Jack O'Lanterns grin,
illuminated within
by slow burning flame.

It is late.

It is late, I say,
and I don't mean the time of day -

though darknes is visible as I write
and the windows rattle in their panes
as they do only at night. . .

Indeed, it is late and there seems so much to say - but I haven't the voice right now.

I could tell you about the memorial service I attended yesterday for Craig Mills - a man that I knew but not well enough. Once over six feet tall, he is now a pile of ash in a lacquer box. Sarah knew him better than I and she says we had an amazing amount in common. We are both Pisceans and writers married to older women, shy in large groups but not for want of anything to say. Well one of us is those things, anyway. Craig has gone beyond them and dwells now only in memory.

I could point out the bitter irony of the Bushmaster semi-automatic weapon manufacturer being "horrified" that their product, a killing machine, was actually used to kill people. I am, in fact, sorely tempted to rail about the responsibility the makers of guns must accept for the weapons they produce.

But it is late, as I've said
and I really ought to be in bed.

Feeling generous and pissed off about Bush and his Iraqi adventure?

Tune in to The Wonderchicken to find out how to donate to the trust fund that has been established for his friend and my namesake, Rick, who was injured in the Bali nightclub bombing.

Then, if you are able, get yourself to San Francisco or D.C. on Saturday, October 26 to march against Bush Jr. and his war with the world. Details for the march courstesy of Not In Our Name.

I regret that I am not able to give money at the moment or time on 10/26 but this is not about me - it's about you. Make a difference.

What would you do if you knew you had only 24 hours to live from the time you finish reading this sentence?

My mother is in the hospital as I write this.

She has been there since about 5:00 a.m. when my step-father drove her there because of chest pains. The emergency room doctors diagnosed the potentially fatal Pulminary Embolism from which she was suffering pretty quickly. A hell of a lot quicker than her regular doctor, whom my mother visited on three different occasions over the course of a couple weeks complaining of chest pains. On her last visit, just this past Friday, my mom was sent home with antibiotics and told she had a viral infection!

I know my mom is on an HMO and I don't feel I am going out on a limb in suggesting that her health was compromised because of the relationship between doctor and insurance company. Sarah told me a story today about a coworker who was ill with urinary tract problems but refused catscans by her doctors. As it turns out she has cancer of the bladder which has metastasized due to the negligence of these professionals who are sworn to protect and not harm life.

Laying this all on the doctors is, of course, unfair. It is the insurance companies who bear the most responsibility. The insurance companies who penalize doctors for pursuing expensive tests, the insurance companies who have denied my own Sarah medication prescribed by a doctor because they did not want to pay.

Tell me somebody, please, when did book keepers and accountants begin playing doctor? And, while you're at it, tell me also why we are allowing it to continue?

I had a horrible dream the other night.

I dreamed that one of the most powerful, and potentially noble, nations the world had ever seen was falling from a state of lofty possibility into a spiritual morass of war mongering, profiteering and naked imperialism.

Ruled by a morally bankrupt opportunist who claimed to be a servant of the people but actually worked only for himself and the rich and powerful intrerests that put him in office, this nation isolated itself from the rest of the world by rejecting numerous treaties that might have served to better the planet and schemed unceasingly to increase it's dominance through war, deception and capitalist propaganda.

Worse yet, a considerable portion of this country's population supported their duplicitous leader due to ignorance and/or greedy self interest.

I awoke feeling depressed but relieved that it was only a dream.

Then I read in the morning paper that both Congress and the Senate passed Bush's Iraq resolution and realized the nightmare continues and I have yet to wake.

In San Francisco this evening, Sarah and myself stumbled across a box of treasure at the crossroads of Valencia and 20th streets - whereupon sits a small out post of literary heaven called Dog Eared Books. The treasure came in the form of a box of interesting free books. We walked away with the following used novels under our arms (three by men named John, two more by men named Charles and Carl respectively!):

Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen

The Cider House Rules by John Irving

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

The Ebony Tower by John Fowles

The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark

and Rumour Has it by Charles Dickinson

All these plus three small press chapbook/zine publications.

One of these latter, a slender little volume called Anatomies by Dan Featherston, contained a rare find of it's own in the form of a personal note, seemingly written by the author and signed Dan. The message, black ink penned in a legible hand (reminds me of my own in the way it forms letters with sharp lines and billowing curves) on purple construction paper, reads in part:

Hi Brian,

Hope this reaches you - recent work, Anatomies.

A book that we (Sarah and me) purchased at a used book store in St. Augustine a couple of years ago contained a handwritten note on the inner sleeve. This book, Great Theatrical Disasters, is a riotous collection of. . . well. . . great theatrical disasters. The message was signed in a tidy cursive (which, despite the name of it's author, looks nothing like my abominable cursive scrawl):

Merry Christmas 1983
Richard

and was apparently a dedication to an actor:

May you have enough "disasters" to keep you laughing, but few enough to keep you employed.

Whenever I come across something like this in a used book it sets my mind to wondering. Just how did this book, gifted to somebody, end up in my possession?

Multiple possibilities appear equally likely. The Featherston book, mailed judging by that opening line, never reached the intended recipient but was stolen from the mail. The recipient of the gifted book died some time after receiving it and the tome found it's way to a used book store. The recipient moved and sold the book in an effort to make space and a little extra cash. A friend borrowed the book from the recipient, moved, and ultimately gave it to a girl he dated four times whose brother works at the book shop where I found it. Or, perhaps in the case of the theatrical Christmas gift, the book was lost in holiday wrappings after opening, found by a garbage man who is barely literate and eventually sold - after riding around in the cab of his truck for five months.

Maybe all the scenarios aren't so likely, after all.

But then, consider yourself - a mass of flesh and blood no more solid than the spaces between the atoms which form that mass of flesh and blood that calls itself "I". A brain moving around on legs and lungs thinking about itself. Not a very likely scenario either, now that I think of it.

Two (2) things that have annoyed yours truly of late:

1. Baseball.

I am not now nor have I ever been a sports fan (except for Battlebots and, on occasion, The Olympics). This may explain my irritation with reports and photos of Oakland A's and S.F. Giants playoff games plastered all over the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle for the last few days as if there was nothing of any real import happening in the world at the moment. What happened to the sports page?

2. The current Wrangler Jeans television ads

Much like the recent Jaguar ads which used The Clash's apocalyptic and completely innapropriate London Calling to sell luxury cars to the clueless, these appalling ads from Wrangler take Creedence Clearwater Revival's caustic protest tune, Fortunate Son, and butcher it so that it sounds like a patriotic anthem.

The Wrangler ad uses the following lines as they fill our TV screens with stars, stripes and Wrangler clad asses:

Some folks are born
made to wave the flag,
Ooh, they're red, white and blue.

Conveniently enough, the geniuses behind this campaign cut the song there and leave those of us familiar with the tune carrying on with it in our shaking heads:

And when the band plays "Hail to the chief",
they point the cannon right at you.

It ain't me,
it ain't me.
I ain't no senator's son.
It ain't me,
it ain't me.
I ain't no fortunate one.

Manunu yodo parp.

Talala spotz tril - talala manmon oma! Harn tarn ta, molanin molana pah.

Weligh ta harn ondoona, pontu-pontu Manunu. Wilkitz filtru dun. O-noono. . .

Manunu yodo parp.

Shiggy.
Shiggy.
Shiggy.

Tala frat zanda mop. O-noono miltrip harn tala.

Manunu yodo parp.

I sat down at the computer nearly two hours ago with at least half an intention to update this space. I had nothing particular in mind and ended up perusing other blogs. A few comment boxes got any good words out of me tonight.

Tom Shugart's, for instance. I just discovered his place, INSITEVIEW, recently when I found he had quoted me a short time back in regards to Elaine's call for a male version of BlogSisters. Currently, Tom is wondering why he is not surprised by recent developments in Bush Jr.'s war fantasies - namely his Rose Garden photo-op with key Democrats.

On a more intimate level, Phineas Narco (who has appeared here on previous occasions) takes us into his mind - a mind diagnosed as schizo-affective - on a "low capacity" day (sorry, can't find permalinks to specific posts at Livejournal).

Shelley, concise and right on target (unlike Lili), somehow starts with a hurricane and ends with Washington D.C. Unfortunately, the only wind in the capitol is the usual gales of hot air.

And Kathryn, who brings us The Hestia Chronicles, muses about sensory stimuli and visual arts.

Sometimes, it seems, blogging is more about the reading than the writing.

As I mentioned earlier, yesterday - 9/30/02 - marked the 13th anniversary of Sarah and myself. Not to be confused with our wedding anniversary, this is the significant date whereupon we first joined hands and lips. There are stories to tell about that day as well as the days which preceded and followed it, but they will not be told now (the novel way in which we two met has already been described here).

Instead, I offer for those who care to read it the poem I wrote for my beloved to mark the date:

September 30, 2002


13 years ago, give or take a day or two,
I gazed into the sky of your eyes
And wished aloud as lovers do:

I want to be yours,
I want you to be mine.

I can only hope the years between then and now
Have proved these words no idle line.

My blood,
My breath,
My spirit now and after death
Are yours to do with as you will.

Sarah, my heart, I want to be yours
And I want you to be mine still.