Tangled Streets ... il matto ...

Tangled Streets
James Oliver Smith, Jr

To steal
A kiss
He had the knack
But lacked the cheek
To get one back
Burma-Shave

This rhyme flashes into my mind. I feel the rhythm and lilt of its humor as I walk west on Franklin Avenue. The sun is bright and a stiff wind stings my face and arms. On the sidewalk ahead of me one the residents of the East Seward Tower steps deliberately. Her hijab and long dark dress press tightly against her back and legs, wings of cloth flapping feverously in the agitated brilliance of early spring. She is too preoccupied with speaking to someone on the cell phone tucked tightly into the fabric framing her face to take much notice of me or the atmosphere, but the kaleidoscope of the moment sweeps me away.

In the glare of the afternoon sun the Minneapolis skyline washes away.

"The nice thing about losing your eyesight," says my ophthalmologist, "is that you can see whatever you want to see."

OK, so what if I let the images of the moment dissipate. The woman with the hijab, the traffic slipping by, the elm tree arching above me and even the trash can at the bus stop are all easy to squeeze out of the dishrag afternoon, but the sun and biting wind remain. My knuckles are stiff from gripping my walking stick. Extending the rubber tip to the cement makes me feel grounded, but that sensation of cold, raw tension in my fingers is impossible to eradicate, like the sun and the wind. It is a firm reality identical to walking the streets of Tuba City almost fifty years ago on the way to school.

My fingers often grow numb from the cold and icy wind while walking through the streets of the Bureau of Indian Affairs housing, by the boarding school, the trailer courts, and down Main Street to the public school. Willow street snakes its way past the houses of friends like the kid who calls himself the "Navajo Clown", even though he isn't Navajo, but he is quite the clown. Next to him is the cute brunette who is so serious a student that she frightens me. Further down the street lives the Morman girl that leads me to believe that Morman girls are the prettiest and most feminine of all. Her neighbor is the kid with a neat electric car track, a delightful little sister and a mother who laughs wildly when she listens to Johnny Cash sing "A Boy Named Sue".

When I pass the boarding school dorms I can't help but think of the twin girls living in the dorm where their mother works. I earnestly hope they don't come out and see me. They are far too sensual for me to feel comfortable around them.

When you move around as much as I do with my Mother and sisters the only thing you know is the road and your literature comes in the form of Berma Shave signs and mile markers. They define where you are, where you are going and who you will become.

Mileage Marker 4534
Spring 1964

My mother is on a mission from god.

Her theology dictates that God speaks Baptist, hates Catholics and Mormans, and that indian girls get pregnant before marriage.

Tuba City has lots of Catholics, Mormans and indians.

To make matters worse, the hymnals at the Baptist church speak Navajo.

She hates it here.

If she were to write a Burma Shave rhyme it might say:

Catholics here
Mormons there
This is the day
To hook the trailer
And pull away
God-The Baptist


With my mother I had to accept several important things:
01. The Bible is the ony valuable book
02. Baptists are the only ones to get it right
03. All boys are bad
04. Girls need to control boys
05. Never settle down and make friends because we'll be moving soon.

Tuba City, I couldn't help but think, is just another roadside stop.

"Hey, Jim, wait for me."

That's my walking companion. She lives right by the street that stops abruptly at the desert's edge. The desert extends east 'til you get to Nevada. Many of our houses have back yards that simply drift off into dunes, sagebrush and sandstone. From our back window I could sit down with a bologna sandwich and see the rugged edge of the Grand Canyon fifty miles away.

The wind presses her skirt against her legs and plays with her brown hair. She trots to my side, adjusting her ever-present headband. She smiles broadly. It's infectious. I'm fairly certain her blouse is becoming tighter.

"Oh look, a devil wind."

She runs and jumps in the middle of it, laughing.

"Come on, join me."

I am never all that comfortable being so compulsive and spontaneous, but she always seems ready to just fly into the now and engage it. I watch her and manage to smile warmly. At least I think I am. I switch my trumpet case to my left hand to releave my right, trying to cradle my book between my side and the horn. It works for a few minutes, giving my right hand a chance to losen up and get warm in my coat pocket. She looks comfortable in her sweater and has no trouble holding the book she is taking to school.

"What'd you do last night?", she asks.

"Wednesday night."

"Oh, right ... church?"

I nod. She chuckles.

"Ever wish you could just stay in one place for your whole life?"

She likes to ask me that question, almost every day, even though she enjoys hearing my stories of travel through Texas, Arizona and Colorado, never missing a Baptist church along the way. Then I would counter with "Ever wish you could just go out alone at night, miss that bible study your dad insists on every evening?"

Then she'd go silent for moment. The only time she couldn't say a word, when she thought of her dad, the curfew, the bible study ... and the night.

We are both puzzled about the bible. It just doesn't make sense how people can control people with something so old and out of touch. At thirteen we feel that it is not relevant to us so we created a secret "unbible", putting stuff in it that isn't in the bible, although we thought it should be, like how to have sex, dance and escape from parents. We can't write it down because they would see it.

The time on these walks is ours, away from our homes and out of school.

"What happened in choir yesterday? You were always able to sing higher than any of us girls. And then..."

"I know ... I know ... and it was so easy before. Now..."

A block away from school she walks ahead and stares back, briefly ... She smiles and straightens her headband ... She turns ... Her dress sways ... My fingers clutching the trumpet case and books ... quiver ...

* * *


Mileage Marker 21900


I grip the shaft of my walking stick with my left hand and twist the knob in my right palm. The woman in the hijab throws the cell phone into the depths of her leather purse ... She turns ... Her dress sways ...

I extend the rubber tip to the sidewalk and watch the traffic passing by on Franklin Avenue ... The wind bites through the fabric of my shirt.

To find
Your way
Outside the car
You must push
The door ajar
To myself

(josjr 2011 0720)

Day 21,700 - 2010 1231

Day 21,700 - 2010 1231
Belov-ED Days - 4,611
Friday
James Oliver Smith, Jr.
http://josjr.com/

I Ching images

Fu Hsi 28: Shock, Thunder, Taking Action, Awakening
01 --- --- Thunder (Lightning, Electricity, Viper, Rattlesnake, Drums)
02 --- --- Foot
04 --------x The Arousal, The Movement, The Catalyst, The Shock

08 --- --- Thunder (Lightning, Electricity, Viper, Rattlesnake)
16 --- --- Foot
32 -------- The Arousal, The Movement, The Catalyst, The Shock

changing towards

Fu Hsi 32: Returning, Repeating, Turning Back
01 --- --- Earth (Ground, Valley, Canyon, Earthworm, Desert)
02 --- --- Belly, Solar Plexus
04 --- --- The Embracing, The Creation, The Yielding, The Centering

08 --- --- Thunder (Lightning, Viper, Drums, Rattlesnake, Electricity)
16 --- --- Foor
32 -------- The Arousal, The Movement, The Catalyst, The Shock

Day 26,696 - Images from the I Ching: Thunder [The Arousal] over Thunder [The Arousal] (Hexagram 28 - Shock) --> changing towards [lines 4] --> Earth [The Embracing] over Thunder [The Arousal] (Hexagram 32 - Returning) ... I have been looking at these images since the last day of 2010, contemplating them as I participated in a number of events taking place to celebrate the arrival of a new year and the arrival of yet another 60th birthday for the Contessa ... I was fascinated with the presence of the double Thunder image on the last day of a rather shocking year ... There are always surprising events taking place in the course of any year, although often these events are infrequent, mild or benign ... This year, however, has been truly filled with traumatic events for me, so the double Thunder feels quite appropriate ... After the events of this year I will probably never work in a full-time permanent, full-benefits job again, my post-surgery vision profile is simply too compromised for me to work in the same way again, and my experiences at the various celebrations brought home to me and The Contessa just exactly how compromised my vision has become.

Meeting with a poet, performance artist friend this past week at Sebastian Joe's another poet and performance artist friend, one who is well known and quite visually distinctive in presence came in and greeted me. I stared at him in total confusion, not recognizing him. I had to ask who was greeting me and was totally surprised at how completely incapable I was of recognizing him. At another party last night another friend came into the room entirely undetected by me. Suddenly, she appeared as though Scotty had just transported her into the middle of the room, a phenomenon I have had to become accostomed to.

With a lot of tools, techniques and many years of experience I have been finding ways to work with my computers, web sites and Kindles. Fortunately, the Kindle allows me to read and study. But the double Thunder wasn't satisfied with just taking my vision into the realm of impressionist art. It determined that my job should also disappear in much the same manner that the loss of my stereoscopic vision, my acuity and my ability to dilate my one functioning eye has made the world around me disappear, reappear, morph and pixelate ... But the inner and outer Thunder, despite its clammer and shock and awe is not all about high winds, lightning strikes, floods and driving rain, it is also about a heightened awareness of the world, the physical world, the world that we walk on, touch and hear as it churns through its cyclic paths in time and space ... In spite of how much we like to _see_ the world, and tend not to believe the world until we can see it, we do have bodies that are moving our heads, eyes, legs and hands through physical space ... We have lungs that breath in very physical air and we drink very physical water to lubricate everything we do.

The double Thunder has, in some ways/way, electrified, activated and set in motion a more visceral process of connecting with that which co-occupies my world, without the precarious visual burden of evaluating the world and all that is in it _before_ I touch it, taste it, smell it or even hear it ... I have become increasingly aware of how our prejudices are triggered by our _visual_ response to the world around us and all that is in it ... If you can't _see_ something, how can you react to its color, its shape or its movement? We actually have to engage the world when vision is not present of compromised. With sight we make judgements on whether or not we _want_ to interact with something or someone _before_ we get close enough to do so.

When I was in high school and still enthralled with the idea of being a herpetologist (one who studies reptiles and amphibians) I encountered a rattlesnake den at the foot of a cliff in Washington state. The rattlesnakes where hidden deep in the volcanic rubble beneath my feet, so I couldn't see them, but I could hear them quite clearly. Every step I took gave rise to more rattlers sounding off. Terror rippled within every muscle in my body. I was caught by the need to make a decision to either move quickly or stand still ... Within the I Ching, Thunder is movement, a catalyst, an electrically charged context. Ultimately, I moved. I moved quickly. Because of this experience I think of that rattlesnake den everytime I see Thunder forming within the I Ching stalks.

There is one changing line in this image. It is moving the outer Thunder to Earth. This new image is exactly at the midpoint of the 64 permutations within the I Ching sequence. This is a sign if returning, starting over. The end of the year is the beginning of another year. This is also the time when the sun starts its journey back into the sky. Within the outer Earth there is a centering, stabilising and centering force that enters the world around us, yet the catalyst of Thunder is still pulsing within, rumbling, impatient to act, but this time tempered by the presence of Earth.

Although I am fully aware that there are always more earthquakes, storms and floods that the Universe can (and will) bring my way, I find comfort in this substantive presence of the Earth embracing me, offering its valleys, canyons and even deserts to reveal new paths to explore ... Another year, new paths, new visions ... buon capodanno a tutti! ... Il Matto ...

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http://www.KindleBlog.josjr.com
http://www.IlMattoblog.josjr.com
http://www.LifeBlog.josjr.com
http://www.PerlBlog.josjr.com
http://www.WritingBlog.josjr.com

http://Addewid.blogspot.com
http://CyberPoetPlace.blogspot.com
http://IlMattoVero.blogspot.com
http://josjr69.blogspot.com
http://PerlCatalyst.blogspot.com
http://CyberKindle.blogspot.com

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The Contessa At Sixty ... Again

The Contessa At Sixty ... Again
-------------------------------

yesterday
The Contessa celebrated
her sixtieth birthday ...

again ...

it was our 4,613th day together ...
with cold, snow and overcast skies outside
it was a day to stay inside
and ruminate ...

she seems to be fond of this
sixtieth year ...
it resonates
like a long pause
on the side of a busy road ...
a time to catch her breath
and decide--
with care--
on her next step ...

inside my remaining eye
glaucoma has started to air brush images,
removing the disheveled textures of time,
leaving soft, pastel impressions
of faces, hands and legs ...

the universe has its own ways to
equalize generations,
giving us the option
to improvise with light,
like Matisse, Monet and
Giacomo Balla ...

I'm perfectly happy to inhabit
these gently applied strokes
upon the canvas ...

with her ...

even our walking sticks dissappear
within the fused hues and
floral mists ...

if she decides to linger ... here ...
for another year--
at this most gentle of decades--
I'll be able to catch up,
allowing us tap ... dance ... together ...

in step ...

our way into the humid
breeze that calls us
beneath the yellow, green and musty
folds of cespugli cangianti*
in the farthest,
lush and mysterious edges
of this scene ... (il matto)

* - color shifting, prismataic shrubs

josjr (2010 0102)

The Flower Pot

The Flower Pot
--------------

I guess I wasn't all that
surprised to see a flower pot
sitting outside our door

La Contessa had asked me
to take pots from the balcony
down to the garage and
clean them out

that was just a few hours before

they belonged to friend of ours
down the hall

so I looked down
at the flowers
at my feet
bright
as spring

(rising dainty to my eye)

and bent over
to pick them up--
pot and all

my fingers
formed a cradle for the pot
itself
preparing for the lift

but when they reached the object
down there
they recoiled
in confusion

for the pot
had morphed into

something
soft
giving in to confused fingers
expecting ceramic
or molded polypropylene

not--
a canvas bag

containing muffins

from the neighbor friend
...
instead
...
such wonderful miracles
occur
when the eyes
forget
to feed the brain

josjr (2010 1201)

Spinning Disk

Spinning Disk
----------

400 pounds
I was--
Beyond the scope of reality ...
That is ...
Beyond the scope of the spinning disk
that stops at 300 pounds.

300 pounds of of visibility --
But, there I was

Beyond ... beyond ... beyond the horizon ... Gone,
Vanished from the caring...
From the fantasy --

But who cares!?
I say...

The blood has to burn with a names like Fatfish
Idiot ... Incompetent ...
as terms of gnarled endearment

Where love becomes a word ... no ... an artifact ...
a whatnot thrown upon the coffee table
in the presence of company.

josjr(2010 0125)
...
http://josjr.com

Snapping Beast

Snapping Beast
----------

It's hard to lift a snapping beast.
It's hard to raise a child.
It's hard to sit beside a son
There, on the other side of the front seat
Becoming almost too large to fit --
Ready to take the steering wheel.
"Hey, dad," he says, "What's that in the road?"

Through the windshield a large turtle
Clutches with helpless feet turned up.
"Let's help it," says the son.
The bridge is close, a field nearby.
Together, with a goalie stick, father and son lift
And dodge angry jaws.
The young man's muscles flex...

It's hard to lift a snapping beast.

josjr(2010 0504)

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King Snake

King Snake
----------

"So, what do you remember of me," I ask my dad,
Holding the microphone in his direction.

"Well, Jim," he fidgets, fingering his chin and the glassy air
That glistens by his skin, "I just can't remember much of anything...
Working all the time and all."

I gaze into the void that he has spread out on the table...
Dark, chilled ... quivering in confusion.

A coiled landscape twists gauntly
In the shadows and I see the worry gather in the faces of parents
Breathing in the stormy night beyond the headlights.

I remember a small flood in the road --
Mud splattering brown on the windows streaked with water webs.
A house rises ...
And there it is ... the snake ... long as my father ...

That man, who can't remember, is chasing the night streak.

I asked if he can remember the snake he chased away.
The snake that lumbered heavily in my eyes, just below the skin.

"No, not that one...but those snakes?" he lilted into a question, "they're called King snakes, because they were brought here from some other country by the King ranch to kill the rattlers."

He didn't remember...exactly...
But he did remember the King snakes.

josjr(2010 0504)
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http://josjr.com