Another Path

"I didn't find the girl. I didn't get rich. Follow me." - L. Cohen

Germs

Hey, did you ever wake up with a cold, and think, well, at least I'm not alone? I mean, there are germs residing in your body, they are living organisms, yes, they sort of make you uncomfortable, but they look at you as a friendly host, they take up residence for awhile and go through a set routine. So, you have company, you have other realities manifesting themselves, inducing your bodily tissues to respond in new ways. And suddenly you have become a factory of phlegm and mucous...

There's also a new layer, a layer of distance from the world that comes with sickness...I guess you could call it the "sick layer" which gives everything a new feel. For instance, right now, I feel like I have a pillow in my head. A sort of soft and fluffy pillow that takes up space in my head which is usually just a ball of confusion. The world seems all a little more distant with this pillow-reality in my head. I'm thinking the germs have kind of put another layer of distance between me and the hard reality of my life...so, sickness is a companion, it has it's own agenda, but it's content to go through the motions of the day with me, as if it's interested in me and all the silly things I have to do as a human being. We all just have to do what we have to do - human and germ alike...

Carry On

How is it that a malicious, well-placed word can punture our little happy bubble of existence? A word is not a dart, or knife, or spear, or bullet, but sometimes all it takes is a word to do damage. I identify with the sensitive souls, those for whom sometimes the world and a word, is just too much. You come to understand that there are many, many people who do not wish you well. It's an important realisation, but you can't let it overwhelm you. There are also many people who just don't give a damn whether you live or die. There are also those who would miss you if you were hit by a truck tommorrow. It's a big world, with billions of human beings all doing their human being thing. It's a strange existence, and I guess, we all just need to make the world in our own image, or come to some happy co-existence, or rage into the night, or let it all pass, or, well, hopefully you don't have to harden yourself too much, because that hardening is kind of a deadening, and we are here to live, and I think it's best to use all that we have to use. So yes, a heightened sensitivity to the world, to the word is an important tool, it can come in handy, but then there's the wound, the sling, the arrow - we must take the blow, bind the wound, and carry on...

Quotes

"Mankind has no aim no, no idea, no plan, any more than the family of butterflies or orchids." - Spengler

"What's important in life is life and not a result of life." - Goethe

"I see world-history as a picture of endless formations and transformations, of the marvellous waxing and waning of organic forms." - Spengler

A Spy

What happens when you mix Eddie Fisher's sperm with Debbie Reynolds eggs? You get...Princess Leia Organa! Puts one in mind of someone sitting in an orgone box with big muffin-like mounds of hair sticking on each side, doesn't it? Well, maybe not.

Anyway, Ms. Organa is known as Carrie Fisher in another galaxy far, far away...a strange place called Hollywood. She has a new one-woman show about her life. Here's a line that sounded oh so true...

"I'm a spy in the house of me." - C. Fisher

The Wind

The wind is blowing out of the North today, 24 mph or more. I went for a run and the first half of the trip was directly into the wind. It was like running with a refrigerator tied to my leg. What an amazing power. The lake looked like a roiling sea, the water kind of slate-gray, with a greenish tinge. I ran past the beaches of Evanston, and there was a mini-sandstorm. Little grains of sand pelted my face...I felt like Lawrence of Suburbia!

The trip back was like having wings attached to my feet, or like having the hand of some god or devil kind of pushing me forward. There were times I felt I was gonna be blown off my feet. Now that's what we Chicagoans like to refer to as "The Hawk." There's nothing like a north wind blowing across the lake...so much wind kind of takes your breath away.

It felt great to complete the trek in one piece. There were only a few brave souls out on the path today. A small tribe of runners willing to take on the elements. Another day in the life.

Spengler's Giving

I'm reading Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West...just started, already it puts me in a worldly frame of mind. We are citizens of nature, and of history. Cultures are too. Spengler talks about how a man is born, lives, dies, there's young age, old age, a lifetime. The same can be said for a culture. History is the meaning we derive from these natural events. Do we live in a personal world that lives and dies with us? Or are we part of a larger historical reality that spans centuries? If it's the latter, we transcend our humble bodies via our consciousness of this greater reality, and we can derive meanings from this world narrative. This gives us a sense of connection to things larger than us. This also points to a symbolic understanding of the events of the world. We can see ourselves as one player, cut off from the rest, with no greater purpose, except our natural function, or we can see ourselves as a historical characters, informed by events past and present, which enrapts us in a symbolic or metaphorical suit of armour. We can derive meanings from this greater reality, we can invest our humble world with these grand understandings. We can read history, and the world, like we read a poem; the more you give to it, the more you receive from it.

Old Voices

Old voices are calling out to me this morning. Reading about comedy, Plato and Aristotle rear their hoary heads. Plato tells us that there is a metaphysical realm where perfect abstract forms exist. Reality is just a copy of a copy. Art and theater are then, copies, of copies, of copies - in Plato's retreat this is not a good thing. Aristotle takes a different tack. He tells us that art and theater help us reach a state of catharsis, a purification or cleansing through laughter or tears.

And then there's this: "The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh."--Samuel Beckett

It's time to brew another pot of coffee...

Eliasson Haiku

The latest New Yorker has a profile of an Icelandic artist named Olafur Eliasson. He's a great fan of Robert Irwin and Lawrence Weschler's biography of Irwin, "Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees." I am too, it is one of those books that can change your life, change the way you look at the world. Elisasson was so inspired, he actually decided to follow in Irwin's footsteps. The whole article is worth a read, but these particular lines, which I kind of took out of context, really captured my imagination, the lines are almost a haiku or are at least in the spirit of a haiku:

How high is the water?
How deep are the trees?
In warm weather,
people could bring
their sandwiches here.
In winter,
they could ice-skate.

"I'm just doing it." - Y. Ono

Last morning at the Essex House...yesterday we walked over to the Dakota, it's kind of like going to Lourdes or Chartes, our secular saint (no, he was just a man, flaws and all, but that makes him even more admirable, right?) lived and died here...

Central Park was alive with people and fallen leaves...bikers, roller bladers (Watch me spin and twirl and skate backwards...Why do I do it? Because I can.), the human comedy in all it's vibrant glory.

We took the subway to Williamsburg, dined with friends...every meal has been a pleasure, it's all too much...can you have too much fun? This is the good life. But even as I'm in it, I question whether this is what I want...what is it little ole sunnyjimmy is looking for? Beats me...I'm just doing it...going through it...enjoying it too, but always questioning, wondering...

This morning in the NYT Sports Section (yes, words of wisdom in the sports section!) I read:

"True success is waking up every day realizing what a great life you have." - A. Quindlen

"It's what we do that determines who we are. It's not our past, it's our present." - J. Angelo

The City

We went from Brooklyn to Manhattan. We're at the Essex House fronting Central Park. There's a TV channel in the room that gives you a panoramic view of the park. What an amazing resource. Olmstead was a visionary.

Last night we saw a Broadway show, Martin Short in his "Fame Becomes Me." It was superb, not a false note, very funny, a satire of one man shows (in Short's version, there's a full, very talented cast who help carry the show), poking fun at our celebrity culture, the burn-out and comeback saga of celebrity, TV talk shows, Broadway musicals, and the bloated ego-based culture celebrated in NY and Hollywood.

Anyway, we always do a lot of walking when we're in this town, we figured we must have walked about ten miles yesterday, from the Whitney to Times Square to the theater district and back and forth (this was after doing the trek back and forth over the Brooklyn Bridge). The endless waves of people, the ocean of energy from tourists, theater goers, hip-hoppers, music blaring, horns honking, a sea of humanity bursting from every nook and cranny, every street corner alive with every variety of human being. Kind of exhausting.

Today, a little less action, maybe hang out at the park, find a good restuarant. Dine with NY friends...it's the city life in all it's glory.

It's Just There

Yesterday I ran the Brooklyn Bridge. It is one of the greatest things to do - I mean it's not hard, it's just an awe-inspiring experience. I mean, it's exhilarating, and inspiring, and unbelievable. First, the bridge itself is an amazing engineering feat. Plus the human labor and dedication (how many men died building it?), is mind-boggling. The human animal is the kind creature that says, "hey wouldn't it be cool to build a road from Brooklyn to Manhattan?" It must have seemed impossible, "wouldn't it be cool if we could sprout wings?" And then years of hard labor, and finally, it's there, it's just there, like an inevitable, essential element to the landscape. And then, finally, it's taken for granted, or just accepted, it's just there.

Coming to it new, (every time I come here, it's almost like the first time), it blows your mind again. So, yes, it's just a bridge, but it's also a symbol, and then it's a symbol that is a reality that you can actually run across, and the journey itself is a nice workout, but it's also an example of the human spirit, nothing will stop us if we really put our minds and muscles to the task. We will find a way to get to the other side!

So it was sunny, blue skies, and the bridge was alive, with people, kind of like a community of bridge people, tourists, runners, bikers, cops, pretty girls, punk rockers, moms with strollers, shoppers going from one town to the next. And there's a journey that we all share, a slow incline, you reach the high point, and then a slow decline. If you run it, you multiply it all by two. You rise above the city, the car traffic, you look down on the bustling metropolis, and then you slowly come back down to street level. Running the bridge...it's time in a life...it's a reminder of what life is...and then again, it's just a bridge...it's just there...

Mac and Cheese

What's the line from Richard Farina, "I've been down so long, it looks like up to me?" There's a little of that feeling as the reality of the new political tide splashes across the land...one thing I've learned, democracy is messy, and inefficient, and oh so vunerable to the inducements of power and money, but once in awhile you get a glimmer, a breath of fresh air, that gets your adrenaline pumping, and you get filled with happiness and hope...but of course, you wonder if it could really be true, and well, when is the carpet going to be pulled out from under our feet? But, even with those doubts, it's good to see people kind of rise up and make a statement, even if it's basically "we've had enough, let's try something else."

I'm perched at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, enjoying the sights and sounds of Brooklyn and Manhattan. Here for an energy conference - "energy is eternal delight." Last night, the Lovely Carla and I dined with the Lovely Melissa and her husband at Sarita's, a restuarant that serves one thing, (in infinite varieties), macaroni and cheese. There's something to be said for doing one thing well. James Brown once talked about songwriting - something to the effect - take one good idea and run it to the ground.

Anyway, I'm guessing Manhattan is one of the few places where you can have a successful restuarant featuring one thing on the menu. I hear it's a trend - a place for french fries, a place for pickles, a place for rice pudding. There are major benefits to having such a hugely diverse concentration of people on one small island. Anything, and everyting goes...now that's a great, American-type beauty.

Post Election

I'm blogging from the Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge. Kind of in a post-election haze...I have the TV on and the gloom from some of our highly-paid commentators is palpable...

Is Bush back on the sauce as of last night? Does Cheney look in the mirror this morning and say, "Maybe I am an asshole." George Allen is maccaca! Sometimes the news is good.

Yes, well...Vote!

Yes, well, all power corrupts. Rust never sleeps. Revolution is not a dinner party. We get the government we deserve. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Waterboarding, it's not torture, it's entertainment!

Today we can vote the bums out...how about it?!

Eternal Waking

Somewhere around age 5, this realization came to me, whether I could really verbalize it or not:

"The world was a cheap and shoddy scam, a bad cover for something deeper and weirder and infinitely more strange." - Neil Gaiman

Gaiman is the writer of a series called "The Sandman." I haven't read it, but from what I can glean from accounts about the writer and his work, I think I can affirm that I have lived his concept of "eternal waking" -- "every time he thinks he is rousing from a dream, he has simply woken up in a new and different delusion from which he must again wake up, and so on into infinity."

Scar Tissue

Sometimes I drink to excess. William Blake in his Proverbs from Hell wrote that the "road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." It's important to be able to live to tell the tale. I have wondered if my binge drinking, (how many beers, glasses of wine, etc. can I consume, in the shortest time available?) has been some kind of search. Search for what? God? Nirvana? Oblivion?

Most of the time I live on a pretty straight edge. But, I have my moments, and when I indulge, I can't just dip my toe in the pond, oh no, I must plunge in head first, and hit bottom, and curl in a fetal position deep in the water, and see how long I can live without taking a breath. Sometimes I think it has to do with being a Catholic. But it's probably more or less encoded in my DNA. I come from a long line of broken men. Good men, but in some way broken too.

Anyway, I was reading Anthony Keidis' memoir, "Scar Tissue." Anthony for those who don't know him, is the lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It's a long, sordid book, (not exactly deep reading, I know, it's kind of like eating a bag of potato chips, kind of an unhealthy indulgence), a record in excruciating detail, of one man's life of debauch. Anthony has smoked, snorted, injected, inhaled, ingested every illicit drug known to man. I haven't read St. Augustine's "Confessions" but from what I've heard of it, Anthony's descent into hell sounds deeper and more complete.

Anthony, rose from very humble, and not very promising beginnings to become a fairly accomplished singer and songwriter for a very entertaining and enthusiastic, funk-punk-rock & roll outfit. I'm sure you've heard "The Bridge," and who could forget, "Party on Your Pussy!" ?? Anway, it turns out the book is sort of insipiring, just like I'm sure St. Augustine's account might be too (I never read the old Saint's account, but I'm pretty confident Anthony gives the same old story a nice contemporary update.)

Anyway, the bottom line, by the end of the book, Anthony is living alone in the Hollywood Hills, with a dog, and lot of empty rooms, but he's meditating, and working on the holy grail of recovery --- the twelve steps! You put the book down thinking, "I hope he makes it." Later you look in the mirror, and you think, "I hope I do too."

A Spider's Web

The twists and turns of a life...yes, we are like that spider spinning a shining golden web, and then we sit back and try to derive meaning in the pattern of the filaments. We create the world, or we are in collaboration with what we call world. It's a strange alchemy. The web has all the purpose and meaning we want to invest in it. It's really a simple formulation and sometimes so hard to do...

So, lately I have pulled back from the battle field, I took my own advice...let it come down...don't fight, don't resist, be humble. Smile and create. Create a new reality, a new web. I have been re-entangled, and it feels good. My little web-world is a replica of a greater universe...very much like the one all around us...but in my web, there's a lot of smiling and laughter, genuine, not sarcastic. This old spider has banished fear, leave it for another day...hell, everything is as it should be, I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

Death of an Anthropologist

I read NYT obits once in awhile. Sometimes people you wish you had met turn up. Clifford Geertz, a Cultural Anthropologist died at 80 years old. A good, long, life, it seems.

I like this quote, it seems oh so true:

"Believing with Max Weber that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun..."

Yes, we are like the spider, spinning our own little worlds, and then we look around and try to derive meaning from the slender, near-invisible threads that surround us.

Is it a fool's game? Clifford concludes that antrhopology is "an excellent way, interesting, dismaying, useful and amusing, to expend a life."

The Loner

One day sunny and warm, the next dark and brisk...the weather has such a changeable nature...it is our teacher.

So I'm a little stiff and feeling the Chicago chill, walking to the 7-11, I open the door, and well, there's Neil Young's voice, and the words of "The Loner," from his 1969 debut echo across the shelves and linoleum of the store.

"He's a perfect stranger, Like a cross of himself and a fox. He's a feeling arranger, And a changer of the ways he talks. He's the unforeseen danger, The keeper of the key to the locks. Know when you see him, Nothing can free him. Step aside, open wide, It's the loner."

I think, well, yes, he's singing my song...the loner is someone who feels most alone in the middle of a crowd...and I think of a young Neil Young, driving from Canada to Hollywood in a hearse, looking to make rock and roll history, oh those many years ago.

I leave the store, kick on down the alleyway, singing the song myself..."nothing can free him. Step aside, open wide, it's the loner." This is time-tripping - the most exquisite kind...and it feels so good.