20 July 2014. Here’s What “Orthodox Socialism” Looks Like

Voices from Russia

******

******

______________________________

This is what “Orthodox Socialism” looks like… it’s growing in Russia… it’s strong in the People’s Republics. That is, it’s the Cross AND the Red Banner… it’s St Vladimir AND Vladimir Ilyich! If you want “White”, you MUST accept the “Red” as well, and vice versa. You MUST accept all the GOOD that came from the USSR (and from the old Empire, too). Never forget, HH was a Soviet patriot, and he’s LEFT to this day… he saw the West and its “Free Enterprise”, and it sickened him (as it does all decent people of good will).

Here’s what HH believes:

______________________________

I’d say that’s a GOOD TREE with GOOD FRUIT! ‘Nuff said!

BMD

View original post

Grieving like a Visigoth

I was 12 when my grandfather died. I had never been to a funeral before this. I knew of funerals from what I heard, read, saw on television. My family being Irish, we keened , screamed, shrieked, bellowed, gnashed what  teeth we had. There was hair pulling and rolling in the dirt, a fight, a swooning, a passing out. My grandmother wept quietly as everyone around lost their mind. She had poise and control, even as her lips quivered and emotion rent her weathered face. Tears spilt like rain on a leaf. My mother ,too, was relatively quiet. I tried to look at my grandpas body but the actions surrounding his casket had the attention of my wet eyes. I was flooded with memories of him, the fact his body was dead, the fact I knew nothing of where he was now hit me from inside. I was afraid that the preacher didnt know a damn thing, that really we were all crying , at some point, for ourselves. He was in pain before he died, shouldnt we be happy the pain was over? Should we not rejoice? No, our patriarch was in a pine box, set to go into six feet of high desert.

I remember feeling sorry for us, our poverty, comparing his casket and the funeral with ones on tv, in movies, in books. This was no King Arthur, no Njall, no Mark Twain—but, he was our hero. Our hero drank a gallon of wine a day, took Copenhagen, watched John Wayne movies. In the chaos of poverty he always wore a suit, a cowboy hat, shiny shoes and said Ma’am. His children, my aunts and uncles, were alcoholic messes.  He would say “Our ancestors will be forgotten—we’re a bunch of idiots”. The Dust Bowl and Depression wounded him and he never recovered, he was scarred forever and was afraid to move beyond his pain. Three Vietnam veteran uncles committed suicide. They couldnt get past the pain. Its easy for us to wag a fat finger at them but to be frank I do not know what the hell of war is like. I do know poverty, homelessness and material want. I am intimate with hunger. One must fight the past, the restrictions we put on ourselves. Its not enough to read the right books, to pose the right way, wear the correct clothes and adopt an aristocratic mien…these are easy, too easy. Any life choice should be a choice between death and life, comfort and pain. Many choose the known, instead of saying “fuck it”. The Maoris or Vikings who jumped in boats and paddled into the unknown? Our own lives are comfortable dens of Oblomovs. We do nothing, never advance. We complain about this or that but resort to tweets or updating facebook. Meanwhile our world are collapsing, the powers that be holfd tighter to power. Its our job to form the structure that will take over. Anyone who thinks the state will just wither or the masses will come to our flag is on drugs.

 

He’s right, don’t be an idiotic ancestor.

Share this:

He is the son of pied-noir French. He likes the color black. In his words: my French nose. It is French, if a nose can be French, and it can, just as eyes can be Jewish, hair can be Negro, skin hue be Irish. Women find him handsome, and he is. He is a self admitted “sex addict”. “I can make a woman cum in 30 seconds, I was trained in the art of Tantric sex”. 

He takes pain pills, and has for many many years. Twas a logging accident that hurt his back. He often uses a cane. He smokes.He has been dating a Belarusian girl, woman who is short. I didnt say petite because petite has a connotation of cuteness.This Slav isn’t cute. Her mien is one of arrogance that has succeeded in choking her awareness of her own ignorance. She has convinced herself that what she thinks is reality, in addition to this , one of her most cherished accomplishments, if not the defining things shes done, is her PhD. Its on her face as she talks of going to the Indian reservation. She: I know to be careful, I know(meaning: I have a PhD, so shush); I read of Lakota in Minsk. Ok? When she comes back from the reservation, her French boyfriend tells me the Indian girls wanted to kill her, she offended a shaman, the entire reserve with her condescending attitude. A person who has an occasional lapse of good will, intent and acts like this is a different creature, a nicer animal. One whose entire persona is made of fantasy, a fantasy that imposes itself on the world is not a fine beast, its a disease with a social scurity number. A virus with legs. No rational human and no emotioanal human wants to next to a baffling collection of cells like this. 

After months of bliss and carnality, the Frenchman comes to our door, harried, panoptic, weary and trembling. I fucking hate this cunt, he tells us, Do you have a drink. I give him the bottle of whiskey and a glass. he drinks from the bottle, half a fifth. I know we have a few minutes before he turns ugly. He isnt a weeping drunk, his pain spills over. Alcohol isnt a mental salve for him, its electroshock therapy.He tells us for the next 30 minutes of how twofaced she is, how she talks about us, hits him in his lower back, he describes a short monster. In his words: she is a sausage from belarus. We hear a faint knock as he is now slurring his words, vim and hate have control of his face, the Devil has control of his tongue. She comes in silently for a virus, for a sausage. She stands and her belly looks out like an entirely different animal, white and bulbous, like the lower lips of cartoon Jews. It looks like a howl is ready to gush forth. Her tiny hands are balled. She isnt shaking. She looks rigt at him and says Lets go home. He tells her to go away, only he screams it. Somehow they enter the hallway, he wants to die by cop. This is a favorite meme of his: suicide by police. He wants his cigarettes, she has them, she gives the cigs but no lighter. No, she says. You will leave. I look at her like shes nuts. The Frenchie is rabid, his fists are also balled, unlike her s these are fists that have shattered glass, knocked out methheads and burly Negros. He hates Negros and Jews. Give him the lighter, for fucks sake. No, he will leave. So what, let him go. She stands , hands to her side, belly yawning and blubbering. Erect. The strangest thing is her posture. Clinically straight. The Frenchman loses it. I take the lighter as he calls her a kikecow. Ive never heard this word and it makes me laugh. I hide it. The air is thick with violence. I want my jacket. Oh, no. He raises his fist as if to hit her. She doesnt flinch. Its not bravery or toughness. Its the arrogance atop a body of ignorance. She has no idea the pain that can hurt, even kill her. Leave, both of you. I usher them out to the apartment building hallway, she says something small and incoherent. This is the flame to his fuse. What follows is a form of poetry, many politcally correct folks will be shocked and disgusted. “You fat Niggerkike, look at yer curlyass hair, all tight, your mouth is Jewish. Russian, bitch you are no Slav—all Nigger all Jew. My fucking grandfather died because of Muslims like you. Youre the type of traitorslut that welcomes Muslims into Europe. He then spits in her cosmopolitan(sic) face. Then he pushes her, she flies thru the air and almost hits the edge , the sharp edge of the armoir. She stands her sausage hysique erect, clinically erect and says lets go. He puts his thumb in his mouth, trembes and waves like a toddler. His eyes are rolled back in his head. 

After they leave, I felt dirty and showered. Not because of the words, just the relationship itself: if it were something, itd be a lie, but its not even something, its a total negation of human rlationship. Its defined by orgasms, lies and monastic evolution. They have no friends visit, they visit nobody. They live in their apartment, she looking for menial work, dejectedly, with the same arrogance but mixed with contempt and ineptitude. He gets SSI, a bare sum that pays rent and bills. Its been 7 months and she still hasnt got a job. He curls under covers smoking pot and talking of Algeria, of Islam killing France, tantric cunnilingus, she sits in the living room, eating cottage cheese wrapped in ham, listening to Scorpions, cooking very bad food, exploding in rages, finding him, hitting him, retreating. Ad absurdum, ad nauseum. This is what he has told me, when I asked her how life is going, she say “Life is Good”, through a wan smile, under curly brown hair and dark eyes, above an exposed midriff that hiccups between her trembling small fists that smell of grease and cabbage.

In Claim

To the Etruscan all was alive; the whole universe lived; and the business of man was himself to live amid it all.  He had to draw life into himself, out of the wandering huge vitalities of the world.  He had to draw life into himself, out of the wandering huge vitalities of the world.  The cosmos was alive, like a vast creature.  The whole thing breathed and stirred. …

 The Whole thing was alive, and had a great soul, or anima; and in spite of one great soul, there were myriad roving, lesser souls; every man, every creature every tree and lake and mountain and stream was animate, had its own peculiar consciousness.  And has it to-day.

The cosmos was one, and its anima was one; but it was made up of creatures.  And the greatest creature was the earth, with its soul of inner fire. … But in juxtaposition to earth lay the sea, the waters that moved and pondered and held a deep soul of their own. …  D. H. Lawrence

 

 

 

 

 

Last night my friend Rebecca Floyd passed on. I wept,  cried, remembered and wept some more. I stayed up late trying to soothe my three year olds separation from her pacifier. Eureka was alive with yells and drunken people in the early morning. I began reading D.H Lawrence.

In the story “The Odour of Chrysanthemums”, DH Lawrence details the death of a coal miner and the effects it has on his wife and mother. He shows us the divide between us the living  and those who have parted. The widowed wife is in awe of this divide as she washes her husband’s beautiful body, a body she had only known in the dark, literally and symbolically.  She looks at his eyes behing his partially opened  blonde lashes for life, the life she saw 10 hours ago, the spark is gone, or as Lawrence says: Life with its smoky burning gone from him had left him apart and utterly alien to her. It happens to all of us and we act, many of us, if not all of us, as if it will never happen—often, we may even think we know what occurs after the body has died. We don’t know and its this separation from the fact of what happens after death that makes the separation of the living from the dead, a most existential apartheid. She is gone from us, but memories remain. Her smoky burning is gone. We remember and the memories build upon one another, all around us, an invisible alp, heavy with the beauty and then it comes, piling all around us and atop our shoulders, we are overwhelmed.    Our grief becomes all-consuming.

 

 “She could not accept it. Stooping, she laid her hand on him, in claim.” The wife in Lawrence’s story “had nothing to do with him” as “utterly inviolable he lay in himself”.

Rebecca is gone and cannot be contacted; I cannot cry on her shoulder, call her up and spill my guts: she is beyond our claim.

 

 

It is this “inviolability” that adds to the grief. The etymological roots of the word literally mean “the opposite of ‘to do violence to’”. Death would not be death if I could wish Rebecca back to life, if we could violate her sacred absence, her eternal hush. To bring back the dead is violence. Since she does not speak to us, our minds open every box of memory, every detail becomes available and her life, as known to us, becomes alive again. Memory is upon us as an avalanche and around us like soft, slow mouse traps of time, invisible.  After moments of intense grief, our mind moves to conversation, to eating, to walking, anything and, unannounced one defined memory comes to us and our  body thinks it is real because our hearts race, tears fall as rain from a leaf. And, Rebecca was more outgoing, fervent, alive when  she was alive, more than most, so she has many lives being relived  now. Meaning: she touched many, many people. There are hundreds of memories coming down on hundreds of people all over the world. Like avalanches and like invisible, silent mousetraps catching us at weird moments in our grief, adding to it, giving it shape and detail. We are at the wall of separation, it is clear, we see our friend, mother, lover, wife,  and so desperately  want to hear her smoky voice, one word, just one, but cannot so the mind furnishes conversations from yesteryear, laughter, arguments, frivolities, silences. It is as if our friend has put their hand on our shoulder “in claim”. Invisibly, of course. But, just as real. Everything now reminds us of the one. Perhaps I shouldn’t talk like this, in this sense. Maybe everyone doesn’t do this. Maybe it’s just me and other “sensitive” sorts.

          Death on television or the big screen is one thing, the death of a family member, friend, is quite another. I’ve had many people die in my life. The fact of their passing is something that fills me with terror. The fact that what once was here, is now gone disturbs me. So, as I got older I have had to distinguish this fear, this anxiety with the feelings of loss. Every culture and individual has their own way of dealing with grief. I write and read. D.H. Lawrence, in addition to being a very sexual writer was a pagan writer. Pantheistic, nature worshipping, the man didn’t fuck around. He got to the meat, the essentials.  In so many stories one can find love and death, life and fear. In short, one finds answers.

The sentence “laid her hand on him, in claim” reverberates with me. Haunts me. It is as this. The deaths I have known I touched them as if to say “mine”, because my life was theirs, completely.  I laid my hand on their person “in claim”, not “to claim”, no, in claim. I have never heard this word used like this…ever. Yet, it is the correct choice. The grieving is at the end of the physical relationship so at the end we do not claim this person as we claim baggage. For one it is a human. We don’t have relationships with suitcases.  The many meanings of the word “claim” we inhabit as we touch our passing friend. We “call” to them. We “name” them, describe them and in this process we describe the relationship, we define ourselves. Or, we try to. We hope to make sense of this immense light that has stopped us, made us deer on a road, panoptic, open mouthed. Unlike the deer, we can turn away, turn off, and weep “in our claim”. 

I write this as my three year old daughter is playing a guitar and being mischievous, being her own smoky burning little self. My friend Rebecca saw her pictures online and marveled at her beauty. ..Just as she did with my sons 13 years ago. ‘Richard, they’re handsome like their father”. Rebecca had a way of making me blush. She spoke to me like she knew my childhood, my life, me. And, she did. I could tell that she cared for me, for her clan, her daughters and mother, John, the animals. The life I felt from Rebecca was literally a force of nature, an element. It was flirtatious and carnal, of spirit and human kindness. I felt a girlishness come from her, maidenness, the lover. All at different times, in minutes it could change from one to another.  We spent many hours within the earth, digging, touching it, smelling it, and speaking of it. We spoke of life and death and the inevitability of it. We acted in a short play, she was my wife, I her husband. We talked books and history. Ours and the worlds.  We both were crazy, in the eyes of the world. She said this. I agreed. Crazy. I don’t know much of her life except what John told me, what she told me, what I saw and how I remember her. She was alive more than most. She was very much alive to the world.

The Rebecca I knew, I think, I think this is true, made peace with life, whether she knew it or not. She was of the earth, and no city, not even Portland can soothe those of us from the woods and wilds. She made peace in nature, as was her nature. I wanted my wife to meet her, urgently. It was a mission. A strong wish rather. Mission is too official, too starched and homely. It was a meeting I wanted to adorn my wife’s life with…and, I wanted to see her again.

My daughter plays and I cannot help but think if she will ever remember this day of her father crying, feeling the loss of a woman, close to him, in our time, so close and now in memory: In those collection of moments, true and beautiful, taken for granted at the time and now known as the gold they are, I remember her, in a sense I “re-live” our time together. This is what all of us are anyway. We are tomorrows memory living right now, living our time. We either waste our time trying to prolong our days, or we use our days; the proper function of man is to live, not to exist. Jack London. I think everyone who met her knew she didn’t simply “exist”.

 I cannot touch Rebecca’s shoulder “in claim”, but I have done so in the past. I never knew, in my living insouciance, if the touch I  gave wass the last, one day it will be my turn to go and I can only dream of having moved so many, so well and so good, so truly and utterly, as Rebecca has.

I must go now to my daughter, while I can. And, goddamnit! I can go…for now. There is no separation there. I think of Rebecca’s daughters and how the blessing of being an issue of their mother, to be hers, to owe their life to her, is now— not stopped —but different.  Changed completely. And, of John, dear dear John. And others as close, nearly as close, differently close to Rebecca, more profound in memories and feelings than my own, and we are all here, we who were moved by her, alone now, with Rebecca as memory. When I go next to the forest, I will cry her name. Or I will whisper it. Maybe both. I’ll speak to her. I will push my hand into the earth until it hurts and squeeze the inner soul of fire. I will remember her and I will be thankful.

And the heroine will go into the the wilderness…

For some odd reason I am reading two different Scandinavian books of fiction about pre-pubescent girls who go into nature, one to find a friend, the other to be punished. Bost are strange books, let me be clear that they are not “childrens literature”, they are for adults. One takes place in Iceland, the other Norway. Serendipitious? Perhpas. Maybe its time for the middle aged man to stop what he’s doing and go off into the wild? Literally and figuratvley. Ive felt “stuck” these last 6 yrs. Im not really the career oriented person. My currency is experience. Im not the sort to save for a rainy day and yearn for a suburban home. 

What is alien to me is the closeness of the societies in both books. Small and tight, community of individuals. Contrast this with America, the land of 300 million entities. Of the land where girls are stolen, molested, raped, disappeared, as if America is in a war. It is a war, too. It is a war against Tradition. European community is in its death throes. In these two books we are shown an alternative, a world of yesterday. The language chosen by both writers is sparse, carefully chosen, repetitive. Girls are allowed to walk paths through woods at night. In winter. Let that sink in. In the other novel, the young girl is being sent to a couple who own a farm to do penitential work , for thieving. Shes 9 or 10. Alone she rides a bus into the Icelandic countryside. These worlds might as well be 10,000 years ago. In The Swan by Gudberger Berggson, the author writes in the magic of the pre-teen. Isnt that what it is? Magical? In that time before we become adults, we still believe in extreme possibilities, in Baba Yaga, werewolves, even if we come from a secular background, we believe in amazing results, life itself is wonderment. Todays mass consumerist, materialistic world is trying to replicate the wonder and magic of our past, of even our childhoods but it cannot, like a diseased King Midas , everything the modern world touches is tubercular, coughing, dying, diseased. It takes 10 year old girls and sexualizes them. It takes 8 year old girls and turns them into blithering morons who must needs another dull toy, another tv show, that manufactured idea so her peers accept her. Sexualized consumers, but in the modern world the adults are like the worst children. They are selfish in the extreme. Childhood and adulthood are merged, gratification is the norm. Human nature, what differentiates a boy from a girl, a boy from a man, a man from a woman, an African from an Icelander has been erased, if not downplayed, chucked into the trash. We are told: all are equal. 

This is a lie. Ours is an age where meth dealers and serial killers have become heroes. An age where mass murderers on playing cards become a best seller in stores. Where lonely obese white women marry black lifers in prison for the worst crimes. Every single person in the West is taught, subconsciously and consciously, that if one feels an urge, it must be fulfilled. This is not a creed to propagate! This is the creed of organisms. The creed of beasts . Unlike animals, when humans focus on 

Rise Up, European Revolutionaries!

Walt Whitman (1819–1892).  Leaves of Grass.  1900. 

170. To a foil’d European Revolutionaire 

1 COURAGE yet! my brother or my sister!
Keep on! Liberty is to be subserv’d, whatever occurs;
That is nothing, that is quell’d by one or two failures, or any number of failures,
Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any unfaithfulness,
Or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal statutes.	5
Revolt! and still revolt! revolt!
What we believe in waits latent forever through all the continents, and all the islands and archipelagos of the sea;
What we believe in invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, knows no discouragement,
Waiting patiently, waiting its time.
(Not songs of loyalty alone are these,	10
But songs of insurrection also;
For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel, the world over,
And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,
And stakes his life, to be lost at any moment.)
2 Revolt! and the downfall of tyrants!	15
The battle rages with many a loud alarm, and frequent advance and retreat,
The infidel triumphs—or supposes he triumphs,
Then the prison, scaffold, garrote, hand-cuffs, iron necklace and anklet, lead-balls, do their work,
The named and unnamed heroes pass to other spheres,
The great speakers and writers are exiled—they lie sick in distant lands,	20
The cause is asleep—the strongest throats are still, choked with their own blood,
The young men droop their eyelashes toward the ground when they meet;
—But for all this, liberty has not gone out of the place, nor the infidel enter’d into full possession.
When liberty goes out of a place, it is not the first to go, nor the second or third to go,
It waits for all the rest to go—it is the last.	25
When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,
And when all life, and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth,
Then only shall liberty, or the idea of liberty, be discharged from that part of the earth,
And the infidel come into full possession.
3 Then courage! European revolter! revoltress!	30
For, till all ceases, neither must you cease.
I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am for myself, nor what anything is for,)
But I will search carefully for it even in being foil’d,
In defeat, poverty, misconception, imprisonment—for they too are great.
Revolt! and the bullet for tyrants!	35
Did we think victory great?
So it is—But now it seems to me, when it cannot be help’d, that defeat is great,
And that death and dismay are great.

The Green Grass Unstained With Presents.

This gallery contains 1 photo.

The Corgis rolled on the cool green grass with Alsatians and Chechen mountain dogs. Wimeraners jumped up and down with Irish Setters. Amidst the canine revelry were children also rolling on the grass, sitting, standing and yes, jumping, too. Hours … Continue reading →

We Will Not Leave Without Marks

An increasing number of people who lead mental lives of great intensity, people who are sensitive by nature, notice the steadily more frequent appearance in them of mental states of great strangeness . . . a wordless and irrational feeling … Continue reading →

So you want to get the hell away?

This gallery contains 4 photos.

So, the modern world got you down in the dumps?You have a few options: travel into the wilderness and dont come back. Read about people in nature , or both. Heres a few books to help you get started.

Austro-Hungarian Novels

---

Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig

Celestial Harmonies by Peter Esterhazy

Confessions of Zeno by Italo Svevo

Embers by Sandor Marai

The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek

Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb

Little Apple by Leo Perutz

The Lord Chandos Letter by Hugo von Hofmannsthal

The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil

Memoirs of an Anti-Semite by Gregor von Rezzori

The Memoirs of Elias Canetti

The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

The Resurrection of Maltravers by Alexander Lernet-Holenia

The Road into the Open by Arthur Schnitzler

The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch

Tales from Two Pockets by Karel Capek

Telegrams of the Soul: Selected Prose of Peter Altenberg

Repost, sign up, say something

If you find yourself here and like what you see, or have a suggestion, say something. If you like it, re-post it, send it to someone. Also, if you dislike it, tell me–its just strange to see so many people reading this blog and no one says anything. Curse me out, call me an idiot.Something.

Recycling, or Shoot the damned Junkie with the Guns

 

This morning we came unto the street and saw that the town of Eureka had placed bright blue recycling bins in front of every downtown building. How goddamned cute. All around our bin was trash from the homeless. Cigarette butts, beer cans, an oblong pile of vomit nestled against a coil of dog shit.Trucks, giant redneck trucks roared past, a jet left its mark in the sky. I took my wife to work past thousands of cars. Cars and trucks and planes. I know many love their cars and trucks and love to take vacations. So what. Making people recycle  but not forcing them to walk,  to ride a bicycle, take public transportation is like making your daughter brush her teeth but doing nothing about her Coca Cola and Snickers diet, it’s like forcing a smoker to put away his butts but not put away his two pack habit.A junkie with an automatic, with grenades waltzing through the streets shrieking bloody murder and the police make him cover his pudenda. Effective? Cosmetically, yes. Realistically, no. The junkie needs to be shot. Shoot the junkie in yourself, do your progeny a favor and stop being a cuntox.

 

The person who denies climate change today is the panoptic village idiot of the Middle Ages, its the dullard in 1900 who still thought the earth was flat. That person has no need of clean air, or any air at all. May they be choked by a gaggle of thalidomide teens.

 

I agree with Pentti Linkola on many things, overpopulation is not one of them. Europe(including the diaspora) needs more people, not less. But, we need to close the borders. End all aid to foreign nations. And, we need to stop driving. Our people are obese, the glaciers are melting, we’re ruining the planet so we can live in relative ease and comfort. Fuck comfort. The fat must be forced to walk. Recycling does nothing but make us feel good about ourselves. We are still part of the animal kingdom. Watch a rat in his natural habitat, smell his urine, his body odor, see the feces, hear the gnashing of his little teeth—we are worse than that. Europe isn’t just her traditions, her glory, her past, her people. She is the land. The variegated land of Europe, the USA, Canada, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand made us who we are today. Ruin this and tomorrows children are ruined. A true conservative conserves—the radical liberal of today is the cretin who drives modern technology and feels good while doing so.A sane government would ban cars, increase the efficacy of train travel. Children would spend most of their day outside, tv would be banned. Recycling wouldnt be necessary because we wouldnt be consuming such shit in the first place. And, it is shit, my friends. Worse than mere shit. Shit breaks down, shit  assists life—-what modern man consumes today destroys man, destroys the planet, the body, the mind, the soul. See that fjord over there? In 30 years it will look like suburban Los Angeles. Your cosmetic surgery is doing nothing for the gaping sores all over your body.

 

The deluge

The deluge

The boy with different colored eyes pushed the toy Noah’s ark in the puddle. On its decks were two deer, a hippo and a gorilla. In the hold below the deck were the rest of the animals; a wolf, a giraffe, rhinoceros, lion and a buffalo. The boy squatted and leaned over the puddle and had his upper teeth biting his lower lip. He was imagining a storm with rain, like in the story.

An image took over his imagining:  of Noah and his family, below decks, on loose hay, in robes and beards, their arms outstretched towards Heaven, asking for protection, for dry land and an end to the rain. Among the family of Noah lay the four legged animals. The boy imagined the smell of the animals and the noise and looked towards the house. He stood and walked to the wet lawn, where he grabbed some clumps and went to put the grass below the plastic deck, he scattered the grass so the animals would be comfortable, snapped the lid and put it back onto the surface of the mud puddle, with the worms that came up from the ground and always found the puddles. A small frog jumped. The worms and ants and frog became biblical sea creatures.
The toy came without Noah or his sons. . Only animals. The boy accused Santa of forgetting the men ;he thought:  An ark needed men to steer and take care of the animals. So, the boy decided to get his army men .He’d place WW2 soldiers on the deck. The ones with guns were fewer than the ones with telephones and grenades. But, they’d protect the animals. When Leviathan roiled the sea and tried to smash the boat, the army men would shoot and grenades would fly.  He left the ark to float in the murky puddle in the middle of the dirt road. He sighed and looked down at the ground so as to not step on a twig. He picked himself carefully thru the green grass, avoiding any twigs, to reach the back steps of his grey colored home. Now, he watched for cracks. There were five steps to the door. He looked like he was dancing a strange dance or performing a ritual with his feet as he maneuvered the cracks and gaps, the rule against cracks had broadened to mean any scar in concrete anywhere.  He stood still, breathing in and out, calm. He glanced back at the ark floating in its sea and beyond he saw the street and further, he saw  the tired houses with peeling paint, the cars on blocks and everywhere was the grey heavy sky that looked to buckle from the weight of the rain and future fogs and drizzles .

His mind raced about what to do and what not to do. His grandfather had told him the rules for when he crossed the path of a black cat, the rules for when he walked under a ladder, the rules for when he walked over a body on the floor, rules for all kinds of transgressions. He felt sick and over-worried. Inside, he felt his breathing become tighter. Jesus help me, he muttered. His ears exhaled the noise from outside and slowly breathed in the noises inside the house. The television was on in the living room and at the end of the hallway, in his parents’ bedroom he heard what sounded like crashing, like two people wrestling. He tried to smile and breathe at the same time. Jesus help me, he said without speaking.

His sisters sat on the couch, their feet in front of them, strait out and pointing at the TV set. They did not notice him.

Except for this sound, there was none other than his wheezing. And, the sound from his parent’s room. They began talking to each other. But, their tones were incongruous. They did not match. His father’s tone was urgent and fricative, his mothers consisted of the word “No”, either drawled out or said abruptly. Her tone was always quieter than his fathers. He didn’t want to hear his voice. His hands were sweaty and he tried to breathe but it felt like he was breathing thru a straw in a smoke filled room. A grunt came from their room, then he heard a thwack, then his mother s “no”. Grunt, thump, no. Grunt, thump, no. It had a pattern and it entered his mind which was like a dust devil of images and sounds and smells, which made his lungs constrict and his heart race. The shadows darkened suddenly and his wheezing became much louder.

Now, other sounds became part of the pattern: a boot scraping sound, a dog-like snarl, the sound of a hand slapping skin, rain. Now, there was rain. His wheezing reminded him of witches who were far off cackling over a pot. This frightened him because the sound came not from far away but from inside him.  He did not know why the breathing became worse. He knew no other person who wheezed. He felt guilty for not being able to breathe like other people. He felt ashamed for not having a deep breath. He smacked his forehead and said “dummy”. He felt like he was going to cry; the feeling in his throat exacerbated his wheezing. He knew that if he did cry he’d wheeze more and so he forced himself to stop. His father would spank him or slap him. His mother would have to make steam and put a towel over his head, like she always did, so he could breathe. If this didn’t work, shed take him to the hospital. He heard now his own heart beating fast in his ears, the wheezing shook him, rattled his young body.

The rain brushed against the kitchen window and he looked at it. It was dark now. The ark, he thought would drown. He walked to the room, stopping to breathe and to look back at the back door. Jesus help me, he said, in his mind. Now, he was afraid he’d turn to salt. Grandpa said a lady turned to salt when God told her not to turn around. Shadows from the room moved on the light on the floor in the hall. He watched them and tried to make out actions, to understand what was happening— their strangeness made him scared. He felt dizzy. He held onto the wall, then walked tracing his finger along the very top, imagining a line drawn on, perfectly strait that he followed, intuitively because he was smart, Grandpa said he was and grandpa was always right, even when he smelled like wine. At the edge of the door to the room, the pattern started again, only his mother sounded louder and afraid. Her fear was thick in the air and met the fear of the little boy and in recognition the fears pulsed. Go away, yelled his father. Honey, go watch TV, said his mom. He felt like his mom was happy and mad at him, all at once and this confused him, so he put his finger to the all to trace and imagined the line crooked and this upset him. He remembered the ark and gasped. Many pictures entered his mind, raced and circled and became a confused din. He looked at the wall and it seemed crooked.

He moved to the door and peeked  and there he saw his father on top of his mom, his mothers dress was torn, her nostrils were caked in black blood, her eye blackened and shut, his father’s eyes were red  and narrow but seemed to be larger than he had ever seen them, he looked at the boy and his mouth  opened like he was in pain, the boy  looked back at his mom and saw his father  choke her tighter, the boys eyes looked at the tableau and saw  legs entwined and his father’s arm between all the legs and by his mothers feet, between her  feet and his father’s boots was the butt end of a rifle, it moved towards her face , then away. The faces and torsos and words were not seen by the boy. He did not see anything but the end of the gun move inches towards their heads and then inches away from them. The sound of it sliding across the floor, like a lame foot, something impoverished of spirit, purpose. Grunt, thump, no. Over and over until the pattern disappeared and the boy imagined Jesus above him —but floating away, into clouds, waving down to him, until he was gone and far from this. The boy turned from the room and walked down the hall and out of the door to cold fast rain and the puddle which now took over the entire road. His ark was at the far end, half sunk, the two deer were gone, the hippo lay on his side and the gorilla stood his fists against his chest, displaying his teeth. He squatted and stared at him and was amazed that, as the ark sank the gorilla still stood and the boy got onto his knees and inched closer to its face and smiled because he recognized his expression. He was not angry, the gorilla was crying and moments later when the ark was gone the gorilla floated, face up and the boy fell forward, his hands in the water and the water to his elbows and his face was twisted in grief and he was quiet as he wept hot tears into the water. He did not hear his father’s motorcycle, nor did he hear his mother’s voice or feel her arms when she found him soaking wet and shivering with the ark broken into pieces, his small hands torn and bloody and white from so much water.

Prognosis:Dyspepsia.

It’s a good word, a word not used much–which is strange considering that this word explains our culture. Our culture? What is our culture. To be short, it is the West, I’ll include Japan, Russia, India, South Africa and a … Continue reading →

Drinking all Night to Slavic Brotherhood

….on page 40 of “Conversations with Stalin”, Djilas says he and Tito and Stalin and Zhukov drank all night to Slavic brotherhood…one of those moments when I wish I could travel back in time. Why? Because this is nuts. Stalin … Continue reading →

Fear as a Motivator for the Obese

Recently , while shopping for Thanksgiving with a French friend Ive known for two decades, we were inundated with a flood of floppy humans, all Americans, all obese . They were insouciant in their obesity, just strolling , giggling, like … Continue reading →

Teutonic erotica

title=”Teutonic erotica”>Teutonic erotica

The Shtetl from Gehenna.

Listening to Marlene Dietrich, below me is an Orthodox Jew with the build of a defensive lineman and the temperament of a wolverine. Right now he is sawing wood or pulling in fathoms of metal cable. There are intermittent shrieks, yells, screams, mostly bovine bellows, that pulse like a sonic boom in suspended animation, upwards thru the thin 1920’s floorboards rife with vermin and vermin on top of vermin. The noise from below sounds mad. I know, I have spent time in the loony bin. This is too odd, too invented, too made to sound nutty. A melange of radio, silence, pounding, loud tv, silence, metal being clacked together with radio and shouting and screaming and sobbing. Silence. Chainsaws under a pillow, more sobs. Enough! I tap my cane on the floor, his ceiling. Silence. It worked, I naively think. I lean on cane and hobble, stoically and triumphant to bed.Before I can sit: bam, bam ,bam and muffled yelling. Then, a door slams. Feet and heavy body bounding up stairs.

I call 311. 311 is for nonemergency emergencys. I didnt think that this warranted the Borough Park police just yet. Then,as I peeked through the hole he ran and kicked the steel door. I peeked again: There he is , wifebeater, khaki pants, barefoot,drunk, I think, fists balled up and veins popping on his neck, calling me, pardon me, in his jackanapes parlance: motherfucker. He seemed drunk, too angry for this level of anger and red faced. He invites me outside, to leave my apartment, oh, I think, he has manners, he’s nice, I was wrong, he’s Mr. Cordial. Nice, I say, youre real nice. He says he wants to “fuckin fight” me. Although I was fond of fisticuffs, I am not too keen on fighting after spine procedures, shoulder surgery and 3 slipped discs—perhaps he wants to go for the leisurely stroll that his brethren enjoy at the witching hour? Ive seen murders of Hasids throng together and walk at night, past midnite, just out for a stroll— incidentally, in Yiddish , there is no word for stroll—I doubt it. I doubt wok-for-yarmulke crazy man here is going to want to settle this over a walk thru Borough Park. He didn’t look to be suffering from a fit of peripateticism. He kicked the door again and the lady on the other end asked me what he was doing. I told her and she suggested connecting me to 911. Sure, whatever. Let’s do it. Transferred, the lady for 911 seems relaxed, says she’ll send over a car. The “police” that arrive are the most un-martial people Ive ever seen in a martial role: he, a pudgy Asian , tall and stuttering, she a rotund, Hispanic/Black woman of limited intelligiance; both had the air of people who had their minds dredged through vats of glue and opium. In short, the “police” did nothing except infuriate my bastard son of Abraham. Since that night he plays Israeli/Hebrew/Yiddish radio full blast between our floorboards and layer of rats and cockroaches…. but only, only when Golem (I have dubbed him this) hears me walking. When I see him he looks either like any other pious behemoth Jew or he looks slightly sociopathic and scuttles away from me. Either way, the nightly noise blitzkrieg coming from below forces us to move to quieter burbs:New Jersey…..not my idea of heaven, but better than Brooklyn and this shtetl from Gehenna.These people , almost all I’ve met, are, to put it very bluntly: cunts. Assholes. Yiddish has 16 levels of idiots. They must have 39 levels of assholes. In the book Shtetl, author Eva Hoffman says that any group that is as insular and, at the same time has a superiority complex, as the Jews, will experience trouble with their neighbors. Im having trouble with my neighbors.These people have pushed me beyond my limits. I don’t want them all dead. I haven’t collapsed completely. I just don’t give a fuck about them. At all. They litter, shriek, are noisy, smell, look ridiculous dressed up in their Ichabod crane outfits, look down their noses and grimace at my wife—occassionally , there is an old man, probably blind, who comes by and nods and mutters something incomprehensible. I’ve witnessed them treat blacks as inferior beings, Mexicans as retards. Never have I seen a racist redneck act this bad. The blacks and Mexicans that work for them look defeated, stooped, hunched, their eyes a weak soup of sadness with futile anger distilled in black pupils.All the while, come Shabas, and Gods chosen people , scurry uberfast in feminine stockings and pendulous payess , jabbering on Nokia cellphones on the way to their Toyota SUV’s where, more often than not, I will hear pop music: rap, metal, Brittany Spears.They zoom off, cigarettes dangling from bulbous lips, glasses perched under the brim of their ancient headgear.

Ou immediate neighbors are nice…barely. I think its because they need us to turn on the oven on Friday or turn off the lights or whatever they cannot/mustnt do.They repay us with fruity Israeli vino.They smile,they say hello, their children grin large and their eyes beam at us with curiosity. The Russian babushka on our left acts as if we came directly from darkest Togo or Tartary…or Fr. Damiens leper colony on Molokai(?). And, the moving adornments, with their amber hue and gesticulating antennae are omnipresent. Cockroaches in NYC come in all shapes and sizes. Being a former Terminix pest control man I have a handle on our particular hovel six stories in the sky .Once, a cappuccino and orange colored bastard the size of a teenage tarantula flew at my precious eyes; I acted from my limbic system: in abject terror and revulsion, ice runs up and down my spine. I chased this one for hours.Finally, he sequestered himself(he was a he) in our wardrobe. So, taking my cue fromHannibal the Carthaginian, I sprinkled boric acid in a thin layer two feet our from the wardrobe, in every nook and crack I sprayed illegal Mexican poison, from floor to ceiling. At night, when we’re snug and dreaming of the state of Jefferson , I know he peeked his atom sized peepers out from my suit or Natashas silver cocktail dress and began to sneak away, heading for his pals,his family and his thousands of children, not knowing that his feet would pick up the finely cut silica(glass) and soak it up into his circulatory system, in days his cockroach veins would be lacerated and he would bleed to death, usually from brain hemorrhaging.The good thing about him making it out is the boric acid makes it to his gut where it mixes with the contents of his brunch and since he feeds his young via prophalaxis( regurgitating his food into the mouths of the young and disabled) the little tykes also keel over.ad nauseum.ad vertiginum.

I walked into a bakery today and the owner, with bakers apron and payess and glasses looks at me, smirks and walks into the back. A teenage daughter comes and doesn’t look me in the eyes and asks what I want . I forget what I ordered because the whole time I felt black in 1950’s Alabama. The Hasids walk fast. The few Asians and Caucasians walk a little slower. Since Im from the hills, I walk slowly and take it in: the Rafi script, the hats, the skirts, the signs, the Yiddish and Hebrew. The Polish market on the corner where I go at 530 to get smetana and pivo and hleb and every day a young Hasid runs in takes a peek at a Russian language Playboy , says something guttural and bolts outside. Waiting for subway at our stop and they never say anything, even when you go to help one up from a fall. Im not used to this. Not one bit. I recall reading Joseph Roths “What I Saw”, his feuilletons from Berlin pre-Hitler and he describes the alien quality of the Eastern Jews from the shtetl. He talks of their insularity, their arrogance and their ignorance. They thought that not interacting with their German hosts would suffice. Just ignore the goyem. Germans couldn’t ignore them.

Many times I wanted to dress up as Lakota man and wife, with headress, feathers, buckskin ad bow and arrows. I wanted to sit Indian style right smack dab in front of the hubbub and be mum. Or, I wanted to do a wardance. I wondered what they’d do, I imagined them saying , “Hey, this is our neighborhood–get outta here” And, I’d say: This is my country, pick up your cigarette butt, your Pepsi can, your trash. Respect the land. I’d picture the commercial from the 70’s of the Indian in the canoe with that one tear rolling down his cheek. I also knew that the Hasids would

Then, I pictured the lot of them beating me to an inch of my death, payess swinging and fringed garments brushing my bruised goy face and I break free and scream :Geronimo!! And… it never happened. The most that did happen was I told one man at the pharmacy I was part Cherokee and his mouth tilted, the expression in every culture that says “Youre so full of shit”. He really told me to get outta there. I walked into a crowd of Hasid teenage boys and felt bald, I was the only one without a hat. Also, I had no payess. By the end of our stay, I wanted some. But, dyed green or blonde or something cool. That, too, never happened. Back then, in Borough Park so much didn’t happen in a time of so much that was happening that I didn’t care.

Biannual peeves and hatreds

Its that time of year when Ive hit the limit to what I can take regarding certain things; now this time of year can come at any time of the year, often it comes dozens of times in a week. … Continue reading →

Share this:

Lenusik and I went on a 24 block walk to the library, she wore a sweater dress with white socks , dress shoes and clean hair. Her face was clean, her eyes healthy; she is not obese nor does she have rotting teeth and a loud demeanor. She does not stink, except at certain times when all toddlers stink. She has manners. Her father wore khaki slacks, a rust colored dress shirt and an Irish cap. Old scuffed Dr. Marten shoes and black dress socks (Calvin Klein) shod his clean unsmelly feet. Did he want to wear this? Yes and no. Sweats would be more comfortable, as would flip flops. And, a hooded sweatshirt. But, he did not give in to his desire. In the end, he felt better because he dressed to impress, not just those who would see him, but his daughter and , this will sound odd to an unbeliever, and God. Now, he doesn’t have a clear grasp on who or what God is, but he does know who God isn’t. His God was actually a homeless Jew when he was on earth. But, he finds it hard to imagine that his God looked like the homeless he sees in Eureka. He may have been bedraggled, disheveled, tired, forlorn and , at times, smelling of sweat, body odors. Yet, theres something about Western homelessness that takes the word “impoverishment” to a level seen only in concentration camps and drug dens. The people I see who are living on the streets have given in to their desires, 100%. They have lost all respect for themselves. My critics attack me now, for being insensitive. I grew up very poor by American standards. Everyone around us was poor or low level working class. Many, if not most, were also like the homeless I see today: wearing sweats, hooded sweatshirts, smelling, stinky, abrasive, shoes falling apart, teeth rotting, eyes “circling the drain”, like flushed water. My grandpa, poor, a junk-dealer  at times, on welfare, at times wore slacks, dress shirts, a tie, a hat, cologne. You’d never think he was this close to being homeless. Never. He had manners and a royal demeanor. He had respect, for himself and for others. I see pictures of men in the Depression and see men with sad eyes wearing slacks, albeit with holes and/ or patches. Women with their last strand of dignity, a dress, dress shoes. Sad, but with some kind of respect. Now? Gone. What happened? In the past , people didn’t wear their nightclothes, even home clothes outdoors. There was a distinct line between home, work, church, recreation. That the lines have been erased is true and everywhere. How many Western churches have a I been to, even Orthodox, where women and men dress as if they were trying to attract a pimp, where they looked as if they were trying to impress the opposite sex, not God. How many times have I see, rich and poor, men and women, all ethnicities, wear pajamas outside? Men show their underwear, women show theirs, people walk by dragging their feet, they talk as if nobody is around, they smack their food, smack their girls asses, the face of their children, each other. There is no respect: nobody has it for themselves, for their neighbor. The upper echelon of the West has always been an example: dress like us, think like us. In Victorian times. the poor and working class tried to emulate the rich. Now, the rock star elite dress like whores, except the rap singers, male and female,  have the same undies that a Wall Street banker has or a Guinness heir has . Not the K Mart panties that the inner city black has, or the Wal -Mart tighty whiteys that a rural white wears. Dress to impress ? It’s too much to ask nowadays. Fuck you, fuck me. Fuck it. The attitude of this age, our era, is this: Why? What for? Our clothes mimic our minds.Our mien is the mien of dross. Our attitude is not one of thankfulness, its one of lassitude. Not gratitude. But, looking around—-is this really what we have to be thankful for?Im going back in, putting on my pajamas and going to take an opiate.

UPDATE: I took the opiate. The homeless have increased in number and decibels. Saturday after a movie, two Ewok looking  freaks scrambled on a sidewalk, 20 feet from where Lena had to “go to the bathroom”. As she’s trying to urinate, a lady gets in her car, looks at us and her ugly face becomes uglier. What? I ask. I cant believe you, she says, people are walking by and …she opens her eyes wide and mocks me. I stand and point at her: Get the fuck in the car, shut your mouth. She mumbles: Dont you talk to me like..I cut her off. Every person Ive been angry at for the last 4 years is in her run down body. I call her every name, she leaves. I leave. My daughter is crying. Papa mean.

I lost my cool, surely I could have calmly called her a slut? Or, politely asked her to go fuck herself? Instead, I used masculine hostility and din to destroy her feminine attack. No matter how the wench was dressed or held herself or conducted herself—–this much is certain, she was a woman who thought she could lambast a man who had taken his daughter outside of a store to go pee. She didnt ask nicely, respectively, like a good crone should. She acted like a cretin, a scumbag,like she was parroting what she saw on reality tv.  I reacted how I saw fit and how my past circumstances, and how I utilized my past life events, dictated. For the past few years I have watched as manners in America have evaporated. That morning my back hurt, my daughter was grumpy and sleepy, I’d encountered the millionth vagabond and then this hag? No, I shouted her down. Not too much, but enough, overmuch? Yes, a bit. Next time, Ill do my best to meet insouciance like this with either ignoring her( seriously doubt it) or being even more calm—albeit with more barbs, my words will cut deeper. Will it have an effect? On said hag, the world, me? No, but it will have an effect on my three year old. I dont want her to scream at anything that disturbs her. Certain things need a certain level of anger, an old woman in sweats and yellowed fingers is not worth 3 minutes of choice venom.