022810

I figured out where the habit of saying "Knick" or "Celtic" likely comes from: in the context of "I will be a Knick," it almost makes sense. Still I think the best way to approach the dilemma is with the more verbose, "I will be a member of the Knicks."

*Ma*

Read by my brother at my mother's memorial service, followed by two passages from I am Waiting (Lawrence Ferlinghetti):

It may come as a surprise to many of you but my mother raised me to be a radical liberal. From Our Bodies, Ourselves as an integral part of the library, to Helmut Newton's photography displayed for all to see, to her favorite poem when I was young, I am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, there can be no doubt of my mother's intentions as far as her children were concerned. Even the act of sending us to St Bernard's was itself revolutionary, for what better way is there to raise anti-establishmentarians than to give them the means to question authority? True, she became more and more conservative as time went on, but I like to think she stayed true to her original identity, and it is that same identity within myself to which I always return. I am who I am, and Ma always made sure I knew I was on the side of the right, good and just. I am proud of the man, the men, my mother raised. Though I can't know whether or not she'll be watching from here on out, I do hope and trust I will make her proud as long as I continue to be myself. I am sure of myself because of her, sure of my good intentions, secure in the sense of self I've found. She was my greatest champion, the only woman I've ever known who actually believed in me (the only person!), believed in what I could do, what I could be, believed in my dreams. As you hear the first and last passages from I am Waiting, ask yourselves this question: would _you_ read this, over and over, to a five-year-old if you didn't, in your heart of hearts, intend to make him into a bleeding heart and a hopeless romantic?

I am Waiting

I am waiting for my case to come up

and I am waiting

for a rebirth of wonder

and I am waiting for someone

to really discover America

and wail

and I am waiting

for the discovery

of a new symbolic western frontier

and I am waiting

for the American Eagle

to really spread its wings

and straighten up and fly right

and I am waiting

for the Age of Anxiety

to drop dead

and I am waiting

for the war to be fought

which will make the world safe

for anarchy

and I am waiting

for the final withering away

of all governments

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder.

I am waiting

to get some intimations

of immortality

by recollecting my early childhood

and I am waiting

for the green mornings to come again

youth's dumb green fields come back again

and I am waiting

for some strains of unpremeditated art

to shake my typewriter

and I am waiting to write

the great indelible poem

and I am waiting

for the last long careless rapture

and I am perpetually waiting

for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn

to catch each other up at last

and embrace

and I am awaiting

perpetually and forever

a renaissance of wonder.

*Poem*

Who's Looking?

I was watching the winter Olympics

and I remembered when my ex walked out--

six years ago. In late spring.

Had to be because I remember

watching Apollo Ohno's cocky self

just before she walked out.

Six years later, I still can't say

for sure _why_ she left.

I suppose if I knew that,

I'd also know why the stars shine,

why rain falls, and why we're all

dying from day one.

I can't know, not really,

not the salient truth of the matter.

In looking back, I realize

it makes all the difference who's looking.

*Flash-Nonfiction*

I realized that you never saw my troubles. MS, as it is for most, was completely invisible to you. I thought that by telling you about my numb feet, about the debilitating vertigo, about the impossibility of crowds, I thought as my wife you might understand and sympathize. I couldn't have been more mistaken. You said to me once, "It's not like you're dying." Do you know how much that hurt? Do you know there isn't a day that passes that I don't wish I _were_ dying? Do you know how much more awful it is to watch your body steadily disintegrate, until you can't do anything for yourself, until you can' remember why it is you keep pressing on, until you can't do anything that would make you feel like a whole person? Of course you don't, and you never had the courage to wonder what my life was like. Within two years of your deserting me, I got to a point where I can only barely walk a half a block; as I have a heavy disease burden I knew this would be the case. Now walking is only the tip of the iceberg of my disability. If you'd had the courage to say no before we started, I wouldn't have a massive, gaping hole in the middle of my life. I can't work anymore, can't go to poetry readings alone, can only just barely make it to the coffee shop on the corner, so I wonder if you can tell me how I'm supposed to meet women now? I'm trapped at home with an ailing heart and a faulty body. I wonder if you knew when you left that you would be the last woman I ever loved.

*Poem*

I remember standing with you

in torment to think that one day

our lives together

would come to an end.

I am certain

I felt that way;

you, I suspect, already

knew you could never

be with a disabled man.

Perhaps you were unwilling

to accept I was disabled,

or would be imminently.

We met once for drinks

and I told you I wasn't mad

about the whole abandonment

thing, though I had every

right to be furious;

you abandoned me,

your disabled husband,

but still I would have

forgiven you.

One moment we embraced

and I could have sworn

we really loved each other.

The next minute

you were gone.

Out for drinks later,

I was sure we would in fact

be friends,

but after two emails,

you cut me off completely;

you acted as if my contact

was totally unwelcome.

In the end, I am terribly

happy that I am not you.

I can only imagine

the world of hurt that

you've descended into;

I can only say,

despite you're being a normal,

I wouldn't trade places

with you to save my life.

*Quotations*

No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o'clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.

--Ishmael Reed

I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.

--Steve Jobs

Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something. If this seems so clearly the case with grief, it is only because it was already the case with desire. One does not always stay intact.

--Judith Butler

The American people and the governing class have accepted that war has become a permanent condition. Protracted war has become a widely accepted part of our politics.

--Andrew Bacevich

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

--Buddha

I was faced with the simplest life question I've ever had to answer. I asked myself whether, on my deathbed, I wanted to sigh and say, 'I could have written a novel' or 'I wrote a novel.' Believe me, the answer was simplicity itself.

--Elizabeth George

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

--Dostoyevsky

Truth disappears with the telling of it.

--Lawrence Durrell

You never find yourself until you face the truth.

--Pearl Bailey

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

--Kahlil Gibran

Peace love and ATOM jazz

022110

The greatest gift my mother gave was this: the courage to be myself at all times. I am sure of myself because of her, sure of my good intentions, secure in the sense of self I've found. She was my greatest champion, the only woman I've ever known who actually believed in me--the only person!, believed in what I could do, what I could be, believed in my dreams.

_____

For those who are interested, I will now be posting my perfume diary exclusively on a separate mailing list (which also goes on the Lord's-Jester blog), [lordsjester]. If you'd like to join that list, please email me.

*Ecuador*

From Ecuador's stupendous constitution from 2008; thanks to my father for this:

"WE, the sovereign people of Ecuador

"RECOGNIZING our millenary roots, wrought by women and men of distinct cultures,

"CELEBRATING nature, the Pacha Mama (Earth Mother), of which we are part and which is vital to our existence,

"INVOKING the name of God and recognizing our diverse forms of religion and spirituality,

"APPEALING to the wisdom of all the cultures that enrich us as a society,

"AS HEIRS to the social struggle for liberation against all the forms of domination and colonialism, and with profound commitment to the present and to the future,

"We have decided to construct

"A new form of coexistent citizenship, in diversity and in harmony with nature, to achieve the good life, the sumak kawsay;

"A society that respects, in all its dimensions, the dignity of individuals and collective groups;

"A democratic country, committed to Latin American integration – the dream of Simón Bolívar and Eloy Alfaro to peace and solidarity with peoples of the earth;

"And, in exercise of our sovereignty, in the city of Alfaro, Montecristi, Manabí Province, we now present:

"THE CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF ECUADOR."

*Poem*

Art

My friend Art was calling they said.

I went to the phone somewhat mystified.

This was my girlfriend's summer house.

"Hey Art," I said.

"I'm at the train station," Art said.

"What, like, here?" I stammered.

"Yes, here! Can someone come pick me up?"

"Well, I guess I could." I paused.

"Well?" Art demanded.

Off I went in my girlfriend's parents' van,

not quite sure what to expect.

Turned out Art had every intention

of staying with us, with them

I should say. Being a little, um,

hazy in those days, I assumed

we'd made some plan I'd promptly

forgot. So stay with us/them Art did.

At dinner that night, gathered around

the table with my girlfriend's parents,

older brother and his girlfriend,

and her two younger brothers,

one of whom was five or six,

we played a charades-type game;

this particular one involved going

around the table saying idioms

as fast as you could.

So we went along, "Pot calling

the kettle black," "Grass is always

greener on the other side,"

"A bird in the hand is worth two

in the bush." We came to Arthur, who

grimaced slightly. Out he came with

words I could never forget:

"Make like a stoner and split this joint?"

I had to stifle howling laughter.

Sometimes there's nothing more to say.

*Music*

One of the records my mother used to play all the time (actual vinyl record album, in the '70s) was Tea for the Tillerman by Cat Stevens. The music on this record is inseparable from the memory of ma. It's quite mature music, and its being featured in Harold and Maude secures its place at the head of the "mature" line; I feel strongly that Harold and Maude deals head-on with that most mature of all topics: the fact we're all hurtling toward our unavoidable deaths. The movie and the record are also inseparable in my mind. There's a scene in the movie I find to be one of the sublimest ever caught on film: Maude who, like Harold, loved to go to funerals for the hell of it, is leaving one such funeral; she is at the head of the line, gleefully accepting the inevitability of her own death, and she dances along with a bright yellow umbrella, defiant against all the somber, black clad people behind her, all set to the dramatic background of the brief but evocative song Tea for the Tillerman.

Lyrics such as the following meant a lot to me as a boy, reinforcing as always the anti-establishmentarian in me, and making a die-hard idealist and romantic:

"You've cracked the sky-

scrapers fill the air.

Will you keep on building higher

till there's no more room up there?

Will you tell us when to laugh,

will you tell us when to cry?

Will you tell us when to live,

will you tell us when to die?

I know we've come a long way;

we're changing day to day.

Tell me:

where do the children play?"

"Lookin' for a hard-headed woman,

one who will take me for myself.

If I find my hard-headed woman

I won't need nobody else."

"Ooh, baby, baby, it's a wild world.

It's hard to get by just upon a smile.

Ooh, baby, baby, it's a wild world.

I'll always remember you like a child...

If you wanna leave, take good care.

Hope you make a lot of nice friends out there,

but just remember

there's a lot of bad everywhere."

"Miles from nowhere, guess I'll take my time,

oh, yeah, to reach there.

Look up at the mountain I have to climb,

oh, yeah, to reach there.

Lord, my body has been a good friend,

but I won't need it when I reach the end."

"I left my happy home

to see what I could find out.

I left my folk and friends

with the aim to clear my mind out.

I hit the rowdy road

and many kinds I met there.

Many stories told me

of the way to get there.

On and on I go;

the seconds tick the time out.

So much left to know

and I'm on the road to find out."

Which of course paved the way for my own global circumnavigation.

*Quotations*

The award of the Nobel Prize to Sinclair Lewis gave me immense pleasure. I can imagine no man whose recognition would be more offensive to the general run of American literary patriots.

--HL Mencken

The historian's business is to follow the track of energy; to find where it comes from and where it went to; its complex course and shifting channels; its values, equivalents, conversions.

--Henry Adams

A good sermon should be like a woman's skirt: short enough to arouse interest but long enough to cover the essentials.

--Ronald Knox

Technically, anyone can do it. But, people who are motivated by profit are destined to create products, whereas people not motivated by profit create art.

--Lance Winters

When people talk about genre, I guess they mention my name first, but without Richard Matheson I wouldn't be around. He is as much my father as Bessie Smith was Elvis Presley's mother.

--Stephen King

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.

--Hunter Thompson

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

--Einstein

Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.

--Orwell

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed.

--Oliver Wendell Holmes

Genius is one of the many forms of insanity.

--Cesare Lombroso

Peace love and ATOM jazz

021410

Frequently over the past week I've caught myself thinking, "I need to remember to tell ma about this." Gone is the woman who consoled me when I was disconsolate, who helped me make a little sense of the world, who made it all right that I was heartbroken. Toward the end of her life, there were numerous topics we simply couldn't broach, for the sake of our friendship; mostly those appear to have been topics related to her increasing conservatism, religious, political, financial. As long as we didn't talk about such things, we managed to share an enviable relationship. We had a great many things in common, literacy, high intelligence, an experience of the world in which most people don't have the courage to speak to us, etc. At the very end we had to keep it to topics like Mad Men, movies, natural perfume, etc. She was always at the other end of the line, my loving mother, the first person I knew when I came to consciousness 40 years ago.

*Old-poem*

I found this among my mother's things; it's a poem set to a background photo of my mother. I used to love this kind of thing, putting graphics on top of photos:

Dear Ma

Here is just a note to say that I hope you are feeling well, and to thank you for _everything_, and to tell you that I love you. I was thinking the other night--it was the sort feeling that came to me that planned to make itself into a poem--that you have taught me, among a great many other things, to have a sort of breathless admiration, an intense but silent and sincere reverence, for the mystery around us. I wanted to say that I try to pass that reverence on to the people around me--I will continue for as long as I can. All my love for now, until we speak again. Adam

It's bitter to realize we won't speak again.

*Lawrence-Ferlinghetti*

When I was younger, my mother kept a handwritten book around. In it, she had transcribed her favorite quotations, favorite poems, favorite passages from prose, etc. One poem we read again and again together (I was five or six) was I am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. By exposing me to this poem, my mother made me into an anti-establishmentarian, into a frothing-at-the-mouth radical liberal, into a person deeply mistrustful of authority and government. I'm not sure if that was her intention or not, but I know this poem echoes in my mind at every juncture. Every line has been reflected in every word of poetry I've written. This, for me, _is_ "the great indelible poem." Here are the first, third, and final stanzas:

I am Waiting (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

I am waiting for my case to come up

and I am waiting

for a rebirth of wonder

and I am waiting for someone

to really discover America

and wail

and I am waiting

for the discovery

of a new symbolic western frontier

and I am waiting

for the American Eagle

to really spread its wings

and straighten up and fly right

and I am waiting

for the Age of Anxiety

to drop dead

and I am waiting

for the war to be fought

which will make the world safe

for anarchy

and I am waiting

for the final withering away

of all governments

and I am perpetually awaiting

a rebirth of wonder.

I am waiting for my number to be called

and I am waiting

for the living end

and I am waiting

for dad to come home

his pockets full

of irradiated silver dollars

and I am waiting

for the atomic tests to end

and I am waiting happily

for things to get much worse

before they improve

and I am waiting

for the Salvation Army to take over

and I am waiting

for the human crowd

to wander off a cliff somewhere

clutching its atomic umbrella

and I am waiting

for Ike to act

and I am waiting

for the meek to be blessed

and inherit the earth

without taxes

and I am waiting

for forests and animals

to reclaim the earth as theirs

and I am waiting

for a way to be devised

to destroy all nationalisms

without killing anybody

and I am waiting

for linnets and planets to fall like rain

and I am waiting for lovers and weepers

to lie down together again

in a new rebirth of wonder.

I am waiting

to get some intimations

of immortality

by recollecting my early childhood

and I am waiting

for the green mornings to come again

youth's dumb green fields come back again

and I am waiting

for some strains of unpremeditated art

to shake my typewriter

and I am waiting to write

the great indelible poem

and I am waiting

for the last long careless rapture

and I am perpetually waiting

for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn

to catch each other up at last

and embrace

and I am awaiting

perpetually and forever

a renaissance of wonder.

*Poem*

Are We Here?

She told me once the doctors said

my brother and I shouldn't

even be alive, judging from her

various illnesses.

We shouldn't even be alive.

Almost as if we weren't really,

not actually alive; all we saw

were figments of our imaginations.

I have often thought of this fact,

as I bungled my way through life.

"Doesn't really matter because

I'm not really here," or

"No one will know because

I don't really exist," or

"How can there be harm done by

someone who doesn't in fact

walk the earth?"

I have always felt almost there,

almost here, almost alive.

I have longed to sink my teeth

into the meat of living

but have imagined I've been

preempted, forever just missing

the boat, permanently on leave

from a life I scarcely inhabit.

*Quotations*

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

--Edna St Vincent Millay

Death is a Dialogue between

The Spirit and the Dust.

--Emily Dickinson

Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.

--Epicurus

The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.

--Ernest Becker

Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.

--Bertolt Brecht

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

--George Bernard Shaw

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

--George Santayana

The human animal is a beast that dies but the fact that he’s dying don’t give him pity for others, no sir.

--Tennessee Williams

Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.

--Nathaniel Hawthorne

Dying is like coming to the end of a long novel--you only regret it if the ride was enjoyable and left you wanting more.

--Jerome P Crabb

Peace love and ATOM jazz

020710

This installment is brief because my mother died Thursday, not unexpectedly, but shockingly nevertheless.

_____

This week I purchased a nice vaporizer. It's now possible for me to enjoy all the benefits of THC, and they are legion for MS, _without having to smoke anything_. It's a little known fact that the THC in marijuana "volatilizes" at a much lower temperature (350-365 degrees) than burning temperature. What's left when finished vaporizing resembles _toasted_ reefer; it's definitely not ashes. The taste is out of this world. Having used vaporizers before, I know that when you have to switch back to smoking, for whatever reason, what you taste tastes exactly like an ashtray. Vaporizing gives a better high because there's no smoke buzz. It takes a little while to get used to vaporizing but once you do there's nothing better. If you know someone who, like me, is forced to take marijuana due to illness, do them a big favor and get them to switch to vapor instead of smoke.

*Poem*

Ma

She was a lady.

She possessed acid-tongued,

put-you-in-your-place.

touch-me-not intelligence,

or wickedness; not sure which.

She wanted the best for her children,

and she was prepared to suffer

injustice, misery, and life

without in order to achieve it.

I see this now; it was all for

the good of her children.

What extremes she went to,

to be admired, to be feared,

to be exactly who she dreamed.

She was so strong

she once stared a rabid man down;

he walked up to her expecting

to meet someone he could punch;

the glare that met him

which spoke of his not existing

forced him to walk around her.

If a person were to ascribe to

an idea at odds with her,

with her idea of herself,

with her vision of the right

and good, with her sense of

justice, that person simply

would cease to exist

in her precarious world.

She was forever on the edge

of being found out,

of people knowing she was not

the elegant woman she made herself

out to be, of folks knowing

her ugly truths.

As beautiful as she was,

she was also ugly, she had ways

no one would want to face,

she was vicious when necessary.

Above all, she was my mother,

the lady who absorbed all

my shock, my dismay that the ways

of us are so terribly callous,

my not understanding any whys.

She was my mother.

*Quotations*

A person starts dying when they stop dreaming.

--Brian Williams

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.

--Napoleon

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

--Arthur Schopenhauer

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

--Samuel Clemens

Nothing will die; all things will change through eternity.

--Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Gertrude was always right.

--Hemingway

I guess I'm just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation's laws.

--SJ Perelman

Dear ones, EASE UP. Pump the brakes. Take a step back. Seriously.

Take two steps back. Turn off all your electronics and surrender

over all your aspirations and do absolutely nothing for a spell. I

know, I know--we all need to save the world. But trust me: the

world will still need saving tomorrow.

--Elizabeth Gilbert

The artist, like the God of the Creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.

--James Joyce

I don't know why I do what I do. If I did know, I probably wouldn't feel the need to do it. Surely it is an odd way to spend your life--sitting alone in a room with a pen in your hand, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, struggling to put words on pieces of paper in order to give birth to what does not exist--except in your head. Why on earth would anyone want to do such a thing? The only answer I have ever been able to come up with is: because you have to, because you have no choice.

--Paul Auster

*poem*

København

My buddies and I met a Finnish fellow

in Copenhagen. We met at the Carlsberg

brewery, and part of the show was

Budweiser brewed under license of

Carlsberg--I remember it being the best

beer I've ever had. We all were just

hanging around for the day,

waiting to catch an evening train,

so we decided to spend it together.

We started in a park smoking hash

that we'd picked up in Amsterdam.

Then we wandered, and our Finnish friend

didn't stop drinking all day.

I hear I matched him one for one.

And the Finnish can really drink.

I remember nothing about the day,

except for the very beginning.

Well, I also remember, clearly,

puking my guts out as we

pulled out of the station

(you see, in Scandinavia,

any person you might meet,

the elderly included, can easily

drink an American under the table).

And our friend, whose name escapes me,

was bawling on the platform, sobbing,

saying over and over, "I really love

you guys." There's nothing quite like

drinking all day, and puking your

guts out at the end, to bring people

close together. We made our way

through Copenhagen once. We were drunk,

blotto, and all I remember is a Finnish

man who drank me under the table.

Peace love and ATOM jazz