To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.

  ― Simone Weil

 

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
― Simone Weil

 Simone Weil: Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. 

An act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer. And you choose that object to concentrate upon which will best focus your consciousness. D.H. Lawrence

Idol Worship

My mother ran to her bed and sobbed the day the light blue Volvo was delivered. She had ordered Navy blue!

She sobbed during late night movies but never when we were beat up by bullies.

Objects, furniture and photographs were more important than her children. 

These were advertising people after all. 

It was all about how it looked and never about reality.

Isn't this what is called idol worship? 

Anger Was Against the Law

Anger was against the law for me when I was a child. 

Not for my parents who raged, kicked the wall breaking a toe, screeched the car stuck in the ice, smashed plates, but for us kids.  NO ANGER ALLOWED. NO QUESTIONS ALLOWED.

When the dog vomited my father said "rub his face in it,," as if he did it on purpose, if that would teach him a lesson. But he is sick, it is no fault of his.

He needs love.

I ran away and adopted a dog. My source of family love to this day. 

My mother advised that I throw all of my roommates belongings out of the third floor apartment window when she was taking too much time to move out after not paying rent. I said that would not be helpful.

What should have been against the law was giving us enemas and taking our temperature with anal thermometers well into our double digit years and subjecting us to public humiliation and unnecessary medical care and humiliating comments in front of all of the relatives and guests. 

Then abandoning us on a daily basis including weekends and summers.

 I give myself permission to rage on the page for as much time as I need. Whenever I want.

 I call it cancer prevention.

Water loves the horizontal, yearns to shed all but two dimensions.

 Leonard Trawick  

What is most personal is most universal.

 ― Carl R. Rogers, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

Trees and Leaves

I made a delicious dinner tonight was two small heads of chopped fresh broccoli, 1 bunch of chopped fresh kale, 1 bulb of chopped fresh garlic, all sauteed in olive oil, with splashes of soy sauce and Chianti for sweetness after everything has cooked a bit. 

Covered it and let it steam a bit.

I taste tested it to decide when it was done.

Enjoyed over cooked millet or rice or whatever you have kicking around.

I call it Trees and Leaves. Broccoli trees and kale leaves!

Be Grateful: I saw this red truck and gorgeous logo on my way home from the pool and smiled.

This is a real company. BE GRATEFUL trucking.

Malicious Humans making Robots

Malicious Humans making Robots acting like adolescent boys. We are all captured.

My dog is a teacup rhinoceros.

Her teeth were so white they arrived at the party ahead of her.

Life is a goddam mess...but you wouldn't want to miss it! ―Joseph Mitchell

It takes almost a lifetime to learn how to do a thing simply. ―Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel

“You’re a trouble-maker. What race do you belong to, anyhow?’ ‘The human race,’ I said. ‘I come from the womb and I’m bound for the tomb, the same as you, the same as King George the Six, the same as Johnny Squat.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Old Mr Flood

“Gould is a night wanderer, and he has put down descriptions of dreadful things he has seen on dark New York streets – descriptions, for example, of the herds of big gray rats that come out in the hours before dawn in some neighborhoods of the lower East Side and Harlem and unconcernedly walk the sidewalks. ‘I sometimes believe that these rats are not rats at all,’ he says, ‘but the damned and aching souls of tenement landlords.”
― Joseph Mitchell, Up in the Old Hotel

America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization. ― John O'Hara

Animals by Frank O'Hara

Have you forgotten what we were like then
when we were still first rate
and the day came fat with an apple in its mouth

it's no use worrying about Time
but we did have a few tricks up our sleeves
and turned some sharp corners

the whole pasture looked like our meal
we didn't need speedometers
we could manage cocktails out of ice and water

I wouldn't want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

 

Frank O'Hara 

Destruction by Joanne Kyger

 

First of all do you remember the way a bear goes through

a cabin when nobody is home? He goes through

the front door. I mean he really goes through it. Then

he takes the cupboard off the wall and eats a can of lard.

 

He eats all the apples, limes, dates, bottled decaffeinated

coffee, and 35 pounds of granola. The asparagus soup cans

fall to the floor. Yum! He chomps up Norwegian crackers

stashed for the winter. And the bouillon, salt, pepper,

paprika, garlic, onions, potatoes.

 

He rips the Green Tara

poster from the wall. Tries the Coleman Mustard. Spills

the ink, tracks in the flour. Goes up stairs and takes

a shit. Rips open the water bed, eats the incense and

drinks the perfume. Knocks over the Japanese tansu

and the Persian miniature of a man on horseback watching

a woman bathing.

 

Knocks Shelter, Whole Earth Catalogue,

Planet Drum, Northern Mists, Truck Tracks, and

Women’s Sports into the oozing water bed mess.

 

He goes down stairs and out the back wall. He keeps on going

for a long way and finds a good cave to sleep it all off.

Luckily he ate the whole medicine cabinet, including stash

of LSD, Peyote, Psilocybin, Amanita, Benzedrine, Valium

and aspirin.

__________

“Destruction,” by JOANNE KYGER.