A putative friend said, “I give up a sob for the dolphins, but howsa ‘bout the tuna?”

to Lewis H. Lapham, Harper’s Magazine

06.02.05  1 Alligator  tzolkin 1 thursday  <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />12:25:53 p

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   This is a love letter, Mr. Lapham, there’s no way around that. Every month for some years, your diamond has arrived in the post, its faceted gleam returning me from despair in these obsidian-dark times.

   Harper’s Notebook – I tug my forelock, sir. I tell my friends, “Mr. Lapham can seriously sling a sentence.” It’s not just the Swift, Ambrose Bierce, Sam Johnson, Nabokov, Thoreau, Mencken in your DNA, it is your unique cogency that made me compelled, from afar, to become your love slave.

    If as Alphonse Karr suggests, we must be thankful that thorns have roses, in these dread and thorny years, Notebook is a monthly rose of such origamic unfurling that I simply bloody can go on.

   People speak of 9/11. I find 11/02, the horrible US election of 2004, a slo-motion disaster, a date of more and dreader consequence to our nation. I sometimes literally clutch the magazine to my wounded citizen’s breast to staunch the hemorrhaging.

    After that grisly election when theofascism slouched to Washington to rule & roar, my pulse was faint, my brave heart dimmed. So concussed was I that you may or may not have literally saved my life, I think you did, but I know you held my citizen’s soul from plummet. Notebook stirs my courage; I have all but torn the very pages into pieces and eaten them, raw and hot, like the liver of the bear, for bravery. There will never be enough said to speak either my devotion or my gratitude, Mr. Lapham, but I remain, sincerely,

Your obedient Servant,

pogblog

ps. So you know these are not only vapours, I even cajoled a friend to walked out around her small city some every day since October 2002 with her now very dog-eared, 2-sided ‘Teach Peace’ sign on a four-foot stick, in solitary witness against the blood-dimmed tide. She's a brave lass. I write trenchant Letters to Editors. The brandy, the distilled courage, of your words has sustained doggèd citizen action, not just warmed the literary cockles.

 ……………

If pogblog only subscribed to one magazine for info, insight, & courage, it would be Harper’s Magazine (14.97$ yr) (http://www.harpers.org)

Doggerel for a dog

I knew you

Would flinch;

It just makes me queasy

That is was so easy,

That it was such a cinch;

When I take the gloves off

And go bareknuckled,

The man who chuckled,

Who was so breezy,

Scowls, throws in the towel.

I scoff.

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copyright http://pogblog.myblogsite.com 2005

…./ 9 Water . Muluc   tzolkin 9  06.10.05

4:45:52am 

 my LoveSlave Harem — the guys for whom I would be a Love Slave — content merely to bring mead cooled by snow brought from distant mountain peaks in fine porcelain vessels on leopard's backs, and juicy ripe peel-me-a-cantelope slices chilled in same. 

It amuses me to say about someone that I rather dig, “I'd run off and be his Love Slave.”

My Love Slave Harem is: borges; gerard manley hopkins; frank gehry(bilbao); peter jackson; clive owens clive owens clive owens; will s X a zill, duh; (Who in words doesn't tug their forelock for will s?); tobias smollett;

Love Slave Harems have no redeeming features — you don't have to have some Big God's name like Zeus on your Harem List to prove your piety cred or something. Or even Will S to prove your wordslinger cred. This is eros, not agape. Will S stays. He may have looked like a 2.5, but he could sling a sonnet nothing but net and no net. The dreaded inner beauty.

Tobias Smollett wrote About the Adventure of Roderick Random and of Peregrine Pickle; and the Expedition of Humphrey Clinker. Which buoyed me up no end in the murked political seas of  nixon, reagan, and several shrubs. And no doubted ignited my joyous devotion to allowing characters to have the names they wanted.

We’re doing a pogblog fable contest every month in that people will leave suggestions & requests for subjects/themes/characters for a fable to be written about, & pogblog’ll put hand to quill and write one up. I will snailmail an autographed papyrus to the Lucky Winner if they vouchsafe me their address. Nothing about my decision will be fair – it’ll be what !The Blue! wants.

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You can start leaving suggestions now in Comments to this Article.

The first suggestion came in an email to pog from <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />New Zealand: will you be doing any pieces about 22nd century lucid dream existence as it relates to the singularity?  i would like to hear your take on that, even if only to hear you refute the idea.

iz iz 6-8-05 12:17:20pm 7 Deer . Manik  tzolkin 7 wed

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   Sometimes it just strikes you like a bolt from the Blue, the impossible isness (iz iz) of yourself, of all of it, your & its unending stupendousness.

   You know in this flash that it is not possible, this abundance, this fecundity, yet here it is. Because it is impossible yet undeniable, it is a miracle. This miracleness sustains me always in all ways. It preens and purrs while you, stunned, admire it. The multi-verse,  many-poem place, is a cat I’ve discovered – it loves to be admired and petted. It is my job and my honor, my devotion and delight to relish it and to speak its wonders with whatever precision, explosion, and caress I am able.

   I have a responsibility for the universe – responsibility: the ability to respond. I take this responsibility with serious glee, this being the pal of the universe. We hang out.

    It wants to be noticed. That’s what I do with my daynights, my 1400 minutes, I notice it, I cherish it, I bury my face in its plush silver fur, whisper sweet cheery nothings into its ear. It’s hard to describe how lonely the universe can get. It lavishes everybody with tiny and with magnificent presents in a constant and fervent invention, and they hardly take notice, seldom say thank you. This baffles the universe, frankly. It gets so wistful sometimes; I take it as my job to cheer the universe up.

    I do not take my palship lightly — well, as lightly as dandelion down – I embrace many-poem with my astonished attention in all my seconds. The root of the word ‘astonish’ is ‘to strike with thunder’; I am thunderstruck; dandelion-puff-struck; keylime-pie-struck; vulture-struck; dirty-socks-struck by the filigree of the panoply in all my 86400 danightily seconds. I reel, a dance, a lurch, in a constant unsteady state of awe at the mischievous, elegant, raunchy, stately, languid, uproarious profusion of presents that many-poem lays at my tipsily dancing feet.

  I can’t stand for the universe to be so lonely, so I keep it company. It doesn’t want worship, it bloddy wants a pal. We hang out. We croon, giggle, gossip – the things pals do. I write it billet-doux. We tease and please. We celebrate, we hullabaloo – the things pals do. Being a pal of the universe is not for the timid. (Twelve important people in my life died before I was 29; I didn’t say this was easy.) You remember that photo of Koko the enormous gorilla holding AllBall the tiny kitten? The universe is a lot bigger than I am but, mostly, it holds me very gently.

   I have no ‘faith’ –who needs it? It isn’t distant. There’s no guesswork. Boom, the universe here it is right now. Luckily it never blinks. When I hear folks maunder on about ‘my faith blah blah,’ I know they ain’t got their finger in the socket of the universe yet. But that’s another bedtime story.

    We stroll a lot me ’n many-poem, and loll. And nap and snack. There are those hurricane episodes and other convulsions and revulsions of the dark that also dwell in its unfathomable heart, but mostly we do snoozing and amusing.

    Being a Jester to a lonely, proud, restless, and, well, ceaseless universe requires legerdewit I can tell you. You have to be on your wits all your seconds or many-poem will out-play you. I have free wit. You do not want to bore the universe.

    Being the universe’s pal is 99.66% up-side. There is a sliver of down-side. (Who woulda thunked the universe would be so insecure?) It has been known to wake one up in the middle of the night for a sniffle and a chat. “Hi.” “Hi.” Sniffle. “Tell me I’m beautiful.” “You’re very beautiful.” “Tell me you love me.” “I love you.” “A lot?” “Very a lot.” “How much?” “With all my heart and all my seconds.” “I love you too.”  “Thanks.”

     Then there’s a pause. It’s quite quiet. “Are you sure you love me?” “Yes, I’m utterly, otterly sure. I swear on the whiskers of cats and the leathery wings of bats. Now, c’mon, universe, I have got to get some sleep .Go play with the kangaroos, plump up some pumpkins, polish some crows’ wings. Aww, c’mon, don’ look so sad. Wake me up at <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />noon and we’ll do a gallivant. I promise.”     

mnemonic devices .. I was so flayed again today by the galloping greed of the 12 ft lizards, the have mores, who are hoovering any confident pursuit of happiness from 90% of their fellows, that I needed a restorative spate of recreation with mnemonic(knee-mahn-ik)devices. A mnemonic device is some nifty trick so you can remember something. A lifetime later I still remember A Rat In Tom’s House Might Eat Tom’s Ice Cream as the mnemonic device whose first letters spell arithmetic. George Eaton’s Old Grandmother Rode A Pig Home Yesterday spells geography. Muy yum (the only palindrome I ever invented – a palindrome meaning that it reads the same backwards as forward, the most famous probably being Madam, I’m Adam.)

   The enduring quality of a mnemonic device speaks in miniature to the astonishing power of story to the human brain – we really prefer stories to crack or chocolate. The rat sentence is a tiny story. George Eaton, Granny & the pig. It is this bardic, storyness that makes us rich – those who spend their time accumulating paltry bottomlines wear emperor’s clothes.   

     My fat pal who wanders the Earth with her Teach Peace sign sent me the mnemonic device for remembering Gandhi’s 9 steps for decreasing violence, increasing non-violence or conducting cooperation. Gandhi was very practical, not mystical. In this case, the first letters highlight a key word in the practical steps or seeds that increase cooperation.

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Dancing Penguins Should Have Long Nights Doing Fancy Polkas

1. (D) Define the conflict.

2. (P) It isn’t you against me .. it’s you and me against the problem .. the problem is the problem.

3. (S)  List the things we do share. Need for food, shelter, water, safety, & art, for instance. Need cats too.

4. (H) Don’t ask antagonists for the self-justifying ‘What happened?’ Ask for a factual list of ‘What did you do?’

5. (L) Practice active Listening Skills..not passive brooding sullen hearing.

6. (N) Resolve conflict in a neutral  place. Treaties are not made on the battlefield. Too toxic & hot there.

7. (D) Proceed with doable steps. Don’t try to swallow the pumpkin whole..Have a single piece of pie to start.

8. (F) Practice forgiveness skills, not vengeance skills. Go quickly to neutral..on the way to eventual forgiveness.

9. (P) Purify my heart. Purify my own heart. Easy to see stubborn flaws, lousy attitude, & blindness of others…   

<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />[10. Practice active Laughing skills. Sweet sweet irony cools the melon.This is a bonus step.]  

..adapted from pp.40-41 Colman McCarthy I’d Rather Teach Peace

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These steps unfurled show you can teach peace indeed! I hope you'll copy & paste the little piece & send it along to people. Some folks put it on their websites. I’ll gloss this more or meringue this more soon. Am too sleepy at the mo. Whatever time of the 1440/86400 (minutes or seconds of your daynight) this finds you deliciously in, don’ let the 12 ft lizards getcha down. We do win. Because we’re more fun, & the multi-verse or many-poem place finds calculating success in money bizarre. Eat lots of buttered toast.

======

copyright http://pogblog.myblogsite.com 2005

. ./ 6 Death . Cimi  tzolkin 6  06.07.05  2:31:30 am montues

ff .. for fuller, siempre y todo

<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />1:49:34 p  3 Hearth . Night  tzol 3  06.04.05

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fizzy cider: drinking your mind can be like what the bog Irish, my people (grt grt grandmother “ravished by an Irish pirate & taken off to sea”) call fizzy cider. Not the fake coorsesque weak junk people drink in the US; The taste of apples is all still there, a barest hint of languorous syrupy on the tongue, too rich almost, just in the ferment one crucial step short of rotting, but whettingly keen like a damascus knife blade in the finish; hiddenly rambunctious & mischievous; an apple is an hyperbole of a fruit – the deer would have carted the pampered seeds around for less – but the fermenting hides this excess slyly – it’s like the lover hidden, bottom-half naked behind the voluminous velvet folds of the drapery in a medieval castle having to listen while the unexpectedly arrived lord takes the lady whose heart is really his; you cause this voluptuous confusion in my heart; your mind tastes like this, like fizzy cider;

<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />11:08:00 am 06.03.o5 fri  2 Wind tzol 2

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Squirrels, a fable

   So you think you’re so smart. I think I’m so smart. One does – it makes the day go more merrily. But I gotta break it to ya, it’s really the squirrels.

   Let me tell you how it works. You & me, we (secretly) strut around all full up with vintage hubris, a fine wine of self-appreciation, a bordeaux perhaps of ego, richly rewarding with caramelly undertones. We be suave.

    Well, it’s really the squirrels. I have sleuthed this with a lifetime of vigilant detection. Ask yourself: where is the next word you’re about to say or think coming from?! Be honest, cowboy, cowgirl – you have no clue.

    There are squirrels who scurry around your brain & grab the index card with the next word on it & toss it on the conveyor belt & out your mouth, ventriloquist’s dummy, it comes. Thoughts, sentences, it’s the same thing, it’s the squirrels.

   Piffle, you say. Well, triple piffle, I say back. Check it out, Sherlock. Do the sleuthing. Get quiet. Listen. Shhh. Slow it down. What are you going to say next? What are you going to think next? You have no clue. You don’t know. No more than you know what or why your spleen is loyally oozing at this very moment. It’s weird. It’s a blow to all that Image of God folderol.

   You & I are so fine, and, hey, look, I’ll agree to like you well enough if you’ll like me well enough, but we both serve at the pleasure of our squirrels.

   Listen very carefully and you can hear the little click-clack of the tiny claws as they race through the shoeboxes of index cards to find the words for you, the pictures for you. Think of your first bicycle or first-bicycle-equivalent. Poof-presto, there’s a picture of it, maybe a home movie, and some probably maudlin voice-over. Aww, your first bike. Oh frabjous joy. The squirrels throw all this [fill in your name]-media onto the conveyor belt for you to wallow pig-in-muddily in. Where’d they find the ‘first bike’ footage? Do you know where it is? No. So don' be piffling me. The squirrels rule.

   As an upshot of my sleuthing, I can make some recommendations and offer some erudite observations. First, if you’re not happy, fire your current gloom-saying, tediously melancholy squirrel staff and hire new cheerfuller, funnier ones. It’s that easy. If you’re a bleeding heart liberal, you can say to your present squirrel team, “Look, squirrels, either you lighten it up, brighten it up, or I’m gonna fire you all and hire a whole feast of frabjous squirrels who gallivant, cavort, and amuse me til I laugh 96.66% of the time.” It’s that easy.

    There is no need to  huff & puff, to freud or jung this til icicles of tedium drip off your inner eaves. Y’got lousy squirrels? Get better ones. Y’got frumpy squirrels? Grumpy ones? Get cooler ones. I prefer squirrels who fetch little fortune cookies for me that say things like “Instead of duty, let’s do tea.”

  Think about it, friend. You spend most of your life with your squirrels. Not with the wife; the husband; the pals; the gals. The squirrels. It’s you and the squirrels. Don’t let the damned squirrels bully you.

   The dagblasted squirrels should be making fondue for you in there – lovely melting dark chocolate to dip pieces of your life into.  

    “Nonsense!” you cry, the gigantic macys-thanksgiving-day-parade balloon of your self esteem aquiver with offendedness, “Squirrels indeed.”

    Shhhh. When you can tell me what your pancreas is up to. Or tell me how the rods and cones in those tiny eyeball-shaped projectors you carry around in your skull provide on-demand 3D blazing technicolor movies 24/7/365? You got a better theory than the squirrels? (Well, I admit that the theofascist wing of the republican party [It’s more like being in a perpetual Sunday school than a party.] uses rabid piranha-reptile-rodent hybrids for their search engine, but that’s another story.)

   Remember you don’t have to mollify your damn squirrels; they have to mollify you. You don’t have to coddle your damn squirrels, they have to coddle you. When you get better squirrels, poof-presto, let me know how it goes.