This was drawn by a girlfriend. She was very talented. She would paint on just about anything these intensely colorful icons. One of her pictures was of a tree filled with kittens. A kitten tree. She gave me several pictures I really adore. Obviously a fan of big eye art - she liked that. She had a very good sense of humor. I liked that about her. And I suppose that's why she liked me. I know it wasn't my cooking - for a number of reasons I will never know myself well enough to understand. But I have been thinking about her lately.

Anyhooo, this young lady is a "Spookshow Baby." My friend was a doll collector, and of that strange breed. Never taking the things out of their boxes. I ask you...

But someone had come up with "Living Dead Dolls," - or at least I believe that's what they were called. She had quite a few of those. Either their boxes were actual coffins, or that was her idea and I'm just remembering that way. She decided to pick up some colored pencils one day and design something a little like it. Spookshow Baby is the name of a Rob Zombie song I would have been playing at the time.

Well, this is Lizzie. Say hello to the nice bloggers, Lizzie. They look scary, but they're OK.

You can't read the inscription, so I'll write it out for you:

"Lizzie's heart begins to pound

When she hears the scornful sound

Of her lover's learned peers,

But it's his silence she most fears.

A dose of laudanum from her precious vial

And she finds peace a little while.

A second dose, then 3, then 4,

And Lizzie's heart will pound no more.

Will no more beat and no more break.

Pray the Lord her soul to take."

She loved me very much. Obviously. 

I've got to throw something together about Bill Thompson for Heavenly Days, but I forget that's tomorrow night. I'm jumping the gun. I shall be disqualified. George and Gracie hold court there tonight. Gracie outlines her agricultural plan for us, as presidential candidate. There is also a discussion of campaign finance reform which is really quite funny. Even with today's high numbers we still spend about 20 times more on Kleenex than we do on our elections. Our noses take a higher priority, apparently.

But but but but but but, let's us keep it real.

How's the salmon over pollenta tonight?

Well, sir, that depends on your perspective. Are you generally an optimist?

I'm not sure I'm in the mood for fish...

Well, we have the swimming upstream type that is really quite strongly flavored, but may I suggest the new breed of fish instead?

New breed?

Yes, instead of swimming upstream and developing all that strong flavor they spend their lives sitting on the couch watching TV. Very bland. You'll hardly know you have it in your mouth.

I must call a person this week whom I know as "The White Tornado." She is 4 foot 10 and weighs all of 90 pounds soaking wet, but she does miraculous things to bathrooms. I have never watched - there being some things best kept mysterious in this life - but I have a theory she wraps herself entirely in cleaning product and rubs her body against walls and fixtures at amazing speed. She once told me her mother taught her that you can't see dirt from the end of a mop - even at her stature - and proceeded to accomplish on hands and knees what might have taken just as long to do in a more dignified but less efficient position. Well, I was impressed.

Comes from the hills, she does. They are alive with the sound of music, I think. In any case, a little help will ease the burdens of an overly packed calendar. The closing is Wednesday. I have two weeks to prepare - paint and all - the grand old chateau in the woods by the creek that tourists will pay more per week to inhabit than I have ever realized in income in the same period. The amount they are willing to pay astounds me.

I was thinking of offering guided hunts during the winter. With a twist. See - I would advertise for suburban adventurers from places like Rockland County who would like to pit their mettle against the wilderness in groups of five. (The chateau will comfortably accommodate five). Once they arrive they will draw lots to see which of their number will be the one hunted. Oh - great fun!

Alas, when winter comes I tend to do as much of my living indoors as possible. I hate snow. I hate temperatures below 60, (or 90, depending on my degree of silliness at the time), and winter sports are of no interest to me. You may recall - if you have been following right along - that whenever I wasn't falling off snowy rooftops I was on blogstream this past winter. I visited other blogs quite a lot more. I wrote several posts a day. And, when I couldn't extract anything new from my head I posted old poetry.

Let the day begin. I must light a fire so her people will know I wish to contact her. Summer is coming, and I am thinking of how it will be. But the future is not the best place for me. I don't belong there. It's enemy territory. So, I don't stay there very long. Besides, a fellow I know invented a time machine and decided to see a future he no longer existed in, and - as you can imagine - he no longer exists. I once thought my studfinder had located him in one of my walls when I was hanging a picture, but it turned out to be somebody else. I don't remember his name. I will, some day.

  

 

I'm sorry. I fell to sleep before I could post a picture of David Bowie or explain my theory about how he is actually his own secret son and the original Bowie is living in a nursing home in Racine, Wisconsin. Talk about ch-ch-ch-changes.

Got a phone call 'round midnight. That's right - Dexter Gordon called, with a voice sounding like The Lady's: Did I wake you?

No, no...

But, in the old days, before we became stodgy old grown-ups, I would never have replied with such boring politeness. I'd have said, Yeah, so what? Sleep sucks and you're beautiful.

Otherwise quiet.

Wondering why a fellow she once knew won't return her phone calls, or her E-mails. He was in love with her once, got down on bended knee and proposed - twice. He's now married, lives in another state. Prob'ly causes him pain, confusion, to talk to you now.

But why?

I was looking into the fireplace, the dark Endless that lives in there, the endless dark of unanswerable sorrows. At certain times there is no back, no bottom - just an eternal rabbit hole leading who-knows-where, my special White Lodge fireplace.

It's not so special. Every house has one, if you know how to look.

Of course, he's married too. If you ever got married I couldn't go on talking to you.

But that's so stupid. I am married - just like.

No, there is nothing just like. In marriage two people become one. You're still free as a bird, in reality.

I couldn't stand that. We're the last of the Mohicans.

So, I haven't had a fire yet. I was thinking about having a fire, smoking the Peace Pipe. Then I started thinking about driving without going anywhere in particular - just driving

With you. The world stops and Time stops. There is nothing else.

Silence on the other end of the line. Perhaps I dreamed it all. No - there's no perhaps to it. I'm dreaming this as well.

I remember when I first found out that Time doesn't take anything away. Time is a dimension. Only in our minds do we use it as a way to measure change. Time itself never changes, and the Indians in these parts still light their fires, only in the past, and sometimes I can see them from my windows here.

I have a sign over my big window - the one that looks at the ever-changing scenes of reality. The sign reads: Don't freak out! You can always walk away.

Who were we? In that car, driving forever nowhere? In bliss like a marriage should be? In a perfect world there is nothing between us and death - perfection, completion - nothing regretted, nothing lost, nothing longed-for that isn't suddenly in our grasp as though it had always been there.

Also in Racine, Wisconsin is the home of the Johnson's Wax Company, and they have kept every Fibber McGee and Molly episode between 1935 and 1950. They are very proud to display their connection with the program as sponsors for those years. I'd like to add that to my list, after Chicago - go there, just for the, you know...

I'm making a list of places to go. Suggestions are welcome. I know what some of you are thinking, but I've already been there.

Still sleeping. It's been...

yup, it sure has.

 

S'bout time Bowie got his own post. I play him enough here n' there. I'm picky about the songs/albums/personalities I like by him, but as prolific as he is... Hey, I've got a theory about that! I'll tell you about it later.

He doesn't AGE. Have you noticed that? It's... creepy.

This 1925 poem by T.S. Eliot has been running through my head all this week. We had it in school years ago. Many of us did.

I had more to say this morning, but the work speaks for itself. It really doesn't require any interpretation. You wouldn't know that if you did a web search, though. It seems there are more than a few opinions. Perhaps if we looked into it we would find that everybody who has one went to the same school I did.

When I get to "Here we go 'round the prickly pear/ At five o'clock in the morning" I find myself glancing at the time. I see that it is nearly seven. Too funny...

Speaking of funny, I just posted a Jack Benny radio program over at Heavenly Days.

I.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III.

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.