I gave a reading at Randy Ford’s cultural center in downtown Tucson. Sam Henrie, CEO of Wheatmark, a POD publishing house, attended to hear me read. If you want some feedback about Wheatmark comment at the end of this blog. Wheatmark has published both my books and I am exceedingly pleased with the quality of the paper, the cover stock and the font as well as the editing. My son did both covers and if you are interested in what he can do, write him at jdfreese@hotmail.com. Also in attendance was Malcolm Alexander, one other Poet, Curt (I didn’t get his last name), Randy himself. The attendance was small because the center had moved and a new season was just beginning. Go to Randy’s website, http://www.elojitosprings.com to see scheduled events and readings.
Jordan is a graphic artist who has won some major prizes. In a few weeks freezelab.com will be up and running as he is revamping his entire site. He is also a fine photographer, cinemaphile, works on animation and recently leaped from a plane at 14,000 feet as a personal deed he had to do for himself. He is 31; and the best part, he is a man. So saith his Jewish father.
I am scheduled for a major reading of the tetralogy in September. I am seriously contemplating buying horns for the reading. Jews at one time, perhaps today, were associated with having horns and secondly, my book is “devilish” so I will complete the canvas. And since I am Jewish, former teacher and therapist, I feel compelled to teach or share this bit of arcane material with you.
This falls under the category of: Did you know? Accordingly, when Michelangelo prepared for his sculpting of the statue of Moses he read the Bible in the vernacular. Having been translated from Aramaic to Greek to Latin and then to Italian, in the description of Moses descending from Sinai with the two tablets in his hands, he is described as beeing illumined or having a halo about his head. When halo was translated several times from one language to another and finally into Italian, halo became horn. And so Michelangelo carved two nice horns into Moses’ head. And so began mischief of a very unwholesome kind. Ergo, Jews had horns. I know a woman who traveled across the west to see her husband during the years of W.W.II. In those days it was not uncommon for women to wear hats with a veil. I am so aged that as a child I had seen that. On the seat next to her was another woman and they began to converse to ease the hardship of such a tedious train ride. Soon it was revealed that my woman friend was Jewish. At the end of the ride the other woman felt compelled to ask her if she would be so kind as to lift her veil as she had never seen horns before. No comment. And thank you western civilization.
As a member of a remarkable minority and someone who is presently hated by a fair share of “humanity,” I revel in my Judaism, secular that it is. Why? you might proffer. The answer is mysterious. You figure it out: Because it has made me free!
And away we go. Returning now to the reading, I read “Juan Peron’s Hands” which you can read on this blog under Pages. It is an experimental story that rides on two tracks. See for yourself. The poets read in their two disparate styles and Randy read of an adventure he had with his wife, Peg, back in 1972 when they both traveled in Sumatra on bikes (why?) and that narrative can be read at his site: http://www.thebrainpan.wordpress.com. For some reason the computer created this space avoiding all attempts to correct it. And so it goes.
While this is going on in my life I have been working on a tentative piece called The Optimist’s Rag which is a feeble attempt on my part to write a self-help manual for the chronically empty with a feverish secondary effort to also reach the acutely empty. The premise is simple: I am sending up everything I know about our mercantile culture, from Cheney to plasticine Laura Bush, from the automaton Karl Rove who could not hold my mitt when I played softball as a kid, for he is an evil nerd, the mechanistic feces of a Darth Vader.
Several times I wanted to delete this entire screed but I am having fun just writing and writing about emptiness and how to attain it in this culture. The entire argument is to help the empty reader to attain a degree of emptiness while avoidng awareness of any kind. I have used quotations, mini-essays, short observations, lists and all the paraphernalia of a self-help book with the intent to publish a small pamphlet as a giveaway to friends and others. It is not satire. It is dry savagery. It is fully constructed bile, and it may be deadly to read, but again, writer, reader, whose life is it? If you go to Pages again and look up Ten Canons which is an attempt to help one see or become aware, I take that very piece and attack it, deconstruct it as folly. I then went on to write a new Ten Canons for the empty person. Does it all work? Who knows? I do now that like a freshly roasted piece of meat it needs to “rest,” thank you Top Chef. When and if I will bore you by putting up a few pages.
I will close with an interior observation. Like me, have you ever had the feeling that you are not riding the crest of a wave which is very powerful in turns of sensibility? Rather, I feel, using the sea analogy, as if I am spume and I have not the slightest idea as to where or when I will moisten a rock or a rotten piece of pier lattice. I am spume this past week.
Adieu.
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