the yard and book sale. ran an ad saying, 8-2. walking the dog at 7:30 and someone stops me to ask where the sale is. so drag the dog back, hey! a year ago we did a sale, and little scifi or mystery sold, really surprised me. that stuff being so plentiful and disposable. this year it all went. people paying pennies to the dollar and looking for more. a chipper for sale, which immediately brought one person (a wag) to speak of that scene in the movie Fargo. a selling angle I hadn't considered. I said 5 bucks to the person who was interested, but he wasn't sure. he wanted to plug it in and all, but I was too busy to accomodate. he finally took it. a woman, while paying for her books, confided to me (rather loudly, actually) that that guy would never give what you set as the price. and he had been disapproving of what she offered at her garage sale. someone actually walked off with a terracotta bird bath that was in the garden. the guy who ran the used booktore in town, now retired and the store gone, came and brought his son, also a book dealer. I cannot guess what percenage of my trove came from the old man's store. a tall thin man with long hair and tie-dyed Jimmy Buffet tshirt asked if any records were available. it occurred to me I could sell mine, I have no turntable. he only took 6. he said it is hard to find something new when you have 40,000 records. of course he may be yakking but the bookdealers knew the man well. he just looks for records. several people bought all sorts of items, I mean across the board in taste. nice to see books go to people who are interested in reading them. even the bookdealers appeared to be buying more for themselves. a tottering, elderly woman was weary of life. one foot was swollen and ashen, as if leprosy. she was a friend of the elder bookdealer, who is 90, but just talked about people who'd recently died. I had to carry her 3 books to the car for her. a young girl was captivated by the dragonflies flicking around in the garden. she tried to sneak up on them, managed to touch one. I should've said after a sale, nowI can get that operation. this brace on my leg has me stumping about, seemingly worse than is. it doesn't hurt but if I do a natural thing like stand up pushing with my right leg it is a sharp, draining pain. a steel rod in the brace, I noticed. I didn't think that much stability was needed, but then, it's not a nuclear titanium rod like quarterbacks must wear. dunno how to disperse the leftover overbooks. I think the library will take donations to sell, and hospitals might want some. one guy says he reads mostly scifi then sends them to his friend in Montana, who has 14,000 books, all catalogued in alphabetical order. Eileen Tabios take note! an older woman said her husband has 1000s of books, with quite a library of books about Native Amerians (I offered none for sale of such that I have). but he'll never sell, nor will he move from the big house in the high tax town they live in. the 1st guy I spoke with asked about my leg, then regaled me with details of a gruesome injury of his own. oh, then there was the guy who, like last year, sought (as well as books), broken mechanical items, to twiddle with. I couldn't accomodate. I'm recounting this stuff because it simply interests me how people are. and thank goodness we have Carl Annarummo patrolling Somerville and environs, documenting the resident weirdness and vibration. I do not claim to do as good a job.

old fart weekend warrior injury, a muscle strain or tear above the knee. not the knee itself, thankfully (after some 50,000 miles run, no knee probs!!!). Beth sensibly voted against my less than better judgment, so we went to the hospital. as Beth noted, in the summer, emergency ward is filled with injuries, in the winter, sick old people. must be 15 years since I've needed such attention. I was given a leg stabilizer, a soft brace running most of the length of my leg. it's only a dull ache if I don't move wrong but wow if I do. dull news, I know. on leaving, a crowd entered, apparently from a horrific accident. a teenager was wailing, worried that he'd killed someone. jeez. earlier a girl in socer uniform was called to be seen. she had a leg injury. the nurse asked if she needed a wheelchair. her father glibly answered, oh she's just faking the limp. which made the girl smile.

leave me to fiddle with Vallejo

Vallejo Gumbo

Hay pergolas in life, tan deserter ... I know so!!!

Gospel duels odious ode Duos, combs ch'i ante cellos.
the massacres die too low fluorides,
tie temporary in the Alamo... I know so!!!

Son locus, pro son... A zaniest brain obscures
in the most fiery prostrate and in the most experted loom.
Serbian valve loch isotropy ode makes barbarous atlas.
o loci herald winegrowers, we know Muenster manna.

Son slays caldron Monday's ode, lops crystal deli alma.
den gunwale fee adorable weal is Destined for blasphemies.
Peasant polytopes anger sonic loss precipitation.
Algebra ode pans weenies, hogties nasty Torquemada.

Yellow hombre... Pore. pore! Velvet's loch host combo
standout, poor sombre hombre notes llama tuna palmate.
shelves loch old house loco, you too lose vivid
temporal tie. combo char code culpability sighs,

and the admirable.

Hay pergolas in life, tan deserter. I know so!

porch note

The clopping house in the
district parlour, the ramekin
butterballs on loan from
puckering, those dipstick
jettisons wallowing in
package, that gasbag lop
effective of cocoa crabbiness,
that jetliner obdurate speckled thing
dying to remove floored greenery,
that banged up bubble thought
under the scabrous hootch,
that twiddling fluid, that
mucky word choice, that stud
changer, that wrangling
hacking sound,
and chance to resist
sits in the green sun,
a buttery leafy left to
resist change in the
manner of rendering

a while ago 3 neighbourhood children were playing with a skateboard. a girl and 2 younger boys. the 2 boys sat on the skateboard and the girl pulled until enough momentum was made for the boys to take off, then to crash on the lawn. their starting point the top of a very modest decline. the girl was not so much larger to necessitate these roles, but for as long as I watched, she was the only one to pull. but then all ended up on the lawn laughing merrily as the unavoidable crash occurred. last night, it might've been the same boys, with a younger one helping. in this case, the older boys sat on the skateboard. each of the older ones wore a white headband, a la Ninja. the younger one pushed them, and when they got their momentum, the younger one would jump on his skateboard to catch up. ending, of course, with the three of them sprawled on the lawn laughing. I dedicate this post to Carl Annarummo.

le jardin 

calendula and hollyhock 

anticipation 

David Hess (the) introduced me to Aaron Kunin at last year's Boston Massacre. I was a little dazed at the time, feeling socially challenged, so I didn't make much of the opportunity. I generally figure I make a lame ass impression on first meeting. furthermore, he reminded me strongly of a friend of mine, a writer, red-haired 'fro and all, so I was internally dazzling myself with that surprise. Kunin's an interesting guy, to judge from the bit of work I've seen and heard about. oh, I was feeling a bit old that day, as it was my 52nd birthday, and the average age of those around me was a good 20 years younger. but anyway, I guess I've set the scene for the following, which is just some cogitation on Kunin's "Mauberley Series". you can download the pdf here. what gets me right off is Kunin's (should I call him Aaron, like I know him?) intro. to wit:

The vocabulary derives from a peculiar nervous habit: for several years, I’ve been compulsively transcribing everything I say, hear, read, or think—in short, all the ambient language that I can pick up—into a kind of sign-language (technically a “binary handalphabet”) that looks more or less like fidgeting or piano playing. The inception of this practice can be dated quite precisely at February 14, 1993—my twentieth birthday..

he says a lot more, but that there is a mysterious gem. what do you suppose that's all about? it sounds a little like a Kenny Goldsmith experiment. and yet. I don't get what he's trying to put forward here, altho it fetches up a framework of sorts, something of an artistic working persona. somehow, he translates Mauberley via this binary handalphabet. well all right then. all this could be preparation for the work, the Series itself, or a distraction. or both. which is all potentially keen, don't you think? the repetitions of words and phrases, retooled, produce a compelling, mesmeric effect. Kunin boils his vocabulary for this work down to 170 words. I'm reminded of Berrigan's sonnets, which themselves show a constrained vocabulary. the limited vocabulary forces words into different meanings, or shades. the poems are really exquisite, personal, it seems, tho within the constraints of this process. one of the attributes of Virginia Woolf's novels that I admire is their singular challenges. she begins each novel with a specific means in mind. the shifting viewpoint in Dalloway, the sparse breaking wave speeches of The Waves, etc. Kunin seems to take a similar approach, the work as project. in the case of both writers, we see a lot of freedom in their formality.

again, I think memoir an intersting genre. I'm broad with the term, including novelists like Proust, Celine, Burroughs, Miller. I don't know anything, really, about Miller's life, so I am only inferring a closeness to the facts of his life in his novels. just give him a typewriter, a ream of paper, and a ratty desk in Paris, and he can move the world. which Kerouac could utter as well. I'll have to order Nin's diaries from the library, perhaps novels as well, tho I'm not capable of good effort on novels lately. intertices of (human) energy.

psychedelic 

painting myself into a corner, book-wise. as to say, I've left only a few out. going thru one's books, one recognizes ones that excited, or that one wants to jump into immediately. for that reason, listing one's books can be beneficial. certes, I for one believe in the stockpile approach, not buying strictly out of the moment's need but for later interest as well. I picked up Tropic of Cancer the other night, a book that had straggled away from my corral. the only other work that I've read by Henry Miller is Big Sur and the Oranges of Hierononymous Bosch, assuming that's the correct title. there's one sense of Miller, that his writing is about being a writer. which is something like the Hollywood penchant for digging into the 'heart' of Hollywood. his self-consciousness in the act is ever present. so he does regale us with narrative, however fictive it may be. I find his work oddly inspiring, as if I should make a memoir too. and it's okay that I'm not in Paris, that the wound up intensity to be a writer is enough to carry the day no matter on what stage. Miller hints towards the viperish snap of Celine, but remains somewhat stuck in his writer pose. Celine was a wild man. the blurbs are lush to the point of fulsomeness in praise. greatest living American writer, writes Mailer, somehow not referring to himself. which is without much meaning (tho one must assert historical context), tho you get the drift. I presume the praisers weren't cognizant of Celine, or perhaps found Celine too intense or offensive. seems like Burroughs began with the route Miller took, then took a big fascinating bend. I recall long ago, high school maybe, reading and enjoying Anais Nin's diaries. all these writers were externalizers, who brought their lives (however fictional) out and about. so that there was a certain amount of living in their writing, that writing was part of their life process. not in the sense of many artists, as a job or calling, but that the writing is an integreation of their daily facts. stop me if I've gone over the edge. many artists make use of their lives, the events therein, in their art, but writers like Miller and the others above, their lives seem to culminate in the text. it's an interesting reliance and trust. I guess one can egg Whitman somewhat into the same category of writer. the act creates the day, not vice versa.

I just wanted to point to this site again: Access to Insight. an awesome wealth of writings on buddhism, mostly from the Theravada tradition. if you have interst in buddhism, this site offers a ton of texts and commentaries. it's very well organized, updated frequently, an essential library. you can download the entire site, 11mb, so that you can proceed without being achored to the net. buddhism seems like the most practical of spiritiual exercies, which is as far into proselytizing as I hope to go.