Pen Is Mightier

Quarter of ten.

Gloria is here vacuuming the house.

We shared a Snapple for her break. My dog isn’t very happy about being shut up in the bedroom. While the weather is sunny, the smoke is pretty bad outside. But overall it’s a pleasant kind of morning.

Noon.

Early this morning I noticed that Lenore’s sprinkler system was malfunctioning. One sprinkler head merely gushed water and made a gurgling mess. Lenore is away from home for indefinite, so I took a piece of lined paper and a black Sharpie and wrote her a note. Then I walked over and put it under her doormat. Hopefully she’ll see it and take care of the problem, all good.

I’ve got nothing literary to say except for the power of the written word in something as trivial as a note to a neighbor left on the doorstep. Sometimes writing lives longer than the generations of people or a mighty kingdom, like the poem “Ozymandias.” Or, Lenore might wad up my note and throw it away…

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Fixed Stars for Crooked Houses

Nine twenty AM.

Now I’m back from the dentist and from the store. I have to sort through my feelings about all of it. The medical center was where I also first saw a psychologist at twenty years old, so of course I thought of old times with my mother. You can be a grownup and still feel like an orphan upon losing your parents. I think now that the most careful plans we can ever devise will often backfire, and the future is never foreseeable. It was weird going back to the place where it all started, like revisiting your old school or something. The people may be gone but the places usually stay. My mind digresses to an attraction at the Enchanted Forest in Oregon: the House of the Crooked Man. What distinguishes it is an anomaly in magnetism, a natural phenomenon that just happened to occur in Oregon. I guess it’s called the Oregon Vortex. I thought of it because it’s an example of an unstable place. My second grade class took a field trip there and then I forgot about it until today. Probably the Crooked House and the Oregon Vortex are separate things… Anyway, my new dentist is very nice. It’ll be good to get myself back on track with my oral hygiene.

Ten thirty. Aesop and I just shared some baby carrots from a ziplock bag I bought at the market this morning… Again I think, things gone and things still here, just like the title of a story collection by Paul Bowles. And when every compass and landmark fails me I fall back on the zodiac and steer by the stars.

The Parthenon Question

Nine PM.

I tried to take a nap, but lying in bed, I could only hear echoes of the Steve Khan music I’d listened to very early this morning. Now I feel wooden like a zombie or some undead person. I’ll avoid Dr Pepper after this, for it kind of poisoned my system. Just before seven o’clock tonight it cleared up, giving us two hours of sunshine. Hearing Khan’s music vaguely recalls Ulysses to my mind; I was exposed to both as a senior in college, when also my mother had cancer and needed surgery. After Joyce I started reading Sons and Lovers on my own time, a beautiful book by D.H. Lawrence, back when our minds were not enslaved by a brainwashing god and government and it was okay to think and feel something human.

Much more recently I read Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf, who raises the question of whether the beauty of the world would endure or rather perish, and what will it take to preserve it. This is still an issue today, for those of us with open eyes and a feeling heart. While the world seems to be dying, we let the humanities fall to ruin: the things we used to live for that were worth living for. Woolf was undecided on this question, but I’m sure she wished for the beautiful things to last perpetually, like the trip to Greece to see the Parthenon at the end of the novel: a fitting climax and perhaps a statement of triumph for the works of humankind. So now, who’s going to write the next Jacob’s Room to answer the same question for our time?

Things Endure

Seven o’clock.

When I got to the store, the Coca-Cola guys were wheeling in sodas on hand trucks. Michelle told me that cottage cheese had been selling out lately. She was sorry that no new sandwiches were in yet. It was very early, and again all I saw were male customers. The morning is cloudy and cool, so I put on my green Michigan State hoodie that I’ve had for 36 years; my brother’s wife gave it to me for Christmas when I was a college freshman. It still fits if I don’t zip up the front. Things will last a long time if you take care of them. Your memories too… It felt quite cozy inside the market, with warm and fuzzy tones of brown, gray, red, and green here and there, at the checkout counter and over the beer cooler. I had a good day yesterday because of the dip in the climate. It will be even cooler today, which is nice for my afternoon trip to Springfield. Last night I went on Amazon and almost bought the new remaster of The White Album. My head was playing “Yer Blues,” with Paul’s loud bass, slightly out of tune, obnoxious and great. I still might go back and buy it… I was thinking on the way home about something from the book of Genesis that is an obvious tool to control and manipulate the masses. Church just isn’t for me after this. 

Life

Nine twenty five.

It’s almost time for Aesop’s breakfast. I feel rather edgy this morning, perhaps because of my back pain. The oak tree in my backyard has begun losing acorns all over the place, as it does every year. Heather at the store told me today is her clean and sober birthday: three years. She said she feels really excited about that.

Summers are always a bit difficult for me; they make me feel impulsive and vulnerable to my emotions. Aristotle taught that emotions are not trustworthy, so people should put on the armor of reason against them. I think that’s rather extreme, if not impossible to pull off. Probably emotions are closer to the natural truth of life. Masking them with reason is to be contrived and artificial— and then again, feeling and reason may prove to be a false dichotomy. I have a weakness for dichotomous thinking, always trying to determine either/or situations, when the wise person marries opposites together so that black and white blend to gray. 

Anyway, the sun dominates the blue sky and the high today should be 90 degrees again. Across the street from me, Roger is puttering with a project while the mail carrier just brought me a package… I did some research online regarding The Winter’s Tale, and now I’m resolved to read it again for the issue of art and nature. Also, I’ve only read The Tempest once, so it’s on my reading list too.

Quarter of eleven. Another thing I see is that my rose bush is blooming again, though it makes more sense to call it my mother’s rose bush, since she planted it and because even in my mind it symbolizes immortality for her sake. Whatever may come and go, this rose bush endures everything, just like the generations of people and their brainchildren over the expanse of time. Some say that life is a frail thing, others that it is unstoppable: I agree with those who say life is very strong. 

Books versus Candy

Midnight hour.

The world really is a lapsed place of blasphemy, so tomorrow morning I guess I’ll go to church, just like old times, to search for my lost innocence… At around noon yesterday, Damien and his friend came and did some important yard work for me. I felt terrible all day from the threat to my sobriety I perceive in the band. I think music is not a very safe profession if you want to stay sober. Now I’m looking for a way to transcend the fallen society that surrounds me. Last night I thought of Boethius and his Consolation of Philosophy, considering the things that are immutable, like rational love, as opposed to the things that pass transiently like the pleasures of the senses. I figured that wisdom was more important than a beer buzz, and longer lasting. 

When I was a kid, and my nephews and I were turned loose in the shopping mall known as the Valley River Center, they went off to buy candy, while my destination was always the bookstore for what was imperishable: Logos, the written word. I read trashy Edgar Rice Burroughs books, yet they were good for building vocabulary. My mother helped me write my first book report for seventh grade reading class, and the book was Tarzan of the Apes. It got a perfect score from the teacher, but Kelly, the girl who sat behind me, was quite outraged at my success. Once during this class I was reading The Moon Maid and David accused me for looking at a book with a naked lady on the cover. Mrs Cheleen passed it off because I was her pet student— and after all, she was right: there was nothing wrong with reading Edgar Rice Burroughs at the age of twelve. Funny but I had a full head of hair back then, and braces which came off the next semester. 

I didn’t hear my first Rush album until the summer after eighth grade, and that was where my true education really started, both mentally and emotionally. I heard someone say that their son had outgrown Rush, but of course they were talking nonsense. Rush is a band you never outgrow. 

Time and Durability

Quarter after eight.

I’m housebound until FedEx brings my big package today because they require a signature for delivery. This means no Snapple tea for a while. I might as well go back to work on my project of the bridge on my Fender bass. During the wee hours this morning I listened to Stravinsky and Borodin on an old CD my mother gave me for Christmas when I was 22 years old. It was absolutely beautiful. The “Polovetsian Dances” was exquisite, and the clarinet lead always reminds me of how my mother played the same instrument in her school band. Of course the booming bass drum is like me playing in the percussion section in my youth… It isn’t raining right now, but it feels rather cold inside the house, and the sky appears bleak and indifferent. Cold white and lavender clouds shimmer over the roofline.

Nine fifty five. I think I’m done tinkering with the bridge. I fixed the whine from the G saddle and adjusted the intonation to near perfection. Almost ready to rock and roll.

Four o’clock. The bass amplifier came at 2:22pm. Aesop behaved terribly, but I couldn’t do anything about that. I plugged it in and played with it right away. Sounds pretty good. I don’t know what my obsession with the Omega bridge is since yesterday. I don’t even remember what year I bought it for sure, but I think it was the fall of 2016, when Kate was still my friend. Maybe it’s a symbol of something political for me, a sign of hope for the future of the whole world. I wish the world could unite once again, and I’m hopeful that it will do so. Anyway, the bridge works quite well on my favorite Fender bass. Another way of looking at it is that it’s symbolic of recovery and perseverance. The bridge is a piece of metal that has survived addiction and still carries on, strong and fearless. The tone it creates has incredible muscle. A house can burn to the ground, yet the cornerstone endures, a gold plated hunk of zinc called the Omega bass bridge.

Five o’clock. After playing with the new amp a bit, I ambled to the store for my Snapple tea and a sandwich. Deb was the sole cashier this afternoon. Her birthday was on New Year’s Eve. The other day I reviewed the birthdate of Edgar Allan Poe: January 19, 1809. And Paul Bowles was another Capricorn. I get an eerie sensation from astrology, but it’s only a weakness of mine. Once I thought about buying myself a garnet ring or pendant, just as a token of my identity. Something to outlast the incarnate existence of myself. Still I know that sand is the residue of all stones… and the prime material of new ones.