I am holed up in the house with a fresh batch of home-made bagels. That could be a dangerous thing. With such bitter wind and the snow, I don’t have motivation to do more than stare out the window and eat. I suppose I could on-line shop but that sounds expensive. I have piano to do and I worked on a fairly silly poem that feels fun to write, it is called Elizabeth and the Witness. Some parts are funny, some saccharine but it seems to be wrapping up as a serious statement of some kind. I will have to see where it goes over the next few days. A bit of the poem is actually purposeful writing, adding a rhythmic texture deliberately to make a line whimsical. Not that I have skills, really, just a little bit of finetuning the things I do. This is winter boredom at it’s very best…haha. Maybe, I could paint the living room? Nah…take a nap or read someone else’s work…there ya go!

It is payday. Social Security gets deposited to my account and I will have resources again! I had bad dreams but woke to a small Covid cheque, a warm place, a little breakfast, a nice Facetime chat with a friend and a sunny day. You and I have survived the night. Maybe that is why I am in a good mood? Or, maybe the tea is a bit heavily caffeinated today.

I am excited and hopeful about things for some peculiar reason. I am expectant. So are the folks next door. My neighbour’s lady friend(wife?) is quite pregnant. She is the one who had to clean snow off the big truck that one time and never again. Looks like a spring baby for them. Nice. What they do and how they do it is none of my beeswax but it is interesting to speculate. They went for a pleasant walk last evening and were holding hands. I saw the whole thing because I am being lazy and just sitting at my kitchen window these days. It can be much better than television and a lot more enlightening.

I think those youngsters must keep their home quite warm because Mr. Nude-as-is-legal never wears a shirt. I see him through the kitchen window and it makes me shiver just to snoop. I have a feeling he has little on for pants either but I can’t see down that low so do not know for a fact. After the baby comes and gets a little older he will have to be more modest. He isn’t really all that sexy, just young and fairly thin with a nice little man-beard. She is skinny! Whew! I think she must share one tomato and a slice of bread with her little baby each day. Maybe, I should take some pie over there? Yeah, that’s what I should do. If I take some pie over I might be able to find out what project he is working on. He parks a trailer by the window and throws lots of debris out every little once in a while.

The mayor has returned. Her hair is growing back so maybe the bitterness has receded? Nah. I think it’s just that her chemo is done. The bitterness hasn’t subsided and her hair probably learned how to live in an acid environment. She actually acknowledged my presence a few days ago. I inquired about her health. I said, “How are you doing?” She answered, “Oh…I am doing…” So things are warming up between us. Maybe I should take her some pie as well? My guess is she would have it checked for possible poisons by the authorities. How interesting. Somebody comes to shovel her drive when there is snow and I am glad. That means I don’t have to swallow my pride and do it for her, I can still be a benignly difficult neighbour. I do mow the grass but that is by default, sort of…she doesn’t and waits for me to do it. Out of a sense of community, I stopped playing piano at three a.m. so there you go. I am Mr. Good Bob now.

The neighbours on the other side are quite friendly. The dad one knows my name for some reason. They probably received a misdirected letter or looked me up on Facebook, too. They are funny. Last summer, they cleaned all of the junk out of the back yard and took it into the front yard. That’s where it stayed for a while, huge piles. I thought at first that they were building a garden because I could hear a roto-tiller running for a long time. They have a sheet plastic and pvc pipe greenhouse out back where they sit and drink something with friends. They talk loud. When I was on the roof of my new shed, I could see they had only planted a new lawn by the greenhouse. They aren’t mowing the new lawn now, either. Their son is Mr. Sneaky Guy and he slinks in every once in a while. He is living in the garage and orders pizza but not from Pizza Hut. I should have been warned by that and not ordered Pizza Hut stuff. The son wears a perma-toque. It might be a tattoo of a toque because it is always there. He has a little man-beard too.

Oh well. Time to mind my own business and practice piano. Maybe I will magically be able to play the Rachmaninoff? I have much bigger hands than Donald Trump but I still doubt it.

Oh, my goodness! I have wasted a good portion of the day getting only Facebook scrolling done… I have a really good idea for a poem that I am dragging my feet on writing…so many more interesting things to not do. I should not be so concerned…only St. Peter is keeping score and assembling the report card for the big guy/gal/apparition to evaluate. In fact, I think about those folks who struggled through two great wars and a monster depression only to die anyway. Maybe they would have enjoyed having the chance to be sloth-like? Maybe it’s up to me to fulfill their lives.

More and more these days, I am thinking our purpose on earth IS, indeed to have as good a time and as much relaxation as we can. Foolishly, or fortunately we also have a bit of a problem with overzealous progenation. Some folks worry about that. Some folks worry about how it should be done and who is doing it with whom. Does the cat? Does the squirrel? Does the goose overhead? Not to worry about the dangly bits, kids…no stress. Laying about, eating grapes and bringing more folk into the world? Yeah, that’s cool as it gets…

Perhaps we are currently on sabbatical? and it isn’t so much we are going to go to hell as we are going to have to go BACK when the buzzer rings. I discovered there is no Santa Claus when I was younger and I have a feeling there is no North Pole and no heaven. In fact, there is probably no better heaven than here and now, no matter your circumstances. Put your feet up. We are there, for the moment. Rest yourself, no worries.

I was resting myself and looking around this morning when I bought a tea and a bagel, went to the marina and enjoyed my lunch. There were maybe a thousand geese overhead who assembled on the open water a few feet from shore. They were talking and laughing, just like there was no social distancing requirement at all. I was amazed at their unconcern.. they weren’t worried about food or love or having the hydro shut off. They weren’t even worried that the critics won’t think their poetry is any good. It’s been that way for them at least a thousand or ten years. (Maybe they get bored, just doing what they do, flying where they fly? Don’t think so.)

Many, many times I am able to just be astounded at the perfection, the miracle all around and within us. The sun, the stars, the birds, the trees, the sky — the fact that the water looks flat but is actually following the arc of earth. You can almost see it when staring at the lake where it meets the horizon. You don’t have to believe it or trust science or anything. It’s just there to see or not see and it’s okay.

We are all, individually okay. We have some crap to pick through on our journeys but each one of us is an example of great art in our very own way. Except me, but that is another matter. I can’t see the art of me, even when I look hard into the mirror. I usually only see: fat, old, gay, broke, lazy..That’s a silly waste of precious break time. None of those things are totally true (except the gay part…that’s totally true) and break time will be over before I know. Who knows what the boss/es have/has planned for the afternoon shift? Maybe this time, I will get to drive the shit wagon but more likely, it’ll be my job to load it again. Good thing I have boots!

You get the odd twisty person barking orders, like D. Trump or Karen, who try to suck up all the oxygen but they are still in the minority even at %40 of the crowd. Maybe those type folks just cannot relax? Maybe, like Adolph, they are too concerned about only having one testicle? I mean, that’s what we heard about Herr Fuhrer when we were in grade school. Maybe Karen can’t climax? Maybe Donald really does have an embarassing small one? It is an urban-ish legend that a fulfilling sex-life settles a person down. Well, yeah, I suppose. It’s more likely that a person settles down when they realize that there really isn’t such a thing as ‘better’..’more’..’richer’…’poorer’..there is only is and not is anymore. If you don’t want to be fat, don’t eat so much…if you can’t stop eating so much, don’t worry about being fat. Is, not is. Simple. If the tire goes flat or Grandma takes a last snooze…that’s the way it is. Cry a little bit or a lot, do whatever seems the best thing. Yeah, that’s it. Be quick about it though, break time is almost over.

One of the most marvelous things about the people I know as friends is that they know things. Little bits of information about interesting topics makes for great conversations. Everyone I know is fun to talk to, I always learn something. This extends to my Facebook family of friends. It is extremely rare that our conversation is base and gossipy — almost never. No one wastes time on the exploits of the rich and famous or the alcoholic uncles or overbearing aunts. My folks are deeper than surface. As I mature? (haha), I discover that I like to laugh and I like to chat, those are probably my favourite things. When I look back on my past self, I see that it was always true…I was trouble for the rule of order in a school classroom, usually making a joke. I teased in church. I have been told by the unamused (mostly ex-spouses) that I am trying to capture the spotlight. Well, yeah, I guess, a little bit? Ha ha. Sadly, the conversation is covid-limited to what electronic devices are capable of. We are separated from each other physically but still try to keep our connections with the cyber-world.

As long as we can chat and make fun, then we are ok…no matter how much food there is or isn’t, how dangerous the political world is or isn’t or how grand our accomodations (though I do like good food and grand accomodation). Trouble with meaningful chatting is, in cyber-space it is difficult to do well. Talking to a moving picture on a back-lit screen is not the same as pouring a cuppa for someone and having their prescence in the room, their realness. In a sense it is the same as the difference between anything analog and it’s digital representation. Digitizing what is analog changes it. To convert a wave of laughter to bits and bytes, then re-create it loses it’s liveliness. The eye and the ear can tell when a thing is re-created, there is the soul of it gone no matter how carefully our machines replicate. Perhaps, when computers add the other elements of conversation, the sensation of being next to someone, their smell, their squeaks, the noises and the colours, the depth perception, it will be different.

Until the little chips in our phones are faster, better, realer, being isolated to Facetime or telephone conversation is a deadly dull thing for me. Of course, without it I am even in worse trouble. I, and the other 7 billion of us, suffer. We need to have what is analog be analog. We can’t ‘sense’ another person from their image on an Ipad screen. The camera catches a lot but the eye is not fooled. I am always left wanting that certain something with each Facetime or telephone conversation. Texting is more trouble yet, with the problems of interpretation when body language is not part of it. Handwritten, cursive letters are also difficult to interpret correctly, although the scent of a perfumed paper does tell something and the lack of uniformity in the shapes of the characters, the flow of penmanship tells even more. They add up to something more real than a crisp Times New Roman could ever be.

Today, this snowy morning, I am hungry. Hungry for a dinner out with friends, hungry to have them sitting on my sofa and telling me stories that make me laugh. I am hungry to sing. I am hungry to disrupt the orderly conduct of a concert with my asides. I miss ‘Pere Steve’ and Norm and Willie and Victoria and Kari and Connie and Dora and Michael and Matthew and Jeremy and Roger and Blanche and having them laugh at wicked things I say. I miss hearing their clever conversations and the things they know that I don’t. I am hungry for that. That hunger is part of my being peckish all the time and I know it. The sensation of warm apple pie and a nice coffee is at least real and is close to the same thing as laying into ‘Ode to Joy’ with full heart. True, that. I am gaining weight just because the refrigerator is not digital. It is analog and filled with the things I can buy at the essential businesses…sausage, cheese, cherry pie, mayonnaise…homemade pickles, et-cet-era. I am ready now, to get dressed, clean off the car and chat through the service window with my lovely friends at Starbucks! Mmmmm.

Nearly at January’s end…the days are spinning quickly by. It hardly seems a moment ago that I was sanding drywall and already here we are again, avoiding the doing. There is little visible progress toward the goals I have set myself and time is fleeting. What seems to work for me is to set aside the weekend for home renovation and the week for writing. What is actually happening is that, during the week, I am spending far too many hours in front of the television set and far too few singing, playing, writing. It bothers me that I drift away from my creative goals so easily but I am slowly coming to the realization that the creative stuff is stifled by stress. I try and I manage a bit. I end up constantly telling myself that I have not done enough but I am doing what is possible, little enough as it is. There are a host of reasons so little is possible, that self-control is difficult. Our world is still upside down, this year into the pandemic. Is it as though a war was on? A financial meltdown? A famine? A plague of locusts? No. And yet, yes.

Covid, in all it’s elements is bringing out the worst in us. First, it was unfair and ill-considered rolling, amorphous lockdowns. Should we wear masks or no? Should the big-box stores be able to sell as usual, leaving the small guys to suffer? Then came rebellion against the relatively simple requests and rules. Now that a vaccine or two are available, the fighting begins about when and where we get our dose, who is first. So far, money and politics are playing key roles in the distribution of vaccine. When will humans get their act together and learn to be patient, learn to share, learn to trust. Our leaders are letting us down. Where are the calm but firm and honest voices? Where are the governments willing to act and act responsibly for the good of all?

It’s tempting to blame the modern conservatives but the liberals are equal in culpability. Yeah, Trump and his cohorts are desperate totalitarians but Pilosi and Schumer are schemers, too. In Canada, we are driven between the rock of Trudeau’s naivety/idealism/silver-spoon privilege and the hard place of O’toole’s base and agressive ambitions. Europe is eroding slowly, with only the odd leader here and there willing to stand for what’s right over what will get them elected. Putin is an evil and ambitious tyrant. China remains as controlling, as opaque as it ever was. There are no truly honest men or women, I fear.

Down here on the farm, I am getting rapidly older. To myself, I deny this but it’s true, it’s real. My arthritis is a serious problem that I do my best to ignore, I grow less and less mobile (though that is gradual yet). I am losing my good eyesight and hearing. The eyesight is going quicker but YOUWILLHAVETOSPEAKUP if you want me to hear you. I am also sliding into a resistance of sorts. I resist getting out of bed. I resist slowing down on the noshing. I resist exercise, I resist piano practice, I resist… Nossir…I just don’t want to anymore. Sigh. It has been a long series of reasons why the reticence developed. Partly, I am bored with the doing…I have been doing long enough. Partly, I am frustrated with the slow pace of accumulation (piano skills, writing skills, emotional health skills). Partly, I am angry at the decay, the being fat, the loss of clear sight, the mumbling singers on the radio. Partly, the divorce and upending of what was a pleasant life creates stress. Partly, the deaths and estrangements of people I cared about weighs on me. …and, partly, I mourn the loss of excitement in living. There is more to dread than to eagerly anticipate.

Sigh. Setting aside the negatives and polishing up the positives is a real chore. It has to be done and I know that. To think and believe otherwise is to succumb. Here we go: Starting with politics and covid and world. Biden did win the election, that means that cooler heads are out there somewhere. Trudeau has not been forced into an election, cooler heads again. The European Union is still a union, still attempting to work together, cooler heads. The Israelis are heading into yet another election, cooler heads? There are real Russians marching in the street, in spite of Putin’s hard-ball tactics. Hong Kong has not given up the fight against The Party Central, yet. Vaccines are real and moderately imminent. The sun came brilliant this morning (little cloudy now) and I woke in a warm bed, comfortable. Starbucks is open for window service and the tea was delicious, the bagel toasty, the server cheerful to a fault. I saw a hot looking fellow walking down the street, sharing his beauty with all who could see it. (maybe I should have pulled over, rolled down the window and expressed my appreciation? maybe not) I have a thousand friends, some of them in far away places. I communicate via electronics with someone, every day. I can still see through the blur, I can still hear Jimi Hendrix (My neighbours can hear him better every day). I continue to write silly little poems and bang at the piano. Though I am consuming too much pie, it is still tasting delicious. Yeah. I guess it is the best of times and the worst of times. The joy is that even while lying on our deathbeds, there is still time. I choose to think pleasant thoughts…as in the advice given to new brides once upon a time. It’s a good idea. I will, “close my eyes and think of England,” letting what will happen, happen.

“Yer not gonna die!” – Hazel Lindberg, circa 1958

That was my mom’s initial reaction to the bleeding stumps or the askew angled limbs of her five children as they paraded before her, each in turn. It was a statement intended to stop the damn screaming long enough for an assessment of damage. It sometimes worked. She was correct, 100%. We did not die, not one of us. We have, in fact, lived long and sort-of prospered, each of us to our own way. We have scars, marks, mileposts but remain. We remain and almost cheerfully. We live, for our time being, in a condition that passes for happily. Almost good. Good enough.

What did I expect when I fell out of the Mulberry tree onto the sharp prow of the sled, my nose bent off to the side afterwards, blood pouring out? Was I expecting St. Peter’s calming voice? “Have you filled out the questionaire?” When I ran screaming and bleeding into the house, was I expecting Mom to fill it out for me? Was I expecting the ambulance’ urgent wail, the bell tolling for me?

Yes, after a fashion. I was expecting something when I fell from the tree, face first onto the prow of the sled. I was afraid I would die. I was certain, having watched TV and read comic books, that it was over for me. With my nose smashed, the pouring blood, I was on my way out before I had a chance to do anything. I was going to die before I got my lifework done. (I conveniently forgot that Wil – E – Coyote always rose again.) Oh, my God! I am not ready! This is a permanent thing! I am forever changed! It is the end of a world! Save me Mom! Save me Jesus!

As one ‘situation’ led to yet another on the road to surviving childhood, I became aware how unprepared I was for any of the situations living brings. Dying, of course being one situation that living brings. (I think, these days that dying primarily happens to the living ones or things – although you might say a star is a living thing so all things die, I think even the universe and it’s time and space will). My impression of death was that a ton of blood would be involved or horrific pain or labored breathing or bizarrely upended vehicles or large dogs with glistening teeth… That is what I have expected death to at least begin with. Probably, after the initial sting, death would be as drawn out as that of any superhero or good cowboy or beloved pet (who had just saved the world and offered his life as fair trade) I ever observed. Having now witnessed a few up close deaths, a few disappearing souls, I have some new thoughts.

Maybe, death begins at the moment of birth, as if spitting out a living being is the same thing as leaving the turkey out on the counter. The turkey was alive (in a sense, if you are unaware of where food comes from or what it has to go through on it’s way to you) in the fridge but starts to change into not a turkey, a dead turkey. (If you think that death involves stinking and liquifying.) I am one of the 7 billion or so of us who have been left out on the counter. Every day, a new rivulet, a new grey spot, a more putrid odour, a less appealing visage.

We cannot put ourselves back in the fridge, that is just the way of it. No matter our fear of death, no matter our cries for mercy, no matter our science, no matter our drugs, no matter our organization of society, no matter the mom we go running to, no matter the God we plead with or try to appease…we and everything else are going to die. Zip. Done. Used up and stinking. Wasted. That we should fear this is more an outside fabrication, a thing to waste time with. What can there be to fear? Hell? Heaven? No more cherry pie? God will be mad at you and send you south?

Inside, we know fear is a waste of time – death has to happen. “Y’ might as well relax”, just like the proctologist says. What is peculiar, is that if you do relax – the proctologist visit can be a whole lot more interesting. If you do relax – getting up and going to work can be a lot less stressful. If you do relax – bankruptcy doesn’t hurt so bad. If you do relax – there is suddenly enough time to stare out the window at the squirrels. If you do relax – humming and spending your precious life hours watching tv or eating too much or not being beautiful or not being a famous author or playing piano badly can be as useful as any other activity. Nope. Doesn’t matter.

“So, Mom…you are wrong, I am going to die. Yes, Mom…you were right, not at this moment. Yes, Mom…we should calm down, wipe away the transitional blood, assess the damage, fix what we can and — carry on. Every fall from every Mulberry tree on the way toward our actual death will leave a mark. I have a bent nose to remember the tree and sled incident. I have a broken heart, a large white scar in various places to remember other incidents. Until Alzheimer’s gets me, I will not be able to erase or reverse the tape of my fall from the Mulberry tree. That tape exists. Bleeding like hell was temporary. My bent nose, permanent but that permanence, temporary. Haha. Jeez, I hope God isn’t too awful pissed off at me.

More changes but more steady as she goes, too. The covid landscape is barren as tundra yet the stock market is hitting new highs again. Curious, to me. People are grinding down to a halt financially and the housing market is still booming? Who is buying the houses? Who has that kind of money when the average home price in Canada is 400K? Well. In fact, the unemployment rate is not that severe. It stands at 8.6 % across the board. Even at it’s height, I think it didn’t hit more than 15 or 16%. That would indicate to me that 84% of working folks did not lose their job. Maybe that is where all the money for houses and equity investments comes from? Musicians, entertainers, hospitality folks and small (very small) businesses are bearing the brunt of loss. That truth I can attest from personal, first hand knowledge. Every entertainer or creative person I know is sitting on their hands and has been for a year! That’s where the greatest employment problems exist. Most other workplaces are open and running, though with differences, maybe slower output. The farms/greenhouses are rolling away as ever. The Chevrolets keep rolling off the line. We are isolated, suffering yes, but big box stores, fast food, fuel are all running as if nothing were amiss. The giant corporations are raking in the cash. It is a strange day.

I am growing more fearful of the difficult folks, the ones who have always been in the background – waving their guns and displaying their disregard for any but themselves, shouting their disdain for civility in public, for manners, for respect. They are wildly in the present, though Twitter and Facebook have clamped them down as best they can. Those folks are still stocking up weapons, supplies. Having been brought to the foreground and given the illusion that they are more numerous than they thought puts civility at risk. They don’t believe their own eyes, taking every lie told them as gospel. I actually listened to one misguided soul who was IN THE CAPITOL BUILDING waving her filth around and claimed it was Antifa? She just doesn’t have a clear view of reality.

I don’t understand Hillary’s deplorables and their desire to lock the rest of the world up. I think they have been led, this time, to believe they face a danger from the folks who have always been on the lower rungs of society. I know they must be thinking that the economic problems and social problems they are falling victim to are the fault of others – minority races, religions. Others? Yes. They don’t see that the danger they face from others is from the likes of Trump. He and the party of infidels he fronts for do not have the common man and his or her difficulties in mind. Not at all. The deplorables don’t see that. Before, when I knew them growing up, they just were wacked out. Bold, yes but on the sidelines. Now, they are front and centre — screaming at fellow passengers on a plane? fighting about wearing a mask in a store? threatening congress by charging into the capitol? grabbing the headlines and facetiming their crimes, both social and legal? Wow.

And we are locked away from each other? We are in some shit boys and girls.

Yeah. I do have some random thoughts and some observations about the inauguration of the 46th President of the United States. “Bully for you..” I hear. Yeah. “Take a number and have a seat.”

On Poetry:

For a little while (week? ten days?) poetry will be all over the place. CNN will regurgitate one or two lines of a brilliantly yellow-clad strong and fragile songbird’s work ad nauseum. Little girls will run for their ebook sellers, some will even dash into a -gasp- library. The ‘influencers’ will be rhyming like crazy, hip hop and rap will make a teensy bit more headway on the pop charts. Perhaps Dylan Thomas will be temporarily wheeled in from the mortuary halls of academe’. (Where art goes to die…LOL) Maybe even Arthur Rimbaud can struggle back? He has a definite appeal to the young and he tells their story with his tragic/romantic/emotional life. He was cute as a button, in the same way that Ms. Gorman is! I can hear the clicking of one million virtual keyboards, right now. Poetry is sexy of a sudden. Poetry is on the mind of movers, in the wiggle of shakers. Think ‘Tik and Tok’. A young, very traditionally good looking woman who reads very well and conducts herself with elegance in a public setting has been chosen Poet Laureate of the U.S. and she read to the nation, the world from her work. Just like that, poetry is famous.

My brother accused me of ‘puffery’ when I wrote that my resume could now include ‘Featured Soloist’ because my name appeared in the church bulletin. …but it was true! I was an advertised soloist at St. Mark’s! I was a feature of the program. Yes. I, too was a yellow-clad songbird for a moment. I strode up to the podium and jotted the fact down in my curriculum vitae. Puffery? Indeed not…er um. Well, yeah. In the same way that calling myself a featured soloist is puffery, so is CNN’s calling Amanda Gorman ‘the first youth Poet Laureate of the United States’. It is puffery that many of the TV newscasters swoon at the words she read. Sorry, Youth Poet Laureate isn’t a first. It is only a first because there is no such category. In fact, the young woman discussed is 22 years of age and has graduated Harvard. She isn’t a ‘youth’ anymore, really. She is young, yes but she is not a youth. Her poetry, ‘brilliant’…? Her poetry is maybe of Laureate quality but perhaps capable is a better description and puffery the word for the week. Uh oh.

I think few read or respect poetry. I used to do. I was drawn to the flame by the seductiveness of the idea of living an important creative life. Reading journals from the capitols of the art world in my distant, isolated heart of America got me caught up in a then-current well spoken of mystique. The beats were ‘in’. The poets were cool. Greenwich Village, Emma Goldman, Pete Seeger, Laurence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan – I was impressed by and took seriously. Their images, ideas and depth changed art and politics for the better, I thought. It meant something to me to wander in and be thrilled by the dark garden paths of Edgar Allen Poe or the sado-masochistic boudoir of Franz Kafka. I read Steinback cover to cover and delighted in meaning. All of those folks’ work was in the limelight of the hour. From far away and nowhere, I could sense a something extra. Intriguing. I wanted to be a part of it, the viral scene that was spreading. I knew I would be an enriched human being… if I could only understand what the H was going on. “…ah sweet mystery of life (I’ll never find thee)”.

So, the jazz, classical and folk (now ‘roots’) music that shadowed the alleys of ‘The Village’ was ‘better’, more important music than popular music. The poetry of Ginsberg/Rimbaud/Verlaines/Plath/e.e. Cummings, the short stories of O. Henry were serious art. All of that set fire to my soul. I struggled through some of it, enjoyed viscerally some of it and prided myself on my choices. I made up my mind what to expect from good, well crafted, insightful art. I developed a standard. I was drawn in by an image. That image was partly created by the popular press. That image was partly created by the elites of education. (the critics the academics) The press and the learned voices helped steer me to my beliefs about creative art. I made my analyses by that guidance.

I don’t read poetry much anymore, don’t follow music as well as I wish I did. I am a bit lazy. It is hard work to sift through the respected poets (thinking Pablo Neruda/Phillip Larkin as examples) so I am one of the masses who don’t read poetry. I know they are great, I can smell it, I read reviews, people I respect say so. Also, I can see the difference between their work and the work of folks like (new, young, fresh, capable, educated, accomplished) Amanda Gorman. I know the difference from my experience but I don’t read poetry much anymore. I don’t have the kind of deep education that you need to pack as a lunch when you travel to the library and I know it.

The fawning talking heads don’t read or, I should say haven’t read poetry, either. It is obvious to my understanding of what constitues great poetry. Those expressing astonishment at the ‘utter brilliance’ of what is an ‘all the right words’ banality reveal this. Yeah. I think ‘The Hill We Climb’ is banal. Wow. What an asshole I am. My reasons for thinking and saying so are many. A look at the text reveals a whole lotta platitudes. Oooops. My bad. ‘norms’? in an original poem that is heralded as art? Becoming light? The title ‘The Hill We Climb’ itself is simplistic metaphor. It is a capable piece and well written. True. There is another truth. The language is common, the depth a surface one that I could swim in without fear. I probably wouldn’t even get wet. Am I making stunning criticisms or an open-minded assessment? Who am I to talk, since I don’t read much anymore? Well, I used to read and I criticize my own poetry in exactly the same terms.

I would guess that the press is the birthplace and nursery of hyperbole because it is supported by advertising, kept alive on euphemism or cheerful, fact disguising claims. “New” “Improved” “Better Waste Management” (that’s garbage disposal) Shit. It is in the best interests of the media to whip up excitement, to drive the buffalo into the pound and over the cliff. That is how multimillion dollar organizations pay the bills. It is how political parties gain power. It is how art gets diluted and used. How about one little platitude more, “..putting lipstick on the pig.” The pig is still a pig and the poem is still uninspiring, no matter how it’s puffed up. This is a thing I know.

I got an ad for poetry books in my Facebook Newsfeed this morning. I ignored it, just as the many thousands or millions of other scrollers will and did. For a while there will be a rush on bookstores and a shortage of writing paper. People will see that poetry gets you the girls — for a while. The respected poets and the majestic ones will be read again — for a while.But hyperbole…calling a thing something it isn’t will pop. The spotlight will reveal cracks, faults, reveal puffery when the real thing finds it’s way out. Overstatement by the press is the first step in pricking Ms. Gorman’s poetry fame bubble. For a little while, little girls and boys across America will be drawn in to poetry. Ms. Gorman looks young, like them and is being feted. “Hey, I want to do that, I want to be her, poetry looks easy..” They will discover something they have not seen. In short time, folks will step away from believing that they, too could be beautiful, articulate, measured Poet Laureates. When Charles Bukowski starts getting compared to Amanda Gorman, folks will say to themselves, “Whoa…I don’t think so…” and go back to Beverly Hillbillies re-runs and McDonald’s meals.

Jesus or Charlie Manson

“Hello?” she swore she heard,
then,
almost in smirk,
came the word, “Hello?” again.
Elizabeth looked up from the work.
She was knitting sweaters
and nearly done one,
ready for a little break.
She rose from her expensive chair,
which relieved back-ache and
went to the diamond shaped window
where
daylight peeked in.
Elizabeth peeked out.

There is magic enough about
any single day to
cause the curious wonderment.
Elizabeth was one of those.
Sometimes,
her piqued imagination
examined the deep purple
sky’s situation,
researching what a sound of distant
thunder meant.
Sometimes,
a finished book, returned to the shelf,
included ‘additonal study’ notes
she’d written herself.
Just now, seeking informaton more,
following where facts led,
she went to the door,
actively thinking, “What’s that little,
‘hello’, for?”

She raised her head,
saw It wasn’t morning light alone
shone in,
knew there was much to know
about the type and source of such
an extra glow,
so the heavy wooden door,
usually kept closed against attack,
eased a crack.
She offered a timid “Hello?” back.

His long hair in disarray,
a booklet-bearing tanned man
stood there,
clothing rumpled like he didn’t care
what the neighbours might say.
Elizabeth’s first private thought was
“Uhg…”
then her better mind held sway
bringing curiousity to boil and buzz
away.

She mentioned, “That mark on your forehead…
what does it mean?” before realizing
he was merely unclean and
he breathed back, “Do you know Jesus?”
“uum…yeah,” she smart-alecky said,
“wasn’t he one of the Grateful Dead?”

When Memory Becomes Fact

I am in an odd mood today or possibly I am aware of my consistent odd mood. I have to do some running to catch up with myself and verify which is which. Ha. I am prepared, I have my requisite bagel and tea at the ready while my fingers fly across the keyboard, spreading the blog-tale of my days. Maybe this day, I am suffering a merry-go-round centrifugal force? At least fifty-seven ideas are on the spinning turntable of mind and as the speed picks up, they fly off in as many directions. Is that child-like? “Focus, fella…focus.” One of my ex-spice (spouses = spice) used to dismiss my odd moods as childishness with a bored air. She thought the illusory, fantastical worlds I extemporized were built as a child might build them. I am not so sure, could be. I don’t remember being a child that well so am not sure how to make the comparison. Observation and contemplation lead to the conclusion that I must have been a child once. What’s gone is first-hand, tactile information about being such. At least a particular youngster. Me.

I know I remember my Aunt telling me something I didn’t believe when I was four years old. I remember my Spouse thinking I was childish and I remember having a misunderstanding with God. It is knowledge more than memory. There comes a time, and I don’t know when, exactly, that a memory becomes not a memory any more. There comes a time when you know you remember a thing and you know the details but you don’t feel it anymore. A wisp of past becomes knowledge, a hard thing, no longer seductive or chimerical but a knock-wood firmness that you don’t re-feel anymore when thinking about it. The sensations, the sounds, the smells are gone and the fading-colour paint is finally dry. Is the dried and finished work really a memory then? Is it only a reality, just another fact hanging on the wall, imbued with nothing?

I have knowledge that my ex-wife thought I was childish. I don’t feel insulted or smell or see the room we were in that day, no memory surrounding the memory. I don’t remember what fantasy I was engaged with that caused her to roll her eyes. I have only the fact. She said I was childish. I have the knowledge of a memory but not the memory anymore.

I witness the little children at play with living, gaming with experience, entertaining wild ideas for the novelty of it. “The sun is a flower, because I say so…it is possible that the earth really is flat because Columbus doesn’t know everything!” They are feeling. They are exploding with life. I can sometimes see why my ex saw in me that half-whacked condition but as for remembering it, the doing of it, the feeling of it as a child? No. I don’t remember it, I only know it. On the surface, I am in agreement with her, that I am sometimes being child-like. I do enjoy elucidating under-baked ideas for fun. (exhilarating free associations) I am deducing my enjoyment is what a child feels but not, in fact remembering that feeling.

I know that I can make folks laugh with my inanity, my ludicrous comparisons, my sudden leaps into oblique directions. I can disrupt any conversation with a well-timed outburst. There is laughter, then I see the look my companions give each other…”Is he ever going to grow up.” I recognize that look. I have seen that look on the face of every single person I have ever met. So, then. I know my silliness reflects an immaturity. I know that it is childish playfulness. I have the knowledge of childishness and not the memory of being a playful child.

When memory turns to fact, it is sometimes a loss, it can be a kindness as well. The true loveliness of memory turning to knowledge comes from the times that immediate, cold facts, hard realities turn to memory, which in turn finally become only knowledge of memory. Memory is kind when it finally becomes fact without the ever-constant sidekick, pain.

I miss and would love to feel what I was feeling the day my aunt told me there was bogey-man under the bed. I know what I felt, I remember but I don’t feel it anymore. I was elated, gleeful and pretending to be fearful even though I knew it wasn’t true. I have lost that feeling, don’t know what colour the room was or how old my aunt was but I still have the memory of it. I have the fact.

What I am grateful for is equal to what I just said I miss. I am grateful for those inescapable darker memories having become fact. I know them. I remember them very well, will never forget but they are facts, now. I don’t have to feel or smell or touch them anymore. Good.

Someday, I will tell you about me and God…it is hilarious, really. Ha.