"Thanks for all the fish"

[stilltrucking]

promised land
holyland
not for me

Somewhere along the way
I lost my roots
I clutch at the grass to hold myself down
so that the wind does not carry me away

I collect stuff at thrift stores
books and pictures
lamps and bookshelves
as if that would hold my down

I gain weight
can I weigh anymore
gravity is the only thing I got going
cut me loose let me fly away

[SadLuckDame]

You can hop on my hot air balloon.
Teach me how to hit the ground sometimes
and up, up, and away we go.

[stilltrucking]

bad chemistry going on here
molecules collide
I got to get out of this hole I am in
I can see daylight
high above me
seeping in around the outlines of a closed trapdoor

I appreciate you dame
you cheer me up
all I can do is make my unconscious misery conscious

"cut me loose let me fly
after all these years I am still alive" the spinoza of baltimore

[SadLuckDame]

... ya know when you're trippin' it's all 5 senses aware and mingled at the same time. It's tapable. Imagination eats the senses right up, just loves to take the trip--mix it all up with memory then you can be anywhere doing anything Jack no matter where ya are.

I'm not telling ya anything you don't already know, I guess I just likes gabbing on the topic. Imagination a life saver, place saver, time traveler...

[MrGuilty]

But I never touched nothin'
That my spirit could kill

— Steppenwolf

Below these words, these thoughts
Behind this consciousness
above the molecules bouncing across synapses
in the vibrations of the atoms of my being
lurks the spirit
which no matter how much acid, mushrooms, peyote, or brown mescaline, I ingested
from where I watched and witnessed untouched by it all
I knew there was a spirit
I could never forget that.

I smoked some pot last week. First time in months. I am dealing with the aftermath. I remember why I stopped smoking it. The highs are higher and the coming down is a bitch. It is not my drug anymore. But it was nice while it lasted.

When I find myself in that basement beneath the trapdoor in the house that used to stand at the foot of the Orleans street viaduct in baltimore I am flashing back to the childhood darkness I spent so much time staring into. I always was a spooky kid. As I walked down those wooden steps in the the dark rectangle of an openn grave.

The sun will be up in three hours.

"Beware of thoughts that come in the night" Blue Highways
Travels with Charlie, I remember reading that, Charlie was a dog I think. And there is a diffenence in time between Blue Highways and Travels with Charlie. William Least Heat Moon was a young man when he wrote Blue Highways, and Steinbeck was old and dying. A different kind of book. A different outlook on America. I can relate to the Steinbeck more I think. Old men get the demise of themselves all tangled up with the end of the world.

I could be wrong
I probably am
Maybe I have been right about a few things.

[SadLuckDame]

Yes, Charlie was his loyal dog and he'd left the wife at home.
It was such a relaxing pace throughout the book, no real drama, not any whore meet-ups or drug over-doses, lacked drama, but it was warm solitude and it reaches in internally to a desire a traveler would appreciate.

I'll return.
It's well past my bed-time,
I'd just wanted to take the initiative on getting myself back to writing
and not bottling it all up.
I'm reading A Portrait of a Lady at the moment.
It's been a while since I've read a novel,
feels good to be back.

[stilltrucking]

Blue Highways was a sweet book
His life fell apart
Lost his job his wife
Decided to take off and loose himself on the road.
follow those back roads of America.
the ones that appear in blue on the maps
visited small towns with strange names like Dime Box Texas.
I read it about thirty years ago that is all I remember.
I read Travels With Charlie I can't remember
about forty years ago
I remember even less about it
I read something by his son about the book recently
He was suprised that Mrs Steinbeck let him even go
because he was dying
and he thought his father wanted to take one more road trip to say good bye to america. Land that he loved.
My favorite book by Steinbeck is Sweet Thursday
Love that book, just loved it to pieces.
Sweet Thursday quotes

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.

[SadLuckDame]

I'm gonna look for it Jack, never read that one either or the other. I've read a few Steinbeck, and really like his style so far. He's an easy soul. Good with it.

In case you want a page read, pretend I've read it quietly starting on this page, right after the trucker bit.

Travels with Charlie

If one has driven a car over many years, as I have, nearly all reactions have become automatic. One does not think about what to do. Nearly all the driving technique is deeply buried in a machine-like unconscious. This being so, a large area of the conscious mind is left free for thinking. And what do people think of when they drive? On short trips perhaps of arrival at a destination or memory of events at the place of departure. But there is left, particularly on very long trips, a large area for day-dreaming or even, God help us, for thought.

No one can know what another does in that area. I myself have planned houses I will never build, have made gardens I will never plant, have designed a method for pumping the soft silt and decayed shells from the bottom of my bay up to my point of land at Sag Harbor, of leeching out the salt, thus making a rich and productive soil. I don't know whether or not I'll do this, but driving along I have planned it in detail even to kind of pump, the leeching bins, the tests to determine disappearance of salinity. Driving, I have created turtle traps in my mind, have written long, detailed letters never to be put to paper, much less sent. When the radio was on, music has stimulated memory of times and places, complete with characters and stage sets, memories so exact that every word of dialogue is recreated. And I have projected future scenes, just as complete and convincing--scenes that will never take place. I've written short stories in my mind, chuckling at my own humor, saddened or stimulated by structure or content.

[stilltrucking]

But there is left, particularly on very long trips, a large area for day-dreaming or even, God help us, for thought.

Oh yes tell me about it. Something in the sound the vibration of a truck made it even more intent. A long trip, a thousand miles a day, I can not even begin to describe the aummmmmmmmmmm sound of a diesel mile after thousand mile 15 thousand miles a month. Till every atom in my brain starts to vibrate to it, a mystic state. I call it meditation. the only meditation I have ever been able to do.

<center> "with a dollar in my pocket I can hear that highway sound and a penny for my thoughts would not tax my mind at all" — the spinoza of baltimore</center>

Even now
My thought is all of this gold-tinted king's daughter
With garlands tissue and golden buds,
Smoke tangles of her hair, and sleeping or waking
Feet trembling in love, full of pale languor;
My thought is clinging as to a lost learning
Slipped down out of the minds of men,
Labouring to bring her back into my soul.

Even now
If I see in my soul the citron-breasted fair one
Still gold-tinted, her face like our night stars,
Drawing unto her; her body beaten about with flame,
Wounded by the flaring spear of love,
My first of all by reason of her fresh years,
Then is my heart buried alive in snow.

Doc reading from the poem Black Marigolds in Sweet Thursday or Cannery Row I forget.
This is the translation he quoted from
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/bilhana/index.htm

[stilltrucking]

I guess it was Cannery Row

Throughout the final chapters, the theme of community counterbalances an equal emphasis on the tragic and the elegiac. Even as Mack and company finally throw a successful party for Doc, the guest of honor keeps coming back to the haunting ancient poem, "Black Marigolds." In a universe that can be ruthlessly impersonal, taking away as much as it gives, it is the spirit of poetry, Steinbeck seems to be saying, that helps us share and even repair loss, linking us to one another in our tears as well as our laughter.
http://www.amazon.com/Cannery-Row-Cente ... 014200068X

Good night pen pal
catch you on the flip flop

[SadLuckDame]

Even now
My thought is all of this gold-tinted king's daughter
With garlands tissue and golden buds,
Smoke tangles of her hair, and sleeping or waking
Feet trembling in love, full of pale languor;
My thought is clinging as to a lost learning
Slipped down out of the minds of men,
Labouring to bring her back into my soul.

Even now
If I see in my soul the citron-breasted fair one
Still gold-tinted, her face like our night stars,
Drawing unto her; her body beaten about with flame,
Wounded by the flaring spear of love,
My first of all by reason of her fresh years,
Then is my heart buried alive in snow.

That sent me off to sleep last night.
A couple to-do items tomorrow, then I'm freed-up for a while on vacation. My plans are to read, shop, cook and write ya or all of yas. Do you know the dame left me a while back? It's been lonely, only my voice instead. I miss her and the sisters. Strange to be steady.

P.S.
I've been sick with a sneezing cold, and flu bug. Gotta keep your distance from me till all's well.

[stilltrucking]

I am sorry to hear you are not well. Would some chicken soup help?

Nothing much happening here I heard a sound byte on NPR with Calypso Rose. I like her a lot.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =101056407

I liked taht song A man is a man especially.

Watched a PBS show about bonobos. Bottom line sisterhood is powerful.

Had a dream where all my fingers had bandages on them and it was awkward to type.

Weather warmed up, mild winter so far.

That is about all the news I got for now.

"Button up your over coat" dear sister.

[SadLuckDame]

When I was a child my sister told me sneezing was a near death experience (the lights almost go out). What if the whole of people all sneezed at the same time today, in say 5 minutes we all sneeze, then none survive it except all the brand newly babies dropping from a women's womb at the last breath. Those babies, however many of them there'd be couldn't survive very long on their own, but for the amount of time they would--the whole world would be innocent.

I haven't had a bite to eat in two days Jack, chicken soup sounds good to me right now. I'm out the door in a few, but I'll be plugged into Calypso Rose as soon as I get home. Looks like it's a whole concert, I'll be in for a treat.

[SadLuckDame]

She was a true, blue blessing! I feel more able, more fresher and liking men more as I write this.

At the end she's said something about..."now women, I know you'd like to drag home one of these men, but I'll let you know right now you can't have them, because they're ALL mine."

What a finish, what a delight and I went smiling the rest of the day.

[stilltrucking]

Happy to hear you feeling better

Something orgasmic about a sneeze.

my moring maniac music at four forty five am on a rainy thursday morning

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xGE4dnrPPZQ&hl ... ram><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xGE4dnrPPZQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>