My Little Looking Glass

self portrait

2006-02-07T17:27:00.000-05:00

NOT A CARAVAN OF DESPAIR

2005-04-22T13:47:00.000-04:00

The following poem was given to me by a fascinating practitioner of the aesthetic, British actor Robert Lloyd, no doubt after I had failed grandly at some thing or another.

I enjoy reading it often. The author’s name, Mowlana Jalaluddin Rumi, stands for Love and ecstatic flight into the infinite. Rumi is one of the great spiritual masters and poetical geniuses of mankind and was the founder of the Mawlawi Sufi order, a leading mystical brotherhood of Islam.

He was born in Wakhsh (Tajikistan) in 30 September 1207 to a family of learned theologians. Escaping the Mongol invasion and destruction, Rumi and his family traveled extensivly in the Muslim lands, performed pilgrimage to Mecca and finally settled in Konya, Anatolia, then part of Seljuk Empire.

If there is any general idea underlying Rumi's poetry, it's the absolute love of God. His influence on thought, literature and all forms of aesthetic expression in the world of Islam cannot be overrated. And, he remains an inspirational poet today.

Here's the poem Bob Lloyd gave me on one of my dark days:

Come.

Come, whoever you are,
Wanderer, worshiper, lover of learning,
It doesn’t matter.

Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times.
Come, come yet again.

Come.
____________________________________________________.

THE SACRED WAY

2005-04-22T12:42:00.000-04:00

This poem by Angelos Sikelianos sat me right down; and, opened my mind right up.

Through the new wound that fate opened in me
I felt the setting sun piercing my heart,
like the sudden surge of the wave
entering through a gash
in a ship rapidly sinking
or at last that evening,
like a man long sick who first comes out
to milk life from the outside world,
I was a solitary walker on the road
that starts from Athens,
and has Eleusis as its sacred goal,
for this road always was for me
Like the road of the soul…flowing
like a great manifest river:
wagons slowly drawn by oxen,
full of haystacks or logs, and other
carriages quickly passing
with the people inside them like shadow
but farther on, as if the world were lost
and nature alone were left, little by little
a stillness settled…and the rock
I saw rooted at the edge,
appeared like a throne the centuries
had destined for me. And, as I sat,
I crossed my hands around my knees,
forgetting whether I had started that day
or whether I had taken
this same road centuries ago…

THE PRINCIPLE OF HONOR

2005-04-22T12:36:00.000-04:00

In this economy of selfishness, I find these last written words of Mishima's life pearls of wisdom:

“people attatch too much importance to life…if a human life has an important meaning it is because of some relationship with other human beings. From this springs the principle of honor.

Life rests on this idea.

There are two types of existence in this world: that of animals, who simply obey their instincts, and that of men, who consciously devote their lives to serving something outside themselves…if men merely existed, what a burden it would be.

We suffer because we want life to be different from what it is.
We suffer because we try to make pleasurable what is painful, to make solid what is fluid, to make permanent what is changing.
We suffer because we try to make ourselves into something real and unchanging when our fundamental state of being is unconditionally open and ungraspable – selfless.

By accepting the impermanence and selflessness of our existence , we will stop suffering and realize peace.”

Mishima wrote these words in 1966 moments prior to committing seppuku

PIMA ENLIGHTENING POEM

2005-04-22T12:32:00.000-04:00

This poem from the Pima culture works like a Zen koan for me:

Many people have gathered together,
I am ready to start the race,
And, the swallow with beating wings
Cools me in readiness for the word.

Far in the west the black mountain stands.
Around which our racers run at the noon.
Who is this man running with me,
The shadow of whose hands I see?

Ode to "BUD", the cat

2005-04-19T11:54:00.000-04:00

Writing about a cat is like pondering an enigma: there is cat laid out before me, unanswerable and mysterious, napping there in his feline sprawl: there's nothing to write about, unless the cat has taken over your favorite spot.

Tonight I realized our front patio is actually the throne of our family cat, “Bud”.

Bud is one of those cats your young son insists he will totally take care of: then, 15 years later, it’s all you and your kid is gone. I never liked cats much; and, certainly didn’t want this one.

The patio, my favorite spot here at home, is a 15 foot by 15 foot cement slab kind of stuck on the front of our house with a heavy, pointed overhang roof, around which I have nailed up white plastic, crisscrossed fencing that almost completely encloses it. I left a five foot wide opening facing the door, so it empties out on the street. It's almost invisible in there from the street.

Inside the fencing are white Christmas tree lights in a try at re-producing Stanley Kubrick’s lighting schemes. On the floor are squares of rattan as outdoor rugs. And, there are lots of fall leaves, even ‘tho I’ve got hazy vinyl plastic tacked up all around the inside to keep a little weather out. It’s ‘off code’ for my neighborhood and kind of crappy but I love it out there. It’s my funky spring, summer, fall think tank. My private, little throne zone.

There are four chairs out there, three of them are passed-on plastic lawn chairs from a friend a few years ago and a leather director’s chair I bought at the local Church Shop for five bucks. Also, a black metal table with a cheesy lamp on top and a couple of Vice magazines on the bottom platform.

Back against the wall, rather in the center of the seating arrangements, is Bud’s pale cream, fluffy pillow where he oversees his domain, weather permiting.

He’s real old now, has a nasty tumor on his jaw and his hair is getting ratty. He came to us from London’s Humane Society after they found him just born under a Soho bridge. Bud grew up in London's West End as my son’s dearest pet, then moved with us to a barn on a West Branch, Michigan farm, and lastly, now lives in a quiet Detroit suburb. In a tough, old stray cat's paradise!

Bud has always been an outdoor cat. He’s thoroughly British: Always been ‘offish’ / Never warm and cuddly. So, for most of his life I’ve kind of resented him. “Did you feed the cat, honey?” “Could you do the cat litter, honey?” This for a cat who never acknowledged I existed. A cat whose contribution has been killing my favorite birds.

I first warmed to Bud on our farm in Michigan. One day, I heard these screams from my barn, then saw this large, orange and black scruffy, farm cat running like Hell from our barn toward the road below. A moment later, here came Bud sauntering toward the house having just routed out a stray that was to his dislike.

Skinny as he always has been, he’s a tough, eccentric cat and I’ve grown to respect and like him. Now over 17 years old, the Vet has told us he’s dieing.

So, this is probably his last Fall where he protests coming into the house. Prefering to stay outside as long as possible, sleeping during the day in my private throne zone, while the birds and squirrels float around and by him drowsing the day away in my favorite spot!

My wife and I are giving him lots of love; and, the son who raised him has asked to be there at his last. And, I keep his pillow nice and fluffy.

The scraggly old bastard has been a good pet after all.

WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND?

2005-04-16T17:47:00.000-04:00

I'm getting some very nice responses on this really interesting poem.

The author was born in 1830 in London. She was published in the Germ, the Pre-Raphaelite journal, and sat for a number of paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites, including some by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

The existential themes in her poetry turned from unrequited love to the renunciation of earthly love. Death hovered above all of her work, like the demon in Fuseli's Nightmare. Christina Rossetti's famous poem "Goblin's Market" is an amazing meditation on women as sexual prey.

She was a devout Anglican who never married. There's this sexist assumption that something is solemn about women who never marry. Men who don't marry 'tho seem roguish and sexually charged. Anyway, she died in 1894. And, her poetry rocks, dig this:

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling
The wind is passing thro'

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads
The wind is passing by.

by Christina Georgina Rossetti

LOVE AFTER LOVE

2005-03-28T11:48:00.000-05:00

LOVE AFTER LOVE
By Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Where Is The Outrage?

2005-03-06T13:28:00.000-05:00

Halting Human Rights Defender

Some time ago I attended a talk at Detroit’s Focus HOPE Gallery by Ursiline nun, Sister Dianna Ortiz. And, now reading how our government is outsourcing it's cruel treatment of our prisoners, I am moved to plunk this story right back into my blog. For, I am still wondering: Where is the outrage?

Attending this event wasn't like going out to the movies or the theatre; going in, I knew it was going to be highly emotional; and, I'm a person who cries at every single wedding I attend. Like the sucker I am, I sat up front and near the speaker's podium.

Let me set the scene:

15 years ago, while teaching Mayan children to read in Guatemala, Sister Dianna was abducted by soldiers there, gang raped and brutally tortured. When the Red Cross finally got her they found over a hundred cigarette burns on her body. She was to tell her story to us as it was recorded in Kerry Kennedy’s beautiful book, “Speak Truth To Power”.

She was introduced by the St. Leo’s church Pastor, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, who worked with her in Guatemala; and, subsequently prayed with her during her hunger strike in front of the Clinton White House (Mrs. Clinton came to her aid). She’s young still, and dressed this evening in a black and dark grey skirt and jacket.

She reminds me of a soft, brown eyed Audrey Hepburn. She has a pretty head of dark hair and someone has given her a bright yellow flower corsage to wear. She pauses, standing before the microphone, gathering her strength.

Her voice is untrained and not one accustomed to public speaking. It’s scratchy and halting. She begins to explain that experts have informed her that the re-telling of her story will bring healing, but so far she hasn’t found a fellow torture victim who can release the horror of it, nor can she. She tells us, “Torture shackles itself to you, so that you are always in its grasp. Fully there for me whenever I hear keys rattling or smell cigarette smoke.”

Handkerchief in hand, she rubs sweat from the back of her neck. As she recounts the horrific details of her torture, tears begin streaming down my face. The room of 500 or so is very still. Finally, she can take it no longer and asks our forgiveness for a moment and steps down to her chair. Everyone exhales and prays for her, I am sure. She holds her face in her hands and tries to calm herself down sufficient to continue.

We wish she didn't have to.

For the next hour she confirmed our worst nightmares about torture, the evil governments (ours particularly) inaugurate, and described the responsibility she now bears in having to share her anguish. We learn that the man apparently in charge of the rebels who tortured her was an American agent working for our government in Guatemala.

One of the last things her torturer told her was “No one will care!” Her solution was to form www.tassc.org. And, to “Speak truth to power.” at evenings like this one.

In closing she asked us, “For all that so many of us have suffered, and the thousands who are suffering at this moment: “Where is the outrage?”

Her question still resonates.

If we allow Sister Ortiz's experience, and the so many others we learn about, to slip quietly into the past, aren't we like the thousands of German citizens who, when questioned about the genocidal atrocities comitted by their government, said, "We didn't know what that smell was."

I am adding this anecote to this piece: it was written by Sister Ortiz on Easter Sunday 2005:

"For those of us who are both Christians and survivors of
torture, Good Friday has an additional meaning. It is
but one more reminder that for the tortured, every day
is Good Friday-in the sense that during every day of the
year, there are those who hang on one government's cross
or another, tortured as was Jesus 2000 years ago.

>From that day to this, governments that torture have
justified what they do, saying 'What we have done is
only what we had to do.' Rather than calling it
torture, we are assured that what is done-whatever it
is-is "for the protection of the state, the protection
of you, the people.' If questioned closely, we are
assured that, 'There is no blood on our hands.' If there
is blood-that is, if it cannot be denied that blood has
been spilled-then it is not the leaders who spilled it
but, only those on the lowest levels from whom such
barbaric acts may be expected.

So it has been for a long time, and so it is today. Our
leaders attempt to keep secret what they do. When they
are caught, they claim that what they do is not what
they do-that is, they lie. When they cannot deny what
was done, they blame others-those far from them,
'hillbillies' and 'bad apples'- intentionally using code
words to imply, 'They are not like us. What can you
expect from those with no culture?' It is as if what
happened on that Friday so long ago was caused by a few
Roman bad apples, low-level soldiers, standing around
the cross, acting on their own to produce that death
agony taking place there.

In this, the holiest time in the Christian calendar,
what might we ask our leaders? What might we ask that-
although they will not give it- is within their power to
give?

In the spirit of Easter, might we at least hope for a
resurrection of truth from President George W. Bush and
those who work for him? Instead, what we hear is
something like: 'Renditions occur, it is true, and
indeed to countries that torture. But we make sure to
ask them if they intend to torture this particular
person and they say, 'No, of course not.' And we, of
course, believe them." We are asked to accept this type
of statement as truth. Donald Rumsfeld certifies
procedures which are plain and simple torture (not
abuse), yet he meant them to be used only in Guantánamo-
not in Iraq, for heaven's sake. He is not responsible
for what happened there. It's those bad apples. All
agree they must be punished, and they are. No blood on
Rumsfeld's hands." Sister Dianna Ortiz, 2005

THUNDERPUSSY'S CAFE' / WAY FAR FROM THE MADDENING CROWD

2005-03-01T13:30:00.000-05:00

My bride and I sought a place to have our first baby, now 30 years ago. My mother was recently deceased and my British wife was just stepping off of a whirlwind, 18-month theatrical tour. We felt we needed a divergence from our prior lives. Too, like most newlyweds we hoped the union might inaugurate a better each of us. It did me, and our sons are testimony to the union’s health.

Much like the Thomas Gray elegy, we sought a quiet place away from the calamitous rushes of our lives.

“Far from the maddening crowd’s ignoble strife
their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept their noiseless tenor of their way."

I had inherited a box full of cash, we were in love, and a honeymoon cum life quest became our manifest. We visited her family and friends in Britain, bought a sailboat in Florida with dreams of sailing the Caribbean, got pregnant, then newly navigated ourselves toward a sweeter place than the Devil’s Triangle to have our first born.

Some fool bought our cutter rigged, 49’ sail boat (doubtfully named, the “Halcyon”), and we loaded up our used Toyota’s U-haul trailer and drove off out of Florida. Bride, navigating from a road map of the lesser-traveled blue highways and headed west.

We knew there were extraordinary people out there and we wanted to find them.

We drove slow, so she could see rural America with all the windows down. My left foot, mostly perched up on the dashboard when not shifting and the seat kicked way back. Marlboro and Jamaican reefer smoke roiling out the windows. We cruised up, along, and around the rural American South West allowing the grid of normal life to drift off in our smokey trail.

We stayed one night in an old Texas Stage Coach stop, just anointed as a national landmark; it’s soul not yet trampled by the State. Miles and miles later, suffered good-old boy stares at my long hair and sailor’s tan in a few back road Texan coffee shops, and rolled on further West up Colorado, past Elephant Buttes (which my new wife thought charming to have been named after an elephant’s rear end); and, drove on and through Denver’s thick, yellow smog, turning further left up into the magnificent Rocky Mountains thinking the mountains a fine place to let our baby out.

But, no: most of the towns up there were either for the rich and fancy or inhabited by women wearing combat boots and calico dresses. None seemed the future reflection of our union.

We circled the mountains, ate here, slept there, and looked real hard. Finally, deciding to drive up toward Utah where a lady was making and marketing baby backpacks we thought were cool. (When you’ve got a pocket full of cash like we did, long wide turns in the road, like this one, come easy; and, who knows, we might have liked the place!)

We got our baby backpack and found ourselves in Salt Lake City, which we found to be an eerie place, on the West side of a big mountain. History being the only item of interest there, we grabbed a San Francisco newspaper and over breakfast my wife noticed an ad in there for a house for rent in Mendocino County, California, an area she had been shown when performing in San Francisco and recalled it as a Pacific Paradise. We called the ad. Then, drove straight to it. U-haul full of bathing suits and sailing gear bouncing along behind us.

The freeway out of Salt Lake only goes down, so the drive pretty much impelled us right into northern California. The house overlooked the Pacific Ocean in a gorgeous surround of pine, madrone, and redwood trees. I coughed up a few grand and we moved in to what I still consider the finest place in the world.

As dumb luck and good fortune would have it, we found ourselves surrounded by a reclusive colony of Artists who preferred anonymity in the vast Redwood forest to the film façade glitter of the town of Mendocino itself, a few miles north of where we were. Our town was (is still) called Point Arena. It had old-fashioned board sidewalks, a few stores, a breakfast café, and a tsunami blown out port with a fabulous bar still operating in it on Friday nights. Some would have called it a Hippie back woods Paradise; and, it was. Is.

The area is still famous for the Thai weed grown in its national wilderness forests. It was rumored that the Mexican Government was managing several thousand acres of weed way far back in there beyond anyone’s reach. Local gendarmes were afraid to go back into those woods on account of the legendary Vietnam vets who were big time growers; and, knew from the Vietcong how to booby trap an area.

When our 6-month lease ran out, we bought a house of our own back in the woods nearby, with a driveway that curved right down to the ocean’s edge at Route One. Our nearest neighbor was a half a mile away to the north. Once immersed into the culture there, a quiet world of Artists and fellow recluses opened up to us. Our days were spent in idle, watching my wife’s tummy grow, and embracing the awesome beauty of the area we were living in. And, total commitment to raising our new son.

On hot summer days we would load up our rusty ‘45 Dodge pick up truck, drive it back into the vast national forest to our East, and forage wood for our fireplace. (It rained six to seven feet of water every year there; and firewood was our only source of heat. The last year we lived there we burned up six cords.) On these wood foraging missions we would park the truck near a little offshoot of the Gualala River, and plunk our baby’s plastic baby chair in the cool creek so the cool water could slide over his chubby little body, while we chain sawed a cord or two of oak or madrone trees that had fallen near the river. We’d do this as naked as our baby was in his little chair in the creek. Load up the wood and drive it home. This was life appropriately distant from the maddening crowd for me; and, delicious to live.

Made more so by the amazing people we came to know. Recluses like “Redwood”, who was a tall, blonde man who owned and operated a very successful, several thousand acre commune well back in the woods. One day I had coffee with him at the little breakfast café in Point Arena, and as he left he said, “Well Randy, I’m off for India.” And came back a year later! Far, far from the grid.

I also became very fond of a man named “Kentucky John”. You’d see him in his overalls and long beard, riding his bicycle along U.S. Route One almost everyday. His mission was to be out there helping kids keep their bikes running. A few years prior to being the area Bike Angel, John quit his job as Principle Photographer for Architectural Digest magazine in San Francisco, bought an old school bus, drove it up to Mendocino, turned right into the woods and drove it in there as far as she would go, then shut it down and turned it into a metallic home on rotting wheels, finally turning it into a live in-shop and turning out world class metal gates and doors.

Brian was another oneovakind man there who fascinated. Having grown up on a busted down little horse ranch in rural Montana Brian, graduated high school there with a four year, full ride scholastic scholarship to Harvard University. He graduated Harvard with honors; after which, he drove straight back to his home in Montana, got his rifle and mountain man gear and drove off to California, landing smack dab at the beach in Point Arena. The day I met him he was washing down a carburetor part in oil in the musty garage next to his beach shack in the sand hills north of town. Within days he had me out in the mountains behind us hunting wild mountain goats and boar. For Brian lived entirely without cash. He traded for everything except the fish he caught, wild animals he killed, skinned and ate, his garden and the odd mechanical part that he might fix in exchange for lead and powder for his guns. For all I know he’s still living off the grid somewhere in the California wildnerness.

Even a girl of with a name like: Magnolia Thunderpussy could find a home there. Magnolia was a California girl who married a Native American named, “Chief Thunder Pussy”. The magistrates in San Francisco, who married her, wrote her new name on the record books as Magnolia Thunderpussy; which set in motion her famous cafés. The first, I am told, was in San Francisco, and simply called “Thunderpussy’s”. Her second was in Point Arena. It was on the second floor of the area’s only retail shop and open on one or two weekend nights. You could buy a coke or a coffee in there, but most customers just smoked that fabulous Mendocino weed on the way in. It was broadly known that blues singer Taj Mahal used to hitch hike up the Mendocino Coast with his guitar. Apparently, he played at Thunderpussy’s café, but I never saw him there. One night when my wife and I were in there with about eight or nine other locals, a lone guy was playing guitar and singing like an old, black blues man. You’d of thought he could-should do it for a living, so good he was. Later I was to learn it he was John Fogarty of Credence Clearwater fame. I don’t think the café made any money because it wasn’t there for long. But, it was world class while it was. I have found nothing like it in the planet’s more urbane environs.

When we allow ourselves to be like cattle buying into lives of constant repetition, never straying from the grid, and suffering the false security of ‘normal’ lives, we miss the music playing out there in places like Thunderpussy’s Café. That is a no no by me.

What the young man said:

2005-02-18T14:37:00.001-05:00

How could Longfellow (1807-1882) have been so wise as to write his "Psalm of Life?"?

"Art is long" indeed. No other piece of prose nor poetry speaks the truth to me like this one does: and, I post it here particularly for my young friend Tim who lives in Flint, Michigan and is stepping out into a new life for himself. Take heed, Tim, for this man speaks the truth:

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real ! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o'erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

I dedicate this posting to my young friend Tim. And, all other younsters who are at the cusp of growing up.

the rock star: HATT REGENCY

2005-01-17T22:16:00.000-05:00

This is about the rock star, Hyatt Regency…

…which is what he was calling himself last Friday night outside the KidRobot store in Soho. A toy designer friend of ours in there, signing autographs. Hyatt and I are catching a breather from the lively crush inside.

There aren't many people who are who they say they are. And, this cat is entirely himself. "Hyatt" isn't his real name, of course. It's just that he's in several New York bands; and, in each one he uses a different name. Tonight he's Hyatt Regency, the rock star.

His band had a top twenty CD hit a few years ago, when he was calling himself something else. He was living then with the area’s feminine, iconic beauty: a talented woman, known for her business acumen, as well as her artistic skill and radiant physical allure. Hyatt has always rocked. Whatever he called himself.

Being fundamentally a Detroit cat, he drives a big, old Ford float. I comment on it and he says, “You gotta have those big eights up there, man.” Then, delicately parks it in an impossible space on Jay Street in Dumbo.

It's an uncommonly warm January evening and he’s standing here with me on Spring Street, his lithe, little body slumped against the wall; jacket drooped over those fragile, little shoulders, pants tumbling down around scruffy old-fashioned tennis shoes. His famous, Samson-sexy hair curling down over his frayed cowboy shirt, obscuring only one of his beautiful brown eyes. His voice, a strained and practiced singer’s, is rich and tonally sensuous to listen to.

He tells me his family's good: his old man is happy dealing cards in Vegas. That he’s producing a few bands here in the city; and, that his sensational girlfriend hasn’t left him yet. He says, "She's a girl who doesn't laugh at my sorrows, man”.

We’re discussing the rock star photographs in the store window behind us, Janis and Jimmy up there in their famousness; and, a feature photograph of Jim Morrison inside the front window of a cheap hotel called, “Morrisons”. I tell him he could easily be up there in the Keith Richards picture hanging next to Morrison's.

He laughs and says, “Hey, those guys rock, man.”

Hyatt doesn’t talk much, but when he does he can be wicked funny. Later that night when a crowd of us are at an Asian café called Snackys in Williamsburg, he tells us about a gay porn photographer chap, we all know, offering to pay him for a photo shoot. Hyatt confesses, “What a disappointment, I had to turn him down. I’d have done it for a couple of glasses of champagne and a good dinner, you know? He was so stupid! "

Then, flashing his rock star grin, shakes his hair out, laughs and turns down to chop stick a little vegetable roll in his mouth.

Later, in the same charming cafe, he turns to lovely Willow, a friend’s musician-girlfriend sitting with us, and makes private and intimate love to her simply describing the delicacies and intimacies of adjusting control knobs on a mixer! She smiles demurely and uncrosses her legs. He’s a real sexy man, our rock star, Hyatt Regency.

Tomorrow he and his band are flying off to record some of their music in Nashville.

The Security Guards at the airport won’t suspect him of anything but being a Rock Star. Some ask for his autograph, some just ask who he is. He might even deign to respond, “I’m Hyatt Regency, the Rock Star.”

He’d be right, too.

AND, NOW: a word (many) from the Rock Star himself:

jetting into the frames of nashville i feel the sensation of being
teleported into a dimension of a new asthetic of the mind and
geography..the people i see and experience are obsessed with
hospitality.. though driven beyond the call of duty to please the
masses with flawless delivery. ala carte music...i am driven to
hillbilly central (literally) the building where the outlaws and willie
nelson harnesssed their creativity in the early seventies.. i walk in
with my black unlabeled cases of production gear and my long sleeves
full of tricks...i am now in nashville..i feel it indoors..the drive
there or even the stop at the coffee shop off music row did not make it
apparent..i am in the maze of rooms, slanted window walls, brown
partitions, mustard moldings, properly abused hardwood floors, swingin
doors, microphones galore on stands, skylights, smells of wood and
whiskey and best of all, the new york city energy i have on my wear on
my sleeve which bounces nashville folks into an excitable "ready?
whatcha need? let's do it " mode.. well, let me walk around these
rooms and get some cashews, coffee, water, bananas and grapes on my
producer desk, my laptop station, cell phone turned off, and my artists
list and times on my itinerary.. let me relax..oh good, i am sinking
in...i bring up the tracks one by one on the recording console, the
first track in progress gives a raw, unsettling vulnerable, yet honest
sound..i do not look behind me to seek my assistants or artists
approval, i am not concerned, though i feel everything like i have eyes
behind my head..they are all trying to find a way to ask questions,
suss me out. i just want to relax my mind and breathe now..and
listen..and feel..unfold into the steps without pushing for the tasks
at hand..i stand up slowly from the herman miller chair and look my
artist and steer her with my eyes onto the balcony...i feel her
questions and concerns build.....i tell her i am happy to be here with
her and not to worry about our short time frame..i tell her that
something will happen here because "we" will just let it...the day
consisted of my artists nashville friends, and top end studio "cats"
dropping in..every friend i greeted with a mild grin...i played the
material for them, they asked what i wanted out of it..i said ..what
can you play? and what do you hear.."i have my notes, but i would like to put it out there for you to explore first.." the walls of the studio opened up into the galaxy..all disarmed now...( musicians become servants to make money and mold their talents to service music in a very contrived
format and it is their job to do what they are told from the beginning
of a session till the end)..not in my studio...
each artist came alive with ideas and i felt their spirits release into
the music to give themselves beyond their duties..our schedules
overlapped overtime..everyone mingled over their schedules times and
collaboration took place..i kept trusting them..they wanted my approval
every time they finished a track..i would just smile and fire them up
more with adjectives.."aww, i did'nt know you was a 78 year old black
man inside!!" i would say to tom bukovac after he played some loose
slide, as he put his schooled calculated guitar aside..i speak in
slangs so often that the musicians play to my characters..my armenian
accent to get nice djembe rhythms, british to get uptight uptright
psychedelic guitar..jive to get it loose and rounded..sterile white man
to get it on top of the beat..stoner to make it confuse the
listener..laughter surrrounded the studio and goosebumps and right kind of tears.. non stop....the only kinda life i like to feel.....when i can get away with it..the airport terminal i have an upbeat and intense meeting with my attorney coordinating the next weeks events..on the airplane seat 1C back to nyc..lot's of caffiene flowing to reassemble my mode and break my stride as the city awaits and my career needs strict assemblance on a business level..perhaps i should just be know it will all happen if i just let it......

PROSPECT PLACE, CROWN HEIGHTS

2004-10-19T11:43:00.000-04:00

Here's a little piece about a gangster and a guy named DiAngelo:

My son and I are riding back to Prospect Place in Brooklyn on the Friday night L train. Across from us is this tough looking guy sitting on the plastic subway bench. He’s totally engrossed in a book, so I can get a really good look at him without being rude.

I’m a country boy from Michigan, so being this close to what the media portrays as a ‘Gangster’ is pretty cool. He’s only a couple of feet away. What's a guy like that doing reading a book, anyway?

Gangsters don't read books, I think to myself.

His wavy black hair is waxed down on his head real snug, flat and shiny and the length of it is tied down in back. The black tee shirt he’s wearing reveals nasty looking tattoos on each thick arm. Each of the fingers holding the book has a tattoo on it. One little finger has been half cut off. And, there are a couple of scars on his brown face, the one on his upper lip pulls it up in a white line snarl.

This man is one rough character, I can see. He looks Puerto Rican and around 40 years old. If he were pissed at me, I’d be scared. I don't want him to see me checking him out so closely.

But, there’s his young son leaning on him. The Brooklyn subway lolling him softly into his Dad as I let the sight of them sink in and wonder: Son, has brown skin and black hair, too…but downy soft. He tries, but can’t get his Dad’s attention. They’ve both got on calf length, baggy jeans.

Finally, Dad leans forward over the book to better concentrate. And, son relaxes in behind him falling into a safe snooze.

If I were growing up in Crown Heights, I’d want a dad just like this one, because nobody’d mess with me. He gets up to leave when we do.

As we leave the train I catch the title of the book he’s been studying so hard: Nikos Kazantzakis’s “Japan/China: a journal of two voyages to the Far East”. And, I’m kind of dazzled.

That night, I surf up Kazantzakis. And, to give you an idea what this apparent gangster on the train was studying so hard, dig this:

“Kazantzakis is one of the most important Greek writers, poets and philosophers of the 20th century. He was more a philosopher than a writer, was deeply influenced by the writings of Nietzsche and Bergson, and the philosophies of Christianity, Marxism and Buddhism. In his work, he attempted to synthesize these different world views. Kazantzakis believed, it is our responsibility to seek out and work with the most vibrant ideological movement that enables life's élan to ascend.”

"life's élan", I really dig that.

And, here’s this gangster/tough guy who is well into his book.

And, I get an idea of how our senses fool us. And, scold myself.

The next day I’m on Prospect Place helping my son move some of his stuff to his studio in DUMBO; and, my eyes meet those of a passer-by. He’s a handsome, young, black man pushing a stroller with a little baby in it. I am warned to not be too mid-west friendly on Prospect Place, because there are real Gangsters there. Unable to restrain myself, I smile at him and ask about his baby.

Surprising me, he stops to chat. I learn that he was born on Prospect Place and grew up here, and his parents were too. His name’s DiAngelo, and he says it was a great place to grow up.

The next block is closed off for a Block Party and as we chat, we are looking at it. Kids of all ages are flying around on their bikes, smoke curling up from throw-a-way grills smack dab in the center of the street, grannies lazing there in lawn chairs. DiAngelo points out his 8 year old son carelessly riding his bike back and forth across the street, having a festive time. Tells me it feels good to see it.

DiAngelo recalls his own block parties, “It was like we finally owned the streets and nobody wanted to hurt you.” He grew up with gangsters. Dressed him self up like them to survive. And, acted like them, too. Did some petty shit, but got by. He met his wife on these same rough streets.

I learn that DiAngelo did four years in the Army, then put in 17 with UPS as a driver; and, is now fully retired. He and his wife worked it all out as kids here in the ghetto: he’d put in 21 years, retire, then she’d go to work and he could raise the kids. He’s a robust 38 and real pleased with life. Kicked back in his beloved ‘Hood’, money coming in, paying rent based on a lease written in 1900 something (!).

I suggest DiAngelo is living better than friends I have in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. And, that gangster on the subway is a better man than I.

“Nothing is as it appears to be.”, claimed Alice in “The Looking Glass”.

The Swallow as Shadow

2004-07-24T13:02:00.001-04:00

When I had my first stroke and was dieing, I (my shadow?) looked down at my body slumped there on the floor and decided this wasn't the right time to move on. The memory of this is very clear; and, this Pima poem speaks to me of that critical moment in my life:

Many people have gathered together,
I am ready to start the race,
And, the swallow with beating wings
Cools me in readiness for the word.

Far in the west the black mountain stands.
Around which our racers run at the noon.
Who is this man running with me,
The shadow of whose hands I see?

Story Medicine

2004-07-24T13:02:00.000-04:00

My friend Ron Stone, died before he got a chance to tell his stories. I grieved for that mostly at his funeral. This quote from Barry Lopez's "From the Crow and the Weasel" always reminds me of Ron, and to get my own story telling ass in gear:

"The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them.

If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other's memory.

That is how people care for themselves."

Ron understood that.

LADAKH

2004-06-29T19:48:00.000-04:00

I've been captivated by the book, "Ancient Futures", by helena Norgerg-Hodge. For the last twenty years she has spent half of every year in Ladakh, working with the Ladakhi people to protect their culture and environment from the effects of rapid modernization. Here are a couple of Potent Quotes from the book that help us see ourselves more clearly:

"What distinguishes Western culture is that it has grown so widespread and so powerful that it has lost a perspective on itself: there is no 'other' with which to compare itself. It is assumed that everyone either is like us or wants to be."

"We do not distinguish between evolution and the changes wrought by the scientific evolution, forgetting that while Europe was transformed by industrialization, the majority of the world continued to live according to other principles and values. In so doing, we are effectively saying that Westerners are more highly evolved than traditional peoples."

I ran into beautiful healer Stewart Yeh at a Christmas party at Paul Budnitz's flat in New York last year and was delighted to find out that he had lived and worked on a farm in Ladakh. The culture there, he said, is probably the most unchanged traditional culture in the world; and, perhaps the most happy and satisfying lifestyle he has ever experienced.

You can't be a tourist in Ladakhi, you may work for your room and board at area farms 'tho, which is what Stewart did...massaged and healed the whole village probably.

In Peter Matthiessen's introduction to the book, he says, "The celebration here of traditional Ladakhi life induces exhilaration but also sadness, as if some half-rembembered paradise known in an other life had now been lost. So evocative is it that I felt - I'm not sure what - homesickness?"

If you read the book, you bring a little Ladakh right there to you. And, maybe some of the area's values will trickle into your life.