ragazine.cc blog

Volume 8 Number 1

2012-01-03T21:13:00.000-08:00

Time to check out the latest issue of Ragazine.CC.... Lots to see and read.... feedback welcome!

Zucotti Park Pix

2011-12-07T09:29:00.000-08:00

So, you didn't make it to the Park before they 'cleaned it up'. Well, here are some pix you might appreciate, including a couple of the mobile command station for the police who eventually cleared the decks. Of course, there's more to see and read in the latest issue of Ragazine, including all the usual treats: fiction, creative nonfiction, art, photography, music reviews, political comment, and much more ....

New Words

2011-05-27T08:03:00.000-07:00

1) Humanimal: An animal that exhibits “human” qualities (the Chesire Cat in Through the Looking Glass); or that kills for pleasure; and/or that physically resembles humans in some way, e.g., a horse with a man-face; a man with a horse face. A human that exhibits ‘animal’ qualities, such as a werewolf, or someone who eats raw meat. Centaur. Goat-man.

2) Uni-Verse: Poetry that contemplates and/or reflects on the integrated nature of being. Not necessarily rhyming, or sing-songy.

Today I'm Not Liking Anything

2011-05-14T02:54:00.000-07:00

Today i'm not liking anything.

The words are all scata.

If I could I would bury my face

In the rose of Arabic to know

What that cryptic script contains.

Romance alphabets cannot hold

A candle to that flame.

The rose I hold, its indescribable scent

Laced through the nose and brain,

Is a mountainside of fresh air,

Light as snow that blows upward.

Tomorrow I will bow to Sanskrit,

Kanji and Han, hide in caves and draw

Sustainance on the walls where

Somnolence and somnambulance

Coalesce in sleepless nights

Spent praying for dreams to come.

These I believe will be carried

In gondolas made of hollowed logs,

Steeped in Latin and Greek,

On streams of silver and gold

In the morning and at night,

respectively,

With the dust of evergreens

On our shoulders and in our hair.

Today I'm not liking anything,

But tomorrow is another day.

Volume 7 No. 2.5

2011-04-02T14:47:00.000-07:00

Take a look at the latest issue of Ragazine, now on line: http://ragazine.cc. HAVANA through the eyes of Michael Eastman; WOMEN through the eyes of Guenter Knop; The world through the eyes of all our contributors..... Thanks for reading.... Mike F.

The Simple Life

2011-03-10T05:19:00.000-08:00

Hey, check this out.... and bookmark thethepoetry.com. You'll be glad you did.

March April issue of Ragazine

2011-03-05T13:38:00.001-08:00

OK, if you haven't logged on by now, it's high time you punched in our URL and got to it... the rag isn't for the feint of heart... no quick fix like a 45-second you tube video of someone taking a long walk off a short pier, no giggles from the mouths of babes, no rocket men experimenting with solid fuel backpacks ... but we do offer some great writing,reading, art, photography and more ... enough to test anyone's brain power ... dig it... or is that digit?

nupost

2011-01-31T15:01:00.000-08:00

Coexistence

When an alligator climbs out of the water behind your house and you wake up in the morning to a vision of swamp breath condensing on the cool glass of your sliding door, you can slip a choke chain over the creature's snout and lead him around the neighborhood with your Rottweiler in tow for an hour or two after breakfast before someone turns him into a pair of Tony Lama’s, with enough left over for Tommy Choo pumps with matching clutch, and a double wide 36” utility belt. He'd eat you if he could.

Ragazine Vol 7 No 1 On Line Now

2010-12-27T12:46:00.001-08:00

Check it out.... more alive with every issue.

Ragazine's Pushcart Nominees 2010

2010-12-03T18:18:00.000-08:00

Hi, everyone!

I am very pleased to let you know the following poets & writers have been nominated by the editors of Ragazine for the 2010 Pushcart Prizes in their respective genres.

The Light in the Sky/Ivelisse Rodriguez – Fiction; July-August
Camouflage Discipline/Kris Saknussemm – Fiction; Sept.-Oct.
Rumi’s Field/Emily Vogel – Poetry; Sept.-Oct.
The Introduction of If and Then/Elizabeth Cohen – Poetry; Nov.-Dec.
Excerpts from the Memoir of Jose Antonio Rodriguez – Creative Non- Fiction; Jan.-Feb.
The Wrong Season for Survival/Mark Montgomery – Creative Non- Fiction; March-April.

Thank you for your continued support of Ragazine. We are looking forward to an exciting 2011!

Best regards,
Mike F.
Founder/Managing Editor
editor@ ragazine.cc
http://ragazine.cc
ragazinecc/Twitter
Blogspot
Join us on MySpace & Facebook

Ragazine is published bi-monthly, January, March, May, July, September and November. The zine began in 2004, and a short history appears on the “About Us” page, along with brief bios on our staff of contributing editors and writers.

Where Daydreams Go

2010-06-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

The afternoon shines on
like the light in a dream.
Quarters in the fountain
dance gamely into
waiting hands.
Sorrows in the zoo bray
formlessly from corrals
and a high fence
draws an unreachable
bar for the kangaroo.
Where are the unicorns?
How to clean a prison cell
would provide just TMI.
A room full of tattooed cats
dines on Mexican flan.
Horses with razor cut manes
add to the heat.
The black water of Lourdes
flows like India ink
from the gold dib
of the captain’s pen.
Without the Dead Sea
life might not go on.
We children burned
signatures on cattle.
Miguelito branded himself
on the arm. They will say
he shared his sky
with Zeus and Thor
and set the ground afire.
We ride camels on the sands
where the light shines
as in a dream.
An oasis beckons
with sunbaked fronds.
έλα εδώ, Μιχαήλ, έλα εδώ.
Scorpions and spiders salute you.
Iron gates close at night
where the daydreams go.

ragazine.cc lives on

2010-06-22T20:35:00.000-07:00

OK, OK, so the last post was a fiction. ragazine.cc lives, as you'll see by a quick click to the site.... hope you like it. much, much more to come... thanks for reading! let us know how we're doing ....

end of the line ... a fiction

2010-06-12T04:26:00.000-07:00

End of the Line

My uncle died in 1998. His name was Horace August Peterson, and he spent his last years in a small town outside Seattle where he lived openly and quietly as a cross-dressing bachelor for the last two decades of his life. Prior to that, he’d spent considerable spare time while otherwise employed by the U.S. Army collecting antiquities, and I don’t mean the kind you find in your grandmother’s attic. These were prize pieces scavenged from the ruins created by the savagery of war, relics of ancient and sometimes lost civilizations about which we know next to nothing, except that they were there and in their glory contributed to the amazing and curious history of mankind.

Unable to decide who should get what of his expansive estate, my indigent brothers and I allowed that the court should make that decision for us. In the end, the court ordered the appointed executors to sell off virtually all the collection, and whoever could afford to purchase items was allowed to bid along with the rest of the collecting world. Perhaps needless to say, virtually everything went on the block, and very few items today remain in the family. Each of the brothers, including myself, in the wake of that sorry spectacle, have been endowed with substantial wealth which subsequent to auction was wisely invested by carefully selected trustees whose knowledge of business and finance is the match of any Wall Street tradesman.

I myself was diagnosed recently with a rare and fatal disease known as late onset progeria. It seems no amount of money was sufficient to stave off the inevitable result of this deleterious affliction, whose diminishments to my person advance daily at an ever quickening pace. Thus, I have decided to divest my life’s ‘winnings’ by giving away small sums of money to large numbers of people simply for the asking.

The funds are held in a local branch of Corporate State Bank in upstate New York and can be withdrawn in amounts up to $1,000.00 a day per person until the entire principal of several million dollars is exhausted. The routing number for the bank is 083000099, and the account number is 651 877 136. If you choose to use electronic banking, the user name is scorpio9, the proper signature image is a sailboat and the password is Xcurve320. If you are unable to access, the branch phone number is 607-235-3133; ask for Mr. Tom Gorman.

“Why not give your money to charity?” you might ask. To be sure, I already have, including including a million dollars in excess taxes to the United States Treasury to help pay down the national debt. What remains, as they used to say in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, is “the people’s”.

One more thing. Since I am near the end of term of this appalling disease, this July-August issue of ragazine.cc will be the last. After six long years we are closing the book. The steadily widening circle of friends has been a joy to watch grow, as much as watching a circle of mushrooms appear overnight under the arborvitae in our castle garden. We hope you’ve enjoyed the changing look and feel from year to year, and that the material we’ve chosen to bring to you will survive a lifetime in your memories. The cyber pages we’ve created will remain ‘live’ for the next 25 years, as we’ve paid Go Daddy in advance to maintain the domain URL and hosting. The material will remain secure -- for the time being, at least.

So, with this final issue, “Sayonara. Adios. Bon jour.”

And thanks for reading.

waiting for the happy ending

2010-06-05T13:26:00.000-07:00

we sat together, the three of us
in bed watching life
in a nutshell as life
in a nutshell slipped by,
interrupted now and then
by the screams of the woman
across the street being
beaten by her boyfriend.
some lovers just won’t quit.
I wanted to call the cops
but you both said don’t bother,
“you don’t want to be involved
with those people.” I thought
I already am and 911
could save a life, but
someone beat me to it,
the lights, the yells
the interrogation and
finally the cop cars driving
away, away somewhere
into the night, and we
returned from pushing back
the edge of the metal blinds,
from peering at the unfolding
real-life drama in which
they didn’t want to be
involved – it wasn’t me –
as the inflatable curtain
came down and we reclined
to our comfortable positions
side-by-side in bed,
safe, shaken, stirred,
waiting for the happy ending
which did not feel quite right.

belmar readings

2010-02-19T13:53:00.000-08:00

hey, great reading last night at belmar. fundraiser and open mic. molly needs money for national slam comp coming up. molly got money for the road, and cupcakes to go. sure she'll do as well there as she does bringing in the big guns for ragazine's poetry out loud.... good luck!

T.B. & the circus book blog

2009-12-12T13:49:00.000-08:00

Check it out... Tom Bair reading at the Belmar.... couldn't make it as was out of town on biz, but take it from Joe, it's worth a read....

http://thecircusbook.blogspot.com/2009/12/tom-bair-reads-at-belmar.html

Make Like A Hemingway

2009-12-12T13:44:00.000-08:00

Please buy my book.
I don’t want to sell
electronics forever.
As my old boss said
more than once, being
an electronic sales rep’s
the hardest easy money
in the world.
Easier than what,
I wonder? Putting
your kids through college
selling chapbooks
at readings? Maybe
if you’re Billy Collins
you can hustle up
a couple of bucks
with a few turns
of the well-worn
phrase, but the rest
of us are still left
sucking hind tit.
Harder than what,
I wonder? Bluestone
slabs quarried
in the Catskills
by a bunch of guys
who can’t hear
each other think,
but feel when
the Beaver Kill
beckons and drop all
to go fly fishing?
Please buy my book
so I can close the cover
on this graphic novel,
buy a Cuban cigar
in Havana and make
like a Hemingway.

2009-11-20T15:01:00.000-08:00

Gate keeper, book me on
The next flight out; put me next
To a beautiful girl who won’t
Notice I’m old enough to be
Her father, who won’t mind
Me falling in love again while
We shuttle between Boston
And Philadelphia, Toronto
And New York.

Gate keeper, the overheads
Are packed tight, the booty of travelers
Stashed in all the available spaces
Beneath too-full seats occupied
By too-big people. Yes, the plane
Is full to the brim; overhead
Compartments overflow
With jackets, coats, suitcases,
Computer bags, chocolates
Purchased on impulse for twice
Their worth in duty free – what kind
of deal is that? I want to know --
While attendants push baggage
To the outside wall, check whether
Seatbelts are fastened, tell us
Laptops, cell phones and other
Electronic devices must be turned off
Until the plane is in the air and
The pilot has turned off the seatbelt sign.

How long will we sit on the runway
Waiting to be anyone, anywhere?
Until the hourlong dream, the day trip,
The next hop, the leg, the arm, the elbow,
The knee, take us to the next stop,
While arm in arm, cheek to jowl, flapping
collective wings we travel the night
over Endless Mountains, until the hiss
and hum, the whirr and clank
of landing gear pen reality checks
into all the proper boxes.

what today

2009-11-12T17:01:00.000-08:00

belmar readings got off to a good start this week moving to wednesday veterans day from the usual thursday only no one i hear mentioned it was veterans day most of these kids were just that kids and few if any had done time in uniform and i'm not the exception being old enough to have served two short lifetimes but getting on with the story there were a couple of good poets and poems and an opening guitarist with a few original songs and a comedian who was trying out his stuff on a tough audience and i with a few short poems, a reflection of my attention span, and when justin was doing his stuff, reaching for the sky with a recitation-cum-reading, the phone rang and i was back on the road again, like a doctor called to the bedside of a dying patient on her last leg, call of the wild, only it wasn't life or death, only life dragged out along a smooth bed of blacktop from here to there and back again. check out sierra demulder on the web before you read anything more here. would it were another night ...
for example.

Red Eye

2009-11-07T20:51:00.000-08:00

The airport rotunda is lively tonight.
Lights are out on Rodeo Drive.
Traffic was slow on the Ten, but
you'll be able to make your flight.
There are times you'd like to dive
behind a wall of sound, or cut
from the left lane to the right,
around wheeled carriages and bags.
You've been working on projects
merely to pass the time; a Chinese man
holds a document in his hand;
his friends, who may be family,
listen carefully as he tells them --
you can only guess, since you do not
speak Chinese -- of its great value
as both directive and collectible.
We all should have copies.
An observant Jew -- you can tell
by the yarmulke -- with a phone
in each hand, one to each ear,
slips one to a seated, middle-aged woman
who does not get up, merely leans.
These scenes are best described
as the sum of events on the cusp
of midnight before the red-eye blinks
over Sydney, Melbourne, D.C., New York.
This beta site at the edge of the New World,
from the broken chair to the flying wing.

an evening out at the reading

2009-10-11T07:41:00.000-07:00

you gather in the back room
beers in hand attitudes in check
silent as the damp grass at night
hopeful as the lost child in the woods
that the sun will rise, a lofty note
on the crescendo of an aria
that for the moment it exists
fills an emptiness you live with
without knowing, until the song
of songs plays and the bow rubs
an harmonic and someone turns
up the volume. that’s when you
realize there can never be enough
sound to fill a room, never
enough sense in a moral tale,
never your character in the fable
to show you the way to the door.

Earth Day, 2009

2009-04-22T05:57:00.000-07:00

It’s Earth Day.
We’re green again.
Or say we are.
Pubs will pour green beer,
to celebrate, as they do
on St. Paddy’s Day.
Children will grip
colored ribbons and dance
around coveted Earth poles.
Organizers will comb
shorelines for detritus,
cleaning up after themselves;
carelessness will go by
the wayside until tomorrow,
and perhaps the day after.
Examples set will reverberate
in a closed room at the Western end
of the Big House, while the fruits
of our labor dry on foreign vines.
Will that ribbon around
the dead elm tree matter
after the tribe scatters?
Will the race against time
bring too much too soon,
too little too late, or the
just right Now? Will she
also wear ribbons in her hair?

No Safe Harbor

2009-04-04T10:19:00.000-07:00

Binghamton, April 3, 2009

1

The gunman took little time
taking 13 lives, and then his own.
Where is there safe harbor?

The shootings took place
in a center of hope, of civic pride.
So where is there safe harbor?

They came to escape to a better life,
to live their dreams in freedom.
So where is there safe harbor?

The killer sailed with them,
father, cousin, brother, son.
Where is there safe harbor?

2

What stirred the calm that rainy day
What went right, what went wrong,
where was the line to save him?

Did his heart beat wildly in his chest,
did his body drip with sweat,
did blood burn behind his eyes
when he pulled the trigger back?

Did he see the pain escape
as he watched his victims fall,
did it have the face of evil,
did it laugh, was that its call?

Did he see their spirits leave
as he put the pistol to his face,
did he ask where the living went
when they quit the human race?

mental journey

2009-03-19T17:52:00.000-07:00

mental journey

poetry
exercise,
a stretch
imagination,
latex glove pull
cracked, dry skin,
vehicle drive
places beyond
earth
spectacular,
mind shafts
maladies,
mountain trails
escarpments
average
prey mix
valley.
take rides
ball of string
unwinds
its course
sparkling skies,
knees tight
straddling teardrop
tied
to finger
on hand of god.

march 11, 2009... you are there (we are here)

2009-03-11T15:13:00.000-07:00

the evidence

the long thin fingers of morning
before gray daylight breaks into the pantry
and steals images generated overnight,
images that replenish spirits sufficiently
to move the mind to unseen challenges,
are fingers of the hand that massages
the soul when there is nothing else.

when you harvested milkweed pods and nettles,
did you ever stop to think there might be
something else to fill the bowls your mother
set on the table to fill your stomach, or,
that the coming years would overflow
with milk and honey, before the sharp edge
of recession cleaved that all away again,
that you would find yourself back at the beginning?

the child in us never goes away, never grows up,
remains the cotyledon within the seed
of the body, protected by dragons that guard
the doors to a treasury of experience, without which
we are nothing more than a gentle crosswind, nothing
less than the diaphanous wing of a butterfly
locked in the vein of a mountain where it sleeps
until metamorphosed from history into smoke.

it is springtime and the grackles are back.
we can hear them in the black branches
of the old silver maples, clear as bells
calling the faithful to awaken,
sometimes to dreams they never had.

March 8, 2009

2009-03-08T06:09:00.000-07:00

Went to a poetry reading Friday night at RiverRead in Binghamton to hear Andrei Guruianu, Jerry Mirskin and Gerald McCarthy read their stuff. Chuck Webster's small works on paper, framed, hung on the walls. The place was full, which is always a good sign for a reading. Jerry gave an open invitation to all to join Liz Rosenberg, Andrei and him at the Bowery Poetry Club bar in New York for a reading Saturday afternoon, but I drive enough for work and another trip to NY wasn't in the cards.
Met Jim Stafford, who recently started Split Oak Press, and already has a backlog of chapbooks to be published. Ran into an old friend and former colleague at the newspaper, David Zeggert, and his wife, Sookyria, the subject of many of his works. But of course. Ziggy is teaching art at Broome Community College in Binghamton, which leaves him plenty of time to paint. Good thing, too, because his portraits are painterly and arresting. See his work in the April-May update of ragazine.cc.
Dropped in at Anthony Brunelli Gallery for the Don DeMauro one-man show, long overdue. Don teaches at Binghamton University and owns Spool Manufacturing gallery in Johnson City, a renovated factory-turned-exhibit space that gives birth to new ideas with every show they put up. I made a comment to Don about him showing at Anthony's gallery, and he gave me an insight sometimes easy to forget: "There's no competition here." Art's art ... we all pull together. A little bit of art history, however, reveals rivals whose competitive spirits, aka bursting egos, more than once got in the way of friendliness. That not being the case here, it was good to see the work on walls outside of Spool.
All in all, a good weekend. Now that it's nearly the middle of March, I'm going out in the mist to take down a forgotten string of Christmas lights.

Here's a poem I wrote last November:

The Third Rail

We two were one
three times, but
who is counting?
We walk
parallel paths
that seem
will meet
but never do.
The third rail
we have
in common
guides us, now,
from one
vanishing point
to another
at a pace
determined
by the nearness
of buried ties.

poem for 2day

2009-03-03T04:08:00.000-08:00

the bigotree

all they got
in common
is a T.

one grows
and shades
the sun;
the other,

just leaves.

cottage industry of ideas

2009-03-03T03:24:00.000-08:00

we look at consolidation of companies as a way to get market share. what about consolidating internet 'social' groups with similar interests, such as the dozens devoted to writers and writing on Linked-In, to get greater exposure (let alone to reduce demand on bandwidth). or, are we seeing in the proliferation of smaller groups the resurgence of a cottage industry of ideas that's going to float the boat for future intellectual enterprise? i'd hate to think the exchange of ideas we're seeing today as the result of increasingly widespread internet availability will become a personal one-on-one, with everyone asking and answering to themselves -- like looking in a mirror. but who knows.... if we're all captive in our own small prisons, and there's nowhere to go but up and out, then .... what?

Kitchen Caravan

2009-03-02T13:30:00.001-08:00

The girls are back, this time offering a Gourmet Mexican Lunch ... Travel with Emma and Sophia to the mountain resort town of Valle de Bravo, Mexico State, as Sophia and her Aunt Lupita and grandmother Tita show you how to prepare authentic, upscale dishes that they serve at their own dinner parties, including Roast Port Pibil, a Nopal soufle, and Crown of Beans.

Learn how to make a desert of Campechanas and Cajeta with pecans and vanilla ice cream. And that's just the beginning... Subscribe to the newsletter; visit the archives. To paraphrase George Herbert, eating well is the best revenge....

http://www.kitchencaravan.com/

2009-03-01T08:19:00.000-08:00

Street Life

2009-02-28T07:24:00.000-08:00

there’s not a whole lot of light
crawling out of the barrel
in the morning, rusted, cold steel
painted metal, upright man hole
made whole by the dark dreams
of Cancer and failed promise
the sun will rise, will warm
raised faces, will dry hope
to dust, particles here and there
seeding wet furrows, wild things
at play throwing bones, we are
the things we are, all changes
on the back lot, all life
two dimensional as the feature
film projected on the white
wailing wall of …. wonder
filtered through fiber optics
digitally run in zeroes and ones
while we sit in darkness, again,
waiting for the sun to rise
to crawl out of the barrel,
bitter about not being better
than we should have been
when today was tomorrow, but
resolved to be OK with that
rather than self-destruct, the
lovely, lonely alternative playing out
on squalid streets where squatters
risk becoming landscape colors
painted with an unseen brush
by an invisible artist whose vision
of the future does not include them.

Elder Poem

2009-02-25T03:43:00.000-08:00

You are the acting elder
of two retiring clans,
bringing heightened order
to their non-competing plans.

Soldiers lay down useless arms,
retreat the way they came,
along a path of bloody charms
bordered by the lame.

Metal dust mixed with sweat
settles on their brows;
while cold skin absent of regret
roughly guides their plows.

Captain, steer this ship,
lumber through the night,
pass slowly by the ocean’s lip,
draw blood from pleasure’s bite.

Sing disconsolate passenger
of lands that far away
will always be beyond the reach
of those who do not stray.

The elder in perspective,
invaluable source of good,
protector from invective,
uncertainty understood.

ragazine.cc update now on line!

2009-02-20T13:02:00.000-08:00

the online magazine of arts, information & entertainment:
a collaboration of artists, writers, photographers, travelers & interested others....

OK, so you’ve been sitting around all winter, up north, down south or in the tropics,wondering when things are going to change. Well, look no further. Jump to the updated issue of ragazine.cc, hike up the trails of San Jacinto, dance with the stars at the New York Flamenco Fest, cruise the clubs of LAwith Ginger Liu…. and much more.

If you like what you see, sign up on the blog and every month or so when we get around to it you’ll get another ragazine.cc update to browse through in kick-back time. Hey, sign up even if you don't like it.... Go to the signup form at the bottom of this page (there are two -- one above and one below, the photograph). Subscribe to the feed and voila, you're cookin'... ...

remember: www.ragazine.cc

Thanks for reading….

the last gas(p)

2009-02-08T05:50:00.000-08:00

i was really ticked off to see the price of oil going down while the price of gasoline at the pump was going up. so i did a quick google search for the price of oil since 2002 and the corresponding price of gasoline, so see if the need to feed the monster was directly correlative, or if we're being gouged again. i was quite surprised to find the following gasoline price chart for upstate new york, where i live (there are other charts on the site, including downstate, etc.), was in keeping with prices from 7 years ago! wow, so i don't have to put on a chastity belt before driving up to the pumps!
All counties north of Rockland and WestchesterMonthly Regular Grade Motor Gasoline Prices(in cents per gallon, including taxes)

If the following chart appears impossible to read, the original(s) can be seen at:
http://www.nyserda.org/energy_information/nyepa.asp

2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002
Jan. 189.2 331.1 245.2 253.3 195.1 167.9 158.9 116.3
Feb. 328.22 39.7 245.7 201.4 177.1 170.4 117.6
Mar. 337.9 272.2 253.32 15.3 184.8 175.6 126.5
Apr. 357.7 292.6 288.0 230.2 184.7 170.6 144.8
May 391.1 310.0 301.1 225.6 205.8 159.6 147.0
June 420.5 311.2 288.9 222.7 209.1 151.7 146.3
July 420.9 305.0 298.6 234.8 198.7 154.4 146.0
Aug. 394.4 292.2 305.5 254.1 194.4 164.8 149.0
Sept. 378.6 289.4 282.6 315.7 194.4 177.5 149.9
Oct. 329.5 296.2 251.9 283.5 211.0 168.2 152.0
Nov. 250.1 327.5 240.1 244.3 211.3 160.7 152.7
Dec. 192.3 328.4 250.7 235.4 202.6 158.3 153.6

don't know what i'll do now that i don't have the correlation between oil and gas prices to moan about. probably have to work on ragazine.cc web site update. now there's a monster to feed.

BEING THERE -- Worth Another Read

2009-01-11T18:34:00.000-08:00

Jerzy Kosinski first published Being There in 1970. It's the story of a kept man secreted away in a garden for all of his 30 or 35 years, his only window on the world a prized television and his only contacts with it the few house keepers and maintenance folks who show up at the house of his aging keeper over his guarded lifetime. He does not know his mother or father, though one might believe it is the keeper, the "Old Man", who is his father, who wants to keep the boy a secret, but still well treated and cared for.

Schooled only by what he sees on television, and an occasional lesson from the household staff members, he spends his time between the garden, where he cares for and nourishes -- and is in turn cared for and nourished by -- the trees, shrubs and flowers growing in the cloistered plot, and the bedroom where he receives his three squares a day, and which houses his TV set. The garden is surrounded by a high brick wall that divides its inhabitant from the very real world outside, heard but not seen except as portrayed through television.

When the master dies and the house is shuttered, the man -- whose name is Chance -- is without provenance. He is put into the streets with no identification, nothing to link him to the world or his untraceable past but a suitcase filled with the master's fine clothes. He is, indeed, a stranger in an even stranger land, a land to which he can only relate by recalling and reenacting scenes from the many television shows he's watched over the span of a lifetime.

A series of unlikely events leads him into the household of a well connected businessman and his younger and lively wife. Koskinski's characterization of the wealthy couple and the way they proceed on their quickly drawn false assumptions is a fitting stereotype of the know-it-all-ness of the American aristocracy. In this case a couple who have nary a clue as to where Chances comes from, or what his sheltered life has been like prior to their meeting. His simple solutions to complex questions, which he draws from the life of plants (the only life he knows), appear to audiences as metaphors for life in all its forms. A zen-like understanding of the seasons makes him an overnight celebrity called upon to solve -- or at least explain away -- the world's problems.

These problems include a global economy in a tailspin, a political structure struggling to instill the kind of optimism in people that will last them through their doldrums, and political divisions perpetuated by cynicism and suspicion. Nearly forty years later, the story holds strong. For the writing and for the alacrity therein, Being There is worth going back to for another read.

100 pp, Grove Press isbn 0-0821-3634-6

Obituary for the Obituaries

2009-01-11T16:17:00.000-08:00

Obituary for the Obituaries

I used to collect obituaries of famous people,
people of influence, of culture, writers, artists, poets,
principled people, at least on paper, in the Times,
Wall St. Journal, or even, on occasion, in not-so-well known
newspapers I worked for, small papers about which , if they died,
there would be little said or written, perhaps a fitting epitaph,
in itself, like a pebble in a landslide.

I used to collect obituaries of famous people
but now I am throwing them out, one by one, as I come across them
in the old files we go through from time to time, thinning,
winnowing, separating wheat from chaff. Why just last month
I disposed of Dali, Miro, Kosinski, Kertesz, while near at hand John Gardner awaits.
I have no particular connection with any of them, except the general
feeling of their influence, which at one time hit me like a wave on rocks,
and I, the earth, let it settle, absorbed it and seemingly forgot about it …
until now, when I am near becoming one of those waves, not to crash
upon the rocks, but hopeful someone sunning on smooth and mild sands
will feel me when I roll in, and out.

The other day I read an obituary about an acquaintance of little fame,
but whose reputation for truth, honesty, hard work and general affability
earned him a seat in the local pantheon. I didn’t clip it out. I went to the funeral home
where the closed coffin held him near. His wife and others dear circulated freely,
pumped like blood through the aorta from his still beating heart. Now I think of that,
and the many bodies still buried in my drawers, one by one and two by two.

I used to collect obituaries of famous people, counting them as one counts milestones hiking unfamiliar paths. Cracked and yellow paper, crisp with time, fresh with Then,
ready to be removed, interred – I, among them, ready to let go.

HEROES?

2009-01-09T07:39:00.001-08:00

seems we really are sinking into depression. don't know how that will play out with my business, but i can tell you a lot of my customers are looking at ways to bring their manufacturing, etc., back home..... may be too late for a lot of them, and others wouldn't be able to compete. the market here is so saturated with all kinds of goods.... sales have to be made overseas, and if overseas buyers don't have money/jobs (making stuff for europe and the u.s., which can no longer afford to buy much, if anything, then it becomes a vicious circle of haves/havenots ..... self sufficiency is the name of the game in the 21st century, so we can save ourselves. then we may be able to go back out and save the world.

at least, that's my take today.

U.S. Economy The Biggest Ponzi Scheme

2009-01-02T05:58:00.001-08:00

All this 20-20 hindsight about the economy and what could have been done to save us from the debacle in which we find ourselves today, gives me a migraine. We all knew the boat was going down, and we all did what we could to save ourselves, to make hay while the sun shone. No one who was ever without was going to turn their back on the opportunity to profit, to benefit, from the flow of excess provided by cheap housing, cheap goods from abroad, cheap gas, cheap land and cheap credit. The guys on top didn’t give a damn, because what they are – or were -- running is actually a gargantuan Ponzi scheme that makes Victor Madoff’s look like the Dead End Kids playing for marbles in the alley behind Times Square. And what’s really sad is that we’re talking about the “greatest economic minds of our generation” here, the financial and political leaders of nations.

You’d think after the next decade or so of recovery the world will recognize the US cannot be trusted to pay back its debts in the same way any lender expects to be repaid, that is, with interest on a currency unit that is relatively the same value as the one that was lent to begin with. The Americans did the same thing to investors in the ‘90s when the banking collapse led to paying back and paying off at a dime on the dollar (if that), as if bankruptcy rules applied across the board. Today we’re doing the same thing in virtually all other markets, from manufacturing (as with the automotive industry), to power generation (oil, gas, copper and steel) to consumer goods and agricultural items. We can’t keep up with the negative cash flow any better than Victor Madoff did, so we bend the rules a bit until they finally break and we’re exposed for what we are, mercilessly penniless.

Every nation in the world tried to climb on the gravy train. No one, really, was exempt, from our friendly competitors in the European Union, to our newfound friends in the former Soviet Bloc, to the Asians with whom we allied to provide the ballast that kept the ship afloat so long as we navigated carefully through the shoals. Now the ship of our state is resting on the reef, exposed well below the water line, and we’re still bailing – as if it should – or could -- make a difference to our trading partners, or to us.

We talk about a global economy, but what, really, does that mean? That the continents should be divided up into areas of production like a vertically integrated factory floor? Where the US is the research and development center, China is the manufacturing site, Russia and the Mid-East are providers of fossil fuels and solar energy? Not only is that impractical, but in human terms, impossible. As a planet, we are at the point in our social evolution where nations must again look within, re-evaluate their needs and wants, resources and capabilities, and act according to the rules of self preservation. If necessity is indeed the mother of invention, this self-searching should lead to societies and civilizations that are again self-sufficient, and in some cases, capable even of helping other nations reach sustainable levels of self-sufficiency.
Imagine, a world of neutral nations living and working together for mutual viability, family units, in a manner of speaking, where we take care of ourselves so we are able to take care of one another. Where lending as we know it is no longer a tool or a policy, where loans are given not to be paid back in kind, but in the fruits of social and economic stability and technological progress. This kind of world requires a dedicated parentage and a reoriented educational system devoted in large part to weaving positive moral and ethical values into the national fiber. An eye-for-an-eye will not get us where we want and need to go. I am my brother’s keeper just might. If this nation, among others, is to survive, it’s time to review and revise what we’re doing to ourselves, and what we’ve done to others. Until America is properly chastened, we will remain in denial. While we’re rethinking how to save ourselves, we need also to think how we can bring our brother and sister nations into the boat with us.

A Little Sci-Fi?

2009-01-02T05:55:00.000-08:00

On cosmological constants……

The proposition is this:

The increasing speed of the universe's expansion will eventually approach the speed of light. Today we say there is no faster speed than the speed of light. But, just as sound cannot be heard in the same way when one travels faster than the speed of sound, since you are moving away from the sound you created faster than sound travels to reach your ears, so objects and light sources will not be able to be seen as they move beyond the speed of light and the ability of your eyes to capture and your brain to confirm the existence of that light.
Thus, dark holes and dark energy.
We will have to learn to see into what is beyond us to understand and appreciate what happens when all matter as we know it moves into the invisible dimension of what we call darkness, but which could be brighter and faster than anything we’ve known until now. Harnessing the energy in the newfound immaterial dark fabric within that dimension will one day be the lifeblood of survival for humankind. Should humankind persist so long.

lately i've been feeling color

2008-12-06T19:08:00.000-08:00

mortality is almost always a touchy subject. sarah connor's robot asks a paraplegic whether he wishes he were dead. of course not, he answers. a legless life is better than none. there is plenty that remains to make him happy. this week was a good week for writers and artists, poets and musicians. readings, openings, conversations and more. not so great if you find such things boring and the people who pursue them wannabes. at the end of days who will be remembered? the last person you saw, heard, smelled, spoke to? perhaps. most likely not you. take a walk through an antiquarian bookstore and see how many authors you remember, how many titles, how many artists whose work appears in 300 years of american art. few remain and there is little likelihood any of us will last more than 100 years except in the collective memory of the collective past -- 'the millions who came before us' -- so why try? we go on because we must. we become the mortar between the bricks that are the future and the past. touchy or not, mortality and morbidity coalesce; art colors the walls along the walkways, like ferns along a woodland trail. no one wants to live in a colorless world, so we tend gardens. time to kiss and make up, and take out the trash.

Lindbergh Kidnapping, Hauptmann Trial

2008-11-26T04:50:00.000-08:00

If anyone out there has an interest in this old case, let me know. Collecting anecdotes from those who may have lived through the kidnapping and trial, and who remember radio, newspaper and movie newsreel accounts. Also interested in stories from children of those old enough to have lived through it, who remember their parents, parents' friends or relatives talking about it. Working to keep alive the case that never dies.

When an Honest Man Makes a Dishonest Living

2008-11-26T04:46:00.000-08:00

When an Honest Man
Makes a Dishonest Living

Peter, I can see it now,
the Bedouin tent
in the high cold desert
of North Africa
smoking your wares
under midnight stars
amidst a sea of sheep,
bringing back the goods
(don’t ask me how)
and the gear you described
to the amused satisfaction
of Customs Officials as:
“native arts and handicrafts.”
I’ll ever forget that line
or the way we did business,
our word our bond,
with interest.

Betsy Tango

2008-11-15T05:25:00.001-08:00

Betsy Tango

Betsy Tango, dance with me.
When I first read your name
I wanted to strip it off the page,
take it in my arms and swirl
it like warm brandy
in a crystal snifter. Dance
with me while I run fingers
along the curves of your ass,
pull our hips together and grind
until the juice drips from the lemon.
Betsy Tango, you’re out of earshot,
now, I can say it aloud,
let me take you on the floor,
upright, rigid, succinct
in movement, deliberate
and thoughtful, step by step
from dusk when you come alive,
until, infused with night,
morning stops us
in our tango tracks.

on the economy

2008-09-22T19:21:00.001-07:00

it's a mongolian cluster fuck. if they just paid off everyone's mortgages the money would filter up. the little guys would have homes to live in and money to spend, the banks and financial firms would have capital and be able to pay taxes and the government could reimburse itself for the losses it incurred in letting the nation's economic engines overheat.
so what's the problem?

Obama vs. McCain: Wannabe vs Has Been

2008-07-01T04:44:00.000-07:00

So this morning The New York Times runs an article designed to help the reader see that hypocrisy is simply human nature, common to politicians and private citizens alike. I stopped reading it part way through. I should know this already. Then a friend sent me a link to the same article and I went back to see if I could suffer through reading it to the end. I couldn't. So I scanned it, instead, and gleaned some small satisfaction in doing so.

I thought of Obama. I've seen so much change in the candidate since he won the Democratic nomination that I can't believe he's the same guy. He still sounds good on the stump, but for some reason he's taken to wearing the flag pin he said didn't make him a patriot! Of course, that's nothing compared with his decision to fund his campaign with private contributions, when he said he would compete with public financing. Makes as good economic sense as saying, "I changed my mind."

These things, great and small, show me he's slipping into the great morass like every other studied politician. And the answers these guys give to easy questions, I just can't take it! For example, yesterday's BIG NEWS was that a former general Wesley Clark said being a POW doesn't qualify McCain to be president. So, what's not to like about that truth? There are a lot of ex-POWs, and that simple fact doesn't qualify them, either!!! Why are talking points so lame? Don't commentators have more substantial things to explicate?

Is the Fourth Estate growing cataracts? I sense we are among the blind leading the blind. Clark did not one question McCain's war record or his patriotrism. He was just saying that one's POW experience alone is not qualification to be president. Who can't figure that out? Just as being a mulatto, tall, thin Harvard grad doesn't qualify you, either. The candidate neither understood nor defended the former general who was doing him a service by discounting what will likely be one of McCain's planks leading up to November. This is where intelligence makes a difference. We are witnessing a battle of a wannabe without experience against a has-been who needs a turncoat to tell him who our allies are.

What's going on? Is there no loyalty anymore? Are people afraid to speak the truth, the way they've been cowed into political correctness? Are politicans so afraid of losing votes that they lose sight of logic and reason?

Footnote -- In Obama's speech on patriotism yesterday in Independence, Missouri, the candidate said "as we begin our 4th century as a nation..." As I understand it, we're just over 30 years into our 3rd century as a nation. Are we not going to sweat the small stuff?

another sunday morning

2008-06-15T02:37:00.000-07:00

i haven't had an original thought in weeks. i felt the sickness coming on at the end of may. things were going along swimmingly. i was in a gulf stream of creativity, waking up nights and mornings alert with images worth capturing in the hour or two before dawn, before the normal working day took over. so powerful was the diversion it began encroaching on the rest of my day. time long set aside to make business calls, to make a living, became time to sneak in a poem or two, a fragment, a phrase to use later. poetry stared at me from every object and situation, quickly becoming a distraction from mandated activity that had and would underwrite the lifestyle i'd already committed to. basic routines grew vulgar; non-essential activities transformed nearly to addiction. i hungered for verse. had i not stopped writing, would i have been able to fill the well and slowly risen to the top, climbing out of it by volition? had i turned my back on the one true lover, and would she forgive me? if i called, would she come back? could i find her if i tried? or was it simply an affair of the mind, all heart, no body, to which there could be no return? in consideration, i file away the meeting notes, the descriptives of our trysts, place them in a sealed metal box, bury it near the old ash pit where one day it may take root and grow. meanwhile, i melt away like dry ice on a summer day, with no more ice cream to preserve.

this thing about writing

2008-06-09T15:17:00.000-07:00

today in a box that got wet yesterday
melting around me in confusion
and the dank smell of mildew
adding to disenchantment
with the cue ball's orbit
the clip of the hoof
and its clop, the circular way
we wind our plastic lines
on the unsprung mandrel
the horse is a loser, face it,
a sawbuck on number twenty
double down, politics is no game
for the weak at heart, or in the knees.
spread a little smell of rose
walk by the long picket fence
where the flowers grow
don't ask how they got there
the gardens of old people
are best because it takes so long
to get everything just right.

Voters' Pride

2008-05-21T05:08:00.001-07:00

So I’m watching CNN coverage of the Oregon and Kentucky primary election returns last night and the commentators began a round-robin discussion of racism in the electorate, dissecting exit polls in which a high percentage of voters admitted voting for Hillary Clinton because of her race – or simply because she’s not “black”. Then came the suggestions, with one commentator after another piling on, that Clinton go public and repudiate voters voting along the racial divide who gave her victories in West Virginia and Kentucky. It was in those states, after all, that exit polls showed race had a major affect on the way the electorate cast their ballots. This kind of stupidity is what makes television a danger to all who swallow the bait, hook, line and sinker.

Dr. King looked forward to a time “when a man is not judged by the color of his skin,” and we’ve come a long way in this regard over the past half century. But let’s face the facts: It may not be racism, but ethnic and racial pride that motivates voters to vote the way they do. John F. Kennedy got the Irish and Catholic vote when he ran for president in 1960; Michael Dukakis garnered a huge proportion of the Greek vote when he was running in 1988 as the Democratic nominee for President; white Anglo Saxon Protestants have voted in overwhelming numbers for their candidates since the Republic was founded. So it should come as no surprise that Barack Obama would score the vast majority of the black vote in North Carolina -- and every other state he’s run in.

Yet, no commentator has asked Obama to repudiate voters who would vote for him solely on the basis of his racial heritage, and why would they? It's expected that people will stick together to advance their goals and objectives, just as one would expect many women to vote for Clinton on the basis of gender, as she seeks to break through yet another glass ceiling.

So, if Hillary Clinton wins votes in “white states”, well, that’s no different than when Obama wins in the “black states”. When you go to the polls, look beyond the obvious. Look back to see where you've been, forward to where you want to go, and to the candidate whose ethics, ideals, experience and vision are most likely to lead you there.

What is wealth?

2008-05-06T14:40:00.000-07:00

Wealth
Five boys came to the door this evening, four accompanying one who was selling candy for his mom’s daycare center so she could raise money to get another place to take in more kids, or maybe just to care for them in a bigger, better way. One of the boys, our next door neighbor, came to the door with the kid selling candy, and the other three stood back at the foot of the front steps, cautious. One of them asked, ‘Are you rich?’ This was followed by nervous laughter from his friends. The neighbor kid, Josh, knows me from the time he was born and is not intimidated by the big house and garden. He turns to his insolent friend and I look up and ask who said that and the other kids point with their eyes and I answer, ‘Not really, I work a lot.’ I wake up thinking of this scene and all the other things I could have said, like ‘I’ve lived here 30 years. Every year we do a little more to the house and gardens, and they grow, like you’ll grow, and mature, and like the garden, if you’re lucky and take care of yourself, you’ll be what others might call rich, but rich is relative.” Or, I could have said, “Rich is elusive. No I’m not rich. I just live here. This is temporary. What you see is not what you get. It’s what I have, my burden, what I carry, what I take with me, what I cannot leave behind until I am too old and weak to carry it, and then it will pass to someone else who will have to shoulder the burden and it will be up to them to carry it. If I had it to do over, I might stay light and fast, like you.”
Or, again, “Understand, all this you see is a liability, the balancing of the books at the end of the day. There are assets, there are liabilities. Do you see what I mean?”

I would like to have seen the looks on their faces as I shared my wealth with them, but at that point I was as poor as I’d ever been and said nothing more than, “No, I’m not. I just work hard.” I handed the kid selling candy a dollar, picked out a chocolate bar with almonds, and when they went away and their voices faded around the corner, I closed the door, softly, and made sure to lock it.

These 400 mile drives are getting old

2008-04-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

April 25, 2008
I, a Salesman

I get up at 5, drive 200 miles to that first call, this time maybe the only call, and drive back 200 miles to be in the office a few hours in the afternoon, to work out of my home, answering e-mails, making phone calls to people I haven’t spoken with in weeks or months or years, or maybe ever, hoping their application requirements have moved in our direction enough to generate interest in what we offer these days, metal oxide varistors, thermally protected metal oxide varistors, capacitors, super caps, ultra caps, rectiiers, gas discharge tubes, wireless antennae, power supplies, wall mount, desktop, open frame and rack mount, coils and transformers, toroids, EIs, isolation, power, flyback, chokes, inductors, LCDs, touch panels, industrial computers, the stuff that goes into the stuff we buy at Circuit City or Best Buy or Costco, or that’s used to help keep us alive in the hospital, or that our mechanics use to diagnose the problems with our cars, or that keep track of the money we spend at Burger King or other fast food joints, or the number of drinks we run up on our tab at the local pub, and on and on. My daily grind is ribbons of asphalt and macadam, a Medusa, and when one road gets cut off, well, there are always more roads, more companies, more engineers, more snakes to kill, and that’s a good thing because this really is a game of numbers; and the more calls you make the more likely it is you will hit a nerve, find a requirement, an application for what you have to offer that researcher, designer or purchasing agent who has everything, except a better product, a lower price, shorter delivery, longer life. Everyone is always looking for a better product, a longer life, or shorter delivery, but almost everyone is willing to sacrifice for a lower price, just as the hungry whore is willing to give it up for two bits, and I wonder how many more years can I out-drive, out run the hunger.

The Day Kenny Got The Shaft

2008-04-20T19:39:00.000-07:00

Memoir 042008

Kenny was showing me how to operate a punch press. It had two buttons, one red, one green. The red one activated the press, but it wouldn’t work unless you pushed the green one, too. That was to make sure you had both hands out of the way when the punch came down. Our job was to press tooled steel shafts into steel gears to go into a grease box in a motor. The gear was already in the jig when he pushed the shaft up into the collar with one hand, holding it there with his finger. I didn’t know his other hand was on the red button. I leaned in to see what he was doing and hit the green button. The press pushed the shaft through his finger. When it went back up, as it was designed to do, he swung his arm in an arc, blood spurting several feet into the air. We wrapped his hand in gauze and I drove him to the hospital. The gauze was soaked through by the time we got there. I apologized, saying “I’m sorry,” over and over, until he finally told me, “I know, now would you shut up,” but it wasn’t a question. A couple of months later Kenny almost died when the stock car he was working under slipped off its blocks and crushed his face and chest. He lifted the car up, slid out and drove himself to the hospital. I saw him a couple of weeks after he got out of the hospital and he was still blue and green where the damage had been done. I’d say he was not only unrecognizable; he was someone you wouldn’t want to look at. He didn't come back to work, at least not while I was there, and I heard some time later he had died. He was a really nice guy, salt of the earth, working man, with a lot of bad luck, some of which he brought on himself, though not on purpose. I’m careful not to say it aloud anymore, but I'm still sorry I had a hand in putting that shaft through his finger.

the belmar -- recommended readings

2008-04-18T02:59:00.000-07:00

the belmar on main st. in binghamton hosted shanna compton and jennifer knox last night. what a kick-ass reading. not just by shanna and jennifer, but by the five or six 'warm up' readers who preceded them. it's great place to hang out drink beer see and hear about what's funny -- or not -- about life at the turn of 21st.

Sour grapes, Obama fans!

2008-04-18T02:40:00.001-07:00

I woke up this morning expecting to write a funny poem and found an e-mail in my in-box from a friend forwarding a note from moveon.org about the presidential debate from Constitution Hall in Philadelphia that took place Wednesday night on ABC. The writer accused the moderators, George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson of skirting issues and focusing on inside the beltway petty politics, and failing to get around to the good stuff.

Funny, we watched the same debate and thought Barack left himself hanging by not answering any of the policy questions with solid, tangible information, and then getting testy when the questions got personal. Apparently he doesn't know enough details of supposed solutions to deal with various issues, to explain his strategies and truly attack the key issues in the campaign. Hillary does. She performed admirably, explaining herself clearly on everything from health care reform to social security to the war in Iraq and more. It was a sad day for Obama fans as they watched him do what he does best -- talk. He's an excellent rhetorician, but he doesn't hold a candle to Clinton when she's on the ball. She knows her stuff, and she knows it because she's lived it. That's the difference. If Obama had the experience she does, he'd be a great uniter, a terrific leader. But he's just out of the chute and we don't need someone to undergo on-th-job training. He'll be trounced by a Republican whose been around long enough to show him what is -- so far -- just the dark before the storm.
Sour grapes, Obama fans!
As for the moderators, yes, they asked some inside stuff, but if you think their questions were trivial, just wait. If Obama can't handle it now, watch him wilt in the heat of the presidential campaign battle.
Right now Obama's all about titles. Jumping from the Illinois Senate to the US Senate, starting a campaign for President and using that to explain why he hasn't held a meeting since he became head of a key committee on veteran's affairs, makes it perfectly clear to me he's more interested in hearing the music than in writing the song. Give Barack another 4 or 8 years in the Senate, where he can plunge his hands into business, and we could see a Democrat at the helm of America for the next 16 years.

Nothing to complain about

2008-04-08T19:36:00.000-07:00

Nothing to complain about

I am thinking maybe I need a swift kick in the nuts
so I’ll have something to complain about, something
to write about, something to get the juices flowing
the kind of thing that poets need for motivation,
but I’ve got nothing, nothing to complain about.
I’m just a plain old middle class guy approaching
retirement age, with a loving wife and three great kids
who still call once in a while to say hello and tell me
what they’re doing in the parts of their world
where what matters is their health, wealth and happiness
and the joy is in the struggle to become what
they perceive is an achievable goal, whether
it’s another college degree, a dog who sits up
on his hind legs and begs for another milk bone,
a couple of quid for a dinner out on Friday night
and groceries in the frig, enough in the bank
to cover the fitness club fee for the next month or two.
I am thinking maybe life has been too good to me
and I don’t deserve this happiness I feel fluttering
in my belly, and wonder what happened to the panic
I felt yesterday and the day before when I walked about
looking over my shoulder, fearful of being hit
by an out of control automotible or stray bullet
that would put an end to my being able to walk
without a cane, or crutches, an accident that would
put me in a wheelchair, or worse, in a bed
where I would be unable to talk or see or move, like
that guy in the closet in the best anti-war movie
ever made, who finally got someone to understand
that what he really wanted, having made contact
with the outside world, was to die. I’m thinking
that my world is too full of the good things in life,
peanut butter and jelly on English muffins,
poppy seed bagels on Sunday morning with the Times,
decent bottles of wine, hand-me-downs from generations
of Foldeses who managed to salvage something
of their pasts and pass the relics along to my generation
so I could pass them along to the next and possibly
the next after that. I am thinking maybe there is
something in my job, perhaps the lack of freedom,
that I should be resisting, fighting, but I work for myself
and pretty much call the shots, so then why
does it feel like the fight has gone out of me
and why do I grow listless as I recall and enumerate
the countless hapless people I have seen in places
I’ve traveled, people with bodies so bent they cannot
stand up and consequently move around like apes, asses in the air,
hands calloused, worn and leatherlike, men and women
sleeping in their own waste while I walk by and try
not to smell what they have long forgotten they smell like
and wonder what dreams they had and have, unadorned,
drunken, drugged, hungering for another world forever
now beyind their reach, men without legs in ragged robes
in alleyways in Cairo, bodies propped against plaster walls
selling good will for what coin falls their way
while a few feet away a butcher hangs a goat’s head
on a hook above the chopping block where flies suck
the dried blood and I hope this is not where the hotel buys its meat.
I am sick, but not so sick that I am dying, I am tired,
but not so tired I cannot sleep. In another world
I would be looked upon as a king, but in a land of kings
such as this, I am just an average guy, normal, and perhaps it is this
that bothers me, that I have nothing, nothing to complain about
and this sets me apart from those for whom poetry
is not an afterthought, but a reality come calling,
something to struggle with when there is nothing,
a way to explore and explain the habits we call
yesterday, today and tomorrow

Aesthetic Nihilism

2008-04-02T04:10:00.000-07:00

aesthetic nihilism. like, when you rip something apart or share the angst and call it art. a reaction to all things you don’t like, don’t want near you, things that call up memories of ugly things that happened in your past. things that when you seek to explain them feel like a corkscrew being wound slowly into your eye. or ear. a fashionable statement like punk, or neo-punk. anti-establishment almost to the extreme. almost, because it draws the line somewhere between disturbed and deranged. skinheads aren’t aesthetic nihilists. there’s no aesthetic there. just prejudice and hate in a tribal unification kind of way. the aesthetics aren’t there when creative expression doesn’t exist to offer insight. rather, aesthetic nihilism exists when the point of what you’re saying, doing, painting, playing, is in doing it, capturing a moment’s angst like a balance sheet captures the state of a business at a particular point in time, adding depth and understanding to the experience. the seattle sound, CBGBs, the velvet underground, funk, rap, goth, francis bacon paintings … all of them symbolic of the gut-twisting way things are, or appear to be in one's personal vision, versus the ‘60s rebellion that wrote, spoke and sang of what could be. what will be will be different than what is, simply because we are made to see it for what it is, and the knowledge that what is isn't always going to be pretty. knowing that, and understanding that much of existence appears to be or in fact is futile, leaves us facing the choice to end it or go on. thus, the aesthetic, the expression that lays it out; the nihilism is that what is laid out before us, while worthy of examination, may not be worth much more than that.

Preserve the Secret Ballot

2008-04-01T11:17:00.001-07:00

When I was a kid and asked my dad who he voted for when Eisenhower was running for president, yes I can remember that far back, when the tvs were all tubes and the pictures all black and white, and the blood was especially dark, and the first images I can remember seeing were scenes from Korea with guys running and climbing in and out of trenches carrying M1s or whatever they carried in those days and it was kind of heroic at the same time it skewed my idea of history, but anyway, he said “That’s my business.”
And I kind of remember asking my mother at another time who she voted for in the election Nixon won and she kind of looked at me with that smug smile of hers where she never opened her mouth enough to see her teeth, where the line her lips made had the same degree of curve as a slice of watermelon, followed by a silence, as if she were saying the same thing as my dad, ‘That’s my business.”
So I learned about the secret ballot, and later in civics class, which we called social studies, it became evident that the secret ballot was something sacrosanct, like voting itself, and that it was as much a protection as any of the other rights Americans had, because somewhere sometime back down someone else’s memory lane, there was no such thing and the finger that went into the ink to show that someone had, indeed, voted, was the finger that got cut off when the winner and his posse went to work separating the wheat from the chaff, and hell, what difference did it make whether you voted or not, because the guy with the sharpest sword was the guy who was going to win. Guess it’s still that way in a lot of the world, just ask Robert Mugabe. Poor loser.
So, anyway, now it’s becoming increasingly clear that respect for the secret vote is rapidly eroding, chipped away day after day, month after month, election after election, by pollsters, the kind of insect that, when we find them in the timbers of our home, we exterminate with prejudice. What business is it of theirs who someone is planning to vote for? Similarly, it’s no business of theirs what lever you pulled, button you pushed or circle you filled in, when you’ve gotten 100 feet from the polling station after casting your ballot. There’s a reason there’s a curtain on the booth. There’s a reason software security is of the utmost import. There’s a reason we spend hundreds of millions of dollars to design, manufacture and distribute voting machines that are considered not only idiot proof (for the voters), but also secure, so our Republic, as it were, can’t be put upside down by the bad guys.We’re already stripped of virtually all our privacy. Cameras at intersections, extremely short-wave radiation imaging that sees through clothing at airports and other secure locations, cops in schools, devices that can hear through windows and walls, cable tv ads inviting viewer participation…. How much is giving up one more right going to hurt? It’s kind of like global warming: you’ll know it when you see, but then it’ll be too late.
So, the next time someone asks you who you’re going to vote for, or after the fact for one of those euphonious exit polls news shows like to flout, tell ‘em, “That’s my business,” and let’s leave it at that.

2008-04-01T03:47:00.000-07:00

April 1

I don’t get up early enough often enough to write down the things that matter before the workday begins and the ordinary flotsam floats in and I am besieged by thoughts of who did I have to contact today to keep the ball rolling on that project we had with the lcd or the power supply or the capacitors. Today I got up early enough though and spent the hour or two before my wife came into the office and disturbed the smooth surface of the pond of silence I was wading in and I decided then and there I better get writing or it would definitely be too late. I just got off reading Joe Weil’s blog on my space and realized there really are people who write good poetry who have faith or hang onto the thread of faith and still manage to come up with some really great stuff and for an instant I kind of wanted to be like him, honest as the day is long, and then I realized that faith is different things to different people, like my wife has faith and always took the kids to church and for a while I went with them and in the church found a certain kind of solace that took me back to my childhood when I was a Methodist before my father slapped me across the face for telling my mother I wasn’t going to go to church anymore, it was the first and only time I can remember him hitting me, he wasn’t a violent man, but he was a declared agnostic, a convert from being a non-practicing Jew, going back to the time in Budapest when his parents didn’t go to temple much, either, and that was it for me, until I met Margot and we started going together some Sundays when I joined her at first mostly because I loved the smell of Orthodoxy, the ceremony, the incense, the church, the references to an inner life I didn’t understand and/or didn’t deserve or didn’t have but it still made me tear up when the priest chanted in Greek and looked at me as if I just had a few more steps to take before joining the rest of the faithful. So this a.m. I got a taste of that before the sun came up and you know, Joe, that meant a lot. But now I’m faced with how much of the truth can I handle?

What was John McCain doing in Iraq?

2008-03-30T20:32:00.001-07:00

Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain recently visited the Middle East. Days later, a heavy duty offense went into effect against the Sadr militia. Was this Middle East tour of his simply an international jaunt to make him look Presidential in an election the Republicans are reaching to the stars to win? Or, did John McCain carry a message from the Bush-Cheney gang that it was OK with Washington if the Maliki government began a major assault against the Sadr militia?
Could it have been that his confusion during a press interview about who was al Queda and who Sunni or Shia, resulted from one too many private briefings and meetings after a too-long plane ride and too little sleep?
The offensive, which began with a demand for militia members to lay down their arms, has run into a lot more resistance than military leaders, advisers and observers expected, and for a few days there it looked like there would be another full-scale, nationwide conflict under way. Sunday, however, Sadr himself called for a truce, to go into effect if his jailed followers could just be let out of prison. Like, that's going to happen?
Is it a sign that a political solution for peace on the Middle Eastern Front is in the air, as Sadr jockeys for a power position in the new government? Or, is it just another hiatus in the violence until the US and its allies begin their pullout after the Democrats win the election in November?

Easter Sunday

2008-03-23T12:44:00.000-07:00

No rabbits in this basket. Posting traumatic stress syndrome. Nothing in, nothing out. Well, we're here for the long run.... Drop a note.

Welcome to ragazine.cc blog

2008-03-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

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