sincerity is a lifestyle Michael Smoler
I stumbled. And wept.
I lost my balance.
Climbed onto the train,
headed for California.
the land I’d dreamed of
since childhood
my good friend David
“he’s on the beam, man”
we’re all on the beam this week
riding the energy created by
Psychedelic Shaman Homie High Silk Purse
the Holy Trinity of the Bay Area
July 17, 2004
“That’s so nice, ‘cause I was thinking about you, too,
you must have been pickin’ up on my waves.”
Shadow of a Doubt about the significance of Charles M. Schulz
July 18
Why, you ought to be able teach any
reasonably attentive 12-year-old child
to speak iambic pentameter in about an
hour. So what’s so great about writing it?
Michael McClure
Judy: “Forgot to have a moment of silence for the troops
This morning. It’s a scary scary world we live in.”
in the car we discuss the work of
Brakhage, Vonnegut, & King
in San Francisco they say “the men are beautiful
and the women are handsome”
feed David his first-ever gelato
outside Maria’s Italian Pastry
where a young Chinese-American woman
in a pink angora sweater
black-and-white checked skirt
and fuck-me boots
recounts her entire sexual history
for her girlfriend, giggling
about how she made her boyfriend
beg for weeks before
she let him put it in her ass
but amazingly, she tells all of this
without naming the act
preferring to employ
some esoteric form
of vapid chick code
Michael commands me: “Don’t talk to any publishers.
You’re shooting way too low.”
outside U.S. Restaurant
drunken woman in long blue dress mutters
“Fucking Chinaman owns this place,” sees me:
“I love you.”
I love you, too
San Francisco
As we drive through the fog
on the Golden Gate Bridge:
“This is totally existential.
This is film noir.”
“It was because of that bitch.
It was because of that bitch
in the Mercedes.”
finally make the pilgrimage to City Lights
climb the stairs to the Poetry Room
the space in which Dave feels
the holiness resides
discuss the hierarchy of shelf position
descend the stairs into the main room where
David has found my words in the pages
of eye-rhyme and Rain Taxi
July 19
It was like a real funky little town you know
And the whole town was partying
And I don’t know why
I was just digging these kids
I think they were like rainbow people kind of kids
And I was digging it, it was so cool you know
And some of these guys and chicks
With their beautiful dreads
I didn’t use to dig it
But now I’m digging white kids with dreads
And that deconstructed schoolgirl look
Natty girls wearing plaid mini-skirts so ironically
Man those torn-up pantyhose get me off…
And then there was this guy
I swear there was this guy
He was walking down the street
He was about 7 ft tall
He had his hair done up in a dozen little pigtails
At least 7 ft tall
He was a white guy I don’t know
He looked like he could have been yellow or green or blue
He’s wearing a red kimono
And he’s glowing I mean dude is glowing!
I just wanted to run up and follow this guy
I wanted to know who he was…
July 20
Rikki Ducornet came in a vision
July 21
sitting on a leather couch next to
the shaman
minimalist, expansive
generous, challenging
curandero with the stare of an eagle
who tells us that Stan’s mind was
too large for hallucinogens:
“Some people shouldn’t do drugs.”
a transmission occurs
with friends like these
time becomes malleable
elastic, impermanent
July 22
Radio interview with Mayor Jerry Brown, KGO 810 AM, 8:20 am: “So Linda Ronstadt likes Michael Moore? The thing [Fahrenheit 9/11] is very polarizing. . . it’s the RED, RAW, MEAT. Here in Oakland, people were screaming with enthusiasm over the movie. But I guess if you’re in Vegas, and you’re taking people’s money, you’ve got to tell them what they want to hear.”
“everything has changed
I understand what poetry is about”
“Man, I don’t even wanna think about the last time I was in Paris.”
That’s a spiritual reality.
It’s a psychic thing.
You gotta open your mind to it.
It’s the sixth dimension.
July 23
“I like it hotter than Carlos. We’ve always gotten along good, but hot sauce has always been a bone of contention.”
I don’t know.
I might just go off tonight.
On Tuesday, maybe we could go to the Asian mall
and pick up some Asian snacks.
July 24
That Kraut is kinda scary.
“We need a fucking good map of San Francisco!”
Talk about a genius.
He was the beam.
He was on the beam.
He was beamin’.
SQUAT & GOBBLE
CAFÉ & CREPERY
A seal head bobbing
up and down in the
San Francisco Bay.
Are you my Daddy?
Harrison Street Chant
Get the Amish girls, man.
Get the Amish girls running.
Why are they running?
Where are they going, man?
Get the Amish girls, man.
Get the Amish girls coming.
Don’t worry. The Amish girls
know who they are.
The Amish girls are coming all together.
July 25
“You’re beyond Hermann Hesse. I’m giving you an A in
Herman Hesse and move on.”
“This is it. Tell me if you don’t think this is cookin’.
They don’t call him Woody for nothin’.”
Judy: “The Lawrence Welk dancers are hopping now. The point is that it’s the Lawrence Welk gang that ruined this music. That’s the point.”
“Woody Allen and Woody Herman, ya know? It’s double the wood, man.”
Girl in Dollar Tree, Healdsburg:
“I like the two-party system. I party on Friday night. I party on Saturday night. Good system.”
in some cases the shaman was nuts
but they were still the shamans
it’s all in the same bag
it all comes from the same place
sexual perversion only exists in industrialized society
the result is a nation of perverts
July 26
I guess you could say
we all have some diva divinity in us,
but it just manifests itself in different ways.
July 27
Vesuvio
Columbus Ave, SF
waiting for A.D. Winans
11:00 am
“Michelangelo coulda done Britney Spears.”
“$170 knife.”
“She didn’t speak English but she wasn’t afraid of nothing.”
“This is the finest city I’ve ever been in in my life.”
“Pulled out his fucking egg. That’s marvelous. It’s his little nervous egg. You could live here for years and never encounter one of those. He gave it to the little girl and she loved it.”
“They’re like ben-wa balls.”
“God bless John Riley.”
“Now I gotta pretend to be responsible.”
“You have to have a fly swatter, and you have to have a fan.”
“You’re kidding me. I love it.”
“Where you gonna go?”
“Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. But I can’t afford to live here anymore.”
“Look at this, this billionaire has to go to prison, can you believe it?”
“She thought she was above it.”
“Wrong again. Here’s the guy with the clippers.”
“Like a cheap suit. Like shit on a baby’s blanket. You can’t get baby shit off a blanket.”
“I’m so sick of CNN. Every 15 minutes it’s the same fucking news.”
“ABC does the same thing, just repeat the fucking news, ‘cause I guess people look in, and they look away.”
“Guy’s a flying fucking asshole.”
“Fuck him and fuck Don Johnson, too.”
“I’m a bartender. Don’t fuck with me, I’ll fuck you up. . . . I’m no starfucker. You’re famous? So what, so’s my Mom.”
11:50 am
“No poets here, we’re novelists!”
“How hard does the old rock get? Stick around!”
“There are three bars under here. Three bars that I know about. But this is good shit. The Chinese don’t fuck around.”
“Does anyone have a cigarette I can borrow? Someone depraved me of my tobacco. They used to have a cigarette machine right over here. Now they’ve got all this Socialist propaganda.”
“Disaster, divorce.”
“By this afternoon I’m probably gonna be unconscious.”
“That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“No, unconscious is not one of my desires. I prefer to be awake.”
“Willy takes this voluptuous, Rubenesque, Junoesque heifer – a lotta meat to the hoof – back to his place. . . . .”
“Grabbin’ the wrong tits, huh?”
“No, I’m grabbin’ the right ones, I just don’t know what to do with them. When I was 35, and with a girl, I was pleasuring her with my mouth, and she said, ‘What are you doing down there?’ It was humiliating, but at least I learned to know what I’m doin’.”
July 28
Jazz is in the moment because of the idea
of improvisation. It is like life. Unless you
are in the moment, you are not fully
experiencing what’s happening around you.
- Susan Muscarella
Dad’s down for the Geisha
“they were gandernecking at that wreck”
Hoyt Axton: “You’ve got a pork chop coming”
Yerba Buena.
It means “beautiful grass,” man.
some of that good earth
still has a ghastly smell “oh sheep shit”
it’s fine, it’s fillin’ the hole
Chinatown, just the way I always pictured it.
great to meet Rabbit
it’s a self-orienting thing, OK?
“You can be a scoffing disbeliever,
but you weren’t there, in the
presence of the Man.”
Last night in San Francisco
Blowout tears the roof off
on Stockton between Green & Union
even breaking off some Mingus
to send me home with
homeless guy in the middle of the street screams at a young couple
“how can you be in love when you offer the poor a cookie?”
but when I hand him 23 cents, he throws it to the ground
“Ingrate!”
and after the show actually has the balls to ask me for change again
when I remind him who I am, he holds up an obscene phallic object:
“Wanna lick?”
Thursday, July 29
In the freezer you’ll find in a can
Some leftover Moo Goo Gai Pan
- Nancy Kwan, singing “Fan Tan Fanny”
from Flower Drum Song
moments after waking
David and I discuss set and setting:
“Wash your underwear and eat fish tacos?
That’s obscene!”
Judy: “on that baldheaded man’s head”
this is feelin’
really righteous in the hole
I got this thing
and it was a nightmare
it was a monstrosity
“we’ve gotta work on our handholding”
what’s that word for fear of clowns?
I think I’m having it right now
GODDESS IS PORTHOLE
that’s my woman…
