Short story

She was standing in the cucina dressed in a pretty pink gingham dress. Her man was out back on the porch having a beer with his pals . She was listening to them talk all in dark Italian as she tried to figure out if the pizza margherita she was cooking in the oven for them, or at least her husband, was ready. The aroma was very good. She opened the oven up and took a look. The pizza was bubbling.

She figured she would wait a few more minutes, & have a beer herself in the mean time. From the fridge she grabbed a frosty Heineken and popped the cap off and sat down fixing her dress and crossing her legs, listening to the sounds of the men's voices drifting around in Italiano. She wished she could understand more; alas, it was impossible. She had no patience to study...and Galeazzo wouldnt really speak it to her. He didn't like it, he said. When he was with her he spoke English and he would do that even if his English was bad . Then however with all the friends & the neighbors it was Italian...constantly. In the United States this hadn't been so bad, but then once Galeazzo was back in Italy his English started to get worse instead of better, because he had stopped speaking it so much. This was making her increasingly nervous. She hadn't thought about it. About how she would be entirely left out like this.

Her mother had said it to her! But she had been so excited when Galeazzo wanted to actually marry her and then , 9 months after the marriage, when he said he wanted to go back to Italy and of course take her with him, she had been elated. She was from a small town in the states that had about 6 thousand people in it. She had never even been to a single major Americna city before in her life. And then suddenly there she was making plans to go and live across the Atlantic Ocean with her husband Galeazzo Buonarotta in Italy. It was preposterous. But real! And now here she was in an Italian cucina in the middle of Rome - Rome!- cooking authentic pizza margherita and serving Italian men food. What on earth had happened? It was like a dream really..she sometimes thought...like a dream she had somehow gotten sucked up into. Had she perhaps dreamed of Italy as a child and forgotten it? Had she dreamed of Europe ? She could not remember it. She did not think she ever had. It had all just ...happened so randomly....

She took a long sip of the Heineken and then she stood up to go check the oven again. The pizza was definitely finito now. She pulled it out and then she went to the window (which she knew was called a finestra) and she called for Galeazzo. The second she went there to the window however she saw that someone else had arrived in the backyard , on the porch. It was a woman, an Italian of corse...a girl who looked much younger. Was it one of the other men's wives?

She called out to Galeazzo telling him to come inside.....

Reality tales

I do often think that most of my inspiration to write came from having spent so much of my childhood passing my time in the various online RPG games. I've said it before but it's always worth sayin again, because I think that what essentially happened to me is that, as a child, and a teen as well, I got addicted to this sort of virtual world that then, once I reached adulthood, very much became unsustainable -- but not necessarily in the way you'd think.

This means to say that I could have still gone on playing the virtual games when I was older (many seem to think they must quit ) but that , for some reason, the allure of the games, and even the "realism" that I felt when I played them as a kid, very much faded once I hit adulthood. In other words, I did not feel nearly as immersed in any game I played past the age of 20 or so...as I had when I was a kid. At the same time as that thoigh, I still had the need - as though it was a drug I got addicted to-- to slip off into these other realms. I still wanted to feel as I felt then, when I played a game pretending I was a magician or a Druid or a samsara warrior or some such thing. I still wanted my brain to drink deeply of just the thoughts of the places the games brought me to.

The real world to this day I feel...simply does not compare to the world I remember from the specific online RPG's I played as a kid. It's actually almost creepy just how vivid my memories really are from them all. If they weren't so vivid, I obviously would not be consistently returning to them all these years later. Alas, if you looked thru my archives, you'll see I hit this subject and return again and again. I do not revisit any other childhood memories nearly as often as I do the ones where I was playing the very specific online roleplaying games. In fact, I've often said to people that my entire obsession and wish to live in Europe stems completely from just how much I played the games. Most of them, after all, though they weren't say in Europe, were set and featured medieval type cities that were just like European ones more or less. I honestly therefore think I got addicted to the sights and the sounds of this medieval style world.

Unfortunately though, like I say, the games very much dried out once I got past 20, but that need and that want to keep going back to that other world I recognized never did , and I think it is really this core "addiction" of mine at the end of the day that has ultimately kept me tethered to the keyboard as I am. I write stories for fun, but I also think I write them literally because I find the reality of actual life in this modern world and especially this country with no history  that intolerable....

In fact, I often find that, as much as I wish I could, I seem to have a very very difficult time trying to write stories in any sort of true reality connected to my own actual life here in the States...and it's probably for the exact reason of my early childhood immersion with these fantastical  video games. For example, even the stories I write that I purposely keep void of magic or sorcery et cetera, I still tend to wind up making fantastical , and unreal, in some other sense. In the summer of 2014 for example I wrote  about a girl named Angela becoming a world famous director out of Miami at the age of 21....and then from there I just basically used her fictional bank account as an excuse to have her hopping all around the world living in luxury. Yea,  Angela didn't leave reality or step through portals or cast spells, but I still couldn't really write her as "truly real." And of course to me being truly real is, I suppose, being mundane ...or maybe very tragic. It's also being trapped, more likely than not, in the United States. Obviously I can't really write that well of a real person livikg in a city like Florence because I've never lived there. I might be able to get close but...it still doesn't feel right. I can write about an American though. Naturally! It's just that I don't really want to. Because I get mad.

I , as you can perhaps see, am a little conflicted when it comes to wanting to write realism to not wanting to write it. On the one hand, I'm addicted to this fantasy drug I've been chasing since childhood and I desperately want to experience rather outlandish and impossible things through writing and keep going back to that fantastical realm ....but on the other I also feel like I'm perhaps doing a disservice (to who) by *not* writing realism, and I think it's the reason why I wind up sort of switching between essays like these and then just pure fantasy tales. Trying to write about reality just seems boring. It also seems like, well, if I'm going to write about a pure reality, ought I not just write an essay?

Let me give you an example of something positive  that would usually get my fingers itchy to start writing ...and which would probably also veer off into quickly into fantasy: I am scrolling around on Twitter, or watching the National Geographic channel, and I see a short show about the Amazon rainforest, or Africa. I begin to get a little saddened by the fact that in reality I do not have the means to get on a Boeing jet and leave instantly for the place. So what do I do? I start writing a story set there and for the next few hours I find peace and relaxation feeling as though I'm there, and deeply immersing mysef in the idea of the place. Eventually the story that began as being sinply in the African jungle with elephants and rhinoceroses turns somehow into something about  magical sea creatures and crazy weather and talking animals et cetera. I'm in a good mood. I'm on vacation...

But now take something that doesn't leave me sad , but rather very angry, like when I start thinking about the political situation in the States, or the student loan debacle here (which has ruined family members) or even the immigrant story of my family from Italy that, if you've read me, you'll know I am deeply deeply conflicted about. When I start thinking about these things, these very real and day to day things, it seems that my fingers never , or at least very rarely, end up inspired to write a fictional story about this, but rather to just often write paragraphs of angry flipped out diatribes trying to explain jusr why I find the situation so intolerable . Often when I get to the end of these diatribes ll admit I do feel better ...and relieved...as though I've taken a bath....but...I don't like at all what I've written. Like, I feel as though I wasted my time. "Why couldn't I have written that as fiction?"

Alas I have no idea why, except to say that I think there is some sort of deep ceded connection somewhere in my brain when it comes to the idea that writing is now *supposed* to be for the fantasy and perhaps solely the fantasy...and ive also said this before ...but if you look at so much of what literature has become for many very excited readers, you'll see this is really very much the case. The truth is that the written world now very much mimics the video game and the movie world: Stories about pure reality seem to be pretty much out the window. People want stories about fantasy. The most popular stories , so far as I can tell, often seem to be fantasy.....

I dunno. Back to da page I guess. I got some tits I wanna grow and some dresses I wanna wear and some big Boeing 747 jets I wanna on. And as you can imagine ....I can't do none of that in la realta.

Cultural confusion

There is a fellow on Twitter this afternoon who is doing a lot of talking about 'tribes' in the United States, and how he thinks everyone's obsession with trying to lift one tribe up higher has actually now resulted in the other tribes that they're fighting against going ...where else... but lower. One would think this would be obvious but, as with so much in the States, there are so many things, I think, that you only end up realizing years after the daily ingestion of the "everyone in america gets along" diet has been revealed as a lie.  Because of course the fact is that no one in the United States has really ever gotten along, and this isn't just limited to blacks and whites, but also to the various whites thrmselves. And it is mostly as a result of the fact that we have no (and I tried to explain this to the fella in a tweet) unifying figures here , that we can really ALL collectively unite around.

I know, I know, you'll yhink what I'm saying is crazy...there are tons of famous Americans that everyone & their mother loves you'll tell me ...but the truth is that all those famous Americans - 9 times out of 10-- only experience their "real deep legacy" in one specific tribe or the other, and it's very rare - if not altogether often never happening at all-- that an historical figure will suddenly find itself accepted into another tribes deeper story, as a real authentic hero.

One good example to use is someone like, say, John F. Kennedy. On the surface, at first glance, Kennedy seems , to many Americans, as though he might be some sort of all around American figure that, once he was assassinated perhaps, quickly entered into the cultural DNA of the whole nation, regardless of the politics he had while he was alive. If you just left off with Kennedy in freshman year US history, you may really have this idea of him, I don't know. The reality of course is much different, and the reality is really only a solidified hero for one community - or should I say tribe - and one tribe alone, that being the Irish community. And even with the Irish community, in fact, there may be some lack of love , since , again, Kennedy was a politician, and that's naturally divisive. We therefore see that someone who is often assumed, in many circles, to be a total American hero, is actually standing on a wildly weak foundation literally the moment he steps out of Irish town. I , for one, coming from the Italian tribe of the New World, could frankly careless about Kennedy. If anything , when I read my tribal history, he is a sort of enemy, and I look at him and I think : if his name was John Antonetti instead of John Kennedy, I might have a picture of him in my kitchen right now. Alas, my connection with him simply cannot be that intimate. He's not in my tribe.

Well, you'll say, what about someone whose a little further back than Kennedy, and someone who wasn't directly involved with politics? What about someone who you might think is easy to like...perhaps like Mark Twain the 19th century writer ? Well, yet again, at first glance, Twain seems to be someone who has perhaps conquered every realm of modern US tribal politics, and it seems like he's just gotta be beloved in every room. After all, is he not a figure that both the south and the north enjoy together? And is he not also a white figure who seems, to some extent, to have caught on even in the black community? Surely this guy is old enough now, everyone says, to have passed every wall and made it. Surely we can unite around Mark Twain.

Take a second look at him though, and you see that Twain is fractured just like everyone else here is fractured. Yes, I personally love him because he's from my secondary, and chosen, tribe of writers, but as an Italian whose family only docked here in 1906, 3 years before Twain died in 1909? As a New York Italian , I could almost careless about Mark Twain. This isn't to say his story isn't interesting - I love his stories of 19th century america-- but the big difference is that, when I read them, I'm consciously aware of the fact that I'm not reading *my* ancestors, but rather the work of another tribal chief. In addition to this, Twain *also* even falls out of favor , somewhat, in places where you'd think he had a total stronghold. Like, for instance, the South, since it turns out that Mark Twain was a "deserter" when it came to the Confederacy, and he actually at times mocked them quite comically. So now- just like Kennedy - we wind up seeing that even the guy many think is America's grandfather....winds up standing on quicksand, and he slips right under the second you really try to evenly distribute him to each tribe. He's flimsy. Even he does not Ultimately stand.

And of course when it comes to this we can essentislly say the same thing about literally almost *every* famous American figure you can think of from literally 1777 straight to today. Or even, for that matter, straight back to 1492---when that old murderer and genocidal maniac Christopher Colombus sailed the ocean blue. Colombus is to this very day beloved in many Italian communities to the point where he stil has a parade, but go to the Black Hills of South Dakota, or maybe just read some of the Indian magazines you can find online, and you'll come to see that Colombus is completely despised. Even , what, 525 years after 1492. Hence I again tell you: there is literally no figure here whom everyone can unite around. Everyone is still for someone in particular: Sitting Bull is for the Indians, Sylvester Stallone the Italians, Martin Luther King the blacks, Britney Spears the white girls. There's next to no figure that all of us here , at once, can feel totally at home with. There is forever the air of someone or something foreign. The air of "this isn't for me".

Now , I know, many Americans- just like I thought years ago- might just think that this is the case eveeywher on earth, right? Except that, when you go and dig into another country and culture , a truly  old one, you start to find that , what do you know, it actually isn't the case. There are cultural figures in Italy that almost literally every Italian can unite around, whether you are talking about someone like Dante from the 1300s, or someone recent, like Fabrizio DeAndre, the Italian "Bob Dylan" whom I am forever referencing.

Bob Dylan, stateside , is sold to us as a figure much like Mark Twain. We are told repeatedly in publication after publication that Dylan is some sort of all American troubadour that spans the aisle and has hung out in every room. In reality though, Dylan's legacy is much different, and for the most part he really only seems to have survived in a specific pocket of academia. Even the legacy of rock and roll has largely abandoned Bob Dylan. He isn't a real wide spanning figure- and it isn't his fault- it's just because no such thing exists here! Look back at Fabrizio DeAndre, however, and you'll find that from north to south in Italy, and more importantly, from top to bottom in terms of social class, he's absolutely beloved , by all sorts of people.

Yes of course, some people personally have no taste for him; but it doesn't change the fact that they still *must* see him as an integral part of their cultural DNA as Italians. Bob Dylan for us is not like this. Go ask a Puerto Rican in the Bronx what they think of Dylan, go ask some white kid in Los Angeles who loves Black Sabbath,  go ask someone in Nashville even , go ask a black fellow, and each person will have a wildly different interpretation of the guy. They will also definitely probably not think he is representative of what they think is their American history. He's instesd a cultural hero for a specific set of tribes. Yea, it's true, Dylan permeated a number of tribes, just like Twain, but he didn't get all of them. When I listen to Dylan, I'm listening to someone who is, believe it or not, somewhat foreign to me- and it's not just because of the passage of time that he's foreign. It's because he came from a place my family has never seen, and perhaps never will see, and that place is called the American mid west, in specific Minnesota.

Some people will tell you that it's not possible for him to be foreign for me, of course, because he's singing in English (this is supposed to be our great unification ticket) but the fact that he's singing in English, just like the fact that black rappers are rapping in English, doesn't mean anything. He is still clearly from another tribe to me. If anything, i personally liked him all the more directly because of his foreignness -- but it still doesn't mean that he's apart of my "ancient cultural DNA". And in fact, when I'm talking to a lot of Americans, I have to be sort of careful sometimes where and when I can drop that Dylan card, if I want friends in certain places. If I start going on about Dylan's Nashville days, I might have enemies not just in the Bronx but also even just in Nashville! Since he was widely rejected there when he tried to go in the early 1970s and somewhat still is. Just last week for example, I saw an article proclaiming that his song "Subterraean Homesick Blues" was a clear example of why he , an old white man from the Midwest, was the grandfather of rap music! Come on, you think you're gonna be able to enter into many rooms and say that and be taken seriously? It's preposterous. Dylan is only held up as a grandfather of hip hop when looking through a white version of the story. In a black version, he never even existed.

However, this is not to say that cultural "trades" with specific characters and figures don't sometimes occur here, because they occasionally do, but it can be hard to see how well they stick. I myself have long been fascinated by the trading of characters - and their legacy - between tribes. For instance, though the black hip hop community generally seems to reject any notion of Bob Dylan as a grandfather or even remote influence on hip hop, they do, ironically, accept Italian Mafiosi like John gotti, Carlo Gambino, and the fictional "Luca Brasi" from The Godfather into their story, even though these people had nothing to do with music....

The figures aren't accepted completely of course, many people have a clear problem with it , but just enough to the point where these three characters all enjoy a totally seperate legacy and interpretation of who or what they were, in the black communities. This is of course the issue however: Who John Gotti is for me, is not who he is for the blacks, and is certainly not who he is for the wider white Americans who once called him "Public enemy number one". For me, Gotti is like a tragic cousin from down the road who went off and got wrapped up in something horrific, and proves that the Italians indeed had a hard go of it here; for the black rapper "Yo Gotti" or "Childish Gambino" he is a hero to recall as they now themselves are wrapped up in the 21st century version of a criminal underworld he once ruled with an iron fist; and for the basic Americans, or even for Rudy Giuliani, he is apparently one of the most psychopathic and vile criminals that ever walked Gods green earth. John Gotti changes, in other words, in each play in which he is called upon to perform, even right here in his own country, the United States. In fact, in  in one play in which Johns ghost was called up (not long after his imprisonment and while he was still alive) he had the following lines written for him: "Yeah" he tells us, in his 1996 fictional incarnation, "so you humbled me. So what you got? You got a war. You got a global war. You got your Chinks, Dominicans, Asians, Russians, Colombians, Jamaicans. What they doin'? They desecrate the nation. You got your variable fuckin' snowstorms of cocaine, smack or whatever they shove in their veins. There's no rules. There's no parameters. There's no feelings. There's no feelings for this country. There's no love for this country." In another scene, or perhaps just a real life quote that I'm misremembering, he then explains, when he's feeling particularly angry about the FBI, that this is a "low life country."

Now, one thing I find so fascinating about the lines that his 1996 ghost was fed here, is that, though Gotti refers to a "global war" in the dialogue, he's actually just really referring to the streets of New York City and perhaps the extended tri state area. He's not really referring to anything global because, powerful as he was, he was never a global figure nor even really a national one. He was mostly just a New York Italian figure....and that's it. When his character refers to global war, he's talking about the specific interior of this country itself: there is a global war here, a war amongst tribes, and all of them vying for power in their own way. Just like the dude on Twitter was saying, in regards not to a crimina underworld, but to the actual politics and even then, the innocent culture of the DNA.

The irony of the United States is that, beyond a language and a shared economy, there's next to nothing that the country is united around. And I have actually recently begun to believe that this country never will be united in the way that almost all countries on earth traditionally have been, and I believe that any attempts to try and force a concrete culture to stand here will, inevitably, fail and fail miserably, since a culture cannot come together in a forced manner like that. It has to be naturally and gradually pieced together, or else people hate it, and this is what leads me to my next idea which is that I think America is the first country on earth that "was never meant to be like a country".

What this means of course I have no idea, and I don't suspect anyone will either, until another 500 years have gone by, and by that point , I'll be long since gone......

Further Stealings

I am having fun again jumping into random books and reading sentences and stealing them in order to see what I get. I must say it is quickly become one of my favorite activities, this "stealing" of other humans and their random - or not so random - sentences. In fact, sometimes I am even thinking it might give me good reason to dig up the password to my rotting Facebook account and log back in and just start stealing people's actual statuses in order to give birth to stories. But alas! Nevermind that for now and, instead of using that dullards website, let us see what a thief can get from... hmm... this book here, I suppose, named After the King: Stories in honor of JRR Tolkien. The sentence I am gonna pluck is as follows:

It could be that the King of Stones had taken him beneah the earth, and that he would lie there without breath, in silence, forever. 

Ok now what the Hell can I hope to get from that? Anything? Nothing? Something? I am rubbing muh old hands together thinking.... there's gotta be a way to twist it .... but how ridiculous, or not ridiculous, can I hope to make it? How about something like this:

It was on the famous Celebration Day when the young Tinwan realized what his father the King had done, which was that he had taken his own sister, the beautiful Alyssa, and he had buried her, purposely, far beneath the Earth. And as the young boy sat there thinking of it on Celebration Day, with all those crowds of people & elves & magicians around him, the flutes playing, the drums banging, he realized that he would never see his beautiful sister Alyssa again. He realized that she was under the Earth because of her wicked father - their father - the King. He realized that she would lie there forever, in tranquil cold silence, without so much as a breath. With this thought in his mind, he broke down weeping, his hands covering his face. The songs of Celebration Day alas, still continued to blare in the distance. 

Ok that one... I don't think it was necessarily the best work I've ever done but it wasn't all that rotten either, and I think I particularly liked what I did there when I manage to gank not just the thing from the book in tribute to Tolkien but also when I managed to gank the idea for "Celebration Day" from the famous Led Zeppelin Song that I've probably listened to, stoned outta my head, a million and one times in my life. In fact... in facT... the while thing about songs now gives me a whole other idea for thievery, because songs are in fact a very , very worthwhile place to plunder, or even, if you're inclined, to take honest inspiration from when you're in the mood.

For example, in Italy there is a beloved singer-songwriter named Fabrizio DeAndre whom I am somewhat obsessed with (especially in my "I hate English and Anglo Saxon culture makes me want to hang my queer self" moods) and, a few years ago, a book got released in Italian called DeAndreide, which is basically a compilation of short stories that creative Italians all put together , and each story is inspired completely by one of his songs. For some reason this same thing has never happened stateside with Bob Dylan (Anglo Saxons and Americans are perhaps not as creative as Italians) but I have still thought of it from time to time and often wondered whee I could go with it if I tried. There are certain songs Dylan has that could easily be twisted into full on fantasy tales... same as the Zeppelin stuff. "All along the Watchtower", "Shelter from the Storm", "Idiot Wind", "Mr. Tambourine man", and certainly that all time favorite of mine "Man in the Long Black Coat" (lesser known) all come to me rather often when I think of plundering his work and stealing joyously to create my own all new forgeries.

The Tambourine man in particular to me has always seemed like a good character to steal and frankly I am surprised other songwriters have not already tried to steal him! I remember I did once, a few years ago, in a song I recorded on my acoustic that is now lost somewhere in the Youtubian ocean ... and it went, I believe, something like this: "I was walking around and I seen the Tambourine Man/ I think I seen him singing in a garbage can." The idea of course was supposed to be some sort of social commentary about how highly regarded all of this once was and now high ... low...it has fallen. Singer songwriters, after all...well, I am not even going to get into it. Fuck that noise. But how about we try to do something with this Tambourine man?

Say, does Bob ever at any point in the song describe the Tambourine man's boots or anything? His outfit? I do not believe he does. Well personally I've always envisioned him dressed in those 'hobnail boots' John Lennon was often going on about . I've also always seen him as a sort of, I dunno, something like a dunce. I definitely think he would have had make up on his face . Maybe sort of like the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, you could say. In fact, I would probably -the scholar in me, at least -- would definitely tell you that the Tambourine man and the Alice in Wonderland universe absolutelyy go hand in hand. Just like "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" (both by Lennon) also go hand in hand with the Alice in Wonderland universe. It is strange to think now but that story about dear Alice actually experienced a sort of marvelous resurgence in the 60s. Mostly with the Englishmen (Alice was English, you'll remember) but Dylan and Hendrix and especially Grace Slick with the "White Rabbit" song.

Alas I got off topic....let me take a hit off my frosty bubbler here ... ahhhhh so nice and chilly mmm... and let me see what I can think up for the Tambourine man. I remember I wanted to ... put him in an outfit of some kind, didn't i?? Yes yes I wanted to get that boy dressed. And I suppose I want to give him a friend or put him somewhere. Should I perhaps try to put him , like, in Wonderland, near a watchtower, with black riders somewhere in the distance riding? Say should I give him a weapon? Imagine if I give him a blade and I make him a rapist and a murderer? Sad to contemplate isn't it? A "troubled" Tambourine man...some ugly hunchback of Notre Dame sort of dude who goes around living in sewers in some nightmare Mordor eating little girls hearts and shit.....

Should I  .. woah this is an idea here...should I put him somewhere and give him an harmonica and have him singing the words to *another* Bob Dylan song? Or maybe, like Stephen King did in the 7th Dark Tower book (never read it, only heard stoned stories from amigos) shall I make him aware of the fact that he's the creation of Bob Dylan? So like the story will open up and he will be sitting there in a pair of black hobnail boots and he'll be playing harmonica, seated in front of a watchtower, with riders riding in the distance, black riders of course, he'll be singing some lyrics to "Idiot Wind", or no, scratch that, "Knockin' on Heaven's Door ", AND, last but not least, he'll be having the realization, as he does all of this, that some guy named Bob Dylan, some really rich guy who never has to worry about starvng anymore, created him, in our world.

Whew that was quite a thing right? I don't even know if I can fucking write it now. But I am an American and we believe in hard work so Im gonna try:

No. I am sorry. I can't do it. I wrote something just then but then I let out a yip and I deleted it and now it's gone forever. I'm taking another hit from my chilly bubbler again and taking sip of black coffee and I am trying to think og something else. I think I .. you know what happened don't you?? I played out the Tambourine man by discussing him with you is what happened. Had I not discussed him with you, vile reader that you are, he might have survived. Now he is dead and I throw his story to the wind. Some kid 200 years from now can pick it up and steal it for all I care.

Now I want to try another story and maybe forget about Bob Dylan who is, Joni Mitchell tells me, a plagiarist himself anyways. Now I want to try something about....(flipping through hundreds of books).... hmm what about something sort of like that famous Moby Dick story by Herman Melville? For some reason that little tall tale just started coming to me. You know I have always wanted to read that tome but I never got around to it. Usually when I think of it I see that McCauley Culkin film from my boyhood the Pagemaster . That was good shit. I rewatched it blitzed outta my mind a few years ago on mushrooms. And now I am thinking I could maybe steal something from that book. Let me run a Google search and find out just what the most famous scene in the book is and we will see if a theft is possible.

Alright here is a good one .....

"Consider the subtlleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began." 

This is a pretty wordy quotation I took here and I am not sure I am going to be able to do anything direct with it since there is no action. That doesn't mean I can't rob Herman Melville blind though cause I certainly can, a good thief always finds something to rob. So what I think I will rob here are the descriptions he gives us of the sea and its creatures and its universal cannibalism and I'll see, like, if I can somehow use it in a short paragraph about some girl just setting sail. Please keep in mind that I have often tried to create sailing stories and oftne fail. The sea is very difficult to explaim.... but lets try:

Maggie stood on the shore looking out at the sea, at once considering how vast and subtle it all really was. She could remember long years of yore when she would be out there with her father, on his boat the SS Carlyle, playing the tambourine at night,all the sailors gathered around her, and the smell of the salt upon her nose. 

Her father used to always sit and smoke a briar pipe watching the sea at night, often straight until the dawn without sleep. He would speak with his thick Scottish accent talking of how the sea was a place of cannibals, eternally at war with itself. He would tell her how all the creatures in the sea, from the little fish to the hammerheads to the great big baluga whales .... "they all prey upon one another, Maggie girl, they all are at constant war....just like we are with these Spanish pirates who never cease to chase us..." 

"Yes," Maggie would say, sitting by his side, often dressed in a blue corset then , the childhood corset she used to wear (where's this coming from?) "and it is just brilliant don't you think, father?"

"Oh.." he would say, sucking on the pipe and blowing out rings of smoke that would burst into fireworks "oh its devilishly brilliant, Maggie. I love the sea...I do ...its just that its so remorseless that it sometimes makes me cry. All the tribes of the sea, Maggie, your grandfather Herman used to tell me as a boy, they are remorseless tribes of murderers."

This one was pretty good, in my opinion at least, and I also have to admit I was a little surprised that dialogue came because that does not always happen. In fact I will tell you that I have long been of the mind that, once you start getting dialogue (assuming you started with just descriptive prose) then you can safely say that somthing "powerful" is coming through to you. I don't know why exactly I think this but it has always seemed to be the case to me.

 Like, often I will read back something I wrote, and when I read my descriptive prose, I will hear what is so clearly my voice, as the creator, but then , when I read the dialogue, it really is often like I am reading the words that someone else wrote. I'll often remember entire paragraphs of descriptions I have written but dialogue just...bloop...it slips away, probably because it is not really being written by me -- but rather simply transcribed. Because you do know , as a mushroom tripper (or at least a former mushroom tripper) that I believe, what do you call it, esoteric and occultish shit like that right? OF COURSE I DO! I have never believed tht I am the sole creator of stories. I have long believed that I am 'receiving' them from some...thing...some where. A stream I guess. But everyone believes that don't they? I sure hope they do, otherwise they''re a MORON!

I just go fishin you know and when I am fishin inside other books for lines to steal it is almost always, as a rule, somewhat more intriguing than just fishin inside me old noggin. Mostly I think because it's probably what the Gods have always intended y'know? Like, you honestly have to ask yourself, if the Gods didn't want you steal from other books, why would they have left so many around? What the hell y'know? Doesn't make any SENSE, man (or lady)! It doesn't make any sense. Its like ...its sort of like that age old hippie argument about why pot oughta be legal and smoked in great quantities: The Gods seem to have left it edverywhere! It grows naturally! So why not rip the weed outta the ground and go down to the bodega and buy a Swisher Sweet and roll that bad boy up and get zooted and listen to  ... who...Azealia Banks...while yer stoned? Why not envision Wonderland? Why not STEAL Wonderland for your self and do what ye want with it? Why not? Just cause some Ivy Leaguer? told you it's plagiarism? Fuck him what does he know.  I'll pay a Puerto Rican $15 bucks break an Ivy Leaguers jaw dude....

OK but for real f'real let me try to write something with Alice from Lewis Carroll again now . I want to make Alice a rap fan I think, now that Azealia has come to me. I want to have Alice dressed in Moschino with a nice big golden Lil Kim belt and I'll put her out at sea like in Moby Dick and she will have ... she will be older for one...not a child...18 plus...and she will have beautiful golden locks that a Jamaican named Raechell has braided into cornrows for her .... (i love cornrows)....and Alice will be jammin' to some otherworldly hip hop songs out on a big boat named the Happy Raider and she will be puffing a drug in the book known only as "Pink La" and ... she will be a buccaneer or something like that y'know... a hip hop buccaneer. And just to make the whole thing unbelievably offensive for suburban white sensibilities, she will only sleep with black pirates even though her skin is white as Norwegian snow! Ahahahaha....

(ends)  
 

Writers and their Visions

It's strange how quickly visions come to a writer, when he or she sits down to write , and it's also of course strange how fast they tend to sometimes leave.

Often when I am discussing the "art" of writing with others I try to discuss just how much value I personally like to put on the opening sentence. To me it's the end all be all of the art form - and this makes it quite different from music or painting, & so on. With writing the first sentence is a sort of death knell, because it leaves you trapped (since you must follow it up), but also a sort of very, very simple , and certainly easy, thing to create. Most people to me tend to think of writing as a grandiose project that they could never even begin to contemplate; and  in the modern age where long tomes like Game of Thrones and Stephen Kings IT seize the day these people have some reason to think this. But they should also always remember that stories , both centuries in the past and even still today, do not really have anything to do with length. The idea that a "story" has to be 250-300 pages is a false construct.

We hear stories all the time from people in our lives that are incredibly short. We don't consider them any less legitimate for this reason. I tend to take this same approach with my own writing and I would recommend it to others. My basic idea is essentially that I really do just go sentence by sentence. If I get a paragraph, great. If not, just as well. If I manage to get an entire "novel" even better. Oftentimes I seem to land with just a basic short story. This doesn't bother me.

In my experience most of the best stories I've gotten where I really get on a spree, however,  tend to be ones that take me by surprise and have to do with something I didn't think I would enjoy so much as I did. For example, in reality, I adore Italy and have researched Italy and very much wanted to set a story, if not a number of stories there, for years. Yet, each time I try to sit down and purposely type up an opening sentence that I know will eventually lead my character to Italy (or already has them planted there) I oftentimes don't tend to get very far. For some reason I just collapse. It's too forced. Too strained. Stories in my experience -- especially the ones that you get on a spree with (i.e. Where 10-15,000 words just seem to get magically written) almost always begin with very mysterious opening sentences. Let me give the reader some examples of sentences now , that randomly come to me ; and which I would use to begin a tale:

The girl looked out of the castles glass window and saw there was some sort of green looking goblin out on the grass. Behind it she could see that a horse was laying dead, flies buzzing all around it. Next to the goblin seemed to be a little girl similar to her; she appeared to be vomiting blood.....

Now we will try to begin something totally new. I will in fact try to purposely type something about- what?-  a 16th century type court jester smoking a glass pipe.....

The boy was staring at him. He was naked and shivering and scared. All he kept seeing in his head was the bloody face of his father and the way the knife had looked ripping through his cheeks. The jester! He had popped up in their cabin like he came from thin air in the middle of the night. The boy's mother had let out a shriek . She had seen the jester first. She had tried to cast  one of her spells but ...alas! Her magic from Rowan was not strong enough. The jester formed a ball of fire in his hands & he threw it at the boy's mother. She burst like nothing right from the cabin....vanishing. And then he turned on the father. He spoke in a strange tongue then and now , one the boy did not understand. With his long sharp fingers dripping blood he began to light himself the glass pipe taking in a big suck of smoke. He smiled with rotted green mucous filled teeth at the boy. "You will be a jester too now." He said.

As the reader can see this one wound up spiraling onwards for a number of sentences longer than the other and naturally in the process I picked up a number of details that, as I said before, are now- as great as they are-- also going to somewhat 'ensnare me' as a writer in this one constrained spot. There are details here , in other words, that most readers are going to expect me to keep working with repeatedly. The jester, for instance, they're going to want explained, perhaps in great detail. The mother too, and where she vanished, or also where she got her magic, they'll also want to know about. Then too the boy and whether or not he will willfully become a jester or if he will refuse . Plus they might want a description of what, exactly, the jester was smoking in that glass pipe? And , again, where's he from? What's he look like? Does he look completely identical to the typical 16th century jester someone here in our world knows? Or is he different? What's his name? Does he even have one? And what the hell is he doing? Why'd he come for the boy? Does he perhaps have companions? If so- how many?

In many of our most renowned stories questions like this are very carefully answered, especially when it comes to the second to last one. A writer who likes to do what they call a "slow boil" could literally make someone wait 900 pages before getting even a bit of an answer as to why that jester showed up like he did to steal this boy from the cabin. A fairly typical explanation often used in fantasy - like in Harry Potter for example-- would be that the boy is perhaps really the jesters son, or his grandson, or his relative oe something like it et cetera. Most books would probably try to create an explanation eventually and many readers would probably demand one. Gandalf in lord of the rings, for instance, shows up in the first book rather randomly , and is then explained away afterwards in rather great detail. But imagine if Gandalf and his back story had simply never been explained in any way? Imagine if Tolkien had just left him a total mystery (which he somewhat did but not completely). Or imagine too if the Shire, for some reason, had just never been explained either...if the story simply commenced with Frodo and then just took off for Mordor in a fog of mystery. Many readers might think the entire foundation of the tale is gone.....

 For me personally I'll tell you it doesn't matter. I don't often care about backstoroes or explanations or even, for that matter, where a story is going, so much as how a story feels in the moment. If anything, I feel a whole other element of deep mystery gets revealed when you leave things --- rven enormous things --- totally unsaid. If you were discussing a scene, say, where a woman (or a man I guess) was being violently raped at gunpoint in a New York subway at night, I  wouldn't care so much about what happened before or afterwards  perhaps, as I would about the rape  itself. A good writer could give me just the utter brutality of the subway rape scene with nothing existing around it and it could be the greatest, and most horrific prose, I've ever read.

Having said that, let's try something else and see what I get:

The knife was trembling in Savannahs hands, and the Tupac song blasting loudly, all throughout the living room. She was very drunk and she knew it and it was because of the fact that she was drunk that what happened had happened. She looked down at the floor . He was lying there sucking in air, blood was all over his face. He almost looked like some sort of fish the way he was sucking it in...his chest was taking big mighty monstrous heaves. She had never seen anything like this before ...of course not....Savannah Watson had never killed anyone before ...but now, Jesus , now he had come at her and he was about to hit her and she had that knife on her and......

She glanced towards the door. The front. It was wide open. She had her Audi parked in the driveway. If she got into it now she could get away she'd be alright...maybe. Maybe no one would know she had been there? She lived 5 towns away down the highway a 35 minute ride. They would think a - what? -- a random bum had come in and attacked him and killed him. Thinking that she began to step away....and then she started to run.

This story might seem like it's one that could definitely be made into a film tomorrow , and it probably could (I would cast Kate Winslet as Savannah), but even having said that, I've got tell you the truth: I was already sort of sick of it even after just two paragraphs. I don't know why exactly. I don't think it was because it was a bad story - but perhaps rather just because it was a story that, for whatever reason, just isn't reaching me today. Where, after all, can I take this girl ...who is apparently named Savannah...that's going to be realistic? I mean, I suppose you could make it a fantasy, but more likely than not, just because of how it has begun , this story here is going to now be constrained in the "realism" box, for the next 400 pages (assuming I kept it going). And of course by being in that realism box that means I have to start providing real avenues for her to walk down. I can't just make it a dream sequence or have her turn into a warlock or journey through a portal and cast a spell and make it al go away. No! She will have to face "consequences".

Most readers in the modern age will probably want her to face at least some sort of punishmen , or they'll want that explanation again. The bloody back story you know? Who was the man lying there? How long did she know him? Why was Tupac of all artists playing? Say, Is Savannah white or black? Is she a white girl who perhaps just murdered a black man? Woah. Whole new freaked out plot there. Or, is she perhaps a black girl who just mirdered a white man? Another al new freaked out turn to take, and they are questions that -- as it stands now --- even as the writer , just like you the reader, still don't know.

Whatever the case, readers  will definitely want the entire plot thereafter to revolve completely around this murder, and how Savannah escapes it or does not escape it. But what if, after having this brutal murder scene be the opening chapter, & then perhaps having Savannah rob a bank in the next chapter, what if I just then had her move to Florida and become a hair stylist and ...go on for 400 pages about her opening up a hair salon ? I would be immediately accused of "deviating" from the original plot . This is something I've always found aggravating....this idea that past events must always weigh heavy on a character. What if they don't? What If this lady really moved to Florida and just completely and forecer forgot this night? No one would like that story .....

But OK let's try another and now let's try something a little different that many people will tell me is cheating but which I do all the time: let's jump into another book that's already been written and published and pluck our first sentence (albeit somewhat tweaked) from there.

Here's one from, as previously mentioned, the Game of Thrones book, the first one, Songs of Ice and Fire , right in the opening prologue:

“A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce...."

Ok. We're going to turn that into this:

The shadow of the ghoul began to peak it's head out slowly from behind the Rock and the darkness. Martin could smell the rot of the wood in the air, and then too he felt he could almost hear the sound of what his father , if he were alive and with him, would have called the void. He gripped the handle of his long sword rubbing it with his fingers. If the ghoul came out from the dark shadows completely and emerged to take him, Martin was ready. He would fight to the death. He would have no choice. He would do like his brother Jardan would do, or like his cousin Grandin. Already he could imagine the sound of what the ghoul would be like, of the cry he might let out. He could also imagine what it would perhaps feel like if the ghoul managed to touch him. Martin knew what happened whne a ghoul touched human flesh. It was not good. The skin would....he shook his long black hair in the cold trying to avoid the thought....

From here I now want to try and see if I can actually jump into a whole other book, or perhaps just another whole section of the George Martin book, and see if we can find another paragraph for our character that way --- instead of just pulling it completely from my own head. Let me look.

Ok I went just a few pages forward and took something that was another direct reference to the same "shadow" thing that is apparently called the Other. I found this:

“The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking.”

We now type:

The ghoul began to laugh now & then it began to speak in a low and guttural voice. The voice was very frightening for Martin to hear, and it was in a language that he did not recognize, not for nothing. It sounded like the split of hard ice on the surface of some frozen snowy lake , and then he suddenly heard the thrust of a long sword, a second later. A foul smell began to emit from where the ghoul was slithering; and a  light some distance behind them then, began to dance, almost hopping, in the distance, leaving a trail behind it. It almost looked to him like fireworks. And before Martin knew, a moment later, he felt a strong thick hand slip over his face and cover his mouth. It tugged at his hair. A voice now speaking in the language of Waghdas- his home--- began to speak. It too was cold like ice splitting.....and chills ran down martins young petrified spine. "Don't ..oh...don't hurt me." The boy muttered.

This particular method of finding first sentences is one I always find particularly intriguing because, even in spite of all the controversy that surrounds "working off another author", I think the reader still has to admit that there's something terribly exciting about seeing the way the story is born based off the way the other one went. In fact, I guess it shouldn't be surprising, but I've often gotten such a kick when I think to do this particular thing that I'll find myself writing considerably more than I would if I just try to rigidly rely on solely my own imagination. The best way I can describe it is to say that it really is almost akin to a form of magic. I wouldn't call it stealing but rather "jumping within something", and/or pulling something out. The fact of the mater is I woul have never thought of that ghoul, or the boy Martin, had I never read just those two first sentences ...and there's definitely something remarkable about that. There is also the fact that, if you do this and you don't keep a log of it as I am now, you end up looking back at it months later and you don't remember at al where you got it from. Usually if you're going to do this I would suggest doing it with lesser known stories maybe. Just in case?

I suppose now that we will do just one more and here I will try to flesh out some details beforehand (like I would usually do in just my skull) before I write it. What do I want this next brief story to be about? Well I think I want to create a sort of mix of the stories up above here already - particualely that one where I mentioned Tupac & the woman with the Audi--- and I want to try and maybe make a female character who seems , in every way, to be of the real world, but who actually is some sort of magical fantasy character. Maybe something like Sabrina the Teenage Witch ...or the Witches of Eastwick...but not a teenager and not in Massachusetts.

She was standing in the mirror with no bra on & just a bright pink & purple glowing flannel shirt (all my girls wear plaid constantly) applying the soft makeup to her lips. It was very bright just like her sorella Gwendolyn had told her it would be. Her siste had gotten it for her as a gift for the Solstice bringing it from beyond the portal from a shop in Avalon. Out beyond the house as she applied the lipstick she could hear cars and trucks passing, birds whistling...a snake slithering too, somewhere upon the side of the house.

It was very early in the morning; and she had been awake for the better part of a week now. On the bed behind her was a man sleeping tied up in a knot under a spell she had cast on him. He was naked save for a pair of boxers. He was a very big man and he had a very  big chest and big muscular arms and a beautifully thick black beard. She had found him the night before at Kate Lynn's bar in the center of (where?) town. He was not magical not a magician..nothing of the sort. Just a regular guy now under a sleep spell she wasn't sure she wanted to take off. He looked good sleeping there and she wanted him to stay there . Shania Murik after all had been for a thousand years now the sort of witch and demon who liked to always have a man and a big man at that in her bed.....

Im now going to type something I expect will throw readers off (some) but which is really a plot  device I actually tend to use very frequently in many of my tales:

She cast a spell to make her fingernails grow very long and a glowing pink just like the expensive flannel shirt she was wearing and then she began to run the sharp fingers down the mans chest & hairy but so nicely fit belly until she reached the waistline of his boxers. She breathed a deep breath...somehow it never got old. She felt a fine smooth chill run up the back of her long shaven legs & then her hand slipped beneath the boxers . It was warm under there..she grabbed his member. And the second she did the memories surged through her hard & fast of when she herself had had a phallus -- an even bigger one--- 1000 years ago in the ancient times, in  Rome. She saw herself as she had been, as the big chested Roman Centurion riding the horse she had ridden then. For a second she almost thought she heard her old wife calling her name. Then her eyes flashed open and she ripped her hand away from the mans phallus....

The new racism

I just watched a bizarrely and blatantly racist  video on YouTube that I got linked to after watching, yes, another bizarrely and blatantly racist video featuring the latest Neo Nazi of the United States, Richard Spencer. I was spoken to by a beautiful and admittedly good looking light skinned - very light skinned - blonde woman, for about 20 minutes, and preached to about all sorts of things, but mostly about why letting "hordes of non whites" into "white countries" is going to end up so disastrous , etc She began to mention how, centuries ago, every country rigidly and, of course, violently defended its borders from invaders. So why , she asked, aren't we allowed to do it now?

The keyword here of course is centuries ago and- had it been mentioned, which it should have been-- technology. If this girls argument had any real logic to it - or any real bread and butter besides just being a racist fluff piece void of any integrity or reality -- she would have mentioned technology and why technology is, in fact, the key culprit to blame when it comes to immigration and "hordes of none whites". The truth of the matter that these people can't seem to fathom  is that the World is simply no longer as easy to seperate as it used to be...and unless we purposely destroy all the cars and airplanes and boats...it's never going to be as easy as that to separate again. In fact , assuming technology keeps advancing, all of this is probably just going to keep getting more and more chaotic , whether we like it or not. In a sense- and I realize to some people who are really rabid with all of this it might sound "insane"-- but in a certain manner of speaking, the entire modern immigration and refugee et cetera problem essentially goes hand in hand with what happened with music records, or even movies and books ...or even writings like this...and the Internet. Years wgo even a small piece of writing like this would have in fact been something you, as my reader, would of had to buy. Now it's available to you for free through this blog I get paid nothing for. Yet if I waltz around with my nose held high and try to claim you should owe me big money , or any at all, for this, you'll tell me I'm insane. And most people, as you can see, are also doing this exact same thing with YouTube and Spotify and a host of other online resources. Most people in fact, even those this very girl called "Commies", are participating DAILY in a form of communism right here on the Internet. But they don't see it --- mostly because they are enjoying it so much.

The fact is that, regardless of whether or not it continues into the future, the Internet has, in our own time right now, basically made all the songs you could ever want 90% free, in the exact same way that airplanes and cars et cetera have also made traveling from country to country far easier than it ever was before. The people that this woman was referencing who lived all those centuries ago...the only reason they felt so absurdly bound and obsessed with their countries of origin was because they couldn't escape them. These days this sort of intense binding is hardly the case. All of us now are thrown into a million different worlds the moment we want to be just using a screen and a mobile phone. This ease of access to the world combined with airplanes has obviously made it all the more desirous to travel the world. The problem in our own time of course -- because there is indeed a problem -- is that not everyone has caught up quite yet. We're in a state of serious imbalance. Three quarters of the world essentially hasn't caught up.

We thus have a situation where there are a lot of wealthy people who probably wish more of the world was open and safe for them to travel to -- but we also have all of these desperately poor people who are trying to leave those same areas to go to a wealthy country. As you can see here , the more people we can make it all better for ...the better it will, quite obviously, be for all of us. And unfortunately one thing that's apparently going to have to happen is that a lot of places that are really good right now are, it seems, going to start looking more and more "third world" for perhaps a rather extended period of time. And again: though that is ashame, the reality is that the only way to stop it is to cease creation of all airplanes and go backwards in time. Which we obviously can't do.

The truth is very simple: Borders are breaking down not because of immigrants, but because of TECHNOLOGY that incredibly wealthy and intelligent people created. There is no way to combat technology. To me, it all easentially seems to be "the will of the world", and my philosophy is that you're better off trying to enjoy it rather than fighting against the inevitable. In some sense, I think everyone on earth right now understands the comfort zone of having ones own culture and ones own "people", but at the same time as that it's obvious to see that this is passing away now ...because of airplanes ...and there's no sense going crazy and fighting it -- though of course I suspect people will anyways.

Oh well....

Sex Honey kitten

"Please," I said, "get your hands out from underneath my skirt..."

He laughed.  "Why?"

"Hmm.. Maybe because I have a husband? I don't know. Why else?"

His hand gripped the beginning of my thigh , just above my knee. I had a long skirt on..quite long. I had just gotten back from shopping in the center of town. My two sons were in the car. My husbands kids. Maybe. No I'm joking. Of course they both are.

"Come on? Just a little fun?" He tugged at the skirt.

"I cant! Can't bear to say it again. Not today. So , go on mister. Hands out from under a ladys skirt. Now!"

His fingers had been about to pull aside my panties. But he complied and pulled out. He lit a smoke and looked towards my car. Luckily neither of my boys were watching.

"You deciding to be a good wife now or something then?" He said. "That why you got your hair done like that and shit?"

"Oh you like my hair?" I said, touching it. I had just gotten it cut into a brand new style and braided. It was bleached and the ends of it red.

"Yea." He said. "I like the skirt too."

"Why thank you, young man. An old gal appreciates it. I think it's a fine skirt too. You should know I love my plaid."

"Well," he said. "What about him?"

"Oh you just can't help yourself can you young man?"

"I just wanna know. "

"Know what?" I said , leaning on the grocery cart.

"If you're fucking him."

"He's my husband."

"As if that ever meant anything."

"Haha." I laughed, "you think you're funny. Well what can I say? He's been fucking me, yes, I'm sorry to tell you honey."

"Only him?"

I grinned. Put my hand on my hips. "Well now what would you be  implying? "

"You know..that you got some other young dudes coming around now and you don't want me now. That you're done with me. You got new dicks."

"You think it's polite to talk to me like that? Out here? Do you?"

"Can you just be fuckin honest with me and cut your shit?"

I flipped my wrist at him. "Honey I don't wanna be talked to rudely like this. Now I got my kids in the car waiting to go home and watch some tv and relax.  If you want you text me on my phone when you're feeling a little nicer."

I went to turn around and he grabbed at my skirt. I knew it would excite him. All young bucks are the same. "Wait!" He said, "you mean it? I can text you, you'll reply? You weren't replying. That's why I..caught you here. You mean it?"

"Yes, sure. Now don't be so needy. It turns an old bitch off, don't you know that ?"

"I know. You don't like lovers."

"That's right." I grabbed his shirt "you remember. Hard to believe that your 23 year old noggin even has such clear thoughts in it."

"19." He said.

I laughed ...my fingers grabbed his waistline now. "Oh yes 19. I forgot."

"Cause you been fucking some other dude!"

"Shh, honey, shh." I slipped my hand down his waistline a bit (he was wearing big baggy red sweatpants , like always really). "Calm yourself young man. You're gonna get your chance again."

"Am I,"

"Yes. But this time you gotta make sure you do it real real hard if you want an old bitch to remember you."

I kissed him lightly on his lips keeping them there for a few brief but good seconds. His hand grabbed my tit. "You'll see ..ill fuck yiu so hard. I'll ..ill come and do it even while your husbands home- like you asked that time. Shit I don't care. I'll do it. I'll sneak in through that window like you asked. I'll do it."

I kissed him again. Then ripped his hand off my tit. "Ok." I said. "Good .  I'm glad, and dripping too. But..." I turned around towards my Hummer. One of my sons seemed as though he'd been looking now and then shot back into his seat when I looked.

"Your sons."

"Yes, they need me young man."

"Ok but tonight. Tonight I'll text you."

"Ok honey. I'll see you."

And wit that I was off.

Chihuahua Mexico

C                        E
I'm just a city slicker, I know
Am                     E
But sometimes I dream of Mexico
Oh I'm just a city slicker I know!
But sometimes I dream of mexico

I'll go to Chihuahua Chihuahua,
Chihuahua , chihuahua !

Erotica Essay

It really is preposterous just how much violence an artist is allowed to work with when it comes to a film or a book, and still be considered a good artist, versus how much sex he or especially she cannot work with. It's almost unfathomable to me , the more and more I think about it.

Films that are unusually gruesome are often hailed as masterpieces and books like All Quiet on the Western Front , which features an incredibly grim and depressing but "oh so real" view of war, are considered the same. The artists who create these violent real to life depictions and write of them can often expect and hope to be considered "serious artists". Critics will write of them.

Fans will hail them as "auteurs". But take an artis who likes to write about sex in great detail and suddenly the person is , more often than not, swept off the face of all known existence ...immediately submerged as something we ought not even glance at. If you don't believe this is true, because you think you've seen some pretty "graphic" depictions of sex on film, then just take a moment to think about how widely known the horror or war genre is when it comes to film --- as an actual solidified genre --- in comparison to "erotica". I have watched many, many films, and read many books of all sorts. I've never heard of any that could be described as classics of any kind which could also double as erotica. There are romance stories that are very popular which feature sex, yes , Titanic and so forth, various Ryan Gosling films;  but those are not erotica films. Those are romance films. There is , to me, a big difference.

An erotica story is one that features loads of wild sex in the same sense that those classic horror films feature lots of gore. The story perhaps -- well no, not perhaps , it should---focus its plot around the goal of getting and seeing sex. Why cannot sex be a plot point ? Even a major one? In the recent Christian Bale story Out of the Furnace the entire plot revolves around the main character seeking to murder someone for revenge. Very well. So why can a plot not focus around, say, a woman, who is desperately seekin sex? Not romance. Not marriage. Not even a hint of relationship. Just hard, wild, risque, erotica, mad Sex .

And remember : wild sex does not necessarily have to be "demented" like some would argue that BDSM story 50 Shades of Grey is. Wild sex can be perfectly safe , it doesn't have to involve chains or whips ...doesn't have to involve any of that. Yet still where is it when we look at our big stories or our big writers? Our classics? It is seriously no where. It's almost ridiculus but it's honestly very  much a frontier that has yet to be totally traveled ....

Again, we have books that are now considered roundabout must read classics like the aforementioned All quiet on the western front (which is from the 1920s) that feature seriously horrific depictions of violence . At the time it was printed, just like at the time Hemingway's war novels were printed in that Same decade an after, many people were rather "aghast" with just how Frank the writers and their depiction of war was. Instead of being some glorified account of war -- which was ofte the case through the 19tg century novels-- these books have us find something terrifying, and in some ways you could even say that, combined with Edgar Allan Poes gimmick (who was not at all mainstream during his life) it was these gruesome war  novels that contributed to the horror film genre that would pop up mostly in the late 50s and early 60s, et cetera. Of course these days these novels now seem almost quaint. I have watched totally mainstream movies (as a teenager!) where people are murdered in unusually horrific and gruesome and disgusting ways. Reading All quiet on the western front wasn't that strange to me. Harsh yes. Strange? Bewildering ? No.

Hence I want to say that the same thing should be happening with sex right now yet it seems that it isn't , virtually at all in some respect, especially in the female
Realm. And I find this very very sad. I think it's a great loss. So open to violence but so closed to sex. We are truly living in an American nightmare----

azealia song

Im down by the river
i feel so alone,
im cold and im freezing
down to the bone
i feel like theres nothing
for which i could give thanks
and yet then i see her,
its azealia banks ....

bombs they are droppin,
i guess it happens fast
the whole future startin to
seem like the past,
machine guns flying
and im seeing tanks
and yet shes still dancing
sweet azealia bsnks

we had jimi hendrix
we had muddy waters too
we had etta james
and they all sang e blues
but now there ssomething new
shes join the ranks
and they call her they call her
azealia banks

Maybe I will drop it again. The entire revolutionary left wing act. I suppose I never had it. I suppose I will not go right wing either, nor will I delete what I've written. Or perhaps I should just say "erase"- to be more old fashioned. But maybe , what the hell, I will drop it all the same , and start to try to sink back to ...whoever I used to be. Not just here in reality of course, but also here , perhaps where it counts even more, upon the page. I will stop being a son of a bitch and I will stop writing about women, and queers, and freaks, and all those other unmentionable and probably unsellable things I write about.

I will (how I must admit it does sadden me) rewind the clock, yet again. Back to here. Back to now. No more spaceships. No more robots. No more plastic surgeries where I can  have a scientist switch a mans gender 40 times in one day and have him get raped and become a cross dresser and fall in love with a buff hairy pirate on a penal colony somewhere in Australia. No. Son of a bitch. I'll reroute. I'll go backwards. To the place where the flame was initially forged. The simple shit will come back to me. The simple plots. The stories set with simple people in simple places. I will, god forbid, maybe even write about people who are married and have children, even though I kind of must admit I hate them. But does that mean I ought not write about them? And shut them off entirely? Just because I hate them?

 I hate the Devil yet he often comes up. So perhaps it ought to be the same with this. I must find a salt of the earth subject . Maybe I went too far down the revolutionary line to the point where I'm just plain confused now. I need to refocus. Shouldn't I want to write a new All Quiet on the Western Front or Across the river and into the trees or White fang? Shouldn't I want to write like this Cormac McCarthy fellow whose still using a typewriter in the new century ? Blood Meridian? The people - they find him solid. Oprah gave him love.

If they read me, they would find me, I fear, weak. I simply write too often of faggotry. I somehow became enamored with faggotry. It's polluted all my writing. I often write in fact with one hand on my hammer.

Note the following just for an example:

He grabbed my ass and squeezed it fiercely. The only light in the bathroom was a little glow lamp that cast a dark illumination and kept changing colors from pink to red to blue. I could hear he had the tattoo gun on him and it was buzzing.

They had cuffed my hands to a pipe, and I had been there for almost 2 hours.

Embarassing isn't it? God almighty it sure is- especially when you consider the fact, again, that I originally started out walking this road of writing and all this telling myself that I was going  take inspiration from John Ford movies from the 1930s like  the Grapes of Wrath and My Darling Clementine. I was going to be the new Clint Eastwood. I was going to appeal to ...men. To a male demographic. A straight male demographic. That was, believe it or not, my initial plan. Before this began:

He caressed my cheek and my jaw lightly  with his hand. It felt nice. Then it started to move down my throat, to my chest. It felt even nicer.

His hands were freezing , he had just come in from the cold & there was  basically a blizzard outside, but I dug it. I had on an oversized flannel and it was opened up pretty wide, my tits basically falling out of it , no bra on. His hand moved further down , he started to rub one, my left tit.

 I drifted god damn far didn't I, lord? Sure did. I almost - I know it sounds preposterous --- but considering where I began, I almost feel like some crippled, alcoholic Amish Mennonite or something who drifted millions of miles from where those folks live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I feel like some sort of madman, really. How did I go from wanting to write the next searing gritty All American masculine novel of ultra manliness to suddenly writing about wanting to literally not be a man? But instead a woman? And have tits and get ...well you know. Bad things done to me.

I don't know exactly how it began. It's all really very vague when I try to recall. In 2012 I was still trying to write normally. Also in 2013-2014, more or less. It really only started some time in 2015, I think. Something changed in me over the summer of 2015 ....I began to discover new avenues of expression & "artistic liberation" I had never previously considered . Things started to look different. I had traveled overseas. Old people left my life, some people I loved were no longer even alive, and other new ones whom I would have never been friends with before had entered. A period of growth, you might say, began to occur.

And Charaxters  I had cherished for pretty much a decade by that point, (Indians and Cowboys and 1800s people etc, medieval stuff)  began to sound not just stale to me- but almost dangerously old. Suddenly a switch occurred and for the first time in my life that stuff truly seemed old.

 I finally heard what it seemed so many others heard.  I finally started to even crave new stuff. New music. New songs. New films. It was like it happened honestly overnight. I look at it now and it's almost as though I had examined that old folk lore Wild West, pre 70s, "analog" , "agricultural" world so heavy that I almost , as an artist, it was like I had to finally rip myself from it or it was going to end me.

In a big way, it was actually like I had to go *back* home ..which I understand might sound odd after what I said before , but is actually the case since I kind of started out a freak and then, later, tried my hand at the quasi conservative  act , examining and even immersing myself in history with a capital H; and....well, I don't know, I still just don't know. I can do it but I can't do it. I can enjoy but I can't enjoy it. It tires me out but it's at once so filled with mystery and darkness.

New age liberals often  think they are dark. Sometimes they are. Metal bands are certainly strange and I would personally call those liberal things. But the actual conservative base ,just like those Amish Mennonites , it has something *truly dark * about it , in the sense that it's almost a place void of any real light. People who want tradition and who are very serious about tradition tend to be very weird--almost emotionless at times. They don't really dance, the majority of jokes are "inappropriate" for them- they are generally just sort of somber and quiet. Conservatives , after all, like to worship everything about culture as it was *before* the advent of the tech. They worship an old idea of the world. They are "stoic". And what's interesting to me is that when I was working primarily as a songwriter , where you'd think these ideas might not hold up, they actually held up pretty damn well. But then almost the second I decided to switch gears completely into prose, they collapsed entirely. And I mean entirely. This was all what happened in the summer of 2015 to me really.

For example, as a songwriter , I am still fairly inspired, it seems , by more or less similar stuff . I liked, as I said , a lot of old songs about old things. The song I was listening to and singing this morning with my guitar is from the 1800s and  goes like this in the first verse:

Oh, me and my cousin, one Arthur McBride
As we went a-walkin' down by the seaside
Now mark what followed and what did betide
For it bein' on Christmas mornin'
Now, for recreation, we went on a tramp
And we met sergeant Napper and corporal Vamp
And a little wee drummer intending to camp
For the day bein' pleasant and charmin'

What  I find so intriguing is that, As a character in a song , I find this character and his cousin Arthur McBride to he absolutely fascinating. I could and have, after all, had periods where I have sang this song around the clock for days, and if I had gigs lined up somehow tomorrow and my own band, I guarantee you I could probably travel across the entirety of the country singing it night after night , every night, for years. And yet, for all this love I have for Arthur and his idealized past here in this tune, guess what? The second he's in a novel I generally just start fucking snoring. Bad. Like, in truth, I'm at the point where I almost not only can hardly read old books with old settings et cetera, but I almost can't even bear them , for a moment. They bore the ever living hell out of me. Literally. For some reason when I read or of course when I write , I am obsessed with chasing something new. I like weird characters . Queers. People with weird names , weird costumes. Vulgar people. Lunatics. Completely out of the ordinary and truly weird characters. Someone like Arthur McBride, as awesome as he is, just looks suffocating to me on the page. And I suppose it might just be because he simply becomes too complete there.

The truth is that songs about old things seem to have a magic that books sort of lose and I think that was why the "transfer" from old to new happened so fast for me once I made the decision to really get serious with literature. ....

So on second thought you know what? Fuck it! I ain't changing. I ain't rerouting or any of that bullshit . I'm staying where I am--- hell im gonna go even further. I gotta forget my old line. I gotta go with the freaks. I gotta keep EVOLVING. I gotta keep finding new roads to burn down. Yes yes ye Indeed

---notes

Strange dreams

I had a very strange dream last night that I am afraid to even write down but that I feel I must , mostly just because I am well versed in dream archives and I have read the Dream Keeper and - well- I understand what Burroughs would do if he were me , at least the old Burroughs. I have also read Kafkas Chronicle. So I know what Kafka would do too (which is he woud also write the dream). Mauser. Swift. Stern. Everyone would. But still I am afraid because it was so shockinf to me and so strange and perhaps so revelatory. Although I'm not sure it will be for you. For you it might meant nothing . I've no idea.

At any rate , it was fast and quick and went like this (hopefully I can describe it well and in scholarly Ivy League terms): I was in some sort of very widespread jungle area, it seemed (I did not see my body or my hands or my arms or legs etc) and I was looking off , initially, at a rather large band of what were either chimpanzees, or bonobos, or gorillas. I've no idea. Monkeys of some type with black fur and they were standing like monkeys do. And then the next thing I knew I saw someone - I do not know who--- start trying to hand the monkeys fire of some kind ...almosr as though they were trying to see if the monkeys could figure out what to do with it. And of course all that happened the first few times that these monkeys got "handed" this fire - by whoever handed t to them (scientists in lab coats?)--- was that the monkeys , more often than not it seemed to I, accidentally lit on fire thrmselves, and then would start shrieking , and panic would ensue. I vividly recollect being terrified by this, and I feel I was in the distance as I watched...mortified to see the way these dumb monkeys just could not figure out how to control the flame. Mortified to think that I as a homo sapien was in fact related to them.

But then of course at some point the monkeys somehow finally got control of the fire  (that was when I woke up back here on the very bed I'm writing this on now) and then I remember being even more shaken ..and scared...because I woke up , I tell you, with the idea in my head that I had almost been given access to watching the first VHS cassette tape of mankinds beginnings or some such thing. As though the designers of the software of this life and this unusually bizarre planet for some reason chose to give me access to watching the first experiments they performed on their early "robots", their early "machines" aka the monkeys. And I suppose this thought terrified me really because well.....

I don't even want to get into it really. I already feel afraid again.

bored game

Random game : blindfolded click on 5 sites in my iPhone safari history
......


1.
An image from Twitter: a fake book cover with Ivanka trump , a sort of Nancy Drew parody story ..."the case of the Chinese trademark swindle" . A photo of someone with Ivankas head photoshopped on is prowling around with a flashlight in a cave----

2. Another Twitter image! This time it's the rapper AZealia banks doing a modeling shoot in a leather jacket. This is a little odd.....

3. Dw.com with the headline .."Trump launches new Twitter tirade against Germany
US President Donald Trump has lashed out against Germany once more on Twitter, criticizing its trade surplus and lack of payments to NATO. Things will change, he warned."

4. Windows help site trying to figure out how to work my computer with no mouse ....

5. A Google search for Covfefe.....

Let's see two more why not lol?

6. Ah! Something cool again..."'The Lords & The New Creatures' at Nye+Brown: How Jim Morrison's Poetry Book Inspired an L.A. Art Show About Cars
MONDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2011 AT 12:15 P.M." 

7. Clinton and Patterson or Burroughs and Austen? Who'd be the best writing duo?
Bill Clinton and James Patterson are collaborating, but who do we really want to team up? Neil Gaiman and Philip Pullman? What if Emma’s author cut up with Mr Naked Lunch?

Song

Listening to Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan
Listening to the Rolling Stones
The grateful dead are still alive in my head
And I got John Lennon when I'm all alone
I put on the Doors when the rains Fallin down
Sublime and nirvana when I'm walking across town
I Even  got  Madonna when I wanna feel light
Jimi Hendrix , dude , he been with me for a million nights

La la la la lW la

Flash on some David Bowie when I wanna feel strange
Robert Johnson and muddy waters when a kid needs a change
You know Elvis is still singing those GI Blues?
Fats Domino and Howlin Wolf,  theyre still making the news

La la la la

Ivanka thoughts 1

Ivankas just like "can't you stop blaming me!? IM not the president!" And of course the truth is that she isn't! She has no control over any of this.

Do you have control over *your* parents? Or your grandparents? ET cetera? My guess is that you probably don't ...and I bet they don't have nearly as much insane money and power  as her father does. From what I've read , Ivanka was probably taken by surprise with what happened here just like everyone else.

I suppose i understand that she's gonna catch hate from people now naturally but, eh, i don't know, I think it's a waste of energy, really. Hard to say. If she winds up running for presidnt herself in 2020 though that would be seriously crazy. Especially if she did it as a Democrat or something LOL! Is that even possible? I'm sure it is....and don't think it's something that couldn't happen because Ivanka was once a complete democrat, last I heard....

Of course who knows now. Could be the case she's a complete Republican just like he became overnight more or less. But judging by a lot of the stuff she says on her own (the Leonardo dicaprio climate change thing, the tweets about LGBT) it wouldn't surprise me if she's still essentially a democrat whose just sort of, you know, *utterly lost* right now.

In a way I actually almost sort of feel bad for Ivanka. Like, yah I know , she's got billions of dollars, but she also seems sort of, I don't  know, a prisoner in her own way.  One of those classic birds in a gilded cage sort of tales you know? I mean You wanna talk about an embarassing father who you can't get yourself detached from, Ivanka hit the lottery. She has all that money but also so much she can't truly do with it. I think it must be maddening in a way. Think of it from her eyes..... Imagine all the things Ivanka can never hope to do....just because she's gotta be "Ivanka", the daughter of he who shall never be named ...and *now* even the First Daughter of the USA. She can't just become a lot of things, because she's gotta wear that one thing.

Holy shit you know?

To me it sounds like a legit mask I would never want to wear. I can think of so many other things ...other roles...I would rather play. Roles with far more freedom. Roles , strangely enough, that even have more power. To me someone like Nicki Minaj almost appears, on some level, to have significantly more power than Ivanka trump. How many people actually worship Ivanka in comparison to Nicki? Go on tumblr ...hardly seems like anyone. Ivanka gets no love on any social media sites and isn't that sort of the indicator ?

I dunno. Just an old boys two American cents...... ---BOONIE RABBIT

Song lyrics Trump

Trumps gonna ruin the whole country
That's what they're sayin to me
He'll burn it down, right to the ground
And none of us will be too free

Well, it don't matter to me, if it don't matter to you
Who gives a damn about the old red white and blue?
You know sometimes, a thing gets bought and sold
And america the brave, well, she's been getting old

So trump is gonna ruin the whole country
That's what they've been saying to me
He'll burn it down, right to the ground
And we'll all be living in misery

  But at least he will have his golden tower
  At least he will have his golden crown
  At least he will have his suits, and one billion dollar boots
  I suppose he can use em, to kick us all around

Oh cause trumps gonna ruin the country
Ya, that's what they've been saying to me
I myself don't know, I'm just tellin ya what I been told
I just know I like living free

US Loneliness

Almost everything that you would think would still be with me about my month long 2014 Summer trip to Italy has more or less faded. Not in a bad way, as though I want to say I've forgotten it or I no longer cherish the memories, or even purposely lost them, but rather to say that it has moved into a comfortable place, where though the memories are joyous, they are not, as very good memories can sometimes be, "painful".

I do not, for example, think about when I saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa and wish, regularly, that I could see it again. I do not think this about the Roman Colisseum or the little town of Vinci either (which was where Leonardo DaVinci was born). I do not sit around dreaming regularly of Tuscany wishing and thinking that, if only I could be in Tuscany in specific again, speaking Italian and singing my Fabrizio DeAndre and Francesco Guccini songs , that all would be well in my life, and I would be happy.

Yes , naturally, those things come back to me from time to time and I wish, for a few moments, that I could go see the town of Vinci yet  again, or perhaps take a closer look at Rome , or Florence, or Pisa....or Bologna (yes Im proud to say I saw all of them and more in just a mere months time) but for the most part, as I stress, none of that really haunts me. I don't dwell on those things and lose my mind. I don't walk outside my home here in the northeast USA and wish that I was in the ancient Old world, in quite that sense.

My friends of course here, if they saw what I was writing, would tell you I was a liar for all of what I've just written. My cousin too, of whom I've often spoken to of Italy and my splendid avventura there, would tell you I was perhaps a liar. They would tell you that Italy is where I long to be and have been longing to be for some time now. Etc. In fact, even myself, until about a year ago, would have perhaps told you the same thing . I would have told you that any day in the old world for me would be infinitely better than a day here in the new.

But then something happened, you see, after enough time passed between me and my unusually splendid trip to that country: I realized, once and for all, what I really missed most of all from it, after all the time now had passed. I looked over my diary entries and my writings and I realized that one thing and one thing alone from my Italian esperienza seemed to come up time and time again, and like I said, it was none of the stuff you'd think it'd be. Most of that stuff, I simply can't stress enough, has passed away almost in a similar manner as to how the "artificial memories" of a place like Disney World pass away, or maybe even an airport. It's exciting while you're there, but once you're out you're usually relieved. Most of my memories are like that. I don't obsess over them. I don't constantly revisit them. Except of course for one.

Which is it before I drive you loony holding off? It's simple really, and at first, especially if you're an American , you might not get it  : it's The piazza.

Yes, the piazza, the generic piazza that is, in fact, a part of literally every Italian town or city from north to south, is what I miss the most, and I don't miss it - again- for any really "specifically" Italian reason. I don't miss it for the Duomo that is often in an Italian piazza. I don't miss it for the architecture. I don't miss it for the cathedrals or the old Roman style statues from 1-2,000 years ago or the Etruscan ruins or , in Florence's piazza at least, the golden doors that Michelangelo Buonarotti sculpted in the Renaissance. I don't miss it for any of that stuff because all that stuff was really, you know, just stage design.

No, what I miss it for is the way I saw that literally every night, weekend or weeknight, hot or cold, rain or shine, people congregated, essentially  en masse, in this place. And what was particularly shocking was how most of them really seemed to have no money either. Which is to say that they basically just took a stroll down to la piazza on Wednesday night, or Wednesday afternoon, and sat around there for a few hours, without spending money, or buying anything beyond maybe a Coca Cola, just merely socializing with other people. No one seemed to have any purpose or specific reason to be there. They didn't leave the house with an elaborate plan and pockets full of dollars (or euros). For them it was probably , like, a relatively subdued night. "We're just going to hang in the piazza tonight. Nothing special." Middle aged people, the elderly, young kids, parents with strollers, beautiful women in  dresses, people who were getting drunk, cigarette smokers, people who sometimes shouted things, everyone was at the piazza. It was fairly populated every night until at least 11 pm. People brought instruments. People brought animals. And then they just sort of took seats in random places--- like on the sides of walls, for instance --- and began talking. Many simply just stood around in the middle of the piazza, not at all attached to anything in particular, chatting.

Now It might sound ridiculous to some people but, coming from a working class American town with a population that actually outnumbers the Italian town with the piazza I got to know best, I have got to tell you: prior to arriving there and seeing the way that piazza came to life night after night, week after week, my eyes had never seen anything even remotely like this at work, anywhere in my own working class town., I had never seen people socialize in the manner they did, so freely, in that Italian piazza. In fact, I'll tell you the Gods honest truth: I met more people, especially old people, and talked to them, in that Italian town, in a mere months time, than I ever did in this working class American town, in my entire life. I met them just walking down the road, or sitting on a bench, or hanging around in some corner. Old people in my small town here seem , to some degree, to actually be non existent. You simply don't often see someone above 70 sitting somewhere, or out at night. In the piazza of course, they sometimes popped up. Frequently, in fact. I'd be strolling back to my buddy's house around 12 , and id pass 70 year old people in the street, also walking home --- or, yes, even just about to enter into the piazza.....

What was going on here?

I had never seen anything like this in my life here in the USA. I had never seen people do this.

Well, actually, maybe I shouldn't go that far, because I did see them do it sometimes, but only, you know, on designated days. Like, say, a carnival that comes around to the church here for one week once a summer, or the festival that happens in early September on the green to celebrate the fall. I saw this sort of socialization at work then here in my blue collar American town, and for many years I loved that, and like everyone else here , I cherished those few special socializing weeks of the year. I'd get very excited when those days would come up. Especially I remember, as a child. But I never saw what I saw in the Italian piazza take part in this town that has an actual higher number of people living in it happen on just a regular old day, or more importantly , a regular summer night. I never saw anyone here - besides children and teenagers who are regularly harassed by police officers -- congregate anywhere just to sit around and talk for as long as they wanted. I never saw big groups of old regular men or women - not drunks, not drug addicts, not "hobos" to be ripped away by American cops -- just, like, sitting somewhere outside , at 11 PM at night, talking, like I did nearly every night, the moment I wanted to, in Italy. I never saw anyone over 18 years old  in this town say "we should take a walk down the road and just, like, sit somewhere and maybe have a few glasses of wine or coffee.... " (In fact, drinking alcohol outside in the United States , I came to learn not long after my trip, is actually illegal. ... )

Now Yes I'll tell you again : I've seen children and teenagers do this strange outdoor socializing and walking around thing, I've seen people in massive cities do it, and of course people who have no cars do it (ashamedly and unwillingly) but I've never seen the regular americans in these working towns doing this. Regular Americans in working class towns, in fact, almost seem to have, in a certain sense, forgotten how to walk or use their legs. They've forgotten it to such a degree that it seems walking here , or parking the car and then just sitting out front of somewhere talking to someone,  is almosr  , as I'm saying, something one ought to be ashamed of rather than proud of. It's also something that, in this particular town im in and I'm sure in many others too, only certain people ought to do. Especially at night.

 In fact, walking along the roads  in a working class American town is so unthinkable from a certain angle that I literally can't even imagine seeing my mother, my sister, or my grandmother taking a walk  for no real reason, or even perhaps for a reason. In the first place, I can't imagine where they would even go, since there Is essentially no where where you can ultimately take a seat, unless you'll be paying. In the second place, I can't imagine who they would possibly have a chance to see. Remember: No one is out there. Next to no one  at all. You see faces sticking up behind steering wheels in cars. They beep at you. They might shout at you. But beyond that there is no one. An Italian would perhaps be inclined to think no one even lives here at all.

In fact, when I first arrived back from Italy, I almost experienced a sort of "jet lag" shock when I just sort of kept walking out of the front door of the house and off the lawn onto the street  , as I had been there, only to quickly realize all over again, as I certainly did towards the end of my youth,  that the only people you generally meet on foot here are drunks, hobos, some young kids, and drug addicts.

 I forgot, for example,  that if I want to take a nice long walk on a Wednesday night past 10 PM that I better be ready to have a police cruiser slow down and ask me exactly what I'm doing and where I'm going, since no one else besides me would probably be walking.  I forgot indeed that i probably just won't see anyone or anything at all interesting as I'm walking in this American town, except cars and cars and more cars. I forgot , you see, that there's really not even anywhere around here where I can just go sit , or stand, and eventually hope to see other people. I forgot that there's no where at all you can legally hang out at in an American town, unless of course you're buying something, and ten you have to get in your car and speedily depart the moment said thing has been bought. I forgot, you see, that though this country indeed has so many things, it actually doesn't seem to have this one vrry, very exceedingly simple thing called a piazza. It's just, literally, no where to be found. It does not exist.

When America was created, in fact, one could almosr say she was purposely created(mostly by those Englishmen of course) withput a piazza. And of course , to me now, after how much joy I received hanging around in the little Italian piazzas at night, all for literally  not one cent of money,  I have got to tell you: a country , or a town rather, without a piazza , is almost beginning to look very much like a place without a spine. It's like a place that just has no real character. How can it, after all, when there's no where to actually meet the characters who live in the town?

Of course, before I go any further and maybe accidentally offend some fellow American, Let me make it all very clear that, just like any other American, I lived 24 years of my life here in this working town and I never really thought too deeply, if at all, about what I now see as the extreme lack and impossibility of socialization here. I basically just thought what many people are probably thinking as they read this: if you want to socialize so badly, why don't you move to a city? Why would you stay in a town? It's thus to say that I looked at my town here and I just thought it was naturally tranquil, without the possibility to have walkers, or any real, solid congregation spot. I thought it was simply too small to have that sort of scene. I assumed also that the thousands of people who were around just weren't interested in it.....

All of this, of course, quickly faded away the moment I saw how the piazza functioned after landing in the old country, because as I wrote before, the main  town I was in over there actually had  less people in it than here. It was also, for the most part, just as spread out  too, from certain angles . For instance, when I left my Italian friends house at night, to go wander over to the piazza, I usually had about a 15-20 minute walk ahead of me. This is exactly the same amount of time it would take me and most walkers here to reach the "heart" of my town. There is no difference. Im not in some deeply wide spread American town. I'm in a pretty populated one, and the houses and apartments  are all very close together. In fact, for the people in the apartments on my main road in this town (of which there are many , and they're all packed with people) it would take all of 5 minutes to get to the heart of this towns center, to congregate as one and socialize.

 It was then that I realized, especially recently, that the main reason my town does not have this sort of scene is simply because this sort of scene actually is not even allowed here. It was a sort of epiphany really, as ridiculous as it sounds, that I had one evening: "'my god, this could all easily be arranged to be just as it was in Italy, it could easily be just as social and pleasurable, but they just won't let it happen...."

That's the trick of it actually and the big shocking detail that it took me some time to comprehend: Not only has a proper congregation spot never Been built here, but the ones that people actually try to unofficially erect , I now see, are getting squashed, repeatedly. And the reason why is so sad but so very American all at once: All of the places in my town here that actually do seem like they have the potential to become the natural piazza of the town-- guess what? They're all corporately owned pieces of property. They ain't , as they say, "of the people".

Take, for example, the Dunkin Donuts which is connected to a little convenience store , and just a little distance from a liquor store, on the Main Street of my working town here. Thousands upon thousands of people live within walking distance of this Dunkin Donuts, myself included, and some of them, you'll see, seem to have the quite natural desire to congregate at this Dunkin Donuts and hang around for awhile. They're people of all ages. All they want to do is talk. And they  do not even themselves realize it, perhaps, but what they're doing each time they occasionally congregate at this corporate   coffee shop is they are sort of putting together the initial layers of a piazza . They're doing what people are prone to do. They're doing what people , In my opinion, are meant to do. The problem of course is that, since that piece of property is corporate owned, they are only able to go so far. They're only able to feel so free. And , of course, if too many people wind up there at any given time, no matter their age, the cops are going to come, and they're going to ask you to leave. In other words, the beginning foundations of the piazza, as far as I see it, keep getting knocked down almost continuously, over and over. It's only allowed to breathe so much. What has thus wound up being the case is that only a specific crowd of people , it seems to me, have the "right" to sit there. They are generally middle aged family men. Younger faces are usually ripped out of that Dunkin Donuts area faster than you can imagine. I myself have been chased out of it , both on foot and in my car, by unusually angry police officers. And each time I was chased out, I was usually just drinking coffee with two other guys discussing the weather.

So then, the reader might wonder, what happens next? Where do all the others go from there? Isn't there, perhaps, another place in your working town where they can go, to congregate? Beyond this one Dunkin Donuts? Well, the truth is no, there isn't. There is actually no where else in this part of town (the main part) as naturally and as comfortably accessible as this one place, where anyone could possibly hope to sit and talk without having the police called on them. For example, around the corner from the Dunkin Donuts,  there exists a massive grocery store parking lot , which is actually a *plaza* also filled with a pizzeria, another liquor store, a Post Office, and a tanning salon--- but that plaza is also, of course, corporately owned, and besides the pizzeria, which has no outside seating, there is no sense at all that it would be OK to take a seat anywhere around there and simply hang out and talk.

 Directly across the street from the massive grocery store parking lot there also exists a massive , and yes, public, town green, which Americans might think is worth something like a piaZza is, but guess what? The public town green has never had any life to it at all, and is in fact somewhat terrifying once the sun has fallen, since there exists literally nothing at all around it, except houses, a huge graveyard, and a Church ive never seen anyone go near or in. The only time that town green comes to life is for one sliver of a week in September during that fall festival I told you about before. Other than that, the only thing you can really expect to find on it is nothing but peace and quiet and perhaps, as I occasionally did years ago, a good place to sneak a quick marijuana session in, since no one is ever there. This is of course exactly what we do not want, because what we want is a place where life can breathe. A place where the literally thousands upon thousands of people who live within walking distance of these places can actually walk out of their front door and hope to see other people congregating somewhere.....

So, the reader might now wonder, how exactly can we get this? How can we naturally take  back our own town here and make it so that we can have a place , a place for all people,  to just simply chat and relax , get to know each other and talk--- without fear of the police officers getting called to come and "remove" us?

Well, after all this writing, I hate to tell you.....but I just might have to save it for next time .....

---- END / early summer 2017 notes