Posted 8:08 AM by robert d

Doing the Prufrock

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965). "Prufrock and Other Observations". 1917.

I remember the poem as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" but that is the title of only the first part. As most poems created in an era without the distractions of Radar Love and cathode ray tubes, Pru runs a little in length. It’s not that long but one’s mind starts looking for the exit a bit before it is done.

Frock is the individual versus the eternity of Life, it is the where and when and how and with whom and oh no not, never again is what you said the time before, ennui, all this written in 1917. Frock is good.

Eliot claimed my mind this morning because I was up early getting ready to put out to choppy sea but still had not lain/laid (I had to look it up) out my course. I was looking for a line about how one measures out one’s life with cigarette butts and coffee spoons. I found the verse but it wasn’t exactly as I had remembered it.

"For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?"

There is a line from a song by Tom Petty - "Take back Joe Piscopo". It means it is all shit, dross, vapid, insipid, banal, gone. It all stinks, it ain’t, how do you say it in English, frêsh.

That’s where I am at this morning. Needing something real.

And as the sun flowered, think rose, I looked outside on the back patio and there they were, my shoes. I am one of the Old Ones and old things mean much to me. Those Nike sneaks are over twenty years old. They are my outside work shoes. I know a grown man should not admit it but I love them. This will probably be their last year but for now nothing else will do.


Whose Shoes These Are I Think I Know

This morning I will put them on and go out into The Kingdom and together we will be proud and do good things.

© 2005 big box industries

Posted 9:18 AM by robert d

Arachnid

I snapped this guy out this morning after I had gotten back from our walk around the lake. Alastair has been there, just hanging, for about 3 days.


Hang Tough Alastair

I missed the initial construction of the web. It really is a work of art. The amazing thing is that A put it all together in about a day. Unfortunately, after all his hard work Alastair hasn't had any customers yet. He seems to be very patient though and I am confident that this virtue will be rewarded.

© 2005 big box industries

Posted 3:00 AM by robert d

Mums

I am getting ready to plant some mums.


The Scent of Sweet Decay

And as I wrote the latter I thought I heard a buzz/bumping sound behind me. I wasn't sure what it was, perhaps something outside, a squirrel on the roof or the wind. But then again neither of these, a squirrel or the wind is known to make a buzz/bumping sound. I got up and looking out the window but perceived nothing deviant and in that same instant of investigation I determined that the buzz/bumping was louder and coming from the left and turn my head in its direction. Buzz/bump there is was a wasp on the wild.

My study is not that big and I still had work I wanted to do. Knowing there was a wasp on the loose would certainly impede any progress that I hoped to make.

There is a wasp's nest in the top left corner window of my 2nd floor study that because of location and slack on my part I have been unable to banish. Recently, because I keep the window partial open, I have had other intruders and had a can of Patrol 1 - House & Garden Insect Killer within easy reach.

Buzz bump, I sprayed, buzz bump, and I sprayed some more. Buzz, buzz, buzz, bump, bump, bump - here, there, and everywhere, and finally the wasp rested on a 33 rpm black vinyl record with an irreparable hole in it that I have tumbtacked to the back wall.


I See A Red Door & I Want To Paint It

Wasp on black vinyl record, I wanted this snap bad. It took me about two minutes to get my camera and adjust the settings and unfortunately by that time the little sucker flitted off of the 33, I want to paint it black , vinyl record and decided to buzz, bump around the overhead light. I turned the light off in hopes that without the UV rays or whatever wasps find so intriguing about overhead lights, that this would cause my prey to good elsewhere. And yes there must be a God because after I turned the light off the wasp left its patrol of the overhead light and actually flew back to the black vinyl record.

Camera in hand, framing the shot, looking for focus, and then fuck. The little sucker finally succumbed to the spray and fell to the floor behind the couch.

The reason I had such a yen for the snap was because of the record tacked to the wall that the wasp had rested on. I had played, round and round, this record, tacked to the back wall through an irreparable hole in the vinyl that manifest one day when my guitar accidentally fell off of a nearby guitar stand and came crashing down on the turn table, several thousand times. Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out - all selection written by Mick Jagger & Keith Richards – Stones Live, is one of the best rock and roll albums ever.

Starting in Boston, The Stones have started their 2005 tour. I have given serious consideration to biting the bullet and paying several hundred dollars to do the last time, but no. I was way up for it until I heard The Glimmer Twins latest album, Big Bang. This is how the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.

Still Sting and Stones would have been good to go.

© 2005 big box industries

Posted 5:12 AM by robert d

Fall

There is a calling, a calling down to bump and slow. The cadence and the rhythms pulling, pulling down into The Pit. All that fancy free and frolic now to sweet, sweet, slumber. All but us know, they hear the calling of their Master. All but us know a calling, a calling down to bump and slow.


Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust but First a Whole

For the last week or two, Fall has crept between the cotton sheets and yes a bit more sweet the slumber.

© 2005 big box industries

Posted 8:49 AM by robert d

Turner Classic Movies

Yesterday afternoon it was The Night of the Iguana, although most of it occurred during the day, and last night it was The Fountain Head. Ann Ryan is the only female author that I have great respect for.


With The Sun Rejoice

Still

I am still reading about Ellsworth M. Toohey and Dominique Francon and Gail Wynand, and of course Howard Roark. I am still slowly reading, The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand - 1943.

Some will like the book and some will not. I first encountered The Fountainhead and also Atlas Shrugged in the mid 1960's. I liked the books then and I am thoroughly enjoying The Fountainhead now. It is the only book in a long time, actually one of the only books ever, that as soon as I am finished with it, I may read it again.

"It was a contest without time, a struggle of two abstractions, the thing that had created the building against the things that made the play possible - two forces, suddenly naked to her in their simple statement - two forces that had fought since the world began - and every religion had known of them - and there had always been a God and a Devil - only men had been so mistaken about the shapes of their Devil - he was not single and big, he was many and smutty and small."

© 2005 big box industries