The Boss (aka Bruce Springsteen) and the Big Monkey
The Big Monkey with The Boss, Tunnel Tour, 1987, LA Sports Arena, 3rd night of a 5 night stand
(and no, Bruce doesn’t have red in his hair…that’s red in the monkey’s hair, now grey…it’s just a scan of an old picture…we’ll have to get a new one!! Both the Boss and the Big Monkey have changed…)
Upcoming Posts: Bruce Pre-show, More Bruce Pre-show, Poetry Train (Preschool Share Day Blues), More Bruce (post LA show)
Bruce Springsteen fans have lived slightly breathless lives in the past few days awaiting the upcoming shows in Anaheim.
So, in celebration, the Art Predator will sponsor two pre-Springsteen show posts and one (or more) post Springsteen show posts plus a non-Bruce interlude for a Poetry Train & Read/Write/Poem post: The Preschool Share Day Blues.
Coming to a blog near you soon:
The California Four Pack aka 4 shows in California–4/5 Sat sometime soon
More Bruce Springsteen pregame show (or preshow game) 4/6 Sun
Poetry train 4/7 Mon (up Sun night about 11pm California time)
post Bruce Springsteen show post (Mon 11pm– after the show!)
with some help from the Big Monkey aka BRNTORN75
A Miracle: Rituals Work! Hallelujah!
Today, the Pope of the Church of the Asshole Neighbors is moving out.
That’s right, friends, the man who has made my life miserable for the last 5 years sold the apartment building and escrow closes today. The moving van showed yesterday and took away most of the detritus of his life, and a peek through the uncurtained windows reveal empty rooms.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Now here’s the groovy part. Here’s the really spiritual wowee kazaowee part.
In mid-February, I realized I couldn’t take it any more. I was going to lose my mind–his actions were making me crazy. I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t even be civil. I considered taking a leave of absence then I got sick. I had tried everything–and it was time to try the unconventional.
A lunar eclipse was coming and I decided to ride that wave of energy to make
SOMETHING HAPPEN.
And guess what, folks, it did: something happened.
I don’t know whether it was watching us smudge the house the day of the lunar eclipse and in the following days first with sage then frankinscense and myrhh, if it was the circle of protection we placed around the property, if it was seeing my friends write words in chalk on the concrete by my house, if it was listening to us sing “All We Need is Love.”
Maybe it was the ritual where we buried two birds who had died on my porch in odd ways in a whole he dug (his name his Doug!)
Maybe it was the prayers that Lucy and her friends did or the prayers my friends and I did the night of the lunar eclipse.
Maybe it was the energy of the blogosphere–4500 people read that post where I asked the universe for support in my time of need. That’s a huge response!
I think it was all of the above (plus maybe pressure the District Attorney’s office put on him with regards to abiding by the restraining order) that caused this man who was unwilling before the eclipse to list his apartment building at a sellable price to do so a few days after–and that a property that had been languishing on the market, at a time when the market is tanking, suddenly had 10 offers on it in as many days. The property went into escrow just before the moon was new. Escrow closed today as far as we know–and the moon is new tomorrow night…
ahhhh! breath in peace, breathe out joy
I called out to the world for support…thank you for your help.
Desert Dances: a spring poem
Desert Dances
Dormant desert awakes.
She drinks deep, stretches, sighs
exhales fragrant blossoms
on her warm, pregnant breath.
Her soft, supple sagebrushed
sparkling curves adorned with
splashes of pink, white phlox
and sprays of desert peach
invite you to tumble
down her snowy mountains
to abandon yourself
to wildflower wanders
to soothe in her hot springs
to rejoice in salty
waters of turquoise lakes.
Desert dances await.
This poem recalls my time living near Reno and the springtime desert from the eastern sierras to the Black Rock Desert. Most Burners only know the area in late summer, golden with sage and rabbit brush bloom; one day may you see it in spring green, pink and peach!
middle spring: a poem by Amalio Madueno
My good friend the poet and general rascal Amalio Madueno is going to read at Ventucky College next Weds. April 9 and I’ve been rereading his book, Lost in the Chamiso looking for a poem to use for a broadside to publicize his reading, National Poetry Month, and Earth Month activities.
Since a number of people have been coming to this blog looking for spring poems, I offer you this one of his.
Middle Spring
Below me and above, middle Spring.
Blossom air soothes gravel and stone.
Birds in my shaggy yard scamper in dust
At home in morning’s ocean breeze.
Night after night dreams become less
Familiar, like the landscape of a city
I will never see. Today is light,
Tomorrow will be lighter still. Sundogs
Streak the perihelion, spiders drop
Filaments of light out of the blue
Into sunny scrutiny – the intersection
Of the everyday.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Read more…
recession or depression? regression or obsession?
When I first asked my dad back in December 2007 if he’d seen my blog, he laughed unkindly, and said, isn’t that just a glorified diary? who reads those things, anyway?
Well, Dad, yeah, I guess : a glorified diary that has had almost 11000 hits in less than six months. And no, I don’t know who reads it. I’m just glad they do.
But in some ways, he’s right–it is a glorified diary at times in the sense that this blog is a place where I explore what interests me, engages me, concerns me–whether it be politics, poetry, or pantry!
And it’s also like a giant scrapbook, a scrapbook that is stored more compactly, and organized more completely than I think he can imagine.
It’s a place where my intellectual ramblings can land. And take root. And sometimes get read–and see the light of day on a computer far far from home.
So on that note, I found this article by Andrew Leonard on Salon.com and since I want to be able to put my finger on it when I want, and because what I think is being said is really really important, I am importing much of this article here. If you want to read it in it’s entirety, go to salon.com
And Dad, it’s too bad you never bother to read my blog because I really think you’d find this article of interest. And Jordan, (cuz I know you read my blog), I hope you read this article because this is partly why I don’t think it’s right for those execs to make so much money.
April 2, 2008 | A record number of Americans receiving food stamps. Gas prices at an all-time high, and staples such as milk, eggs and bread costing a prettier penny every week. The average number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits reached its highest level in two years last week, while just this week, construction spending fell for the fifth straight month and manufacturing activity shrank to its lowest level in five years. Real estate values are even plummeting in the Hamptons, and hedge funds started off 2008 with their worst quarter ever.
Most economists are no longer debating whether there will be a recession in 2008. Now, they’re arguing over when the recession started — was it last November, or December? — and how bad it’s likely to get. While they bicker, however, a far more terrifying economic specter from the distant past has sent a chill through the infosphere.
“We have not seen a nationwide decline in housing like this since the Great Depression,” said the CEO of Wells Fargo late last year. “It is now clear that the U.S. and global financial markets are experiencing their worst financial crisis since the Great Depression,” wrote economist Nouriel Roubini last week.
Want to see “The Great Depression: The Sequel”? Here’s a handy three-step do-it-yourself action plan.
1. Continue to ignore growing income inequality and govern the United States for the benefit of the rich at the expense of the many.
2. Continue to whittle away at the safety nets that exist to cushion Americans from economic ill winds.
3. Continue to weaken government oversight of Wall Street.
Last October, citing Internal Revenue Service data, the Wall Street Journal reported that the top 1 percent of Americans earned 21.2 percent of all income in 2005. That’s the highest measure of income inequality since, you guessed it, before the Great Depression. Read more…
Celebrate with Lucy in the Sky
Open house and Grand Re-opening: Lucy in the Sky
April Fool’s Day celebration from 3 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. As part of the festivities, a new Star Wars room will make its debut. 20B N. Fir St. Ventucky.
805 
652-1988.
National Poetry Month: Lifelines
A reporter for our local paper is doing an article on poetry “Lifelines”–lines of poems which have served us in meaningful ways. The Academy of American Poets is encouraging people to think about this; for more information about the project go to their website.
This is a slightly expanded response to her query:
Maybe 8 or so years ago, I received a copy of the Lannon Foundation’s annual report. In it, I found this quote:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
They cited Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day,” from House of Light.
I knew nothing of Mary Oliver, really, had heard of her and a few of her poems, and liked them all right; that was about it. But this fragment of a poem really spoke to me: What is it I plan to do with my one wild and precious life? wow!
As a college teacher, I have an opportunity to share–or impose–on my students words and ideas I find important. I put this quote at the top of the syllabus every semester–to get my students to think about this too–to think about they will do with their one wild and precious life–and to let them know too, that I want them to know I care what it is they plan to do, that I see their lives as precious.
Last year, when Mary Oliver spoke at UCSB, I finally bought her New and Selected Poems V 1 which won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and which includes that poem, “The Summer Day.” The poem as a whole reminds me of the importance of paying attention, of giving myself the time to be blessed and idle in order to smell, and feel, and see the beauty and energy of life on this earth, and to be grateful to be alive in this and every moment.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean–
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down–
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I ahve done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Every time I prepare for class, and even while I am teaching, I stumble on the last tow lines, these words, this reminder, this lesson not to waste a single moment. What is it I plan to do?
But the poem that I turn to when I feel defeated, when I need solace, when I feel lost about what to do, is Wendell Berry‘s “The Peace of Wild Things” which I found in Robert Bly‘s News of the Universe:
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
The last four lines are the most powerful for me–speaking as they do to the patience of waiting for the time to shine, and to a sense of peace and joy and calm that comes from resting–nesting– in grace. When I read this poem, I feel the embrace of the world, and release a deep breath of freedom.
What are your lifelines? please share!
spring sycamore hokku
According to hokku.wordpress.com, what most of us think of as haiku, as practiced by well-known practioners like Basho, is actually hokku; the two forms have little but brevity in common. On this blog, the aesthetics of hokku are– HUMOUR, SOLITUDE, UNCONVENTIONALITY, SUGGESTIVENESS NATURALNESS, ASYMMETRY, TRANQUILITY, TRANSIENCE I tried to keep some of these ideas in mind while composing this new poem today (when I should have been grading papers, I was looking out the window!)
sycamore skirts wind
rise on spring fuzz cream undies
cling tomorrow fall
The failure to me of this attempt however is that it lacks the simplicity of good hokku–mine is still overly complicated. Maybe I should unpack the images, the narrative, and turn it into a few verses (hmmn, another day!)
What do you think? How does it work for you?
ride the poetry train! check out other readwritepoem responses!
turn off lights, turn off computers
coming up on Earth Hour 8pm last Saturday in March:
lights off
computers off
IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY, now’s the time to get in the habit of flipping off the switch on powerbars, turning off lights and watching energy juice and use…while we still can!
for more info go to:
art predator 