31 October 2022

According to legend . . . like push the notification bell subscribe and the stars will align themselves pointing to the true north as the polarity shifts from positive to negative causing the wormhole to pulse making the portal to Uranus visibly visual . . .

Yeh . . . right !

So another Halloween has come and faded over the horizon . . . and I’m one year older than last year and 150+ people died in Itaewon land of the Morning Calm (South Korea) “celebrating” . . . in Shibuya Japanese po-leece had everything under control . . . blowing whistles waving blinking neon batons and shouting “something something kudasai” through their electronic magic megaphones . . . Japan . . . Land of the Rising Sun and cosplay anime make believe furry animals and intrusive ketoh gaijin.

Oh yeh . . . Burning Man officially returned to the Black Rock Desert . . . I heard on the YouTube grapevine that there was a NINE hour dust storm this year and I thought, “we have that same shit here in OV . . . like 3-4 times . . . during the summer!”

Burning Man is now a 301c non-profit global tax dodge.

Another late breaking item . . . to celebrate my day of birth I visited Manzanar National Historic Site and hobbled out to renew my acquaintance with the pear orchards and reminisce about days gone by . . . 20 some years . . . stopped off at sanshi-en (Block 34 Mess Hall Garden) transporting back in time through the minds eye . . . feeding the koi . . . truly like Simonides of Ceos recalling the past.

My oldest daughter asked me what I wanted for my my birthday . . . I said, “idk . . .” and after 2 or three day of serious thought I sent her a text in reply, “I want to go to Manzanar!”

And now I’m working the final draft of 36 Views of Manzanar . . . a collection of prose and poems about my time working as an interpretive guide at Manzanar National Historic Site.

I started writing the collection in August 1997 . . . it was finished in November that same year . . . so WTF happened you might ask . . . dunno . . . sloth doldrums . . . sidetracked.

Lot of old men doing things that they put off . . . YouTube writing books etcetera etcetera etcetera . . . got time on my hands . . . time to get them hands out of my pockets get’er done . . .

G&G

G & G

If yer of a mind

to grunt & grind

keep this in mind

there’s mice in the defibulator

that damn dog is on the fone.

Damn dog is on the fone

the banker wont be home.

Screen is off the window

if you’ve a mind to roam . . .

screen is off the window

‘n I’m so alone.

Dog’s still on the fone

it’s wrong to be alone

when night’s so damn long.

Streetlight in the moonlight

boop boop a doop

sittin’ on the stoop

in the starlit night

‘til the cows come home.

Hey,

diddle just a little

cat got his fiddle

in the middle of the street

tryin’ to make the ends meet.

So ask yer mother for fifty cents

I can jump the fence

‘an watch elephants land on the moon.

Ram-a-lam

ram-a-lam

bang that spoon

last day of joon . . .

I know wat I’m doin’.

Special thanks to Samuel Andreyev for seeing me nodding off.

A Train . . . poema

Well now . . . “how do . . .”

How do you do?

Stepped into sunshine

Under a sky azule

Dint take Uber . . .

“A” train courtesy bus

Charles Mingus

Sextet

Striding solo

ebony & eye-vo-ree

on new mown lawn

shadow of lilac tree

just me

at 10:30.

Eric Dolphy on saxophone.

Poema

Canto

Sonia bending

prickly nerve ends bristling . . .

NO pictures !!!

Please . . .

sophisticated anti-christ revolutionary

suspending unnoticed memories over void . . .

Polaroid strobes darkness . . .

“A” ticket train ride

bedroom mirror,

lobby copy machine

motel anxiety

clouds and rain

puddle

smeared dark shadow

on surrounding walls . . .

eight page catalog of yesterday.

Abe

I was lying abed try to decide if the pressure on my bladder nesitated getting out of my sleep zone . . . it’s like what I imagine a sensory deprivation tank must be like . . . you ever see that movie “Altered States”?

I had an experience similar to that in Mexico once upon a time . . . no drugs just the warm salty Pacific ocean . . . I was wading in the sunset water with my then wife gazing at the sun as it settled into its watery grave about to become the the rising Nippon sun. The water was a tepid invisible force I feel against my legs . . . prompted me to think . . . was I really on the beach wading on the tectonic rim of the Pacific plate or what?

My eyes were still shuttered against the dim light seeping thru the blinds but I knew the inevitable was pending . . . I could hear the sound of water splashing thru the bathroom door . . . in the bathtub . . . lying on my back left arm bent at the elbow forearm vertical hand supporting my right arm like Dali’s “Soft Watch” painting . . . opened my eyes . . . yep sho’nuff looks like the surrealist rendition minus the watch and tree and the other stuff.

Yesterday Shinzo Abe was gunned down . . . I cried. The Japanese police got the guy . . . homemade double barreled weapon . . . missed with the first shot . . . I tried to think of suitable punishment for the assassin but drew a blank . . . I thought about this all day yesterday . . . it wasn’t until late afternoon that the light came on in the closet . . an end . seppuku! cutting of the belly it’s called . . . suicide for having disgraced yourself and your country . . . a punishment an end apropos for the people who kill senselessly . . . a public cutting of the belly . . . most importantly no second . . . no one to cut the spinal cord and end the pain . . . you have to kneel and watch your intestines as they spill onto the ground along with your blood as the pain washes over your body like freezing cold water . . . did you think of this when you composed the poem before you exposed your belly?

Cry Song

Let’s get personal . . . I’m not what is too often referred to as a “Native American” . . . Oh . . . yeh I’ve got the brown hued skin and my hair used to be black but I am a member of the Big Pine Band of Owens Valley Paiute . . . not Oglala Souix or “Apache” or Dineh . .. . I added the “h” cos you pronounce “Dine” dih-neh . . .

Anyway this morning at approximately 10:00 hours I witnessed my mother’s burial. The “deacon” delivered the catho-holic/Christian Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead rhetoric and a black & yellow swallow-tail butterfly flew over the casket . . . it was just checking out the flowers nothing symbolic or significant . . . just a butterfly doing butterfly thangs.

When my dad’s mother was being interred we were standing off to one side . . . and he said, “. . . that little rain yesterday washed away her footprints . . .”

Oh shit! . . . and yesterday there was thunder and it was cloudy and rained a little . . . just enough to stipple the dirt erasing tire tracks footprints etcetera . . . you draw your own conclusions.

I’m an “old” Indian . . . not just chronologically but culturally . . . a traditionalist . . . one rooted in the material and cultural practices of the Owens Valley Paiute lifeway before Cristoforo Columbo and the Euro-American intrusion . . .

When I knew my mother was dying I began singing a “cry” song . . . as my cuhnu said, “. . . a song over death . . .” in this case a pending death . . . I sang a short version of the cry song over her casket after it had been lowered into the grave symbolically finalizing the funerary aspect of her death.

I shook hands with relatives and friends . . .

Being of Pima ancestry (akmil o’odam) as well as OVP heritage, the handshake is a Pima funerary custom . . . and I told them (friends & relatives) that I was acknowledging their condolences on behalf of my Pima tribal traditions.

A mantra from the Buddhist Heart Sūtra . . . tadyathā gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā . . . a simple translation is: gone gone gone away gone far away to the other side . . . in essence the cry song says the same thing . . . it’s closure.

Ciao . . .

Wind

. . . and the wind blows up . . . and the wind blows down

vinyl storm window flexes . . . smooth skin belly rise ‘n fall in silence . . . storm window breathing . . . tuned to the pulse of the wind . . . blowing straight up the wall ‘n down the other side . . . night light dim light radiating low wall socket energy from doorway . . .

. . . the wind blows across . . . across the ground over the roof . . . a vent open ‘n close . . . finger of wind probing . . . smothered metal flap flapping alarm . . . the wind is blowing . . . sandpaper fingers . . . window screen noise in pale room light . . . feels like midnight blanket of seamless sleep.

Fast Forward

He could hear the sound before he saw it . . . the flyer . . . little silvery distortion just barely visible over the dark green creosote brush prolly 1 or 2 klicks out to the south . . . it was over the old asphalt track about 60 meters up moving slowly . . . anti-grav . . . solo civvy craft . . . what fuck was it doing way out here?

The sun reflecting off something shiny distracted him . . . he turned his head . . . and he saw the beater transport on the road tracking the flyer . . . trouble.

They might try to shoot its generator to bring it down . . . but it was too valuable so they would wait for it to settle and then attack . . .

Rewind rewind . . .

So . . . wat I been up to you probably wondering . . . well it be like dis . . . 2/3 months ago I caught the omicron bug it rather it finally tracked me down ‘n laid some funky juju on my body . . . It was like a bad cold a mild case of influenza . . . nose was dripping . . . fever (sweats) one night and I felt like shit! Lasted about 5/6 days and on day 10 the test came back negatory . . .

When I first suspected I might have the bug that test thingy lit up “positive” after one freaking second . . . dint have to wait for the 15 minute time period to elapse . . . so I settled in for 10 days of quarantine madness.

What I’m getting at is I’m still feeling the effects of my bout with the virus . . . fatigue and a lack of motivation . . . got the sails up spinnaker out but no breeze . . .

I dunno . . . idk . . . is it just me or is there lethargy in the atmosphere tainting the world? Might be coz some modern aircraft carriers don’t have catapults . . . really! I thought it was only the country that started the covid pandemic was using ski jump technology to launch their jet engine fighter aircraft . . . then I found out the Bolsheviki Russian flagship carrier was also using the ski jump . . . I thought all aircraft carriers had catapults but I was wrong . . . even the British are still employing the “ski jump” to launch aircraft.

WTF?! I’m probably going to find out that the U.S. is the onliest country that have the old reliable steam driven catapult onboard their carriers . . . China say they gonna have sum kine high tech electromagnetic hyperdrive catapult on their new carrier . . . prolly gonna tear the nose wheel out it’s socket . . .

Ukraine sold that there ski jump marvel to the Chinese back in the day . . . Good bargain basement deal my commie brethren comes with state-of-the-art upturned nose ski jump flight deck . . . would I lie G.I.? . . . say what?!

The mind wanders . . . Oh yeh Trump nixed the idea of switching to electromagnetic catapults on U.S. carriers . . . uh huh right on.

More from the sci-fi channel later.

20:12 . . .time for some dinner . . . miso soup with wakame.

DIDUNO

Did U no China is going to have a catapult on its newest aircraft carrier . . . uh . . . well . . . uh . . . WTF?! I thought all aircraft carriers had catapults . . . no, not China the tech giant . . . they got the Wuhan virus but no catapult.

So how they launch their fancy fighter jet planes?

Oh . . . I get it . . . they built a ski jump on the front end of the flight deck . . . it looks like a l-o-o-ong skateboard with no wheels mounted on a canoe . . . lol . . . I saw something similar back when I was doing contract work . . . it was called a “jump strip” kinda like before . . . a precursor to the Harrier launching and landing vert (VTOL) . . . the jump strip allowed jets to get airborne from a short landing strip.

They would start their takeoff at the very end of the tarmac brakes on engines whining airframe vibrating . . . then the pilot released the brakes and shot down the level section of runway . . . at some point he lit the afterburners and the jet “jumped” off the end of the jump ramp and was off into the blue yonder . . . just like Doolittle’s B-25s heading for Tokyo.

The B-25 transport ship (aircraft carrier) dint have no ski jump on the end of the carrier deck they launched from . . . instead they waited for the bow of the ship to elevate coming out of the trough of a swell and timed their takeoff to coincide with the maximum elevation of the flight deck . . . the twin engine B-25B Mitchell medium range bomber was “tossed” into the air off the end of the deck . . . or maybe the bow fell away from under the plane and left it to use its forward momentum and subsequent lift to fly like a pelican skimming just off the surface of the ocean.

O-M-F-G!!

Anyway . . . yeh . . . word on the street is that the next new state-of-the-art Chinese aircraft carrier gonna have some kine electromagnetic rubber slingshot mechanisms to launch their jet powered fighter aircraft cos that ski ramp on the bow of the ship is so yesterday . . . just saying.

I couldn’t find any visual evidence that any of the U.S. aircraft carriers ever utilized the ”jump strip” deck feature . . . just used the old reliable high tech steam catapult.

State-of-the-art Soviet Russkie military war machine prompted this babble . . . Putin is so yesterday.

If you want to better understand what’s going on with Putin’s Soviet Russian politics, lookup H. Makinder’s work on Heartland and the World Island (Democratic Ideals and Reality, 1919.). Inches

I

Mind Warp

Storyworth’s question of the week this week was: What have you changed your mind about over the years?

Hmmm . . . I’m thinking . . . I’m thinking . . . rewind stop rewind pause . . . yeh I got it . . . I used to be a hardcore “cowboy” . . . not the horsey kind . . . a renegade . . . a singleton . . . you know . . . like the Lone Ranger or Buck Rogers . . . self sufficient. . . had all the bases covered.

Mind change? Nothing actually . . .

But . . . at some point I realized that it was important to have backup . . . assets that I could source when the need arose . . . like equipment . . . info outside of my field of endeavor . . . like the man from Harvard said, “You need a goombah . . . a godfather.”

Enter TCAP . . . not the dragon (Bruce Lee) but The California Arts Project . . . T-C-A-P . . . the task of the Project was to develop a measurable curriculum for the 4 disciplines of “art” . . . dance theatre music and the visual arts . . . yep . . . no problem! EZPZ.

Wait a minute . . . there’s another aspect of the story . . . four more letters of the alphabet . . . R-I-M-S . . . acronym for Riverside Inyo Mono and San Bernardino . . . counties in the eastern ESE region of California . . . mountains desert and the “inland empire” (densely populated semi-civilized area).

So like I said, “EZPZ” cos I already had a lesson plan that addressed the issue . . . the abc’s of drawing.

20 educators representing the 4 artistic disciplines were selected from the four countries to develop measurable curriculum for the California Department of Education . . . the post hole diggers were of the opinion that you couldn’t measure the “arts” academically . . . you either “had it” or you didn’t . . . John or Jane Doe couldn’t be “taught” how to dance act sing or “draw” . . . they only could do things like spell read add subtract multiply divide cos we have “tests” for that! Proficiency tests . . . alphabetical A – F . . .

Around 1995 I developed a lesson plan to “teach” kids how-to-draw . . . my methodology was based the use of shapes lines the alphabet and color . . . Hokusai and a book published in 1940’s titled “Anyone Can Draw”.

Well anyway . . . on to what change occurred or dint . . . fast forward to the next to to the last session of the RIMS t-cup collaboration . . .

The FINALS!! . . . we had to present our academically measurable and scalable lesson plans . . . the lesson had to be adaptable for grades K thru 12 and for college level nerds.

Then came the “commercial” . . . part 2 of the “final”. . . we were divided into 5 groups of 4 people each . . . 5 X 4 equals 20 . . . right?

Well we weren’t “separated” into 5 groups we got to pick or choose a group . . . everyone scattered like chickens squawking and stepping on one another until we sorted ourselves into the necessary number of groups of people . . . my group consisted of me ‘n Julie . . . a guy in a wheelchair and another guy . . . . kinda like outlaws . . . social lepers . . . I don’t remember seeing the guy in the wheelchair during the meet-ups but there he was . . . then “they” . . . the review panel . . . they gave out the products that we would use for the “commercial” . . . we got box of Arm and Hammer baking soda . . . the other groups got detergent or household items . . . everyone was acting flustered and flapping about . . . but not us . . . theater guy in the wheelchair said, “I got the words . . .” Julie was just standing like a kindergarten teacher on yard duty and the mystery guest he dint say nothin’ kinda like the “tar baby” . . . y’all remember Uncle Remus? . . . so I said, “I got the song and dance.”

There was a time limit . . . 5 minutes to come up with an appropriate “jingle” . . . a bit of choreography and the voiceover . . . for a 60 second commercial . . . stage left . . . enter the song of the Volga Boatmen . . . duh . . . what else?

We had arm & hammer why not go for the hammer and sickle?

I substituted “arm and hammer” for “yo heave ho” and we (the chorus) raised our fists mimicking the big muscled arm logo the product box then swung our arms down like we were hammering . . . meanwhile the theater guy was spewing words touting the product.

We finished “designing” our commercial in three minutes . . . I raised my hand to let the panel know we were finished . . . theater guy was timing himself . . . the panel said, “You’re finished already?” looking a bit astonished . . .

When you got you got it and we had it by the short hairs . . . tight!

5 minute time period expired and the other groups were kicking and screaming for more time . . . needless to say since we had finished first we got to go first . . . yep . . . smoked those detail loving green jackets . . . our commercial made it in the 60 second time limit then we sat back and watched the show.

Funny how the four of us “knew” we were so compatible . . . but after being around each other or close proximity to one another we musta picked up the “vibe” and when we had to pick and choose it was like those magnetic dogs . . . positive negative polarity nose-to-tail no thought we just fucking “knew” where we belonged.

When you surround yourself with people who are assets and not Ph.D’s or CEO’s . . . the sky has no ceiling so it can’t fall . . . that’s what I learned . . . you can’t always do it all y’sef . . . of course . . . you still might have to take charge . . . be a cowboy like Rowdy Yates on that t.v. show “Wagon Train”. . .

You know “. . . head ‘em up move ‘em out.”

The RIMS TCAP experience gave me a new perspective on how to conduct “business” . . . changed my approach on how I handled situations . . . but like I said . . . you still gotta be a cowboy . . . sometimes . . . and nothing’s really changed ‘sep my POV.

Slava Ukraini!!