Man R. from Mars vs. Bertha Venus

Well, faithful readers, what may seem like a bit of diarrhea after a prolonged constipation is actually a fairly long-tinkered-with little piece, summing up much of what's been on the mind recently (as far as artistic musings are concerned). By no means is this a final word on any of the involved subjects, some of which I've discussed pretty lengthily on the blog. While I've bestowed what is likely my most obnoxious title to date on this creation (apologies to Mr. Boticelli), be sure that underneath the handful of puns is some meat to chew, which you'll have to do mostly unaided, at least for starters.

One quick note I'll share, is on the phrase "three on a match", found below, which is old-fashioned enough to likely be foreign to most modern readers. It's a superstition that says it's bad luck to light three cigarettes with one match, and though there are numerous rumors as to its origin, most place it around World War I. Supposedly the enemy could spot your location by the lighting of the first, aim the rifle by the second, and shoot the person lighting the third. Some rumors claim the whole saying was invented by a match manufacturer so he could sell more of his product. So we have a superstition that arose from either war or capitalism. As we move on to more ethereal matters, be warned that these two forces may poke their heads out at some point, as they always do, world without end.

UPDATED NOTE: It was only after rereading this a few times that I noticed that within this abstract battle of the sexes there appear to be some references to warfare, and economic matters. Of course, true to my nature, there's a bit of a slacker/defeatist quip at the end. I assure you that all of this was unconscious, and purely a manifestation of how all these seemingly unrelated matters are connected in the laissez-faire market of the mind.

***


MAN R. MARS vs. BERTHA VENUS

parade of motley bands around the blonde,
wrapped in streamers like a lace-stitched shoe;
pell-mell partials swarm this swan,
pearl harborin’ somethin’ secret--
a wad o’ wisdom ‘tween the teeth;
tempest in a d-cup,
busom and then some;
mind your pleas and cues,
three on a match made overused,
once entrenched with a
monkey’d ‘round wrench,
now back on the boneheap
while skins and cynics
reticent to give a red cent
cough up a long
and dwindling lode,
larceny in dey hearts
and bedlam on de brain
roll out a rare refrain:
If I Had A Hammock,
I’d Hang.


***

5000 Words

I know, this trip happened like over a month ago. Whatever. I'll spare you the Mt. Rushmore pics, as I don't know what I could show you that you probably haven't seen before. So here's some kitchy fun from Wall Drug, and if you don't know where or what that is, well, you'll just have to find out for yourself.

Pictures From The Road Strikes Back!

So we were driving along some smaller Wyoming highway, and had the urge to pull off to the side because we saw an easily accessible river. We descended a hill, and at the bottom were the remains of some kind of dwelling, as if the top half had been sliced off and removed, leaving only a below ground section. We ignored what we figured was an outdated No Tresspassing sign and continued down to the water for about 30 minutes of skipping stones exploring, getting our feet wet...little boy stuff. I wish I could entertain you with a story of some enraged property owner attacking us, or some other Deliverance-esque business, but it was just a peaceful afternoon under the sun where lesser poets would say something about heaven touching earth. You might grok a hint of what I'm talking about with the first pictures.

Next we have a lone picture from Buffalo, WY inside the Occidental Hotel. I can't even begin to tell you (a sentence starter that never fails to immediately negate itself) how amazing this place is. This place has been restored to a level of detail that's shocking. We hit the town before the high season and it was pretty dead, so the owner gave us a sweet deal on a couple of rooms. Supposedly we slept where Butch Cassidy once stopped for a night; possibly bullshit but it's no fun if you don't play along. There's a restaurant connected to the place where I had the best prime rib I've ever had in my life for like $25. I implore you to check out the website (www.occidentalhotel.com), and if you're ever passing through Wyoming you don't want to miss it.

The last three are pretty self-explanatory, but if you want captions, here goes: 1. You have to be THIS tall to ride Devil's Tower, 2. "Independence Day/Close Encounters of the Third Kind 2: These Colors Do NOT Run" (starring Will Smith), 3. Jesus Towers Over Devil's Tower--no contest.

At Long Last Pics...

From the top, two shots of Shoshonee Falls (Bigger than Niagra, Stronger than Viagra!) in Idaho (note the rainbow in pic #2), and a few from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, specifically an antler archway, the signage from some old-timey saloon, and Mr. Ryan the dead tree-hugger.

More to come. And FYI, Wyoming is now my new Second Favorite State (after the indisputable California at Number One).

News from the front...

Once again an apology for the lack of updates. I could blame it on the emotional freefall I've been in since learning that Gilmore Girls was coming to a close, but you know, it had run its course and resolved itself about as well as I had hoped, plus I'm a little too tough to let the future of a CW network television show affect my creative output (actually, Veronica Mars may be cancelled too as of Thursday morning, so maybe I should wait before making a bravado-filled statement I might regret).

Some serious computer problems out here in minneapolis, and I don't know if I'm going to be online with my computer the whole time I'm here (about 2 1/2 more weeks). Apparently my computer is too NEW to be compatible with the modem & wireless security at the place I'm subletting. Way to go, Apple. That's what nearly $2000 gets you. Oh, my 90-day tech support window is over already too? Unless I want pay $350 to extend my warranty and regain the right to hear some Indian operator posing under a fake American name type what I'm saying into their own help software and stall me with pre-scripted babble (personally I would feel in better hands if they used their own names; the smartest kid when I was in elementary school--let me rephrase that to allow for my younger self, who was able to get much further ahead with little effort--the second smartest kid when I was in elementary school was named Deepak, and I know if it was him instead of "John" on the other end of the line I wouldn't be so skeptical). Alright, maybe it was Qwest, the ISP, who was outsourcing the help line jobs, but allow me a little poetic license in combining the two corporate brick walls I just hit, for pete's sake.

What this all means is no pictures, which, let's face it, is a great way to not have to sit down and actually write something on a regular basis. Since I just spent the most part of a week driving across the Great American West, I was hoping to share some of the visual record from said trek, and I assure you there's some great stuff scattered among the typical Me In Front of Mount Rushmore shots (there's actually a Me Appearing To French Kiss George Washington's Profile shot, but I'm sure that's been done a million times as well, no offense Martha).

Do you want to see me ride a 6-foot-tall jackalope? Or Ryan's face in the cut-out hole of a squaw, holding a papoose? Yeah, well, you're going to have to wait. Unless you all want to pitch in to pay for my AppleCare package (if I knew there were more than 5 people reading this blog I'd try to start one of those Everyone Just Donate A Dollar For My Insignificant Unnecessary Purchase That Somehow Becomes a Noble Quest Because I'm Shamelessly Throwing Myself On The Mercy Of The Masses And I'll Have Enough To Get It things that some girl used to pay her way through college or whatever). I guess that only happens if you absent-mindedly lose or break something important so your friends feel bad and pitch in to buy a new one for you (right, Alexis?).

Some would say, hey, you have a work computer you share with a guy who's now gone most of the time hanging out with his girlfriend, so what's the big deal? You still have internet access. Well, I'll tell you. I do a lot of downloading. I'm not sure if I should say it's porn so the music and television industries won't come after me, or admit to being the kind of guy who scours torrent sites in hopes of tracking down fragments of his past (hey, someone uploaded that cartoon I saw once when I was 8! I guess I have to spend 3 days and 1.5 gigs of memory getting all 24 episodes of it, even though I'm either [a] never going to watch all of them, if any or [b] be totally disappointed about how shitty it is compared to what I remember). Take your pick; I can't win.

Others would say, maybe this is a sign to stop spending so much time online, and actually use your computer to write something constructive, like another screenplay you won't do anything with, or a script for one of those short films you keep talking about making but never do.

Hey, great idea.

While we're on the subject...

I'm not going to pretend that this post isn't a placeholder of sorts...I had hoped to be updating more often, and still plan to, but I bit off a lot last week (as you can see from the previous post), and frankly I'm still masticating on that one. The fact that said action rhymes with "procrastinating" should be regarded as a coincidence and nothing more.

I also can't deny that religion has been on the brain a bit lately. And it seems to me that no matter how much I protest, the audience is going to surmise that one is preoccupied. Honestly, it never has been a big part of my life since I came of age and called into question the things I had been taught, which also were beliefs that my parents appeared to be taking for granted and not overtly passionate about. Sure enough, when I revealed to my father that I simply wasn't interested in taking any more religious classes (I was just entering high school at the time) or attending any communal services, he didn't put up any kind of noticeable fight. At the time he was busy taking care of (and worrying about) my increasingly sick mother, so I imagine retaining me as one of god's warriors wasn't too high on his priority list. Perhaps his own beliefs had been called into question and he didn't feel hypocritical enough to ask me to reconsider.

At any rate, I am eternally thankful for his understanding and/or lack of energy, and not in the way that I'm thankful I was indulged as a child, which has certainly turned out to be more of a double-edged sword. It was the first step towards exploring many of my preconceived notions, and forming my own set of beliefs, which I hope have become more flexible as I've grown older. A favorite quote of mine is one from TImothy Leary: "You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind." That's something I always try to keep in mind when I find myself growing intolerant of certain things. Now that doesn't mean I'm going to be a born-again christian next week; it's about being open and available to anything that might come down the pike.

So despite my aversion in my adult life to any kind of dogmatic system I've found myself reading a lot of literature lately that deals with people's beliefs, the way that people act on them (or fail to), and how it shapes their lives. A few in particular are Philip K. Dick's The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, and Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy (as of this date the first two installments, Fifth Business and The Manticore). You would be hard-pressed to find a subject that illuminates the human condition as well as this one, and it never ceases to be fascinating regardless of how much of it you think is hogwash or a crutch for self-actualization.

In closing, I'd like to share with you a piece that I wrote a few years ago, which isn't from any particular well of inspiration save for the fact that I needed new material for an open mic I was performing at that evening. You will note that this work references both christianity and communist China, the idea being that these are both institutions which have strayed from their original, pure intentions, and how much so is in the eye of the beholder.

***

THE FLOWER AND THE GLORY

oh when the saints come parched and thin
there's a canteen sip for each sun-baked sin;
all good things must come to a bend,
the hump on the back of the camel skin

she mumbles out the feather-pen writ
cabalist incantations,
nothing more tragic than misspelled magic;
the croak of desperate desert vespers

she takes the paperwhites outside
to overdose on natural light
like incinerated astronauts
in welcome home atmosphere,
ashen scent on the breeze

she snaps a malade stalk
and thinks of Youth in Asia;
tanks for nothing--
scars on the stars in the city square;
root out the rats and their last caveats,
the hammer and sickly banner

all year-plans rolled up and stored away;
varied degrees of internal decay
betray a hemisphere of flying
in the falter of marches and churches;
the withered remains of growing pains--
deaf throes of the flower and the glory.

***

This one's a doozy...

The other day I asked some of my female friends through email to give me their thoughts on a particular biblical passage. This wasn't to inspire any kind of religious discussion, but to help me flesh out a character for a femme-centric piece I'm writing. I stumbled across this section of scripture when I Wikied "Song of Solomon" a.k.a. "The Song of Songs". I know a little about this psalm because Sergio Leone quoted it in his 1984 film Once Upon a Time in America, a particular favorite of mine. Some of the words from this display of adoration are read in the film by a very young (I'm guessing around 13 years old, and surprisingly effective) Jennifer Connelly, to a boy whose character is also played by Robert DeNiro in two different time frames. This cinematic aside doesn't necessarily (we'll get to that later) have anything to do with what I'm working on, but I thought I'd mention it. BTW, Once Upon... also features what I believe to be one of the 2 or 3 greatest film scores ever composed, this one by Ennio Morricone. It's hard to hear his music and not be inspired to do SOMETHING.

I'm going to post this quote from the Song of Songs below, and note that I simply asked my friends for a reflexive reaction, as women, to the words, in any kind of form.

Here you go:

**

The watchmen who patrol the city found me: "Have you seen him whom my soul loves?"

I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had hidden and was gone; my soul went out when he spoke; I sought him, but found him not; I called him, but he did not answer me.

**

Continuing along this chain of events, someone in the house today had turned on Antiques Roadshow, and one of those weird appraisal dudes was looking at a painting by Alphonse Mucha, and though the work was titled "Job", it featured a woman.



I Wikied the artist and linked to a gallery of his work, thinking maybe there would be an image that reflected the aforementioned excerpt from the S.O.S. I found a couple forlorn women (a common subject in the medium, I know), but the one that stood out was a poster advertising an actress playing Joan of Arc.



And I thought, as Joan was crazed from her visions that she was unable to fully explain or gain sympathy for, such is the plight of the woman roaming the city looking for her love in the S.O.S. And just as Joan was eventually burned at the stake for her words, deeds, and beliefs, I'll surprise you by mentioning that there's a continuation to the lines from the S.O.S. (which I excluded for conciseness, and what I believed at the time was a lack of relevance to my own ideas), and here they are:

**

The watchmen who patrol the city found me; they smote me and wounded me; the watchmen of the walls took my jewelry off me.

**

Interesting, huh? Again, I'm not interested in any kind of bible study, or trying to form some kind of DaVinci Codesque conspiracy theories about Joan acting out lines from the S.O.S., but the underlying credo in my artistic endeavors (and view of the universe) is that everything really is connected, somewhere down there. When I write verse, it's coming from a deep subconscious pool of thoughts and ideas that all swim together in the same water. They don't discriminate. Usually our conscious minds call these things forth in particular orders and patterns; when you speak to your friends you don't blurt out run-on sentences in stream of consciousness fashion (well, maybe Bob Dylan used to). But when you paint, or play music, or write verse, or whatever, you have the option of opening that gate, that filter, and letting it all out at once. It's hard for many people to do this. Some use L.S.D. I consider myself lucky. One could take this a step further and imagine being able to harness the information of the Collective Unconscious (you can Wiki that one yourself for a little Jungian treat), but this post has become pretentious and out-there enough so I'll just bring it all back home:

If Job is the man that god tested personally, and Joan is one whose beliefs were tested, theoretically, in a less direct fashion by god, than it seems they have a lot in common. There's a jumping off point here for a discussion of religion and gender, but it's not what I'm interested at this moment. For now I'm content to let these images and words stew a bit and see what comes out. Combined with what some of you have already given to me, it's good stuff.

Thanks for sharing, and letting me share. Feel free to discuss below, be you male, female, or somewhere in-between, and I'll certainly participate.