Zuihitsu

(...)

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the mingo
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Location: Tug Hill Plateau

Re: Zuihitsu

Post by the mingo » March 17th, 2018, 12:32 pm

If I begin from right here I won't have to waste time looking around for a place to start or overcome inertia. If I add this and subtract that I will arrive at a result. If I take that result and multiply by seven then take that result and divide by two I will find myself on top of a large ridge not far from here where Tubbs Rd. crosses it east to west. The ridge runs north to south like the other ridges here do. They are all the result of glaciation from the last ice age. Even by regional standards, this ridge is huge. It runs for miles. Approaching it from either east or west presents an endurance challenge if you are on a bike. Approach from the west presents you with a long long grade to the top. You will be in granny gear before you are half way up. From the east is altogether different. From the east, it's not a grade, it's a bona fide climb. A wicked climb. Even in granny gear I only make it about a third of the way up then hop off to walk the rest of the way. Only thing that makes it worth the climb from the east is the descent on the western side. From the top, the land opens out and it is a view that always holds me. I stop there at the top and let the wind coming up the western face cool me. I drink some water, take a breather. Look at everything I can. There is a road there that comes in from the north and T-bones with Tubbs Rd, Halsey Rd. I biked up it last summer for shits & giggles. It's a nice run, follows the ridgeline til it veers to the northwest, no radical ups and downs. A sweet country run.

Then you are ready. You put your water bottle back in its cage. You pull your hat down tight on your head. You adjust your sunglasses. Then push off - you don't have to spin the pedals not even once, you just launch, let the land and gravity do the rest - halfway down the wind is nothing but roar in your ears, the spokes on your wheels are spinning so fast they sound like warp engines on a starship ( insert Flying in a Blue Dream by Joe Satriani right here ) even from behind the shield of your sunglasses water is forced to the corner of your eyes onto the skin of your face and blown back into your hair.

At the bottom you coast for a bit, you're smiling, you begin pedaling again as if a mere mortal but Tug Hill has brought you a portion of her very best and for some indefinable moments you were a peregrine falcon, your soul in freefall. It was for this I have come.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeTPPIyXb48
Doll, you may have found a place of rest but I'm still on the trail.

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the mingo
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Re: Zuihitsu

Post by the mingo » March 19th, 2018, 5:41 am

I had a Big Idea tonight. To write something and call it "The Story of Japanese Women" -

Chapter 1

When I was in Japan there were a lot of women there. They were all taking care of things. In all kinds of weather. All over the place. From Hokkaido to Kyushu. They were all born with black hair but some later changed it to pink or blue. Some had tattoos.
___________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 2

Richard Brautigan married a Japanese woman. Later on, the Japanese woman filed for divorce saying Richard was an alcoholic and totally fucked up.
Richard agreed and signed the divorce papers. Richard wrote several books after that, none of them about his Japanese wife.
___________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 3

At 4 a.m. I made myself a cup of tea. Temperature outside is 16 degrees. I had a fire going. No one else in the house is awake, they were dreaming or floating just above or below dreaming. I was about 6,500 miles from Japan. There is snow outside my windows. It shows the tracks of the
neighbor's two dogs who came over earlier today to raid my garbage. Their teeth were samurai swords slicing cleanly through my garbage bags. They both went after the same bag and began fighting over it. It was a big fight. The older dog won.
____________________________________________________________________________

Chapter 4

Japanese women ride bicycles. They do errands on them. They ride across town. They go out in the country. They ride down by the river or out to the lake. They ride to the shrine, make an offering, hang a while, feed the birds. After that, the birds tend to follow them around and become a bit of a nuisance. Some birds follow the Japanese women home. Perch in the trees. Begin waiting. When their patience runs out or they forget what brought them there they go back to the shrine in twos and threes or one at a time.
_____________________________________________________________________________
Doll, you may have found a place of rest but I'm still on the trail.

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still.trucking
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Re: Zuihitsu

Post by still.trucking » March 19th, 2018, 10:45 pm

hell yeah Mongolia, words fail me
thank you, I met Brautigan about forty years ago walking down Broadway, around fells point in Baltimore

he would love to read what you wrote about Jap women

grew up in the forties, two uncles in the Philippines,
remember when Steve Earl's record company changed the lyrics of guitar town, from everybody told me you can't go far on 37 dollars and a Jap guitar, changed to it to "can't go far on 37 dollars and a cheap guitar"

I am a child of racism,
it is as American as kosher salami

we have been good to Japan we gave them baseball and atomic weapons

sorry nothing to do with your wonderful Zuihitsu
I am just letting it pass through and let my fingers do da talking
as I watch a PBS special about Jackie Robinson
I was raised on big band music and baseball
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-7Ac2LVVYU

thank you
wonderful reading it 8)
"Natural selection, as it has operated in human history, favors not only the clever but the murderous." Barbara Ehrenreich

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the mingo
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Re: Zuihitsu

Post by the mingo » March 20th, 2018, 3:37 am

Thx, Jack, @ 3 a.m. - appreciate the read - damn, it's 6 degrees above zero up here as I write this - had a cousin show up at my door today that I've only seen once before in my whole life - sign? omen? spooky action at a distance? I opened the door, knew I had seen him before but couldn't remember his name - it seems we are going to go to breakfast at some fire station some time in the future - then he jumped into his car and he was gone - Holy Fuck! I said to myself - my mother's ( RIP ) family has its share of interesting characters - my cousin came knocking just a couple of hours after I had zuihitsued about the Japanese women - are those two events connected? I assume they must be since everything is connected ... hell, for all I know I'm just spooky action at a distance - I remember a piece of dialogue from the movie "Thunderheart" where Old Man Reaches tells Walter Crowhorse
that Ray ( the FBI agent ) is "as far from himself as a hawk is from the moon" - it's funny what you think about at 3:22 a.m. on Tug Hill Plateau when it's 6 degrees above zero outside the 20th of March 2018 -
Doll, you may have found a place of rest but I'm still on the trail.

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the mingo
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Re: Zuihitsu

Post by the mingo » March 20th, 2018, 5:07 am

Ps - I didn't know Brautigan walked the streets of Baltimore. I thought he was an ace fighter pilot fighting the Japs over the skies of Tacoma, Washington
during WW2 and hadn't met any Japanese women yet. * 8) *
Doll, you may have found a place of rest but I'm still on the trail.

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WIREMAN
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Re: Zuihitsu

Post by WIREMAN » March 20th, 2018, 3:26 pm

Brautighan on Broadway, old Fells Pt. who'd a thunk it....I remember in the 70's the sailors hall being there and houses you could get for a song, seriously!.......my then to be wifey didn't dig it, I thought it was amazing....id be there now if I wasn't in Frederick.....
me I feel like I'm becoming some kinda Kung fu t.v. Priest.....

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stilltrucking
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Re: Zuihitsu

Post by stilltrucking » March 21st, 2018, 5:36 pm

Boo, Forever
Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I’m haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.
– Richard Brautigan


richard brautigan in baltimore
http://www.bmoreart.com/2008/08/boo-for ... tigan.html
I was heading down towards the point and he was walking up towards eastern avenue
He wore a fringed leather jacket and looked like he was six foot seven inches tall
We looked into each other's eyes and he flashed me a beatific smile
and I glared back at him,
I was glaring jack in those days, the early seventies I was a a sorry son of a bitch
I hope I have mellowed
maybe it wasn't St. Richard I saw, but it could have been. :) Yes Ken, even if it didn't happen it could have.

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the mingo
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Re: Zuihitsu

Post by the mingo » March 22nd, 2018, 2:11 am

I never saw Brautigan
even when I lived in San Francisco
I went down to ideath but the folks there
told me the son of a bitch
had moved to Montana
no way I was going to Montana
I mean, Custer went to Montana
and look what happened to him

If it had been Patton things would have been different. I would have followed him just about anywhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu11QRO9BrQ
Doll, you may have found a place of rest but I'm still on the trail.

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stilltrucking
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Re: Zuihitsu

Post by stilltrucking » March 22nd, 2018, 9:13 am

Chaos and entropy and bad feng shui
Every time I think about Japanese women I think about a book I have that is lost in the mess that is my home after my recent move. 100 poems from the Japanese, beautiful book, silky pages, it is a treasure. I got to find it. Seems like I spend half my time looking for things. Got to be a better way. I read the stuff I posted here back years ago and I am chagrined. Not who I am now, I feel like a pilgrim these days.

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the mingo
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Re: Zuihitsu

Post by the mingo » March 22nd, 2018, 10:12 am

I feel like a pilgrim these days.
You can join up with Wireman, he's feeling like a kung-fu T.V. priest 8) - I read that book you're talking about - it was Ken Rexroth what collected it all up if I remember - bought a copy after borrowing one from the library - where it is now no idea - it has come to seeming that my life up to this point happened to someone else - it's a growing notion these days - my faults are legendary I hope -

I'm eating scalloped potatoes for breakfast -
Doll, you may have found a place of rest but I'm still on the trail.

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sasha
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Re: Zuihitsu

Post by sasha » March 22nd, 2018, 12:10 pm

Had to replace my toaster oven a few days ago - a 10-mile and $39.95 trip to WalMart. I knew precisely how to set the old one to cook the perfect English muffin for my poached egg - now I've got to figure it out all over again. This morning the house smells like burnt toast.

This last nor'easter - the 4th in 3 weeks - ran out of gas before getting up here to NH. Too bad. I was really looking forward to finding places to put all that new snow, maybe even put my back out again.

There's been enough melting over the last week that I thought I could venture out on our morning walk without my ice cleats, maybe even make it all the way up to the lake. Nope. The dusting of snow we did get overnight rendered the road so slick I barely got as far as Wayne & Linda's place before pulling the handle. Fuck this noise.

The snowbanks are still over my head in places (not especially impressive when you realize I'm just a shade over 5'6"). The dog and I have been diligently drilling piss holes into them. If I can't shovel them away, maybe we can melt them.
.
"Falsehood flies, the Truth comes limping after it." - Jonathan Swift, ca. 1710

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the mingo
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Re: Zuihitsu

Post by the mingo » March 23rd, 2018, 9:03 am

This symbol showed up on my snow covered lawn sometime during the night. It cast a shadow. I thought about using it in one of my own creations but decided not to after a while. I mean the thing casts a shadow and it's obvious it came from an unknown somewhere else. I got close to it and listened but all I heard was the sound of Conestoga wagons, pulled by oxen, crossing the plains. Plus, before all this happened, one of the neighbor's young daughters came to my door yesterday afternoon asking me where my dead dog was. Right outta the blue. My dog has been dead since the middle of January.
So, I'm not touching it. That symbol can stay right where it is and when it goes on I won't miss it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5dtxftwDyk
Doll, you may have found a place of rest but I'm still on the trail.

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WIREMAN
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Re: Zuihitsu

Post by WIREMAN » March 30th, 2018, 6:43 pm

Anyway you want it.....sittin in the bar watchin baseball....spring sprung and the folks loud...oh yeah their loud and drunk
Into the 8th inning a close game....beards, all the ball players got em....
me I feel like I'm becoming some kinda Kung fu t.v. Priest.....

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the mingo
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Re: Zuihitsu

Post by the mingo » April 1st, 2018, 11:51 pm

Damn, just now realize I need to build a fire - been knocked-out out ragged by some ungodly flu bug for several days now - didn't split any firewood today because didn't have the salt to do it - sad, because now I got to do it in the dark of midnight. damn, and I feel just as pitiful now as I did earlier today.
God bless America
Doll, you may have found a place of rest but I'm still on the trail.

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WIREMAN
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Re: Zuihitsu

Post by WIREMAN » April 8th, 2018, 7:21 pm

.....hell yeah!....Mongolia!....throat singing n golden eagle hunting....genghis Blues rules....mix in a bit of ryokan and Han Shan and we gots ourselves a partee.....

them 47 ronin ruled the day till perry came with the ships and opened old Nippon up....ugh!

Sittin in my bay window lookin over old Frederick town with the sun going down....cars n trucks flowing by.....Sunday evening 7:14pm. ....a cool April evening, the good folks with coats on....birds chirping and me writing Zuihitsu 😎
me I feel like I'm becoming some kinda Kung fu t.v. Priest.....

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