The Cows

I like these guys from Minneapolis...wish You Tube had some clips of The Cows playing "El Shiksa". One of my favorites.

Transcend all illusions of time and space by using your imagination, which can take you anywhere at any time

Poison Arrow

This ABC song came to mind this morning. The Greek tragedy set to 80's synthesizers. Once again, art imitates my life minus all the percussionists (gentleman, is it necessary to have mammoth orchestra bass drums and assorted congas for a song that employs a single Casio SK-1 drum machine?) Anyway, the quick flash of the Coke advertisement at the end is good for sponsorship. Poison and Coke? A winning, refreshing combination!

Time is Bleeding

In 2006, I wrote a preface for Denis Emorine's book, Au chevets des mots (A Step Inside). I remember reading this little book and becoming quite delighted with it...it spurned my desire to quest for that which is unsaid or cannot be said...that is, the pauses between "words" that say EVERYTHING. (Kalinauskaite, previous entry)

It was liberating to lose myself in this wistful reverie.

Preface: Here is a collection of vignettes that invites the dreamer into the elusive, entrancing perpetual fever of poetry. Here you are in the town square of language, where words elope, make love, fight, and part like unsatisfied, restless lovers into the night. It is never enough, it seems, when it comes to language. There are words that masquerade and manipulate, and there is the purity of meaning, as Emorine seems to suggest from the opening quotation used:

"And then, we'll be able to talk without stumbling into those words that cause time to bleed." --Jo Bousquet.

...The heart of this collection is in the segment "Fever", when Emorine declares: "Only silence has the bedside manner needed to respond to words broken down by their plentitude."

-Lina ramona Vitkauskas

ISBN: 2-919942-15-8

Arizona

Carefree, AZ. Cave Creek, AZ. Sedona, AZ. Pure vortexes of energy in those stoic, wise rocks that have stood the test of time on the barren landscape. The vegetation--saguaro cacti, ocatillo, pricky pear. Javelinas cross the roadways. Cowpokes and Harley riders. The stretches of long desert miles. The constellation-filled sky--seeing Venus as bright as the sun.

Pulpo

“Ace Of Wands
Scissors in a cross
An invisible heart
is distressed, see it?
A heart reflected on the wind.”
—“Incantation”, Poem of the Deep Song, Gabriel Garcia Lorca


The still wave,
pulpo of ice, storm reef,
stolen elephante forms
an apprehensive crash.

Emily said, “A word that
breathes distinctly
has not the power to die.”
The ether of each ovary ember,

lost in the wine of night.
I could juxtapose jurors, virgins
and my twisted tongue

and remain a lamp
that witnessed the stabbing:

"Como tembalaba el farolito de la calle!"

Invisible Hairshirt

Lyrics to 20+ year-old songs like Alison Moyet's "Invisible" (which stopped by the brain this morning) has redressed the idea that the subconscious does have a soundtrack and puts the needle to the proverbial life vinyl when an appropriate "groove" arises.

My whole life, I've seen the world symbolically, through letters/characters, language/words, sounds/sights. It is amazing to me, when I observe waves that crash against rock, that I can process it to the point of feeling, for a moment, as if I am a wave. My reception to nature could further be tuned, but the frequency has at least registered.

Between Moyet, REM, and the torrential and seemingly chilling waves this morning, I recall a conversation last night with a few writers about music's role or importance in finding a voice in writing. The poetic is fictional and fiction is poetic and reality is only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.

-----------------------------------------------------

"So here I am. Here I am."

I am not the type of dog
That could keep you waiting
For no good reason
Run a carbon-black test on my jaw
And you will find it's all been said before

I can swing my megaphone and long arm the rest
It's easier and better
To dispute it from the chest
Of desire

I could walk into this room
And the waves of conversation are enough
To knock you down in the undertow
So alone, so alone in my life
Feed me banks of light
And hang your hairshirt on the lowest rung
It's a beautiful life
And I can hang my hairshirt
Away up high in the attic of the wrong dog's life chest
Or bury it at sea
All my life I've searched for this

Here I am, here I am in your life
It's a beautiful life
My life
It's a beautiful life
Your life

Le Notti Bianche (1957), Visconti

Le notti bianche (White Nights), directed by Italian neorealist Luchino Visconti, takes its title and basic plot from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1848 short story. In both the story and the film, a lonely young man meets a lonely young woman.

Mario (Marcello Mastroianni) is lonely for social reasons; he is a stranger and a newcomer to town. Natalia (Maria Schell) is lonely because she has always lived in isolation, even in the heart of the city. Her loneliness is intensified because she is in love with a man (Jean Marais) who may not ever return to her, but who continues to occupy her heart to the exclusion of any other possible relationship.

Mario thanks the young woman for the moment of happiness she has brought him. However, he is left alone at the end of the film, befriending the same stray dog he met at the beginning. He is back at square one, and has put more energy into pursuing the fantasy of an obsession rather than any prospect of real love.