Art Garfunkle Goes to War

Mammals living on land understand the world through smell in the same way we understand the world through social restrictions. Not all of them, but many of them do. It's a complex language of scent.
Scientists are becoming more and more convinced of the need to understand the emotional life of an animal in order to understand behavior.
I don't think I have a favorite cereal. I recently told someone that when I mix golden grahams and life, i get a special sort of joy. I think its true, but, having been away from cereal for a month now, I don't think I can call that a favorite anymore. I genuinely dislike cereal at least 80% of the time. It's tedious and bland and by the end of the bowl you're only eating out of some sort of muscular reaction to the sight of a bowl of particles. Even when I finish a bowl and think "I want more" and so I go get more, I don't think "Man, this stuff is great." I just want more to put in my mouth...my muscles haven't gotten over the bowl to mouth motion.
10:47 is constantly 5:47 to me. Not because i'm not used to the time switch yet, but because I have met three people here who have enjoyed talking to me because I'm a human, and not because I'm an American without a brain. Two are librarians. One I met today at the bookstore, and she only thought I was kind and sort of cute, and when I didn't look her in the eyes when she handed me my receipt, I think she got ticked and if I went back she'd probably stop being so nice. The librarians are dynamite though. Jason and Anna. Great people.
If I read too much in one day I get depressed that I'm by myself inside the books. What fun is understanding the world better if you can't experience it with other people, even intermittently.
I've recently discovered that my chief goal with my newest friend is to start a group of gypsy folk, travel around the world, and convince people that peace will save us all.
I will spend the rest of my time in England as a smattering of dirty bread crumbs, a spilled plate, a tipped glass, and an untold group of stories. The tragedies of an American.

Air Force 1

Today only, I try to think about the world in terms of friends and enemies. Real medieval style settings with men on either side, one set in sheeny white, the other dark. The broken things are always due to this sort of thought. But today, since it is today, is a day for broken things.

A european is liberal, is hospitable, is concerned with his reputation. The englishman is reserved, is a control freak with alcohol, is softly looming over his own countenance. An American is raucous on the inside, is trained in 1st place, is able to step outside himself in ways Europeans think he can't.

The broken things cause me pain. Skin crawly, metabolism shifting, animal sound pain. Weep me down the street. Weep me to a new world. Weep me inside myself. The broken things haunt us all like dead infants, smelling of wasted effort. Weep me like a drum, a stoicism. Waste affords no time to those not dressed in white. Wasted they shall be or wasted we shall weep.

Today is a day to repent, to recant, to thrust my signature hand first into the fire. They will trade cobblestones for my ashes. Cats will scratch my charred and flaking feet. I will say prayers for the broken things as I burn, and scream a wretched mantra at my friends. There are no enemies here. There are no enemies here. There are no enemies here.

And if there are then we are all dressed in black. We are all learning to breathe deeply. We are all learning not to kill our brothers. We are all learning that loss is permanent, that the gross misinterpretations of our fathers must be rewritten and redistributed so that loss can be forgotten. The broken things must be fixed with all effort and stamina and cost, or we will fall for ourselves, and see only white in the mirror.

The Universe Has Rubber Feet

D. P. Nangle

Gerentology

I'm feeling especially heavy this evening. The weights are criss-crossed across my shoulders. The weight of my children, the dead weight of several thousand individual bodies, the bright spots in my eyes after camera flashes. The word "carion" keeps passing through my head, but I can't remember what it means. And so of course I looked it up. Carion is not a word. But carrion means something to the effect of rotten flesh, or anything else similarly vile. I haven't been able to use it in a sentence since it started popping up...so here goes.

We all feed on the carrion of our ancestors.

Or less vulgar, perhaps:

I tripped over a pile of fishy carrion, lost my balance, and landed in the arms of a young man of twenty-something. He set me up, told me to watch my feet when I walk, and got back on his cell phone. He's a bit of fishy carrion himself. He had stepped on my toe.

British faces are indefinable, as of yet. I could not tell you the difference between a Brit, and Irishman, and a Scot, or a Welshman for that matter, by just looking at them. As far as I can tell, all four have particularly straw-like hair, fairly massive foreheads, and indistinct eyes, noses, and mouths. They aren't smilers, so I can't include teeth, even if I wanted to.

The greatest piece of carrion alive, Mr. Tom Waits, has joined me for tea thirteen times in the last seven days. He likes his tea without sugar, half-full with Old Dan Tucker, and on ice. His advice is to chew and swallow gravel until you sound like you're gurgling it all the time, find a girl who cares about you for your hands, and start painting the moon once a day, every day, for six months. If by that time you can't tell the difference between a Brit and an Irishman, you'll at least have a grasp on love.

To be new to a place, any place, makes the crack in my toes that much louder. My mother's toes crack. I can crack my wrists, my knuckles, and my index finger as well. My neck I have cracked before, and a six year old girl was so appalled that she told her mother immediately. I haven't cracked it since...and I stay away from six year old girls unless I have something to read.

I'd like to be able to finish things much better than I can now. Glasses of water, mostly, but also sketches and ability-training and books and fruit. I seem obsessed with keeping those things in my life that ought to be impermanent. When I want peace, I go out and buy a kiwi and peel it at the table and leave half of it on accident, and when I come back I'm afraid of fermentation and I throw it away, not knowing, anyway, what could possibly be good for me in a kiwi. Tom Waits doesn't eat kiwi because his teeth are too soft now. He drinks paste and shakes and astronaut food, and has found all the secrets to love, having lived on the moon for a few months in 1997. He says its easy, except that you both have to know that its easy, and so often only one of two knows. He says that the first step is to break something. Give yourself a sense of immediacy. This will make her think that you have a good grasp on what it takes to be in a family.

I'm the very worst picture taker in the world. And here, it is especially difficult to take a good picture, because everything is so close together. And I never know what looks good in a picture. But I have enough sense to take pictures of a boy doing yoga on top of a museum pillar. He was brilliant. He started with his shirt on, but then looked down and saw that he was wearing a shirt, and so he took it off.

I Pull At the Rest

I'm impatient. I exhibit all of the signs: I wait in lines, I stop often to think, I carry everything that I can fit in a bag at once, I don't sleep well, I don't wake up to alarms. It's some sort of impulse with me all the time.

Yesterday I came through to another side of the ring, though. All the time I've been afraid of hoops that are on fire. I've peered through and hated what I came to refer to as my opposite, my future reflections. I have so much trouble with the laws sometimes, with history and those that write it, with all the credit. But yesterday I became a future reflection I'd never seen before...I give myself credit for none of it. Some small piece of bread and a sprig of green fell from Oxford's cloud-cap, dropped in front of me in the street, and spoke a word to me about giving up on things. You musn't, he said, accent sharply cockney. You shouldn't. He cleared his throat. The sprig of green smiled. Whatever it is, you shouldn't.

And I haven't, as far as I know. I know only that on this side of the ring there are none of the visions I have had in the past. A trick I played on myself. I am still so impatient, and there are other rings lying on the ground and leaning against the wall in my bedroom right now, but i have put the sprig of green in my jacket pocket.

Music still eats me in gigantic bites. After even one year of listening to it, you'd think that some music would just turn to dust in your head, that the familiar progression in a song might seem too childish to believe. But I'm still taken with it. I would like nothing more than to be able to make it, compose it, carry it around on sheets of paper and hand it off to people. "Read this. Listen to it later, maybe. I made it. I made it all."

The sprig of green will grow, in my pocket, as I've taken some dirt from the window sill and laced the bottom of the pocket with it. I will take a picture of it when it is grown to a good height. I would like to take a picture of it now, but it has no roots, and a picture could kill the poor thing. Not that growing won't, as I've said a few times already.

I'm pulling at the rest of my evenings here, so far, to try to tie them together. I think perhaps it is about time my evenings should meet.

Given Tendencies

If at all possible, twice a week, walk through town with headphones on. Big buggers of headphones that block out most of the noises that distract you. Pick music that keeps you in step, but not too fast. Then start looking around without letting people know it. Without ambiance, the world appears to move a lot slower, and everyone's movements appear absolutely deliberate. When fashionable women turn their heads, you can follow the glance as far as you want, and inevitably there is a man, a lovely man in slacks with shoulders and hair and pace to his life, or another fashionable woman, one who we all know should be mimicked, except that nothing can be done because she will change with you, outrun you, and leave you a little too happy. They look at each other though, some mason's glance, recognition. What a dult you are when you listen to music in town. These things are not meant for you.

Later in the day, sit in your flat listening to something powerful. Some giant of composition. Read and read and read. Share in the gospel of the stuff, the mix of art. You'll have heroin rush memories of the literature. Heighten all your senses as often as you can, because otherwise you are a dult walking through the streets not listening.

Name the backs of people. She is an Erin. He is a Lliam. She is an Ova. He is my friend Thomas. The streets friendly up.

Eat a crayfish sandwish out of the box, because like I said, it is so delicious. It's as if you've never heard of the crayfish when you eat it. Drink Pomegranate Power. Get it for less than four pounds, pay with a ten, and let the change jingle so you have to give it away if someone hears it. Marry the Oxford canal every day. Go ape shit about it. Point it out to people who are also there, walking by. Point to the rare disease that is growth. It will kill us, so enjoy it.

Look at a map, but don't bring it with you. Keep possibility in your right eye and use your left for x-ray vision, because so many times the road is on the other side of some large building in a square. There are no short cuts here. So if you're looking at a map, the straighter the better, and then why bring the map? Purchase all kinds of post cards and let them sit before you miss someone. Send them out one at a time.

Relish the wet ground, because when the sun comes angrily forward, the ground squints and gives him a fresh from bed smile, and this relationship is good for them both. It produces growth, which as I said will kill us. And since it will kill us, enjoy it.

Crayfish

They taste delicious out of a box.