Prognosticatory Anxiety...... In August of 2005......... On April 4, 2009 he died of heart disease.........

Aug,  19, 2005....from correspondence:      Steven called this afternoon.  After drug dosage changes, his heart is beating normally.  His heart is so good---I wish it were more perfectly formed.    I will see Steven tomorrow, as usual.  Maybe some macrobiotic food this weekend with no caffeine, nicotine or quarts of milk or gallons of vanilla iced cream 'here' for him......

I've spoken with Steven a dozen times.  He sounds almost Blaise' about his arrhythmia--what stamina to endure days of 150bpm!  I would be dead.  Hopefully,  the body mechanics in Floyd County will, again, make temporizing  reparations.  Feeling really emotional about all this and the countless other issues about me, I'm trying to avoid tailspin and fragmentation--

if that is possible.  Yet, particles of truth shower on my illusions.  

addendum:   Later, when Steven came by to spend the weekend with me, I mentioned to him that he should, perhaps, give up some of his 'bad habits'....like 'marlboro man' smoking...which he had  lied to me about having 'quit'...which he lied to me about having 'lightened up rather than 'lighting up'"' and chain-pot-smoking....and  whiskey-drinking. ...He became agitated and angry, returned to his van and drove back to Adairsville......We did not speak again until a few days before his son Branton...then, my godson.....was to leave for England to attend the University of Manchester.........  After I agreed to pony up the funds to pay Branton's tuition and called my old friend, and Steven's, Bill Mello, who was now living in London, Steven showed up to fetch the money for the 'London Adventure'......which would, of course, compel him to work even more arduous hours, installing irrigation systems for KES Misting......to get out from under constant financial strain.....So..no rest for the weary!........     On April 4, 2009, Steven died!    Afterwards, the death spiral of my relationship with his widow and son led to a vortex of guilt and shame....a Black Hole, into which all my connections to Steven's wife, son and sister were sucked into oblivion........   Even now, in 2019.....there has been no resolution, as I am the only person who wants to resolve any of this anxiety......So....it persists, since alleviation and consolation take more than words on a condolence card or standing, sadly, in black, at a gravesite.....So often, the wake of a Storm is anger....that demolished what was left in the aftermath....The carpet of Life on skeleton underpinnings is bumpy with the underlying detritus of denial and rationalization.    

The Last Attempt at Emotional Correspondence........To No Reply....

 i was just watching the "dance" scene from a film adaptation of an 18th C. Novel.   ....... the conversation is both polite and telling...... direct, yet distant.... another time, in which i would be more comfortable....... and you, i think.... i am such an obsolete device of nature......and, frustrated, cast aspersions to the deaf and the blind, who, diverted by simpler conceits, beg the answers in the questions.......fallal reason insuring the needed delusions.....i have lost your parents.....soon, they will be quite distant.....must life be such a catered affair, with each guest bringing the old, dead arrangements from ancient parties? sigh! i hope that you and i do not drift apart, as we have not yet established a foundation that would support the types of relationship that either of us would prefer......a tip of the hat is for passerbys on the boulevards of civilized society......i prefer a telling glance, forever renewed by change of course and the redirection of dreams by the truths of Life..... as maddening as this way of life can be... sometimes i am Shelly's Prometheus, drifting into the endless enigma of this temporal jungle; yet, in a second, and for one, i see the all that is and nothing more.....i have my eyes wide open, though somewhat near-sighted by age; my ears tuned to the timbre of voice, yet listening to the lark's calling and the titmouse in the berry bush...... the great, voracious birds circle, eying my stumbling, and still i tip-toe across the River on stones left by those who went before........instructions, written on the wind, blow 'bout the world of dreaming and i awaken where i was before the world changed.....i've lost the sextant and must travel by intuition.........i've heard tell of a golden compass......... the magic stones, lost in the pool of an ancient waterfall..... the maps hidden in an uncharted desert........of gods in the clouds, on mountains and far away.........but, i was told in a dream from who knows where......that all we need to know is embedded within the helix changed with countless mix..........today, the sunlight draws the crocus and hyacinth into the cool air, then the cactus blooms of summer, the musty autumn and then the frozen realms beyond, from which the breath of tomorrow emerges.......

Exactly, by a timer, Eight Years Ago, with no referential recollection

The roads keep changing......

we go on to our final destinations, 

the sets changing...

morphing from our inner callings....

Reflections at the Tomb of Thomas Holley Chivers......

After the strangest dream......in which Edgar Allen Poe was mind-wrestling with Thomas Holley Chivers over a sing-song poem in archaic trochaic octameter, as Poe....floating on opium or laudanum.....bemoaning his teen-romance....whined for brandy and bucks from his rich doctor-friend......This was, oddly enough, sorta inspirational enough to check out Chivers' gravesite at the nearby Decatur Cemetery.......at which, I noted that his burial stones were eerily identical to my great great Grandfather's......who....again, oddly enough.....died about the same time......(another exercise in 'not quite random association'.....that I call, neologistically, 'percolative coloration') Since few have even heard of T.H., I'll post one of his metronomic poems:

"As an egg, when broken, never

Can be mended but must ever

Be the same crushed egg forever—

So shall this dark heart of mine

Which, though broken, is still breaking,

And shall nevermore cease aching

For the sleep which has no waking—

For the sleep which is now thine."

Thomas Holley Chivers

Chivers' greatest work......and that's saying a lot.....was "required reading" when I was a sophomore at The Agrarian Univeristy....Vanderbilt, in Nashville....a half century ago......"Allegra Florence, in Heaven" ...or something like that...... The Professor's Punishment was to have to read some wordy drivel like Chivers' pre-Civil War 'opus': "The Death of the Devil, A Serio-Ludicro, Tragico-Comico, Nigero-Whiteman Extravaganza" or just turn some pages to Dante Gabriel Rossetti's poetic ramblings....... I thought all this 'stuff' really silly.....but the seque from Poe and Chivers.....and Rossetti...and Swinburne.....finally dumped me on the steps of T.S. Elliot and D.H. Lawrence....... The Moral of this Rambling: Look at all the birds in the trees.....otherwise, how would you know which one is the most beautiful....... OR Sometimes one must swim in muddy waters to appreciate the crystal springs...... OR If you think you've seen it all.......Look Again!

Beneath the Glued-down Cover Story

Reading the bound blackbook that I sent 'Charles' in 1968....the hundred pages, written on the IBM Selectric.....the pages began to fall from the volume...pages that had been scotch-taped over the more revealing pages, written before....now 'beneath'.....a representation of conscious repression.....with fading ink on decomposing paper......I remembered neither of the 'storylines' However, isn't this the definition of 'repression'?   .......forgetting, then forgetting the forgotten?  The brittle yellow tape, having released the 'underneath' from the ablative conjuring, masking the shame of confessional exploratory.....

TEATIME .......

Those thin, super soft blankets from China have a new use.....for warmth...and for 'blind' tea-tasting.......I offered 6 different teas, from many tea plantations......serving it to 'under cover' tea drinkers......there was no correlation between cost and preference........drinkers chose by aroma, even more than palate sensation......

The Only Dance There Is......

Walking past a 'strip mall shopping row' with a 'see-through' window lineup of folks, i a row, wearing earbuds, watching themselves cycling or 'rowing' or lifting weights in full-wall mirrors......I imagined much more exotic 'exercise routines'.....that would be far more 'connected' to the Natural World.........rather than the self-imposed 'group' isolation that seems to prevail.......How about 'stretching' or 'yoga' to the sounds of a bronze rain drum? The 'New Age' is over.....Perhaps, we are now in The ‘age of intelligence dissipation’ to the sounds of hip-hop, blaring from open car windows.......drivers, pounding its rhythms on steering wheels.....

Pin the metaphoric tail of subconscious anxieties on the image of prejudicial expectations, then...under the disguise of self-righteous moral determinism.....thrust it through its heart with your sword of "justice"....you will be lauded by those who wade, ankle-deep, in their own morass of posturing illusions, in the perpetual sustaining of entropic denial and formalized conceits.....

Stationary 'moving'......'grown up' finger-painting with assist from digital photo-manipulation........a cup of java later......Art for Shallow Breathing.......

"adulting' the 'child-scribbling'.......colored inks between sheets of plastic......

Lindsay Kemp and David Bowie, in an early collaboration

a rainy afternoon with Lindsay Kemp and David Bowie......after a friend that I met in 1970 called her friends and asked 'who will kill me?'.......Well, that friend is still kicking around, after all these years........Ironically, I called her this afternoon to ask how she was 'doing', after hearing that her husband had open-heart surgery.......she replied, without hesitation, 'I still wish I were dead.....Who will kill me? What happened to Riot Squad?'...as though she were completing a statement she had made almost half a century ago......Then, she handed the phone to her husband, who asked "who're talking with?"....She replied, "I don't remember......"

"The struggle of Detachment, for the Illusion of Freedom"

REFLECTIONS FROM THE INNER MEMORY BANKS, AFTER VIEWING "JACKIE".........

Viewing Natalie Portman's very Darren Aronofsky-inspired portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy.....as 'Jackie' Kennedy......in Pablo Larraín's Film, JACKIE.......many emotions that I felt, still an 18-year old......even remembering where I was seated during Dr. Alexander Marchant's very philosophical history lecture that was attended by my entire freshman class.....800....and, within months, to be honed to 300 by attrition, by inattention, immaturity and sybaritic social immersion.......As our lecturer was predicting, based on his familiarity with the perpetual tides of aspirative mediocrity......Two days later, the school was left for disinfecting as it's cast of 'we know it all, already' students, by habituation and under cultural and social pressures, both real and perceptual, left for their various holidays of feasting and gift-giving.....seemingly, oblivious to what had happened in Texas, just a few days before.......Watching "JACKIE" jolted my aging memory banks that still seem to be packed with details....both visual and emotional......that were now recombinant chemical restructuring, unconscious constructs....pulling my mind and behavior, conceptualizations and unprocessed Art......as my mind's painting and re-painting the details of memory, that it remain...for reconsideration....for further-processing......even to introduce cautionary avoidance sub-routines like avoiding traveling in a downtown 'street parade'.....looking into the upper windows of Macy's and The Polaris Room for the glint of sunlight on a steel barrel.......Dr. Marchant wept, with a countenance of hopelessness, as he broke from his 'lecture' to tell the mostly oblivious 'freshmen' of the tragic event..........Why do I remember what I was wearing that day, and where and by whom I sat? I have forgotten, already, entire months of my Life, that my brain has re-stitched and edited-for-content; and, I've forgotten, already, what I was wearing 72 hours ago........

THE AFTERTHOUGHTS OF HAVING WATCHED TOM HARDY'S MOVIE, "VENOM"......

KILLING THE EYE

At 6, i became aware of the variations in individual's interpretations of sensory information and how these variations from the mean create eccentrics like myself. A few years later i discovered that my eyes did not focus very acutely upon objects more than a yard away, although my close range focus was extraordinary. i was amazed, when my vision had been "corrected" by the intricacies of Nature at greater than arm's length. i continued to avoid interactions with other children whom i considered boisterous and undisciplined...and therefore.....unthinking dangerous and volatile. it seemed that the surfaces of things were extreme and the depths unfathomable. of course, i did not..at that time....either have the vocabulary to shape my thoughts in such a way that i could play back my interpretations or the confidence to believe that my take on what seemed to be happening around me could be any more "true" than the preconceptions of others that formed the context of my education in Life. I did not know about the sub-species called artists or those labeled intellectuals or those who lived lives as instinctual as those of birds. I was wary of the impulses that were genetically driven and that seemed to bypass ethical or moral considerations and wanted only to cast aside the predestinations of learned patterns of both perception and thought......But then....I was only 7 by then, and had only a few clues to go by.....

Opium by Jesse Manno

CONFORMITY ISSUES --- OR, RATHER, THE LACK OF THEM

Surrounded by at least 800 carefully "Brooksbrothered" classmates while in college, I gravitated...stylistically.....toward the Mod/Beatnik 'couture' fashionabiity....and, eventually, to the "who gives a fu&k'ness' of my half-century post 22 or so Years....i.e. dress as you feel......To me....both of 'these' looks are pretty much the same exercises in conformity......to Fashionably stylish, confused meaninglessness of the Beckett Hareish Symboloids, or the Conservative programatic Conformity of the Nathaniel Elliot Worthington III's.....from the shape-shifting trend emulators to the politically-shifting fashion-masked congresses of lawyers ......

On Perishing

Although that is an inevitability,

it is not in my immediate Life Design,

yet.....although a reason that I am rather hermetic is insulatory.....

Interaction between and among Humans is, by our Nature, stressful......

I am reading poetry today......the shorthand of prosaic sentiment....in which only the nakedness of creative interpretation is visible....Scraping the dried blood of poets from the cell walls of Memory late last night............re-reading Arthur Rimbaud's A Season In Hell and The Drunken Boat, a poem written when he was 16.... the 'time' in a man's Life when he either jumps his skin or collapses into it, like the shed integument of Michelangelo, falling from it's flat surface, far above us, unnoticed by those preoccupied  with the touching fingers' meaningfulness.....

RELATIONAL DATABASES AND END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT PROTOCOLS

The mantra of every experienced web application developer is the same: "thou shalt separate business logic from display", in such a manner that leaves the 'end user' practically oblivious to the personal data compromise agreement to which he will, often....before utilizing a website or program....even before 'utilizing' an informational website.....even before viewing pop icons' goings on in the peripheral media 'news'.......even before being 'permitted' to view potential online purchasing!....; steering billions of needy information/data/material/social consumers to, with little analytical thinking, to quickly 'agree', then move 'on' to their potential goals and etheric destinations within football field sized gigacomputer servers thousands of miles from the immediacy of their often random, unspecific and relatively important inquiries...... 

Perspicuity In The Penumbra

Reading that the amateurish Sunday afternoon paintings...some irony there.....of Adolf Hitler, failed to 'sell' at auction recently......and considering.... that I could purchase the beautiful work, below..top, , for tens of bucks.....and have other 'pieces' by its creator.....; that the manipulated photographic print, below..center, just sold for $4,300,000.00 at a snooty Prestigious Auction........and that I just lined a kitchen drawer with my own "art" ....at bottom....because it matched the plastic silverware drawer liner.......now fulfilling some pragmatically practical purposefulness....Time to 'check out' the 'Art Scene" in Dubai! Last night, after an almost sleepless night, having consumed vast quantities of chocolate and coffee...too late in the day......in lieu of deep, comatose slumber, phantasmagorical images, flirting with my semi-consciousness, left bits and pieces of scraps from my brain's 'underground' storage facilities....like subterranean caverns, producing deliciously piquant moldy cheeses to mix with the morning's fresh fruit and French pastries..... The events of yesterday, fresh to the forge, coating and containing the effusiveness of interpolative memory, dislodged from their 'sticking place' before being 'filed away' with the billions of words and images that have yet to ascertain their value to my Waking Life.......

Loss of Innocence

Is this when playful oblivion darkens to fixation on the labors of Life?

"a view from the other side.....the introduction of The Interbank Card"..... 1966....

Then, I graduated from 'college' to live in the World of Plastic Money and the Credit Prestige of borrowing, the Gold Standard reproduced as the double-knits of synthetic funding and smiling, delusional Consumerism that was initiated twenty years before........no amount of selenium can tone this picture......for there's no silver in the emulsion, now.....much less, Gold.....

The Interbank Card Transition to Play Money

 

"a view from the other side.....the introduction of The Interbank Card"..... 1966….

 Then, I graduated from 'college' to live in the World of Plastic Money and the Credit Prestige of borrowing, the Gold Standard reproduced as the double-knits of synthetic funding and smiling, delusional Consumerism that was initiated twenty years before........no amount of selenium can tone this picture......for there's no silver in the emulsion, now.....much less, Gold.....

Concerto in B minor for 4 violins, RV 580 - Vivaldi

Brilliant Art is forever 'Brilliant'.......

Overlays of Interpretations of others' imaginative projections

it's a bear, it's a cougar......no....it's not Superman, or even Ernest Hemingway......just the cosmic conundrum that I am, this morning......picking up the pieces of the puzzle that will create today.....a theme of sequestration and geniality against a background of interstellar noise and closer synaptic synergism......without the realms of the imaginations of others.......but, manifest though their imagined consciousness.....We are as much what others imagine us to be as what or whom we express ourselves as......

Robyn as seen by Jonathan,,,,,,on the screen and through the viewfinder

missing Jonathan Demme today.......and, wondering what's with Robyn now......with all the watering of Les Fleurs du mal right now........is two cups of coffee just too much! Now, I feel like I have hair in places where most people don't have brains! Rebel...Rebel..... all those molecules of time that you thought you'd shed forever, haven't gone anywhere, have they? Maybe, they just 'faded away'.......out of mind....but still tugging at the waves of consciousness........Yet...that is just the beginning of the Story, isn't it? Now.....to organize all the words into the illusions of Art.......But first, let's go thundering!