Wild Einstein

My innocence has been pierced by deceit. Nothing new there, eh? I struggle with my scruples all the time. Who doesn’t like going to bed? I mean, come on. If language is an hallucination, then cactus beards the desert sky as the philodendron fills the dendrites of a finger as it rises and falls.

Metaphors deform the sink. I’m ready for just about anything.

The Jolly Green Giant smashes a teacup in rage. The clitoris purrs and is properly deified. An arm moves. Jewelry clanks like a thermostat. The deeper angst of meaninglessness and bewilderment is transmuted into the desire to accomplish, to triumph over insipidity.

Bubbles of meaning flow from my fingers. I scatter the ashes of worry on the waves of enlightenment. I’ve got a reason now to like overalls.

Anguish blurs vision. Logic doesn’t do that, but it doesn’t go that far anyway. I want to name this wine Wild Einstein. It involves the immediacy of steam, the seductions of chocolate, the embrace of drama, the push toward dreams.

I sat on the bed with my left leg tucked under my right leg and listened to Bob Dylan sing “Not Dark Yet.” “I ain’t lookin’ for nothin’ in anyone’s eyes. Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear. It’s not dark yet, but it’s gettin’there.”

I’d like to visit Greece one day. I’d like to see the Parthenon at dusk. That philosophical mood in the air just as the sun beds down on the horizon, disappearing bit by bit until the stars brighten and the night brings its ideas of infinity to bear down on the sad cold ground of planet earth.

Nothing in mathematics is ever literal. The rock is literal, but the river is not. Whatever happened to the idea of virtue? Why is it always so dark in here? I say: the more pockets, the better. You can never have enough pockets. What if you find writing on a bone and have nowhere to put it? Pockets make us marsupial and friendly.

Envy is the bitter fruit of dissatisfaction. Certain things invite touch, others not so much.

I mounted my horse and mused under the Sonoran sun. Cactus relates the hidden resources of the desert. I can understand that. What I can’t understand is twine. Is it string? Is it rope? What is it?

And please, tell me, whatever happened to the bill of rights? Habeas corpus? Free speech? Elvis Presley?

There’s your democracy, crawling into a skull. The plot has been sliding toward punk rock. There’s nothing quite so beautiful as the legendary mud disease. The theorem of plums stumbles out of a wild sorrow. All the clichés about old age are true. You get cranky. You don’t understand things.

A capable individuality sometimes capsizes in outrage.

There’s no formula for raw experience. Experience is experience. Hearing, seeing, touching, feeling. Mistakes occur. The buzzing we thought was coming from the Comcast box turned out to be my Gymboss Interval Timer vibrating on top of the bookcase.

The real basis of life is what? a blob of protoplasm? I would like to explore this jelly further. I can do that merely by living. Think of me as a blob of protoplasm with fingers and thumbs. Hair. Complexion. Feet. Walking from room to room. Opening and closing the refrigerator. What do we do for food if the economy collapses and food disappears from the grocery store and the dollars in my pocket are worthless paper? Life will be hard to support. But there will always be 7-11, right? 7-11 is as old as Rome. Did Julius Caesar shop at 7-11? Did Hannibal water his elephants at a 7-11 after he crossed the Alps?

The 7-11 closest to us closed up. Boarded its windows. That’s not a good sign.

I grew a beard once. Nothing in my life changed significantly. I didn’t become another person. I stayed the same person, but with a beard. Which I had to maintain with a pair of hedge clippers.

If something doesn’t work, sprinkle a few vowels on it. I need emotion in order to say something. Emotion grows big out of vowels. Consonants give it dignity. Even when I had to get up in the middle of The Magnificent Seven I maintained my dignity and when I came back Denzel Washington was taking a bite out of the heart of a deer.

Morning blends with the river. A staircase walks through itself. Energy divided by the speed of light squared equals licorice. On the other hand the truth of the cruet is unassailable and definitive. No table should be without one. The table alone is impressive. Or should we toast the CD player? The harmonica holds a long blue note proving that everything is sad and lonely. People are sometimes so introverted they pop open when you least expect it and fill the room with butterflies.

If you cut a word in half, does a meaning spill out?

How might I describe this world? I would say it’s the graffiti of a two-stringed guitar. A drawer full of socks. A young man named James Newel Osterberg growing up in a trailer park in Ypsilanti, Michigan. He insisted on being a musician. His father, a high school teacher, stood in the doorway, blocking his exit, then realizing the futility of it, moved aside and let James Newel Osterberg enter the world to become Iggy Pop.

Salvation doesn’t always come in a box. The realities revealed in drama are more than emotional luxuries. They provide insights into our own dilemmas.

Which is one way to look at it.

Another is to follow the pornography of odor to its ultimate conclusion.

Snow falls on the fields of Minnesota. The ecstasies of the staircase result in pearls. Darkness lowers its tapestry of stars and headlights. The subtleties of life converse with a loaf of pumpernickel. They exist in order to teach us something. Something about compote, and compound eyes.

Folding laundry in Hollywood. The coagulation of blood. Fred Astaire sitting in a chair tapping his feet. The movement of snakes, the wetness of veins, the vertigo at the top of the tower.

The sound of salvation in the rocking trees.