time I started writing this poem, I was working in a poster shop in Paris right in front of the Centre Pompidou. The days were very long, and sometimes I would go more than one hour without seeing a customer. We catered mostly to tourists. We sold posters of famous paintings, postcards of the same paintings, and all kinds of useless little types of junk-shop stuff made in china, like golden Arc de Triumph, Eiffel Tower’s of all sizes, lighters in the shape of naked women, touristy maps of Paris on kitchy frames, mugs with all the monuments on them, et cetera. I became very broke towards the end of that summer, as I’m apt to do, and I had to sub-lease out my studio to stay alive, so I actually lived inside that store for a couple of weeks before flying to the USA for a six month leave of absence living out the Maine winter, then the Texas winter, and back to Maine, before heading back to Paris. Those poor people who owned the poster shop, they gave me 300 euros in cash so that I would buy some candies in the US unavailable in France, and ship them back to them, so they could sell them in their other store. I religiously stayed away from that money. But after a couple of weeks of having no car, not being able to go look for the candy in question, living in Portland on my friends’ couch, not having any money... after a few weeks, I started borrowing a dollar here, a dollar there... and before I knew it, the three hundred Euros were gone.

Maybe I’ll get it back. Maybe I won’t.

I told myself that living in Maine would be the perfect place to write a narrative slash fable-like poem taking place in Mystery Maine... but I was wrong, I didn’t even touch a word of it in the six months I was mostly in Maine. Mostly I drank beer at the Skinny – rock-n-roll club now defunct but opening back up soon I hear. I wrote an online journal for a select few, one I promised myself I would turn into a book before I died. I drank some more, hung out in coffee shops, several bars, met lots of great people, had some great times, but never got around to re-writing my poem. Back in Paris, I was way too totally broke to do anything but go around scrounging for food. By the time I found a job, it was too late and I – as now – worked such long hours that I was never able to concentrate or deliver any type of energy to my poem. So there it sits. So there it is.

Maybe someday I’ll get back to it. Maybe.

First thing first. Life gets in the way of creativity for those of us who aren’t disciplined enough. For creativity to be foremost, nothing else must matter. Nothing.

My friends sent me this wonderful package loaded up with books, music, and stuff. It’s absolutely great.

MERCI!

Turned the DVD player off after watching Super Size Me. This is my first viewing, and probably the last. I knew everything he talked about all ready, though I didn’t know it to the extreme he talks about it.

A few months ago, I had two teeth extracted. That day, I was in pain, hadn’t slept in several days, and came into work looking like shit. My manager, who’s now working at corporate office, basically forced me to go see a dentist. There’s one just a few store-fronts from our liquor store. A few hours later, I was sitting in a surgical chair with an old fellow sticking pliers in my mouth. I hated it. I hated the drugs they gave me beforehand.

There was this gas I had to breath in – I had decided not to be put to sleep (being fully aware of the linguistic connotations) and had decided to only have my mouth be put to sleep. After the shot into my gum, and it wasn’t taking - they’d stick needles in there every few minutes to see if I could still feel something – they decided to put a gas mask on me. It was no fun at all. I lost all ability to move my limbs. I could only move my eyeballs, see what was happening, be completely aware of my suroundings. I started trying to talk, or rather to yell at them that I hated what was happening to me, but all that came out were primordial grunts and garbles. I’d never before felt so powerless.

And hovering over me was the doctor, a tallish graying man in his early sixties, and a young nurse in her early thirties or late twenties who all ready hated my guts because it was past six in the afternoon and her shift had been extended. She’d been rude to me from the start. To her, I wasn’t a patient in pain – small, I know, not exactly life threatening... give me a break – to her I was an hour more on the clock. She made it quite clear to me when she picked up her cell phone right outside my room and called her significant other to inform him/her that because of a late patient she wouldn’t be able to make it in time. All of it with over-amplified sighs, sorry’s this isn’t my fault... blablabla... when I lost total access to my limbs and vocal cords, and that I was on this metal table late in the afternoon staring up at the ceiling and at these two people hovering over me, one of whom hated my guts, all the sudden I got more scared and more paranoid than I’d ever gotten before.

I tried to talk, and it came out as prehistorical grunts of fear.

“Whoops... guess we put a little too much gas, sorry about that,” is all the doctor thought to say. He pushed some button and the pressure released.

I felt like the biggest coward. I felt like a little boy except my mother wasn’t outside that door making sure these people weren’t going to do horrible things to me.

Then everything went numb inside my mouth. My limbs came back to life. The pliers entered my mouth. I couldn’t feel a thing, but I could hear my teeth resisting. I could see and feel the annoyance of the nurse as my teeth fought the pliers. I could hear things crunch in there.

In the process of going to a doctor for the first time in a few years – not counting the bull shit green card over-paid American doctor I had to see in Paris to get my papers – they told me my cholesterol as well as my blood pressure were high, that I needed to be careful. For two days after the dental surgery, I couldn’t eat any solids, so I contemplated my diet quite seriously. I decided I would not go to another fast food or hamburger joint ever again. I’ve failed a few time. I decided to buy fresh food at H.E.B. for my lunch instead of going to the local hamburger joint. I’ve done that ever since. I’ve lost weight, though not as much as I’d like to. I don’t like nor drink sodas, so that’s not a problem. Coffee is a big thing for me. So is alcohol.

I bought some books.

Eat to Live and Cholesterol Protection for Life, by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (I was turned on to these books by reading Large Fellow, you can find more information here.) I’ve gotten the name of a doctor, a proper M.D., from my sister. A doctor who works with ‘alternative’ remedies – mostly meaning NO pills and such, and sticking to dietary solutions. So I thought about possibly doing an experiment, kind of like Super Size Me but the other way around. That’s why I rented that movie, so that I could see to what extent he took the experiment. The extent to which he took it is scary.

It would rather be an unfair start since I’ve all ready totally given up fast foods and hamburger joints, as well as Tex-Mex restaurants, and so forth. But I am overweight, an alcoholic, and I do live a rather unhealthy life-style. I don’t even know how much I weigh... (scared to know, really).

Maybe it’s time to go see that doctor, get all the numbers, the charts, the cholesterol levels, the this and that’s... et cetera. And jump on the wagon!! First, though, I need to read the books, study the whole affair, and see if I have the balls to go through with it.

(There is one thing I must keep in mind. I won a trip to Las Vegas with my work, and this trip won’t happen till the end of October. How could I go to Vegas and not drink, not eat whatever, not do all the things that are totally bad for me? What else is Vegas good for? So, for right now, I’m cutting out the meats, which I’ve more or less done for the last several weeks, I’m slowly cutting the coffee, and eating as much raw vegies and fruits as possible, along with beans, salads, and unsalted nuts. But I’m not going all out until AFTER Vegas, which gives me plenty of time to study up on it all.)

Uhm... I’m getting all these hits (for me, that is... lets keep everything in perspective: 9 hits in a day is a shit-load for me) and I’m not writing anything new. I realize this whole business of blog writing is an ephemeral one, and if one has the customers – readers – then one should at least have the decency to write new material, newer material, more material... et cetera, ad infinitum. The problem here is simple: I have not been much inspired these last few weeks. I’m getting off a ‘pissed at the world’ binge, which transmuted itself into a small depression, and is now finally trailing off into never-never land.

But out there towards the outreach of my personal universe, is still too close for comfort... I feel the nasty vibes. Shadows and monsters which have crowed my imaginary space, and in thus doing created chaos which had to be fought internally, are barely gone, their intrusion still felt. All this is hard on my direct hands-on easily translatable imagination, and all this is also quite a stretch on my emotional capacities. During these times, most of my emotions are strained and entirely taken over in fighting the anger and the depression – shadows and demons – and my creative life gets pushed backwards into my unconsciousness for the time being... which makes for – at various degrees – great dreams, horrible nightmares, and mostly sleepless and or restless nights.

Non of these imaginary landscapes are readily available to my creative impulses as I am usually too tired to write. I spend the whole day at the liquor store faking being happy, putting a smile on my face and listening to all these people’s troubles and such, so as to make the highest commission possible – which has a tendency to make me feel like a whore, not helping any... all smiles and jokes, fun and games on just a few hours of bad sleep several days in a row... By the time I get home, I’m exasperated, on the verge of imploding, and in no way able to write about it all.

Or maybe I’m just full of shit. That’s probably the most viable explanation for my laziness and inability to write.

More sooner than later. Cheers.