Bo's Request (an Art Thread)

[pan]

Been writing cover letters for job applications (two submitted yesterday). More of a movement artist than a wordsmith but, to get things started, here is something I wrote for Migrant, my section in Train.

Where is home?

Moved twelve times in the last 16 years. The transient in transit. Pierce Transit runs through it. Before I came here I was in Rush Limbaugh’s home town before I was surrounded by corn fed Norwegian bred Lutherans singing praise in perfect four part harmony to that Home on the Plain before I’m taken Home – Praise Jesus. I grew up in Iowa, Little Town on the Prairie an island afloat in the ocean of corn. Lived in SoCal, in the Desert where golf and plastic surgery reigns, might have the grit to stay in rainy Tacoma, but, I always say I’m from San Francisco - though I rarely visit anymore.

Home, where is home?

Home is where you are. Correction, home is where you and the two cats are.

What is home? That safe place. That place with love. I love that old car, it always brought me home. The ’75 Westphalia could be home. Or rather, the place that used to be home. Too old, too unreliable to be trusted anymore. Baling wire and duct tape. Just like the U-Haul I drive to the next place, hoping for home.

Searching for home. Migrants with heavy furniture. U-haul. Our orange travois with wheels keeps getting bigger. Full of stuff. Heavy Stuff. Stuff that anchors us. To a home of nostalgia. Anchors to a home that never really existed. That place. This is the place! Well bully for you Brigham Young. Bring ‘em young. Not young anymore, with more stuff each move to stuff in the moving van and every move leaves behind anchors that are mourned in passing.

A house burns down and the anchors are cremated and the past has passed on.

The bubble is burst. The house is on the market. The anchor is weighed. The trees we planted are left behind. Do the new owners love that Japanese Maple we planted as our 10th anniversary gift to our dream of home? Have they maintained the landscaping? Have any of the plants, the dreams, the love we planted been cared for in our absence? Or have they been torn up by the roots to make room for the next owners’ dream of home?

Where are the anchors? Is there a home port? Adrift. Without a home. Drift wood is picked up for beach fires to warm the beach rats without a home. Their shacks have been bulldozed like West Bank ancestral olive groves to make room for more condos and home-loving dreamers blowing a bubble. Pop!

[waldopaper]

C'mon... get Sirius.  Just nearly got wiped off the earth again on bicycle.  But for once I had a (nutcase) helmet (i bought yesterday).  It wouldn't have done me any good.  He missed me by inches with blaring horn going about 40 mph... just slow enough to miss a T-bone, me being the T.  

Really gotta learn how to get around without gas.  

[waldopaper]

 

"...and home-loving dreamers blowing a bubble. Pop!"  P. Zmolek  

It's ratty.  It's small.  It aint no place at all.  But since Mom in the burbs kicked his old ass to the curb, Pop's severance pay won't come to naught.  There's that... and look what I found a couple days ago:  A wowzer gramps old-fuck titanium frame:  

Oh yeah- and speaking of Pop...  the stock market crashed today!  And don't forget the fairing.  It aint a Slipcraft without tinted fairing with the official Slipcraft (tm) decal!  

Now... imagine the Ti frame with fairing and fat-tire quad configuration...  

Powered by Davinci Drive...    

 

[Mouse]

looks lovely, and greenery about, with plenty of space for finding the keys in the rain and swinging the cat

[BO]

I fucking love it, Waldo. I't be a lot of fun to spruce up. Needs some shutters and filigree for the porch.

[waldopaper]

Heh.  The house is facing South.  See the solar panels up there?  There's a trap-door on the roof.  It leads to the walk-in closet for the loft that's already there.  Bed and all my shit can fit up there.  Which leaves the entire downstairs for... ta-da... my office.  From which I will market the Slipcrart (tm) globally.  Maybe do some crowd-funding shit.  And get a Facebook page.  And a you boob channel.  

First trip is to Germany by ship.  

[pan]

My one bedroom apartment in Manhattan has some big advantages - especially since I don't need space to give space when things get tense, I got 1100 miles - small is good.

[Cal]

What a cute little house Waldo!

I've hired a crew swarming all over my place today sweeping tons of collected debris off the roof, washing down the walls, cleaning the windows I can't reach .... so's I can put it on the market & sell it at a loss.

Now I'm sitting inside with the invasion of cleaners abuzz outside reading the RBC posts & where you all are & wondering is there's some plan I can make to keep on staying here.

Mouse - thinking of you & Ms Maisie.  Pan you've got a workable plan going.  Bo mobile is the way to go.

Where's Stone?  ... and I still find myself wondering where's Kurt.

[pan]

Waldo posted some things he found that Curt a few years ago had posted with his Tony Forrest screen name - he had cancer and it appears that he passed.

[Cal]

Oh my.  Thanks for that Pan.

[waldopaper]

 

Gburg   

 

Mount Airy plantation  

Richmond, Virginia, April 1860   

 

Miss Daisy.  May I sign your dance card? 

I have no dance card. 

Vot iss?   Du bist… the most beautiful woman in the room.  My hand, madame.  Allow me the pleasure of this dance. 

How did you know my name? 

Please.  The orchestra is about to begin.  Vardamt!  A Strauss… please! 

You are German, sir. 

And you. Madame, are not a Virginian. 

I will dance with you, sir.  

 

Somewhere along the Harrisburg Pike 

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, June 1863 

 

First light before the sun.  Inside the wood lot, the family won’t be up for hours.  Their house on other side of road, know.  They know about the rifles in the barn.  Nicht kennenzulearnen uber die  rifles in the woods. Beecher’s Bibles.  Ten crates of ten.  Each one assembled and tuned by Jägermeister’s son, Heinrich.  Master craftsman and rifle salesman, representative of the Baron.    Clouds glow gold now as clouds of skirmishers appear over the rise behind the farm.   A fat doe sniffs not far from Henry and bounds away.  The ghillie is only known in Scotland and Hesse, among many secrets passed from certain fathers to certain sons.  Does that make me a wizard?  Ja true, Daisy is a witch, but the column is raising dust a mile or so over so these are flankers or stragglers out of line.  Nein here come der rebel into the woods.  His thoughts are mine. 

 

Come on old doe.  Eye seed ye yonder.  Shoot us some venison brain tall back two the boys. 

You do not see me.  You do not see the rifles underground. 

You better come out now Yank.  Just tell him we was shootin at a Yank rain way. 

You do not see me.  You do not see the rifles underground. 

Ant no Yanks here an near ant no dam deer. 

The rebel piss splashed on Henry’s knee and on to the barrel of his favorite carbine.  The sun high now, and Henry hadn’t moved all morning.  Stretch legs oil wipe barrel stow ghillie and here come Daisy’s carriage she alone but for the Negro..  Sun getting low cloud dust crawl along pike horses and guidons and General Jubal Early.  Old Jube do business with Daisy.  Jawohl. 

 

Careful old Jube.  I could shoot off your hat from here.  I could almost hit you with my Walker revolver.  But I won’t old Jube.  You have gold for me.  You think I am in my gun shop in Harrisburg.  The lost Dutchman has the best-shooting sharps carbines in the world for your horsemen.  No harm will come to der German family.  Vot iss?  A square package and not a heavy purse?  You shall not have my telescope sight, old Jube.  Nor the four like it hidden at the Culp farm.  We will play cards tomorrow like old times.  Over ten years since the Revolution in Germany and I was just a boy.  My old friend Carl tricked me into being a Yankee spy.  But we German rebs was right and you American rebs is wrong.  And you knew I was a Yankee spy all along.  You will win back your Yankee paper.  And I will have my gold. 

 

Old Jube’s horsemen depart like the gentlemen they are, with smiles and waves all around.  They took the carbines and left good cases on the ground.  German family will put them to good use.  Let’s play cards tonight Jubal Early.  Let’s play cards Jubilee.  Dixie has fallen to me schwer and you know I deal an honest hand.  Remember the old days in Roanoke and sing about my Hessian land.   Please remember the whiskey Jew bee.  Unless you have no beer.  We are playing for keepers’ marse Jubilee.  Dixie Daisy you and me.  My family served a noble house for seventeen generations.  You take me for a Junker because Henry is a gentleman like you.  I will count all my old friend Carl’s cannons.  That is what Henry promised to do.  But Schurz is a Rhinelander like me.  Herz Deutschlands, mein blühendes Hessenland.   

 

[pan]

I honored that you have shared this with us.

[waldopaper]

aw shucks.   most my best stuff these days in the local fishwrap.  can you see a production in this?