feral

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Long Drive Home at Midnight after Taking an Old Friend to the Klamath Falls Train Station

cautious progress
south on socked-in potato basin
oncoming beams five-pointed
celestial in freezing fog

swelled yellow halfmoon
steady descending
in irregular shreds of wasted
storm soaring north

slipping under tule veils
low flat gauntlet of will-o'-the-wisp
brushing over
one
by one

climbing finally
plateau's yardstick road
bursting dry from mist
onto barrens volcanic
and ink-drenched juniper
halfmoon waiting there
all cold clarity and startling
firmament

crazed and infinite

1:39:42 PM

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ANOTHER SCREAMING MEME:

Suggested by Dick and James:

I drive:
bashed metallic gold '86 Ford Aerostar (manual transmission) with the rear rows of seats removed for hauling hay bales and livestock feed and book boxes; bashed faded dark blue '89 Isuzu compact pickup truck (4WD), usually in the mechanics' shop; bashed circa '50s or early '60s Schwinn 3-speed (soon as I move to town)

If I have time to myself:
reading or skimming magazines; laying down tarot cards and trying out all the various ways the layouts can mean; standing outside looking around and breathing

You wouldn't know it but I'm very good at:
used to be an excellent editor, but this skill, honed fine over a lifetime of intellectual insecurity, seems at last to have fallen by the way; I'm also an excellent driver (slow in the driveway)

I'm no good at:
social activities; meetings; meeting deadlines

Book(s) that changed me:
age 18—St. Francis (Kazantzakis); age 14—Girl in Buckskin; age 24—Dharma Bums (Kerouac); ages 25-35—Diaries of Virginia Woolf; somewhere in there I began editing fulltime and had to stop reading for pleasure or edification

Movie heaven:
The Big Lebowski and almost anything Coen Brothers; Last Tango in Paris, Sheltering Sky, and almost anything Bertolucci; Pennies from Heaven; The Shining and most of Kubrick; Woodstock; Manhattan; Reds; Age of Innocence, Goodfellas and most of Scorsese; Apocalypse Now and The Making of... and most of Coppola; I'll think of more...

Comfort eating:
chips & guacamole; watermelon; crisp bacon with eggs over easy and waffles and real maple syrup; rare roast beef with lots of pepper; potatoes and gravy; goulash over heavily buttered bread; gloopy potato salad

When I was a child, I wanted to be:
a scientist (age 6), a psychiatrist (age 15), a writer (age 17)

All my (spare) money goes on:
I have no spare money, yet

At night I dream of:
often, animals; currently—whales; frogs

My favorite building:
A picture named rich2.jpg

Richfield-Boron Building (downtown Los Angeles, torn down & replaced by ARCO Towers);
A picture named bullocks2.jpg

Bullock's Wilshire (also L.A.);
A picture named lapub.jpg

original L.A. public library building, downtown branch (burned down)

My biggest regret:
not having truly realized the existence within me of an actual heart, and having figured out what it's for, sooner than age 52

If I wasn't me I'd like to be:
I already am everything else

My favorite artists
Rodin; Calder; Miro; Picasso; Turner; Diego Rivera; Dorothea Lang; Diane Arbus; Edward Hopper; Rockwell Kent

The soundtrack to my life:
(I'm being brutally honest here) junior high school—Dvorak'sSmetana's The Moldau [I had an LP with both composers on it, and to this day the visual of Dvorak's name overwrites the sound of the Moldau); Simon & Garfunkle, Sounds of Silence; Lovin', Spoonful; Temptations, Impressions, James Brown, Junior Walker and the All-Stars, Booker T and the MGs; high school—Doors Waiting for the Sun and Morrison Hotel; John Mayall-Joni Mitchell-CSNY; Zappa's We're Only In It for the Money and Sugarcane Harris; 20s and 30s— Duke Ellington Jazz Violin Session; Laura Nyro Christmas and the Beads of Sweat; Beethoven's Emperor concerto; Prokoviev's Piano Concerto No. 3 in C major and his soundtrack for Alexander Nevski; Aaron Copeland; Tom Waits Heart of Saturday Night; Bryan Ferry; Elvis Costello; Lou Reed; Leonard Cohen; Rickie Lee Jones Last Chance Texaco; soundtracks to Manhattan, The Bandwagon, Man of La Mancha, Fiddler on the Roof, and most decent pre-Andrew Lloyd Webber Hollywood/Broadway musicals; most recently, Toots Thielmanns, Stephane Grappelli, Vassar Clements, Joe Kennedy, Jr., Stuff Smith, early Jean-Luc Ponty, Philip Glass (especially Heroes, which makes me leave my body, and excepting Koyaanisqatsi, which renders me homicidal) and on and on...

The best invention ever:
printing press; flour mill; kite

11:49:54 AM

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