Paper Clip

He said that
Richard Strauss
claimed he could compose

music about a paper clip.
I couldn't imagine
a less inspirational

object, so I thought
I'd give it a try,
only to discover

how beautiful it was
standing like a surf board
reaching into the sky

as elegant of
a curve that
ever was.

Distraction

Be here now, they said,
yet my mind wonders,
looking and listening

at the car screeching
and the woman
refreshing her lipstick

as if no one
is watching.
I catch

something important
but only
the tail end

of (what might be)
an interesting thought.
The car stops screeching

darkening the street
with burnt rubber
and the woman

powers her nose,
anticipating meeting
someone

more to her liking.
My other ears and eyes
draw back into my head

and I command myself
(this time) to pay attention
more carefully

until my mind
wonders
once again.

Together

She said he said,
they took a walk,
almost forty years ago

and later, today,
they sometimes
become one

and sometimes two
or three or four
wondering where

the time flew to,
or, if Einstein was
right, where the train

was, and which train
they were on, and
where they were,

when the
lightning struck
like cupid's arrow.

Trust

He's now in the dog
house, having run
away a few days ago.

How can we trust him,
after he chose a rabbit
rather than his warm home?

He promises to be good
but we see that twinkle
in his eyes and how

his ears stand up,
waiting so patiently
for the rabbit

to rustle a
few leaves in
our neighbor's bush.

Lost Dog

We called our big dog in,
at bedtime, and called
and called and called.

To no avail, we went
on a search
and rescue operation,

combing the neighborhood.
Finally my wife looked behind
the neighbor's garage

where the rabbits
hang out. There he was,
anxious to return home

from
his evening's
adventure.

One Seventy

They don't know why
he fired 170 rounds,
or why he was so angry.

His family said he
rarely spoke, yet
he mailed reams of discourse

between
his first and second
indiscretion.

And in Iraq, today,
72 died, and my neighbor,
Mrs. Hudson,

phoned me
to tell me that
these are terrible times,

because, she said,
the bible said so
in a prophecy.

She asked if I could
imagine life before the
original sin

and I told her
that I liked apples.
She said that the Bible

never mentioned
what fruit it was,
but that she knew

it was bananas,
which I like even better.
So I let the sun shine

in the picture,
because it does shine,
even when our behavior

is
so
pitiful.

Dual Egotism

Not connected at birth,
they found each other
like two desperate magnets,

hungrily becoming one,
but not knowing who they are,
and becoming none.

They shared their hair,
had a common hand,
and went together to

work and play. They
loved each other, or
was it themselves?

But they were saved,
(somewhat) by a free
hand that

reached out
independently, and
felt

the freshness
of a
lonesome breeze.

Lonely

3:21 am is a lonely time.
My wife is asleep.
The dogs can barely

open their eyes,
and do so
just long enough

to briefly explore
the cold
morning

and then
come back
to their beds.

I remember
my college friend
telling me

"no matter what,
Jesus
will always love you,"

and how I used to
walk the streets
at night,

going to Hopper's
Nighthawks
where I sit by myself

and noone
knows me
because I am

that man
without
a face

and it is
these
moments

where I find
mirrors
and meet

(in myself)
that
whom I did not know.

Afghan Woman

Barely a teen,
she was married
to a man in his forties

who abused her
to the point
that she doused herself

with petro,
and, despite her best intentions,
survived, scarred,

wanting to only feel better.
Now divorced,
she is alone,

with her scars,
both physical
and emotional.

Good or Bad

". . . ask what you can do for your country."
And so he said, as he defined
a good person, and made

the rest of us guilty of treason.
My friend wondered what
social causes I would take

on in my next life after
my 38 years as a public
servant, and I wondered

at what point can I
declare a truce with
the final judge and

simply commit my
self to further understand
me, whatever that may mean.

And what is "my country"
other that a conglomeration
of people, faces, and things.

If everyone was doing
something for others,
to improve their quality of life,

who would be looking
out
for themselves?

Anne Frank

In Anne Frank
we read the diary
of all girls

vaulting from
child to adult
surrounded by

a microcosm of
the world, and
subjected

to love,
generosity
and fear.

It is an
extraordinary
opportunity to

live a tragedy
through the eyes
and mind of one

sensitive individual,
and to remind ourselves
that our humanity

as a species
is tentative,
at best.

Busy

To save a dollar
a day, we reduced
our cable service

to twenty seven stations.
Now we have a sane
number of little men

and women inside
our TV wondering what
to say or do next.

We live by calendars,
going from this event
to that, sometimes

leaving one early and
getting to the next late,
just so we can be eveywhere

at once. Yet when we get
sick, or our car breaks
down, and all these "urgent"

events get stuck on the
back burner, life
goes on without us.

Suicide Bomber or Mental Case

The country is focused
on an articulate
and angry mental case.

We've heard his thoughts
before, that we are the
cause of what has happened,

not him. Yet, thousands
of miles away, we daily
have similar tragedies,

also motivated by a
perspective, a point of
view, a set of beliefs.

We sometimes think
of education
as a luxury item.

In times like these
we realize that our only hope
is to help each other

to find better solutions
to common
and pervasive problems.

He had so much ahead of him...

His mother,
between tears,
couldn't understand

how
such
a beautiful life

could so senselessly
be
denied.

She saw her
son's
timeline,

with mostly
unused territory
ahead.

Tragedy is when
unwanted events
occur.

We review our lives,
looking
and wondering

what is waiting
behind
the curtain.

33 Die, From the Beginning

Perhaps there was only water,
a very long time ago,
and then a

very simple life.
A few years later,
few in comparison

to the length of all time,
life evolved to cockroaches,
butterflies, and homosapiens.

We were the most advanced species,
with amazing intelligence and dexterity.
So intelligent, that we wanted

to control others,
and so we waged
awful wars, continual.

Then on 4/16, a student
decided that he had
had enough

and put on his boy scout
uniform and his guns
and sent his classmates

into disrepair. How
do we condemn one meaningless
act, and justify another

on the other side of the
world? Is the homosapien
itself the ultimate WMD?

Dogs as Pigs

My dogs look like pigs
except they have longer legs
and smaller bellies.

In real life I could never
sell them for bacon, but
in my drawings, it is another

ball of wax. I'm not sure
whose chromosome is missing
that makes such transformation

occur, but I'm suspect it is
one of mine, and not one
of my "best friends'."

Better

When feeling better after not
you start to think
of all the things you forgot

to think about when you were not.
Like all the dumb things
you were supposed

to do, or find, or say.
When your head is dizzy
and you can't think, they hide

behind the black cloud,
like the 300 tons of dirt
in the 30s that made its

way through the great plains.
Now, better, the dust settles,
and you see the mundane,

but also the very special stuff
that glitters, warms our hearts
and lets us know we are alive.

TV Man

Invades my home,
erasing car noises
and my bird's song.

Like a monkey on my back,
I turn him on whenever
I can, hoping for some

real semblance of truth
or humor only to discover
hours and days later

my time has so
deftly been expired into
that irredeemable past.

Getting Better Watching TV

I'm not sure
which is worse,
watching TV, or

getting over a cold?
When you haven't watched
TV for awhile,

you realize how it steals
your time like a crazed
kleptomaniac

and your eyes run and
your mind spins and
your time gets eaten

up like a band of
vultures are on you,
and you say no no

not any more, but it
is there, in the air
striking us all,

stealing our precious
minutes as if we
have nothing better to do.

Still Sick

Still have the classic cold
stuffed head, runny nose,
cough, fever.

With all the poems
already in the world
if I was a decent humanoid

i'd sit out this one and
give my muses a rest.
But what happens to

a poem if it isn't writ
and instead ls silenced
by one thing or another.

Being Sick

Being sick knocks
the wind out of me.
It doesn't have to be

anything terminal,
even a simple cold
is enough to make my

head spin and my body
sluggish. Jack London
wrote so many words a day,

even if we was very sick.
I wonder if his sick words
were as good as his healthy words.

I have a friend who is
a jazz singer. He cut a record
when he was losing his voice

which added
a certain originality
to his efforts.

My high school art teacher
had Parkinson's disease
and grooved over the shaky lines

he could make
when his medicine
was running out.

Did any of these tactics
make them feel any better?
Does my thinking about them make my head

feel any better? Do they heroes divert
for a few moments
how cruddy I feel when I'm sick?

Phone Book

Mom was hard of hearing,
so she took up psychoanalysis
to figure out what was going on.

Because she couldn't listen
to your words,
she'd look through you

and look at your
expressions
and body language.

I heard someone say that
you could read
from a phone book

and people would get
what it was
you wanted to say.

Is that what JC
meant when he said
that he spoke in parables

so that those
ready
would hear him?

It may not be the story,
but the subtext
that carries the message.

There are 6000+ languages
on our small planet,
yet we all have similar

hopes,
doubts,
frustrations,

and we may know
what others think about,
even without their words,

that are
often so
extraneous.

Opinions

When I taught art to
first and second graders
they would often

ask me to compliment
their work.
I almost always told

them that it was great,
even if it was crud.
But they knew the truth,

and if it wasn't a masterpiece,
they'd simply tear it up
and start over.

Adults are not as quick
to know the truth,
and don't yearn to find it.

Our egos seem
unduly invested in
what we do

(or how much we earn),
believing that what we are
and do are one in the same.

Even "how are you doing"
isn't really meant to be
answered honestly.

One woman, at dinner,
did, and almost everyone
lost their supper.

Sometimes we ask,
"do you really want to
know (the truth)?"

but even that
doesn't cover
all the bases.

Traditions

The rabbi in jeans
spoke of matzah,
not the matzah

in the grocery store,
but the matzah
that was eaten by

the Jews many years ago,
that was cooked
a little less than hummus,

and symbolized
that Jews,
being on the run,

were not able
to wait
for their bread to rise,

even before rabbis,
he said, when the sages
were called something different.

And I worry about
whether I have
any rich traditions,

born to skeptic parents
who looked to the future
rather than the past.

Yesterday I asked
what were her traditions
and she said

if she was having
trouble falling asleep,
she'd say goodnight to

the people she'd seen that day.
And I, frightened to be
swept away by any tradition,

embrace no traditions
one day, and (a little)
of all, the next.

Frontal Lobomy

We make mistakes.
We say things
we shouldn't have.

We do
things
we shouldn't have.

We make things
that either
don't work or poison us

like polluted wheat gluten dog bones
for our beloved pets.
Even the Nobel Prize

is sometimes given
erroneously, as in 1949
for the frontal lobotomy.

I was three then,
and one of the most avid
proponents lived in St. Louis

and used an ice pick,
according to his son,
to go in above the eye

and dissemble
our emotions
from our reason,

as Socrates
so wished for
when he took the hemlock,

but unfortunately we don't know
how well it worked for him,
and fortunately,

most other philosophers
do not stand in line
for their turn

with the ice pick
or even
the hemlock.

Accidents

When Arlo was seven
he wanted to dunk a basketball
so he put a stool next to the basket

(must have been quite a stool)
and fell backwards
and broke his wrist.

Now a few years older,
he broke his arm (in two places)
on a skateboard.

On Wed. the 14th of March,
a man in Roma
died on a bicycle.

I did not know the man,
though I was with someone
who had been with someone

who saw it happen
I wonder about that man,
where was he riding to,

and did he know that,
riding a bike in Rome,
was living on borrowed time?

And brave Mark in the U.S.,
gets a motorcycle
and on the 24th of March,

has a bad fall and
came home a few days later
for a lot of healing.

Or my sister, and her then boyfriend,
hit on a motorcycle on the SF Bay Bridge,
and lived to tell about it.

Or Craig, inventor of the Vetter Fairing,
now in a wheel chair
because his passion was racing.

Or
or
or.

Isn't life dangerous enough
without the added risk
of the thrill of

flying through the
air unprotected
from the cruel pull

of gravity, who
keeps us earthbound,
even to the point

of giving us
fractures,
and (much) worse?

Wanting to be Meek

I wanted
to be a poor kid.
I had everything I wanted.

My mom would
buy me any book,
and any tools I asked for,

and I could have lived
in the most plush
dormitory in college.

My heros
were my misconceptions
of Thoreau,

who lived (for a year) at
Walden Pond on almost nothing,
as an "experiment,"

and Siddhartha,
who shun his riches,
so that he could understand life.

And Gandhi, who
burned his British clothes,
and spun his own.

I used to tell my students
it is better to appreciate
a crack in a sidewalk

than to own a yacht.
Some believe that
anyone with wealth

and/or power is evil,
and the poor are blessed.
and will "inherit the Earth"

and though we sometimes buy
that hook, line, and sinker,
most don't put the

meek into their wills,
and most with money
may live with a better quality

of life than those without.
Privilege, as some call it.
Using one's resources to

fulfill one's goals is certainly
a laudable goal,
and squandering one's resources,

including health, money, and time
is certainly
not commendable.

Orphan

I imagined when
my parents died
I'd be an orphan.

Kind of like Kipling's
Kim or Huck Finn.
But no luck!

I was always asking
my parents for advice,
though I'm not sure

if I ever took it.
Now they are
gone from the planet

but not from my life.
I think of them often
and see them everywhere.

Unlike Castaneda's Don Juan
who gave up his last name,
and became his own person,

I realize what I am is
the combination of where
I was and where I am going.

Waiting for Death

When my parents
retired 27 years ago,
I imagined that they would

be waiting for death
to come for them and
I was surprised to discover

that their third stage was (much)
more like a honeymoon
than a funeral.

They weren't in a state of denial and
their life was full of new challenges,
discoveries, and contributions.

They got their affairs in order,
financial, spiritual,
and personal.

They made new friends
in a new city,
as if they had come from outer space.

They though and examined
every choice they made,
and made the best of every moment.

They analyzed every dream they
had, and whether they would
be more productive if they

took a nap in the afternoon.
They kept an accurate accounting
of what they spent,

and how the stock market
was treating them.
They spoke of their life

as being in heaven, and
considered joining the
Hemlock Society,

vowing to only continue residing
on Earth if they could
be healthy and independent.

Taxes

All weekend I worked
on taxes, between blogging,
that is.

Actually I hired someone
to help because it
takes me forever to

do jobs I hate.
Did you know that we work
almost half of the year for Uncle Sam?

Then he/she takes our money
and spends it
as he/she sees fit.

Ideally the money is
well-spent, uprooting
social injustices and

creating a safe and efficient
country for all.
It is amazing to me,

with the amount of expenditures
Uncle Sam makes, that
we aren't all in a soup line.

Not that I don't like soup,
but could the billions that
are being spent to wipe out

a middle eastern culture be
better spent returned
to our citizens?

Having said that,
as the expression goes,
it is easy to take shots

from the peanut gallery.
Ideally we learn as much
as we can about a situation,

and still we can't know all.
Perhaps the way to world peace
is to methodically eradicate the

world's population. Perhaps
the government knows best
what I should eat for breakfast.

And perhaps, when we say grace tonight,
we should thank Uncle Sam
for the food we have

on our table,
and the roof we have,
over our heads.

April 1

I asked my wife
if the refrigerator was running
(hoping I could say,

"better catch it. April fools!")
but she knew that one,
and simple said, is it April 1?

I probably should have thought of
something better, like we
got a call from the zoo

and Mrs. Lion would like
to see her tomorrow,
or any of the other myriad classics.

On this one day we can
be kids again, and live in
that special world where

we try to fool
the other guy, just for fun.
As a kid, my friend and I

used to tell each other
stupendous stories about
something that recently

may have happened to us. The
goal was to get the other
to believe our stories.

Here's some timely ones
for this
April 1:

The war in Iraq ended today.
George Bush announced he'll
support Hillary for president,

God is proved dead,
Walmart decides to double wages,
and Social Security finds

a large stash of money so they
will never go broke.
Oh, the IRS closes down,

CEO salaries will be limited by law
to 1.5x that of the lowest employee in their company,
and only same sex marriages will

be sanctioned
by congress.
April Fools!

An Alternative to Waiting

We wait
for this
and that.

We leave the present
and live
in the future.

Siddhartha learned to wait, saying
"the greatest prayer
is patience."

Did he learn to be so mindful
of the present
that the future did not matter?

My job soon changes
from working for someone else
to working for myself.

And then,
in a number of days/months/years,
I will sit in a rocking chair

creaking as it rocks,
and wonder when
eternal sleep will knock at my door.

We wait for a semester to start,
for a class to begin,
for a class to end.

We wait in line
at the grocery store,
imagining

that someone else is
stealing our precious life
from ourselves.

When's dinner,
we ask?
wondering how we can

shorten that time,
until our perceived needs
(or wants?) are fulfilled.

An alternative, you ask?
The water will boil
whether or not

we watch
the pot.
What could we do

in the meantime
so we are living,
rather than waiting?

When Parents Leave...

Eyes follow
hands point
tears fall

we distract congole
dissuade accomodate
"Let's look out the window"

"Let's play on the floor"
ba ba ba boom
now he's alone on the floor

tears, we say
"you're a big boy
let's walk around

what else is in the room?"
aaannn aann an
"did you see this...

on the other side?"
Oscar and his mom come around,
waiting for his sitter to go to the park.

And we take Jasper for a
very long walk and the big boy
sleeps happily in his stroller.

Cheap

Cheap is a touchy subject but
other words are more positive,
like thrifty or economical.

When I was a kid, cheap
was from China (no longer
the case, of course) .

Cheap is poor quality, or
a behavior some disdain,
and some appauld.

My grandpa carried
discount gasoline and day-old bread
in the trunk of his car.

That was cheap! But he
would put a deserving stranger
through college.

That was not cheap!
Sometimes seemingly
cheap people are,

like gramps--
mixed bags. Others
are always stingy,

not able to give
to (or of) themselves.

Some places charge
more than a dollar
for a cup of tea,

yet a cup of hot H2O
is often free.
Is it cheap or

thrifty to carry
one's own teabays
around for that free

cup of hot H2O?
How about taking
those mini shampoo

and lotion bottles
from a hotel?
Hey, that cheap,

you say, but suppose
you give them to
the homeless?

Well, that's different.
Certain ethic groups
are thought to be cheap

but if you dare say
to someone that they
are cheap because

of who they are
you'll be thrown
out in the street.

Noam Chomsky and William Glasser

Chomsky regretted writing
the intro for a book
denying the Holocaust,

not because he didn't believe
in freedom of speech,
but because certain subjects

are so hot that people can't
be reasonable about them.
There are a host of those subjects,

from mentioning the KKK
to a southerner, to, geeze (definition #4),
I better not say any more.

William Glasser said that
we know how to get along
with our friends
but not our family.

He said we don't criticize
our friends because then
they wouldn't like us.

I wonder
if we also don't mention
all those sacred cows as well,

like how much money they lost
on bad investments, whether they
believe in the best God,

and whether they
really follow each of the
ten commandments.

A Good Book (Culture Shock)

At the Chagall exhibit in Rome,
a docent was lecturing to
a group of Italian kids,

who couldn't get close enough
or eat more of the words
from her energetic mouth.

Some religiously jotted
notes as she enthusiastically
talked about the masterpiece.

Plop, a few days later,
I land in the Atlanta airport, walking
by an impassioned print by Howard Finster

but soon am (sadly) assaulted by
a noisy/smelly world of fast food and
sickly and puffy looking young and old

and CNN comes on about
the 250 lb 7 year old that might
be taken away from his mom

because she's not feeding
him
right,

and I am overwhelmed (and depressed)
by how far we are from
educating our youth

and I talk to my wife (and daughter)
about starting a school for infants
(and their parents)

and then I see one shimmer
of hope, one young, good looking kid,
oblivious to the noise/smell,

CNN on the 250 lb 7 year old
and how Anne Nicole Smith
died,

a kid who has escaped a 2007
"wasteland" into the throws
of a good book.

Over Virginia

Flying over Virginia
from Rome to Atlanta
at 36000 feet

from my seat in the middle
of the plane
I look out the window

and see only a portion
of a silver wing, a bit of a blue sky
and a few lonesome white clouds.

Turning my head,
I see highways
on the movie screen

as we hone in on
our destination.
Lots of noise from

conversations and
a roaring engine and
pungent smells from the

pizza with pesto
and the overused toilet
(just) a few feet away.

Many are now standing
with their toothbrushes
and combs

in line at the toilet
getting ready
for their plane's descent.

Soon they'll embrace thelr
loved ones, or noone—
but their cat or dog or turtle,

or they'll transfer to another
plane & postpone their homecoming
for a few more hours.

Drivel

(Note: After trying to read the Financial Times Magazine flying from Rome to St. Louis)

Countless drivel fills
magazine racks &
trash containers.

Drivel this and that,
using the most imaginable
pedestrian language

to describe
ideas, events,
discoveries and inventions.

But rarely is the subject
itself the cause
for the drivel

rather it is the treatment
and presentation of the same
that causes me such distress.

Ordinary reporters
never go
beyond the Five Ws (and one H),

while the gifted poet
makes the everyday
heavenly.

Rubics and Logic

I've been very suspicious of
rubrics and logic,
who may be first cousins.

Both are useful enough
when their powers are limited,
but neither gives us the truth.

We don't make
a lot of decisions
based on logic.

We are creatures
of subjective impressions
(is that redundant?).

We are drawn
to and from objects
for unknown reasons.

We conduct many (if not all)
facets of our lives
as if guided by a powerful spirit.

Our decisions are often
directed by a strong "intuition"
rather a large bag

of empirical evidence.
Rubrics are equally faulty
as a determinant of quality.

Yes, they make it easy
to give a low grade
on a student's paper

because the essay contained
four spelling errors,
included five grammatical errors,

lacked a topic sentence,
and more. But the rubric
didn't address whether

the author made the reader
"think and feel, and hopefully,
[took them] to a place

they hadn't been
(a definition of art from
one of the curators at MOMA).

Recently a teacher
gave a student a better grade
than their work deserved

because, even though
the student had fulfilled
the requirements of the rubric,

they had not understood
the content
of the course.

Ode to the Lovely One

It is always amazing to me
how good things
happen.

A job opens up, and someone
is lucky to
get an interview.

And when he goes for inspection,
he gives a talk, and in the front row,
is the lovely one.

And he gets the job
and they marry and she is the perfect
compliment, companion, compatriot for him.

And then is born the perfect prince with golden locks,
who knows exactly what he wants
and what he doesn't want.

And she and him, are perfect parents,
each with an extraordinary gift
to make beautiful stuff "from nothing."

They made the prince, not from
nothing, but from the lovely one,
who knows just what to do and just what to say,

and from him, who listens and records,
as if he is a siphon, taking in everything
around him in such a gentle way.

Advice to Marc Chagall

Coming back from a large Marc Chagall
exhibit in Roma, my son and I agreed
that Marc was not a great painter.

Surely, I said, he blows Norman Rockwell,
or Andrew Wyeth out of the water. My son
could not argue that point. But he said

that Marc just drew, and then filled in
his drawings with blue and red,
except for this one wall of beautiful colleges

that he did in 1970.
I said he was a great lyricist
and that even though painters

wouldn't look up to him for inspiration
a lyricist would.
I then imagined what

I might say to Marc,
should he, one dreary day,
be in a despondent mood about his art,

and decide to telephone me.
"What's wrong with my art?"
he would say

and I'd tell him that he should get
a new manager who doesn't want him
to illustrate so many bible stories

and that he should mix up his colors a bit,
and take the advice of one of my teachers
that every area in a painting should

include a little bit of every other color in the painting,
or a friend who said, always look at the
whole when you are working on the parts.

Or maybe I'd give him the
gold toothbrush of advice,
that one should "listen to everyone and believe no one."

But then I started wondering, what if
Marc really did take my advice,
then we wouldn't have

his spirit and paintings that
are so unique and so compelling,
especially he,

having lived through countless
wars and turmoil,
taught us such priceless lessons

about joy and love
and just doing something crazy
because it feels so good!

Correction

Walking down the street in Rome
yesterday, I realized that his name
wasn't Alfred, but rather Dr. Dolittle.

I wrote a piece about that, but
lost it as I transferred it to my
computer.

And then today, I realized that
his name was probably Alfred
Dolittle, though if I had to

swear on a stack of bibles, and (even)
if it truly was a formidable stack, then
I couldn't say for sure what I used to call him.

Which all makes me further suspect
history as a precise accounting of
what happened, one day, very very long ago.

If we can't even trust the horse's mouth,
How can we trust anything?
The journalist wants multiple sources,

even if one is very very good.
But here, I'm not sure if I ever
told anyone what his name was, or is.

I do remember that I did
want to befriend Dr./Alfred Dolittle,
because my speech wasn't good,

and I thought he would interpret
what I wanted to say
to my parents and friends.

Alfred

50 years ago I drew
Alfred in the margin
of my notes.

I was supposed to be
taking notes, something
I never learned to do.

Except in one class,
where the teacher
wrote the notes on the board.

Ben sat behind me and
drew Abe Lincoln or George
Washington—I can't remember.

He was the real artist and still
is. I was a "wantabe." I just
would have to learn to draw George or Abe.

I don't think my guy that I drew had a name
at first. But in French class, around the same
time, I learned that Kim was not a good name.

Bruce whispered to me "Alfred" and that became
my name in French class, and the name of my
guy, whom I've drawn for 50 years.

My high school art teacher laughed at my
funny drawings. I did one of a sadistic cow
and Alfred. He laughed and put it up in the hall.

He said that I could learn to draw.
In college, Mr. Savage said, anyone can
learn to draw, anyone, that is, except Kim.

My father could draw, and my wife
and son can draw. I think Alfred would
just look like Abe or George if I could draw.

Almost Gyped

Looking down

small hand reaching
for my wallet
hiding in my inside pocket.

It was a hand I did not know
sneaking, small, not one that
I knew.

I grabbed the hand and moved it
out and away from me, scratching
my neck with her fingernail.

Looking up at her I said damn you
and an odor came from her
or her baby.

She muttered something, rearranging
the babies' blanket
and quickly exited from the train.

From the platform, she
looked back at me and grinned,
holding up her hand

with two outside fingers
becoming a devil
extending to the sky.

Walt Disney

As I understand it, Walt Disney's goal was simply to make people happy. Coming from two world wars, what else matched Walt's creations in the way that they gave us a glimmer of hope.

I am much better at playing now than I was as a kid. I remember watching the kids next store playing cowboys and Indians, and I couldn't imagine myself as either. I was me.

Now I play with doing things like stapling, cutting, painting, drawing, or writing. Even walking is good, but I'm not a great fan of fantasy.

I guess it is because the infinite realm of possibilities is overwhelming, and because reality is so much more interesting too me. I'd rather read non-fiction than fiction for the same reason, though sometimes fiction is really the best way to communicate about the real world.

You'd think (after all this) that I'd go to Disneyland if given the opportunity. No, I'd only go if I could take a little kid. I staying in a hotel across the street and never had the slightest inkling to go. But for a kid——to watch a kid laugh——that would be worth it.

Peace of Mind

Edward Weston said that with “peace of mind and an hour’s time [he] could make great photographs.”

The jet lag is finally over, after a week here in Roma. I’m up early while everyone else is asleep. It is quiet and critical issues from work are fading from my mind.

Being a grandparent is more difficult in some respects than being a parent. I am trying to embrace someone else’s parenting methodology, which may not be my own.

Now I want to have my own children again so that I can see if what worked before will work again. And maybe I could do things correctly this time. But I realize that the result of great parenting may not be a guarantee for great kids. And would I miss the ability to spend a day by myself? Being busy doesn’t create either peace or time.

We are surrounded in Rome with great achievements. For the most part, I believe it was the men who did the buildings, aqueducts, art, literature, etc.? What about the woman? Whatever that was done with the children created a culture with great integrity, love of beauty, and discipline. I envision long days for the workman and the artisans. But what about the kids? Who tended to them? The women? I once heard that it took the average Parisian woman in 1900 fifteen hours a day to prepare food for her family. What would it take the average Roman woman 1000 years ago? And how did they take care of the kids?

In some third world countries, the kids are born and then, on that same day, the woman is back in the fields with the babe in a sling close to their mother. The Roman woman must have had to work day and night sweeping dust from the house, preparing meals, and tending for the sick and elderly. All of this was a critical, if secondary, role to enable the city to be built. Certainly the women were responsible for both feeding the workers, and for raising the future workers.

I imagine a very abbreviated childhood for the Roman youth. The boys were apprenticed early and their future was laid out for them. The girls took care of the younger kids until they had kids of their own. Today we say that kids grow up too fast. Compared to what? Ancient Rome?

Did anyone have peace of mind and an hour’s time back then?

Kim as Statute

Probably out of jealousy, or maybe from pity, I decided to become one more Roman statute.

Jealousy since I haven't made it to the ranks of stone, and pity because the stump looked sad having nothing to hold up.

As you can imagine, my pose was precarious and the next moment I was on the ground. Luckily my photographer missed that shot.

We finally got to the point in our baby sitting saga where we decided that Jasper was the one who was sitting us, or more accurately, had decided that he be pushed in his stroller from one Roman park to another. He did not want to spend any time entertaining himself.

Exhausted from two long trips to different parks in one day, we sat him on the floor with his toys and told him to play. He decided instead to cry...and cry...and cry.

Eventually his father came home and consoled him. I guess today it is back to the parks.

Conversation with a Stone Man

Note: I wrote this is my normal prose, and tried incorrectly to lower the photo and the whole page went into text heaven. I decided that was a message from the writing god that I should never write prose again because it all looks the same.

She said this is a beautiful place except for the dead people.

Who's dead? I asked. Are these tombs?

No, she said, they are just all dead.

Who's dead? I said.

My dad's death certificate said he's dead, yet he talks to me day and night.

Dead is when no one thinks about you.

I went up to the stone man to talk. I was surprised at how tall he was. I stood on a boulder, and then on my tip toes, looking at his stone face. I still didn't measure up, reminding me of when I was a short kid and they called me "mouse."

Some get bigger than life when they die that first death—the one that comes in old age, in battle, or when the scooter rounds the blind corner. Pow!

I tried to look in his eyes, but he was stone and didn't want to talk to me. Maybe he was dead, after all.

Success in Baby Steps?

Today we are soloing with our grandson, Jasper. His parents, Sarah and Josh, wanted to work in their studios, and so our job has begun. First he was crying and cranky, but then I held him, bouncing on an exercise ball and talking gibberish, and he finally fell asleep. Now my wife, Linda is holding him. He doesn't like his crib. Who would choose a crib when they could be held by a warm loving body?

I left to go on a walking tour that ended up at St. Peters. The group were all classicists except me. It was hard to figure out what the talk/walk was about, but I did get that it was all about constructing what went on in the Vatican area before it became the Christian mecca.

And now back to babysitting. Jasper slept for about ten minutes, which was a welcome relief from his crying. And now he's crying again. I put him in his stroller and wheeled him around the apartment, and then read some books to him. He then watched me cut and staple one of my heads. It occupied his attention for a (very) short time.

Success? There are times where you think he's going to never have another sad moment for the rest of his life, and then his cranky side comes back.

Progress, maybe, but no success.