Reasons
Reasons. But What's the Goal?
Nature's goal for me is not my goal. Is it odd that we could work at cross-purposes? No, I suppose even that is natural.
See, it's like feathers. A mutation that developed for the purpose of cooling, adapted eventually to flight (yeah, maybe).
Well, look, we got these big brains that are there to help us find food & mates & avoid predators, and now...
100,000 years later. Flint tools, fire, pretty soon, Cave Art.
300,000 years later. We spend our time solving Acrostics or chatting in chat rooms.
And some people get so crazy, they year voices & never use their brains for ordinary purposes at all.
It was Language, more than anything else (even more than the thumbs as we picked up the baby with one hand & a rock with the other)... Language led to writing & writing led to history & the next thing you know—here we are.
Working together to
Working together to
What are we doing here?
Of course we're not all doing the same thing. some people playing football. Some people playing dolls. Some of us working crossword puzzles.
The best thing in all the world is to sing in the choir, but if you're singing in the choir, you can't hear the choir. I'd like a musical performance that starts with a solo & adds until you have a full chorus.
Breath is life. Don't scream. Sing.
Young Folks
Young folks, stupid folks, hogging tables & talking on cell phones. That's café life. I suspect 3/4 of these kids are Seattle U. students. I prefer the Postman who sits listening to his Walkman as he reads the newspaper. His skin is the rich black of river-bank mud beneath his USPS hat strap. (I don't think they wear safari hats any more--maybe in the summer.) I wonder what he's listening to. I wonder if he is disgruntled.
Then across from me, a male-female couple with an older woman, maybe the younger woman's mom? They have the same Scandy grey-blonde hair, but who is the guy? He's too pot-bellied & geeky for that girl, but maybe not. Maybe he's an academic. Or...he seems too old for the younger and too young for the older & they are just too far away for me to hear the conversation.
Especially since the speakers are blaring 40's jump music with squirty saxophones.
Lee comes over in his black apron (a black apron!), & we talk about the cats, Vera & Elmer. Which reminds me of 'Mas & how he would chase the kitten Buck away from the heater. Winter in Seattle, many years ago.
I've been reading through the 1977 journal looking for Annie & ChiChi, finding way too much of me. There are some small nuggets in there, but God you have to do a lot of sluicing to find them.
But that's the thing about nuggets, innit?
BM Starbucks 2/23/01
If I Didn't Know Better, I'd Think
If I didn't know better, I'd think that I was completely nuts in 1977, at least from the evidence in my journal. Two full pages every day—I mean really--& though I was rabidly social (compared to now) & ever so busy, you could hardly tell anything about my life from what I wrote. Anything interesting, anyway. You will find out more than anyone could want to know about my cycling moods. Also, I had an unfortunate tendency to indulge in word play. Clang-associating. Yes, it was no doubt fun to do, especially full of coffee or tea as I ever was (& am), but really, no fun to read.
And where is the catalog of silliness that went on between me & ChiChi? I will have to pull it out using my bare memory. Yes, & the details of all Annie's Cosmic Shit too. There were a few details that I'd forgotten, like her pregnancy & many abortions. And poor Marian, whom I liked more & enjoyed talking to, is going to get hardly any mention at all. Even if she was a Christian Scientist with an estranged reggae musician husband & a libertarian boyfriend. Oh, but page after page of my feewings...it's taken me 3 days to read through from October to July. Funny part is all the names, Anne's friends mostly, who remain names only. I can't put faces or voices to them. Funnier are deeds I can't remember, or forgotten facts—that Bob Bugg was interested in me? How much I was in touch with Cousin Pammy? That I was writing to KMcK? But as for all my "ravishings"--descriptions of nature, overblown, and of my reaction to perceptions. Too too. And too many dreams.
Hey, with the beauties of the natural world, less is more, honey: less said, no need to
OK. Nice planes of sunset on the building faces down the hill tonight. A cloudbank out there in the west that reminded me of SF. Except it was taller & bluer than an ocean fogbank. I come to cafe & ask Lee if he does representational art. He tells me he works mostly in pencil.
Speaking of how boring dreams are: Last night I dreamed that Jeffrey T. (the Manager) was giving me wine, & I got drunk & kissed him. Even in the dream I knew it was a bad idea--getting drunk and kissing him. I guess I'm not dead yet.
BM Starbucks 2/24/01
Fix It
I hate to fix this evil mood by limning it on paper. By fix I don't mean repair, I mean preserve. Evil mood because I didn't win the Quinto or the Lotto, & I might have to go to work tomorrow, & I still won't have the rent. Even if I work all week, I won't.
I need to sell some writing, for the money & for the reinforcement. But mostly the money. I’ll let the reinforcement take care of itself.
"Ignatius Loyola," says the bald-headed young man with Leninesque goatee. "Ah, white boys," say I.
Light elongates like a blue miracle. Oh, it's the Blue Fairy, say I. (Did ChiChi & I do a riff on that?--doesn't matter, I can say we did). Quarter to six & the western sky is white. Celestial white. "St. Francis," Lenin says, as he gets up and shuts the doors.
Lee whispers, "I'll be right back" & strides out the door. He won't.
I think if only my arm would not hurt at night, I'd be perfectly happy & would stop thinking about the benefits of death. True or false?
If I had money.
Depressed, me?
Well, excuse me, but this is depressing.
Lee comes back & tells me he was going to bring pictures but the dog came over to his apartment & distracted him.
Then Daniel leans over the wall & we discuss weather. He's so young. He's young & comes from Minneapolis, so Seattle seems like SF to him. Wait, I mean Seattle seems to him what SF did to me way back when.
Time to get out of here before someone I don't want to see shows up.
BM Starbucks 2/25/01
Nature's goal for me is not my goal. Is it odd that we could work at cross-purposes? No, I suppose even that is natural.
See, it's like feathers. A mutation that developed for the purpose of cooling, adapted eventually to flight (yeah, maybe).
Well, look, we got these big brains that are there to help us find food & mates & avoid predators, and now...
100,000 years later. Flint tools, fire, pretty soon, Cave Art.
300,000 years later. We spend our time solving Acrostics or chatting in chat rooms.
And some people get so crazy, they year voices & never use their brains for ordinary purposes at all.
It was Language, more than anything else (even more than the thumbs as we picked up the baby with one hand & a rock with the other)... Language led to writing & writing led to history & the next thing you know—here we are.
Working together to
Working together to
What are we doing here?
Of course we're not all doing the same thing. some people playing football. Some people playing dolls. Some of us working crossword puzzles.
The best thing in all the world is to sing in the choir, but if you're singing in the choir, you can't hear the choir. I'd like a musical performance that starts with a solo & adds until you have a full chorus.
Breath is life. Don't scream. Sing.
Young Folks
Young folks, stupid folks, hogging tables & talking on cell phones. That's café life. I suspect 3/4 of these kids are Seattle U. students. I prefer the Postman who sits listening to his Walkman as he reads the newspaper. His skin is the rich black of river-bank mud beneath his USPS hat strap. (I don't think they wear safari hats any more--maybe in the summer.) I wonder what he's listening to. I wonder if he is disgruntled.
Then across from me, a male-female couple with an older woman, maybe the younger woman's mom? They have the same Scandy grey-blonde hair, but who is the guy? He's too pot-bellied & geeky for that girl, but maybe not. Maybe he's an academic. Or...he seems too old for the younger and too young for the older & they are just too far away for me to hear the conversation.
Especially since the speakers are blaring 40's jump music with squirty saxophones.
Lee comes over in his black apron (a black apron!), & we talk about the cats, Vera & Elmer. Which reminds me of 'Mas & how he would chase the kitten Buck away from the heater. Winter in Seattle, many years ago.
I've been reading through the 1977 journal looking for Annie & ChiChi, finding way too much of me. There are some small nuggets in there, but God you have to do a lot of sluicing to find them.
But that's the thing about nuggets, innit?
BM Starbucks 2/23/01
If I Didn't Know Better, I'd Think
If I didn't know better, I'd think that I was completely nuts in 1977, at least from the evidence in my journal. Two full pages every day—I mean really--& though I was rabidly social (compared to now) & ever so busy, you could hardly tell anything about my life from what I wrote. Anything interesting, anyway. You will find out more than anyone could want to know about my cycling moods. Also, I had an unfortunate tendency to indulge in word play. Clang-associating. Yes, it was no doubt fun to do, especially full of coffee or tea as I ever was (& am), but really, no fun to read.
And where is the catalog of silliness that went on between me & ChiChi? I will have to pull it out using my bare memory. Yes, & the details of all Annie's Cosmic Shit too. There were a few details that I'd forgotten, like her pregnancy & many abortions. And poor Marian, whom I liked more & enjoyed talking to, is going to get hardly any mention at all. Even if she was a Christian Scientist with an estranged reggae musician husband & a libertarian boyfriend. Oh, but page after page of my feewings...it's taken me 3 days to read through from October to July. Funny part is all the names, Anne's friends mostly, who remain names only. I can't put faces or voices to them. Funnier are deeds I can't remember, or forgotten facts—that Bob Bugg was interested in me? How much I was in touch with Cousin Pammy? That I was writing to KMcK? But as for all my "ravishings"--descriptions of nature, overblown, and of my reaction to perceptions. Too too. And too many dreams.
Hey, with the beauties of the natural world, less is more, honey: less said, no need to
OK. Nice planes of sunset on the building faces down the hill tonight. A cloudbank out there in the west that reminded me of SF. Except it was taller & bluer than an ocean fogbank. I come to cafe & ask Lee if he does representational art. He tells me he works mostly in pencil.
Speaking of how boring dreams are: Last night I dreamed that Jeffrey T. (the Manager) was giving me wine, & I got drunk & kissed him. Even in the dream I knew it was a bad idea--getting drunk and kissing him. I guess I'm not dead yet.
BM Starbucks 2/24/01
Fix It
I hate to fix this evil mood by limning it on paper. By fix I don't mean repair, I mean preserve. Evil mood because I didn't win the Quinto or the Lotto, & I might have to go to work tomorrow, & I still won't have the rent. Even if I work all week, I won't.
I need to sell some writing, for the money & for the reinforcement. But mostly the money. I’ll let the reinforcement take care of itself.
"Ignatius Loyola," says the bald-headed young man with Leninesque goatee. "Ah, white boys," say I.
Light elongates like a blue miracle. Oh, it's the Blue Fairy, say I. (Did ChiChi & I do a riff on that?--doesn't matter, I can say we did). Quarter to six & the western sky is white. Celestial white. "St. Francis," Lenin says, as he gets up and shuts the doors.
Lee whispers, "I'll be right back" & strides out the door. He won't.
I think if only my arm would not hurt at night, I'd be perfectly happy & would stop thinking about the benefits of death. True or false?
If I had money.
Depressed, me?
Well, excuse me, but this is depressing.
Lee comes back & tells me he was going to bring pictures but the dog came over to his apartment & distracted him.
Then Daniel leans over the wall & we discuss weather. He's so young. He's young & comes from Minneapolis, so Seattle seems like SF to him. Wait, I mean Seattle seems to him what SF did to me way back when.
Time to get out of here before someone I don't want to see shows up.
BM Starbucks 2/25/01
posted by K. E. Ellingson at 4:32 PM
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