Category Archives: shards

May 20, 2017 · 4:10 pm

it will be there when the oil runs out

It Will Be There When the Oil Runs Out

I met up with some Gypsies in Brussels almost 50 years ago. Grant and I had just backpacked in from Luxembourg, flat-broke. We went into this Bohemian/workers bar in the street-action part of town (a sprawling place with an elevated section almost like a stage) and ordered two beers we couldn’t pay for. It was one of those mini moments of truth.

And then the Gypsies (there was a long table of them dominating the elevated section of the bar) began playing guitar and shaking tambourines and singing Flamenco while a beautiful young woman danced; afterward she made the rounds with an upturned hat.

Then I pulled out my harmonica and began playing Bob Dylan songs while Grant (eyes closed, head back, and on his feet) began singing. “The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind,” Grant sang, and when he was done he marched straight up to the Gypsy’s table, took off his Greek fisherman’s hat, turned it upside down, and held it out.

The Gypsies stared at him in stone-cold silence for what seemed like a very long time, everyone in the bar was watching, and then an old Gypsy with a face like seasoned leather scooped a handful of change from the dancing girl’s hat and poured the coins into Grant’s hat. The table exploded in laughter, some gajos at the bar applauded, and when the night was over the Gypsies took us with them to where they lived on the top floor of a boarded-up building in a section of Brussels that was nothing but boarded-up buildings.

We sat around by candlelight drinking wine and smoking hash and the Gypsies mapped out their strategy for the next day. In the morning they sent us on our way with enough folding money to get us to Munich.

This is the human spirit that crosses artificial boundaries, and the more you persecute it, the more it eats your guts out.

It will be there when the oil runs out.

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May 18, 2017 · 3:42 pm

just the facts

Just the Facts

Dragnet ran as a radio show from 1949 to 1956 and did two stints on TV ranging from 1951 to 1970, starring Jack Webb, who created the show.

TV was still in its black-and-white infancy when Dragnet came on the scene, featuring friendly L.A. detectives Joe Friday and Ben Romero who always knocked before entering to ask the woman of the house a few questions concerning a robbery or a murder, sitting on the edge of the couch in their suits and ties, pens poised over their notebooks. And when the woman of the house began to meander into speculation, Joe would clear his throat and bring her back into focus with: “Just the facts, ma’am…”

Probably 90% of the people who watched Dragnet watched it to hear Joe say those words, but what no one picked up on is he wasn’t saying “Just the Facts,” he was saying “Just the Fax.”

Joe’s saying fax instead of facts wasn’t only a pun, it also played on his longing for a more sophisticated audience to communication with: a fax is a means of communication.

Eventually, in his off hours, Joe became a burglar, a second-story man, and here too a play on words was at work, a story being a form of communication. Joe broke into highrises and stole fax machines from offices. He became known in the press as the Fax Burglar.

Living in secret isolation in plain view of the entire nation eventually got to Joe, and he rented a warehouse down on the docks, furnishing it with a couch, a stand-up lamp, a hi-fi record player and a whisky bar. Then he rented a U-Haul and moved in all the fax machines he’d stolen.

He’d go to the warehouse late at night, turn on the lamp, mix a drink, put on some cool jazz, and start up the fax machines. Then he’d stretch out on the couch in the dim light of the lamp, his drink resting on his chest, close his eyes and pretend that all those chattering machines were hooked into phone lines, and that he was in touch with the world.

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May 17, 2017 · 1:13 pm

inspiration

Inspiration

Sometimes she makes love to me while I sleep. Other times she plays rough and abandons me. But she always comes back.

She sits across the room slouched in her chair and tries to stare me down. Eventually she gets up and sits on my lap, rests her head on my shoulder. These are the times I wish would last forever, but sooner or later she gets up and goes out on the porch to smoke.

I stare at her back through the window and watch the smoke curl into the air.

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· 10:26 am

genetically predisposed

Genetically Predisposed

Can love dissolve hate? Can hate dissolve love? How much does it take of one to do it to the other?

What happens once love is dissolved in hate? Does hatred turn into indifference? And what happens to love if love wins out? Does it get reduced to sadness, the hallmark of compassion?

Is pain a component of compassion, and is it pain that spawns beauty? Are love and hate and all the things they spawn building blocks in the watchtower of awareness?

What comes next, do we have words for it? Are words inhibitors meant to keep us in check? Are there no such things as love and hate? Is language factored into our DNA to keep us in line?

The Neanderthal did not vanish. He hung around in ice caves for a half million years, waiting for Homo sapiens to reach him from Africa, then crossbred into their gene pool.

One to four percent of the genetic code of every modern-day human is Neanderthal; it’s the backbone of our immune system.

Was this a gift of love or a byproduct of lust?

Is lust grounded in love or is it a function of a grand design?

Even rock lizards have the gene necessary for language, but they choose not to use it.

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May 14, 2017 · 5:05 pm

flying like a helicopter

Flying Like a Helicopter

What do you think a bird thinks when it sees a helicopter in flight? No bird in particular, but more likely a sparrow than a hawk.

It’s commonplace for a flight of swallows to fly into the engines of jumbo jets, but we’re talking a phenomenon that’s been kept hush-hush over the years, the loss of millions of sparrows and lesser numbers of other birds since the advent of the helicopter, spiking during the Vietnam War.

Perhaps you’ve found one of these sparrows lying mangled in the grass, its beak slightly open, its eyes glazed, its wings mutilated. If so you probably chalked it up to the work of a cruel child or a cat. But not so. That sparrow tried to circumvent millions of years of evolution, and in mid-flight, instead of continuing to flap its wings to stay airborne, it attempted to rotate them. It tried to fly like a helicopter.

This is one of the more unique ways in which man’s inventions have disrupted the animal kingdom, and it could be our undoing–the wings of the tiny sparrow may one day evolve into rotating blades.

The complexity of such a shift would require a quantum leap in awareness that would spread throughout the aviary world, throwing the evolution of birds into warp speed so that in place of claws, birds would develop digits with opposable thumbs with which they would fashion weapons to rain fire and brimstone down upon us.

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May 13, 2017 · 7:32 am

face to face with the hunter

Face to Face with the Hunter

Tip the waitress. Tip the balance. Give a tip to the old woman with the soles flapping off her shoes in line in front of you at the track’s $2 window — put your money on the dark horse.

What, you don’t go to the track? You don’t gamble on dubious outcomes? You don’t trust men no bigger than children astride massive animals? You don’t know how I got past security?

Don’t sound the silent alarm, it’s a contradiction in terms. Plus you’ll piss me off, and what’s more dangerous than a man who’s slipped past security, talks in riddles and makes wild accusations?

I’m here to lodge a complaint. All my friends are dying in unsavory ways. We’re not a crowd that goes out peacefully. We don’t wind up parked in front of a TV in a wheelchair on a geriatrics ward while someone shovels jello down our throats. We run with the hunted until we come face to face with the Hunter.

Bring it on we say, and he cuts us down with cancer, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, aneurysms and strokes. Some of us jump the gun and blow our brains all over the wall. The winner of this “beat the Hunter at his own game” race by a length and a half stabbed himself six times in the throat. That takes some concentration. A wee bit of determination. Hats off to Jesse Bernstein.

Right, my complaint: who the fuck do they think they are, those people bunched up behind a wall of authority and squeezing the joy out of life?

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