I almost wrote "Cafe Closed" today, for I haven't any new photos to post. Searching around, though, I found this bizarre image and thought, "OK, this is . . . ." I never came up with a word for it. I had fairly discarded it, but this morning it made my head spin. So the cafe is open. Read 'em and weep. Smoke 'em if you got 'em. My head is full of empty phrases, or "cats and rocking chairs," as the Ryan Adams song goes.
Baby Sun, Youngest Clown on Record, drove me crazy all day yesterday finally got a poem or at least a fragment of one out of it at about 2AM. If your blog has a zillion hits from me it's cause I couldn't stop looking.
ReplyDeleteHaving grown up with Circus people photos as relatives -- it isn't so odd. I have always embraced my very *different* relatives. I could fill your head with some stories I'll tell ya.
I went through a zillion photos yesterday myself -- found photos of my life in the Keys -- which I think is the first time I wrote on your blog.
it was an odd day. I don't know what I did or where the time went. Other than I traveled with photos back -- and strangely forward. Both the Wendt ones and my stash.
I had a wonderful photo I would have sent to you had I not sold it. Two year old twin boxers -- Providence RI circa 1915 in a tiny ring with giant boxing gloves on. Bought it at a yard sale.
Anyway.
I'm scattered this morning too. Not enough money to pay for the things that need to be paid and little motivation to work.
Problem that.
Relating to Robinson
BY WELDON KEES
Somewhere in Chelsea, early summer;
And, walking in the twilight toward the docks,
I thought I made out Robinson ahead of me.
From an uncurtained second-story room, a radio
Was playing There’s a Small Hotel; a kite
Twisted above dark rooftops and slow drifting birds.
We were alone there, he and I,
Inhabiting the empty street.
Under a sign for Natural Bloom Cigars,
While lights clicked softly in the dusk from red to green,
He stopped and gazed into a window
Where a plaster Venus, modeling a truss,
Looked out at Eastbound traffic. (But Robinson,
I knew, was out of town: he summers at a place in Maine,
Sometimes on Fire Island, sometimes the Cape,
Leaves town in June and comes back after Labor Day.)
And yet, I almost called out, “Robinson!”
There was no chance. Just as I passed,
Turning my head to search his face,
His own head turned with mine
And fixed me with dilated, terrifying eyes
That stopped my blood. His voice
Came at me like an echo in the dark.
“I thought I saw the whirlpool opening.
Kicked all night at a bolted door.
You must have followed me from Astor Place.
An empty paper floats down at the last.
And then a day as huge as yesterday in pairs
Unrolled its horror on my face
Until it blocked—” Running in sweat
To reach the docks, I turned back
For a second glance. I had no certainty,
There in the dark, that it was Robinson
Or someone else.
The block was bare. The Venus,
Bathed in blue fluorescent light,
Stared toward the river. As I hurried West,
The lights across the bay were coming on.
The boats moved silently and the low whistles blew.
seems the scattered mind thing is contagious, actually I think it is my permanent state of mind now. Interesting picture....bizarre? maybe but definitely interesting. Since you have cats and rocking chairs I'll fill my mind with gerbils and porch swings.
ReplyDeleteHow about Orientalism? :)
ReplyDeleteL, OK, I'm definitely going to read Kees. That is a terrific bit of putting together details to say a thing that is not said. I love that sort of writing.
ReplyDeleteR, I don't think that the gerbil will fear the porch swing the way the cat should the rocking chair. I had not thought of it before, but that line has a lot of Frost in it.
Grasswire, Hello there. I'm not sure what you are asking, but I'll bite. Orientalism was a fun bit of deconstruction without the freeplay. Now that it has been done to death, we are all studying Occidentalism, that faulty view the East holds of the West that is as invalid as the other with its potential of filling the subject with loathing and desire and objectifying the "other." HO! Just kidding you a bit. Truly, thanks for stopping by.