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Life in the Empire

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!

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With a political system that operates off bribery and a deep state that makes sure business as usual is not threatened, I can't imagine we'll experience any positive change unless the populace revolts against the inherent system of corruption that comprises our government. Which, of course, they won't. Not in meaningful numbers anyway.

As Waldo used to say, 'People will continue to clap for Tinkerbell' thinking that the next election cycle will produce the candidate all we plebs have been waiting for. After witnessing what happenned to Bernie, there's no way the oligarchs are going to allow the plebs to vote for someone who actually represents them. Not even marginally.

This article suggests that the issue is far bigger than the Duopoly we have in the US

Agree: Politics are meaningless as we face the effects of overpopulation and the death of the planet. And it's certainly not anything industry cares to concern itself with. Our impending demise is a fate accompli. It's now only a matter of when.

Maybe not as good out loud as Lew- but been reading a lot of THIS.   

While I am not at home in my home in Florida, I do appreciate not being so near the center of the Hive.

Dormeuil Suit  

Every morning I can't wait to give somebody grief.  I do it in my filings and do it in my briefs.  There's robbery among us- and I don't have time to give a hoot.  Have a gold Rolex you won't believe peeking out the sleeve of my Dormeuil suit.  

It's not easy for a boy to be a businessman.  Life not turning out for me exactly like I planned.  My papers are in order- I can go out there and loot.  Ask me am I qualified- letters of marque all here inside my Dormeuil suit. 

When I can't take anymore- I take my 944 and disappear into the night.  To a nose blast- or a place in the past- and a time when I knew what what was right.  Since that time in college- the tree of knowledge bore bitter fruit.  Not a free ride.  There is no heart inside this Dormeuil suit.   

If you see me coming better stay right where you are.  Don't file litigation on me and don't lean on my car.  Don't point anything at me that you are not prepared to shoot.  But if you want all of the best, come on in and be the guest of a Dormeuil suit.  

Well, that's enough of this year's story.  Brother P- if yer into music and movement... ya gotta love this:   

No pesky english language.  Japanese schoolgirls who can play the horn.   

Pretty effing amazing.

I think this is the same group I saw in a video doing a swing piece with choreography on stage. It was pretty amazing.  Thanks for the share.

A very dark comedy from Germany.  I wish I understood German as I am sure that some of the cultural and historical subtext is lost in translation. On Netflix.  I think some of you many appreciate this.

Old Money Journey  

Monongahela 1862.  Morning fog moved upon river burning off engine chuffing smoke upstream. Creaking deck open door.  Splashing wheel Sherman coming east.  Longstreet moving west.  Do not take genius to figure out war and stay south of a river.  Jubal has big job planned.  Jubal cackle wonder why your damyankee dutchman call it Cashtown.  Hundred greenbacks per ounce.  Quality folk give you ten thousand.  Coal scuttle Captain rattle sunrise chill.  Cackle in Henry memory.  Chef you gotta see this.  Dispatch will wait for sawdust clomp downstairs deck.  Look at his eyes Chef.  He won't make the landing.  What do you see.  My son.  One of the 69th Irish Volunteers and god eye damned all gentlemen. Whisky me lad.  Mother of God.  What kind of man is it that would not give you his best whisky.  I had a brother who was a gentleman once.  Twinkle eyed.   So he smiled.  Then he died.  Roll him up with a cannon ball boys and give him to the river.  Must have been a fine jungen.  Gut shot don't live so long.  Send hands ashore to prepare boat for auction.  Thank them for me.  

Gold like as not arrive on time.  But auch smile.   Worth it. 
 
Henry could see it.  Plain as day.  Silly tubes popping balls at each other.  And that's good.  Just a small notch above spears and clubs. Just as apparent (as war technology) was the need to manage wealth of nations.  How are wealth and nations defined.  Nobles were noble (Arthurian legend).  Rank made one a prime target in Civil War battles... but not always.  Sam Watkins regarded officers as harmless creatures.  Sam was more concerned with the people who were trying to shoot him.  Shoot young Sam, that is.  Better we should figure this out before there are air machines and death rays.  Whoops.  We (fucking) didn't.  Now we are dilly bab plab pud our piddle debt plorp impeachment trial.  Next:  Christ returns to Earth and Trump shoots Jesus on Boardwalk and skull-fucks sucking Lincoln wound with his warty knobbed white clap-dripping willie.  Watch it on Youtube.  On your way to work of course.  And so I did.  I knew there was a gender war.  I taught feminist literary theory.   Now I hear bitter old dudes talking about being "divorce raped" and homeless.   

Luck of the draw.  Even if cards are played right. All used up is a possibility for anyone with anything to lose. I did not see "verbal aggression" coming.   Should have.  That's what storytellers do (to fools who deny the emperor's clothes).  I was sick with victimhood when I came to SLC.  Really fucked-in-the-head.  Henry now goes scouting for me.  But he is not a pathfinder.  He is a hunter.  Nobility.  Prosperity.  Progress.  (he is so 19th Century)  Nobody would mass-produce machine guns.  Nobody would use up the drinking water to fracture rocks for oil to burn. Showboat Glenda good witch peekaboo Lilith psycho bitch all hoochie koochie casino entertainment for Mr. Skullhead from the graveyard. Everybody knows that.  Right.  We are most inventive manufacturing excuses for what we wanted to do anyway.  Patriarchy.  Paternalism.  All real... abstract nouns invented in the industrial age and discussed freely before mass-produced chemical birth control.  Gender kabuki auction was cancelled when Bernays sold it down the river.   Berne is a sexist.  Russians are invading.  
 
Time is food.  Money is shit.  Gender is something in between.  
It was back with the XI Corps German boys.  Henry and Konrad were going to market to market to buy a fat pig.  Singing silly boys were we.  Henry was in civilian clothes of course.  He finally got Konrad so he could hit a pie tin at hundred meters with his shitty Springfield.  Henry fixed it up with trigger, lock and sights.  Henry's mouth watered for spareribs and kraut... like his tears for the beautiful Hessenland in rousing deutscher english market song.  Home again r-r-rik a chick jig they danced to get the hog from the black volk farm.  Just behind the picket lines but far from camp.  Where Henry taught Konrad to snap shoot.  Sort of.  
 
Two rebs were there too goddam.  HALT screamed Konrad.  Stehn auf!  One dropped the pig.  The other dropped Konrad.  Fine Walker revolver took left leg left click right leg right. Click.  Lie still boys or I kill you.  Tell General Early the Dutchman returns his boys alive.  You goddam killed one of mine you goddam piker.  Now GIT.  A baby started crying in the house.  Konrad's eyes were growing dim.  And he smiled.  Gegen geborgen.  Then he died.  Big Tom sadly ask what he say Henry.  Dutch talk.  He said... he is born again.  Big Tom carried Konrad and cried.  Henry carried the hog.  The boys would still be hungry.  Jubal's boys go home hungry.  
 
And Henry had seen enough of the goddam yankee army as well.     
The Southern Cause.  What the hell is that, madam.  She bustled off.  Jubal squinted and spat his chaw...  drip dam boot toe in the rain. Damn rheumatiz.  Army of Northern Virginia ghost baggage train streaming 40 miles flowing slowly by... guns and rifles canteens bayonets rattle leaves bye sluggish Antietam creek.  Tens of thousands lowing  livestock cattle sheep mules and a few stray niggers bawl under the whip and wagons creaked and rocked and slid muddy by... screaming wounded curses over slats dripping blood... on Virginia's bloody soil.  Effect is plain enough to see and Lo Armistead is past and break rain plate over head.  And now he is dead.  Lost his cause back there in the wreckage.  Lost cause we did not have enough.  Lost cause Yankees had more than we could carry.  

Horsetalk Pete pull big Indian canoe up scraping Rock Creek moonlight bank.  It all comes down to Carney and Pierpont.  Rosa waits along the road.       
 

Beyond Those Hills   

GETTYSBURG (Day Pickett's Charge - Confederate troops break through the barricade fence along Hagerstown Turnpike ("Confederate Skirmish Line" by Mark Maritato). Syrian Civil War, Civil War Art, Military Art, Military History, American Civil War, American History, Confederate States Of America, Civil War Photos, Historical Art

"Where the cotton is high.  The corn is a growing.  And there ain't no fields to plow."  -- Old Rivers  

Pennsylvania.  July, 1863

I will take your place on the skirmish line today Konrad.  Give me your stupid uniform.  Henry began to cry.  Because if you go out there with such stupid head today... you will die.  Konrad did not laugh.  Such would have earned him quick der Klonkon Head.  And I must have my Sharps and not your shit Springfield.  Goddam my tears roll like stupid goddam girl.  But I will not kill a man for you.  Not even for our mother Union.  Now go to sleep boy before I put you there.   Dream of our beautiful Hessenland.  And our singing Rhein.  The guns will wake you before I will coming.  Have supper for me.  Good spaetzle und fleisch.  Und please.  Lager beer.  Wind. 
A gun.  There.  Again.  The wind... thirty degrees to sunrise.  Again.  Long range rifles... aimed at the main body.  Grass is long and good pointing for wind.  Smell is sweet.  And here they come.  The reb will see you soon.  Tell him you will shoot him without nobody hearing.  He might believe you.  Whistle.  Thump.  Dilger you bastard.  Don't blow me up before I see who it is.  You don't want the skirmishers you silly shit.  Shit.  That was Latimer or some Johnny asshole.  Fuck my eyes.  It's Cletus.  He thinks you do not see him.  Wait.  Thump.  Wait.  Oh god Clete.  Please don't snap your shotgun.  Good.  He thinks... 
Cletus.  Halt.  I am private Konrad eleven corps union army.  Shit you ain't.  Dutchman.  Shut up Clete.  Private Konrad says you may withdraw and report to whatever Early asshole that XI Corps is right behind me 2,000 yards.  He was ahead of the yanks by half when you decided to shoot.  Now scoot.  Well Carl, here they come.  I told you about them and here they are.  Like you did not already know that you stupid.  But you send silly Hessian boys out to die so you can free the niggers.  No time for supper.  Get rid of stupid uniform and get back to hotel.  Jubal.  The whisky here is shit.  They hide the good stuff in the parlor.  But your spies here said they were going to shoot me.  That's what I heard you goddam piker. 
And I do not know.  Who they are.  We have an agreement about the banks you goddam piker and your withered old ass best believe the Dutchman will hold you to it.  Volley de volley de volley de volley rip fippa rip.  Christ.  Infantry.  Hope the big gun boys keep each other busy.  Latimer and his stupids might want to do the town like you Dilger bastards did Fredericksburg.  Goddam my luck.  One can not understand the play without knowing the theatre.  For some can only suspend disbelief if they see it with their own eyes and hear it like thunder.  Thump goddam.  Thump.  Then they allow themselves to think the unreal is real. 
Gold is no more real than greenbacks.  It lives in the rock along with iron and such.  It has uses to us.  Fine jewelry for fine ladies.  Not like steel rails, once only for the most useful blades.  To cut timber or meat.  Bah.  The best whisky is in my room and soon I will have some.  People get ready.  There is a battle coming.  You need not explain death to the hunter... but the butcher sometimes forgets.  That's what you are, Carl.  A butcher.  Jubal is a hunter... and a cold-blooded killer.  Not like you, Carl, with your golden heart for the niggers.  And here we are in the eastern theatre of the war.  Gold is out west.  And the end is in the script. 
Queen Mab is writing it before our very eyes.  Only a copy.  You can see by her smile that she has the ending.  She is not smiling now.  Tell General Schurz the main body of Ewell's Stonewall boys is about a mile away.  Long range rifles  and maybe six battery smoothe.    That's right.  Louisiana Tigers and such.  East by Nor'east.  About thirty million of them.  Now excuse me.  Gentlemen.  I must procure some maps for General Meade.  Excuse me.   Ach. 
Eye am fizzitor in yer cone-tree.  Baron Von Hesse.  I half groom in data old tell.  Thank you.  My hat.  Take it my friend.  Good luck fir ye, melad.  Excuse me.  And sometimes the poor bastards. Excuse me.   Will trade their souls for a rifle that works.  Back off.  The tools should be safe where they are.  But the trading has reduced them.  Indian Pony always knows what to do.  But she is looking out for herself now.  As she should. Now doubt Jubal has the wagon and will piker my ass for it dearly.  No time for that now.  Get the whisky and maybe sleep through the battle.  Officers of either have been invited to my room.  There we will drink to the outcome.  Hope they have the decency to knock.  Because who is that pretty girl.  Fine unlimbering of that piece, sir.  I will keep the citizens out of your way.  They are frightened,  Lieutenant.  With my compliments.  My wife is waiting yonder to take our baby daughter to safety. 
We just came from the Old Country.  Excuse me.  

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