I'm back

I was out in Pennsylvania and New Jersey last week, visiting my family for Passover.  I also saw Professor Gilbert, who had returned from DC where he welcomed the Pope to our United States.  He tells the story here.

Kevin Ayers has a new album that I just got.  He was never my favorite in the Roxy/Soft Machine/Henry Cow axis, and I find the album less exciting than, say, a new Robert Wyatt album, but one still can't help but be pleased that he still making music.

This obituary was sent by correspondent Stephin M. of Los Angeles, California.  Monsters from the id, indeed.

James, I received a ballot for the June primary.  If you have any friends running for Green party nominations in Alameda county, let me know and I'll offer them my support.

Physics anyone?

On Friday, we took the Peace Bus around town for some adventures and kicked off a new campaign to promote the resignation of Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice. We walked around the State Department some and then went over to the Einstein memorial for a photo shoot. I thought it would look nice since we all have such big heads. Albert's was the biggest.
Today it's rainier, but we're planning on going out to the big Earth Day concert with some of our magical machines and serving Pink Lemonade to the kids. I thought it would be nice to serve cucumber sandwiches as well, but have not generated great interest in that idea so far. A little nosh goes a long way, I always say, when I'm not saying something else. Indeed that is Johny's neighbor and Trinity college professor Brenda in the center of the picture. She lives up the hill from Johny, a block or two from the house I grew up in. I look forward to visiting California again soon.

I spoke with my 95-year-old Uncle Milton today. He called Grandma while I was visiting her.  He told me the discovery he made about human motion: that it is like a wheel, which goes forward by falling.  One side of a wheel goes down while the other side goes up, but the wheel goes forward.  He asked me to think about this carefully, and I have been doing so.

Tiny Giants

Since I was asked, macro photography is done using a lens that allows you to focus on a subject that is inches away, basically so you can take close-up pictures of tiny things.  I don't know why it isn't called micro photography, but it has something to do with the fact that the image on the negative is the same size as the object.  On the other hand, if you take a photo of your head, the image is much smaller than your head.  

Anyway, the above is a part of a photo display in a window that had been there so long the image was peeling off the paper.  I couldn't tell what was going on until I took the picture.  To the eye it looked like some strange fungus was growing on the photograph.  The display showed what this plaza in Berlin looked like before it was bombed in the war.  And now the photograph is self-destructing.

Today's Verse: 11 April 2008

There's a spinning vortex of refuse
A thousand miles offshore
Where currents meet
Chase in a circle
Then flow on
Girdling the globe
Eventually to return
With more trash

Nothing's lost or forgotten
It's displaced beyond our ken
Pity the souls who lived there
Suffocated on the remains
Of somebody else's good time

Wash away my guilt and care
Wash away, wash away shame
I never wanted to hurt or kill
(Since school)
Come sweet redeemer and purify
Relieve me of desire for plastics,
Polymers, petroleum products
Wash away
Let my bath water cleanse and sanctify
Bring forth everlasting life

There's a fountain, fed by a spring
Flowing since birth
Last year it gushed a flood
Now it's drying up
Exhausted

Today's Verse: 10 April 2008

The head in the sack
You brought
Distracts me from my game

Can't not imagine
Its lifeless gaze
Of displacement

I know it's not human
Anymore
But animation souvenirs
May linger over the immobile
Clump of its "features"

When I serve
Its dissembled presence
Intercedes between the toss
And contact
And looms up in my mind's eye
In the brief interlude
That the ball hangs over my head
No longer rising
Not falling yet

What prompted you to bring it here?
Now I can't get rid of it.

Tiny Giants

Since I've been crazy about macro photography lately, I thought I'd share some.

Here's that funny German double S letter in front of some government building in Berlin.

When the picture's bigger, you can see all the individual etching lines sharp as a tack.

So cool.

How those kiddies do love the big horn

More pictures from the Sunday farmer's market

Today's Verse: 9 April 2008

I lament
On the way back home
All the way back home
I received your vision
Of a better future
Of maps and charts
Too late I saw
The lines that connect
Near and far
Ease stress
And improve the quality of life
Although some misfits
May bemoan perceived aesthetic defects
(The median of gray, concrete phalli bound by wire?)
How could I but applaud your enthusiasm
Selfless devotion to engineering
Global approach and ambition?
It all comes too late
I'm returning to the past
Where problems don't require resolution
In fact there are no problems
It just is
Was
At the same time
I'm happy here there
Good luck and keep in touch

It does seem odd that I’m marketing software, although I’m not exactly marketing software, I’m an Account Manager for a company that makes admissions software for colleges, but you know, whatever, in any case the real question is what I’m doing in Cincinnati. For a long time I used to come back here almost every year around this tine, Passover you know, but not for a while, I think the last time I was here I went to opening day with my brother, and before that I went to opening day with my dad, and the umpire dropped dead in the third inning so we went home but we came back the next day. It was sad. Opening day is the first day of the baseball season, I suppose not everybody knows that, the Reds always have the first game of the season and that was Monday, the first day I was here, opening day for the Reds. Nobody lives here that I know any more, except my dad and Jimmy Eichmann, that’s all I can think of, but the trees are still the same, even though the temperature is the same as in Berkeley, high of 62 low of 48, the trees know where they are and as I was driving down the street past the white brick houses—never brick in California, you know—it was the look and smell of spring here, it was like driving to Grandma’s house. Even though Cincinnati is a grotesquely middle-aged city, I’m somehow too old to be here; when I make a joke about Bob Braun or Kash Amburgy, I might as well be talking about Fred Allen or Edgar Bergen. The women who do the same job I do here are in their twenties and are like the girls with whom I went to school, with their straight blonde hair and flat Midwestern vowels, business majors from the University of Dayton, except of course they are the daughters of my classmates from Wyoming High School. And last night I dreamed about Paul Trupin, my high school friend who died at 33, but every time I see him I remember that he’s not really dead, that was misreported, everyone thinks that but no, he’s back in Cincinnati, but just passing through. Usually I’m trying to see him but can’t, but this time he wanted to stay with me while he’s here, which of course there are some friends to whom one never says no. So it’s good to see my dad and to see Paul, and as for the rest, you know, some things don’t change, vis-à-vis Moronicity, and to think I could be a podgy rock star with bad hair and make-up. Tracy, maybe it’s just the picture, but you look about one hundred and fifty seven times better than Robert Smith.

I am Cured!

I was visiting a friend in Berlin recently, and we went to Rotterdam to see the Cure. She is a huge fan, I was just curious (pun thought about and rejected).

So, we had these meet and greet passes, and got to spend 15 minutes alone with the band before the show. Last I remember Robert Smith, he was standing in a child's wading pool wearing too much makeup and singing about Japanese babies. He still wears too much makeup. But he and the band were so hospitable, I had to give them high marks for fan relations. And they played for over three hours, showing an admirable level of dedication for a band that's been around since we were living in Morges.

Anyway, just another entry for the "Who would have thunk it?" file.