July the ninth, 2006
(transcription of letter written 7/7/06)
On Tommy Makem and Danny Quinn
Dani--
you hav eno idea how much you caught me at the right time. I'm surrounded by old people, rich middle-aged ("you go sailing this year?" "oh, we only made it twice..."), and well groomed kids who have such an obvious lack of knowledge of life that I want to mug the fear of God into them so that they might pull their pullshit saggy coifs out of their eyes and see the world for something thatit really is. I'm 100 miles from anywhere that it makes sense for me to be. I'm in Dover, New Hampshire to see Tommy Makem. Guthrie, Dylan, Seeger, he's up there with those guys. I'mve seen him once before. When he sings, Dani, sometimes there's just nothing else-- just this glorious baritone that hits you like Ts. Michael flying out of the sunset and kicking you in the heat, there's notevening news, no alram clocks or cellphones, no no one anymore, no someone and it hits you and you get it-- History, the World, God, the mystery of Ireland.
I'm a pilgirm, Dani, a lone pilgrim at that and it's all i can do to save my soul to take myself to wherever there's a scene, a real scene, a holy man, or Holyrelics,. I've been fighting the lone aspect ofit, but it seems this is just how it's got to be, everyone i know just ends up busy, out getting arrested in the adirondacks for trespassing. pilgrimming-- i spent 4 horus in the Edson cemetery in Lowell looking for Kerouac's grave, and I stood at the exact point where I'd seen it in pictures, I'd seen bob dylan standing right where i was standinglookingdown at his grave, and i couldn't find it to save my life-- that's just the way of things sometimes, it doesn't matter how far you drive or how hard you try or how much you want something to happen, all you can do is do what you can, what you have to do. I had a dream where i soughtout the advice of the swampthing, and he told me to do what i had to do. it was apretty sweet dream considering i got advice from the earth elemental. i had a dream where i sought out madonna to ask her a question, but she didn't know the answer so we just had oral sex instead. that dream was pretty sweet, too. i remember it was like 1987ish madonna.
but right now, tommy makem, dammit, dani, it's so amazing, he does that old folky thing where he sings the line twice and then you sing it and it's thishokey singalong thing, but it's hundreds of people just weakly singing and he's up there and he's dying, he's gotta be 70, and what can i do, but with y sorethroated haorseness and snot rolling out my nose (mike gave me a cold) to sing with my no sense of pitch and goddammit i'll die being the guy who drives a hundred solitary miles to sit alone in a crowd of hundreds to sing with my miserable voice, just to get looked at funny, and checked out by a fat chick. i started a clap which caught on, just clapping the the beat, it was a weak one, but after an hour he's got p=people, a handfulatleast, throwing their hands in the air shouting "oh the whisky, nancy, oh!" and he knows it and he goes right ainton "inch by inch and row by row/ someone bless these seeds i sow/ all it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground" He knows what he's doing and he sees me and knows it's working, magic, real mgaic. magic is real, Dani, do you know what it is?
He ends with this and is your land, and day after my friends get mountains (one guy asked if a turkey would eat his dog_ Dani, what to say at this point but it's so obvious that everything's starting to come together again, that something's right again and i feelfine. He's taking pictures now with some family, and i wounder if their immigrant weaver grandparents would be proud of their family for being comfortable at the expense of not getting anything this man just said to them...
If i can keep this up and if the stars cast thier favor...i don't even if i can say what would happen. the bullshit optimism of the 1960's was a sham, it was nothing-- a whole lot of talk around a nucleus of 5 people that relaly got it, and there was all this talk of a revolution that was going to happen and everything would change, but so many people with no idea of what that is, what that means started it, Dani, except maybe in quiet to you. words are like money, you print words the happy say are paltry melody/ but those the silent feel are beautiful. if things are going to change, if this magic's going to work, it's all going to come down to a handful of us, and if i need to be alone pilgrim for that to happen then by god and All i'll be that man, if I and the stars allow.
(end transcription)
i wrote that a feww nights ago, the first letter i've written in a long while that might have any kind of merit to it. i'm enclosing a few bites of aborted letters just to show you the dark age i'm renaissanicing out of righ tnow. write me early and oftenk i can't wait to hear what you have to say
Friday, October 9, 2009
January 28, 2006
january 28, 2006
my friend--
i write to you now with an eagerness that could only mean that this will be an earnest letter, if not a good one. since i've stopped writing you, i feel as if i've lost much of the vague sense of focus that lends to wahtever shred of grace my letters once reflected. contained. they would contain a shred, reflect a shard. you see what it is that i have lost. to compound my loses i have stopped writing all together for school, on account of i don't go there at the moment. this has led to a general decline in my ability to express the glimpse of the infinite that ive, through luck, grace, and guile been able to steal/recieve. hermes is by nature a trickster. i've offended apollo as well. let my suffering at the typewriter be a sacrifice to him.
the movement, you may have noticed, is away from a beat sound. it is my feeling that to have a beat sound is an affront to everything they have hoped for, though i think only mr. k and mr. gregory really got it xxxxxxx enoughto survive the 60's. as far as i'm aware, lawrence ferlinghetti never got It, which is largely why i don't care whether or not i got his name right. i have become crushingly aware of the infinity of possibilities that Is, and the oppressive burden it is that falls on those who realize it to foster those possibilities. All is True, True is All True All IS. to quote: GOD IS ALIVE MAGICE IS AFOOT MAGIC IS ALIVE GOD IS AFOOT ALIVE IS AFOOT, etc.
at least, i think, you understand what it is to be crazy, and this could strike a certain chord in you if your mood at the time of reading this letter is that fertile mood in which you are able to forgive the failings of the letterer and understand him despite his fumblings.
'red is the rose' is a better song that 'loch lomand.'
since in my current state (the state of a fumbler) i am unfit to address matters of grandness, i will try to humble myself by forcing anecdotalness.
and have i got a story for you.
long 'bout 4 weeks ago i was visity my friend mike in the debuque state forest in hawley, massachusetts, about 2 hours west of here, where he lives and works as a member of the student conservation association, which is affiliated with the CCC, which if you're into American histlry you'll recall was founded by FDR as part of the new deal. it works into americorps, somehow, or americorps works into it, i'm not sure, either way , i was visiting him in the debuque state forest, in hawley, mass, where he lives with 15ish other people doing conservation and conservation education work. me and dave, whose adventures i believe you've heard before, arrive after darkand i had a killer toothache. everyone there was having some beers (don't tell their bosses) and generally enjoying themselves they way conservationists who don't have TV would. i spent much of my first hour or two there in a dementing type of pain which i tried to soothe with clover powder from their suprisingly well stocked kitchen. despite the fact that i was rubbing amakeshift salve onto my gums and i had a grimy abortion of abeard at the time (i said that i wouldn't shave while on vacation, so i wouldn't no matter how silly ilooked.) this girl was talking overly interestedly to me. everyone cleared out eventually, and mike announced to me that him and dave were going to get our stuff from my car. i assuemd he wantedme to leave with him, so i got up, but corinne, an incredibly nice minnesotan, told me to stay, or rather, "steyyy", so they headed out and e and the girl were left alone. we shuffled into a small room with a door, which had a piano in it. i was to find out later that it was the piano room.
this would be a good tie to describe the young lady that i'm about to bed.
she was short, and pale skinned with blue eyes and blonde hair, of course, of the kindthat comes along with very blonde eyebrows. she was mexican, and i believe hold citizenship there. she at one point believed in peru? as well as france? and illinois, in a chicago suburb. then moved to wisconsin where she obtained a bachelor's degree in biochemistry, i believe. her accent was a bizarre mix of mexican and midwestern. she was pretty in the dark. i was later reminded that her name was angela.
several theories of mine were validated that night, chiefly that if you put me in a room with a crazy person, we'll find each other. also it was proven that i have relations in an alternating pattern, specifically tall_short_tall_short_tall_short. she was wearing a sports bra which was okay since her breasts were the unflattering pointy kind with bristly nipples. i had some trouble getting her pants off of her ankles, and she was wearing simple cotton underwear. we had our sex, and it was alright. she seemed like the type who in her entire life will never have great sex, due to her own misgivings and apparent character flaws which you'll hear more about in a minute.
my friend--
i write to you now with an eagerness that could only mean that this will be an earnest letter, if not a good one. since i've stopped writing you, i feel as if i've lost much of the vague sense of focus that lends to wahtever shred of grace my letters once reflected. contained. they would contain a shred, reflect a shard. you see what it is that i have lost. to compound my loses i have stopped writing all together for school, on account of i don't go there at the moment. this has led to a general decline in my ability to express the glimpse of the infinite that ive, through luck, grace, and guile been able to steal/recieve. hermes is by nature a trickster. i've offended apollo as well. let my suffering at the typewriter be a sacrifice to him.
the movement, you may have noticed, is away from a beat sound. it is my feeling that to have a beat sound is an affront to everything they have hoped for, though i think only mr. k and mr. gregory really got it xxxxxxx enoughto survive the 60's. as far as i'm aware, lawrence ferlinghetti never got It, which is largely why i don't care whether or not i got his name right. i have become crushingly aware of the infinity of possibilities that Is, and the oppressive burden it is that falls on those who realize it to foster those possibilities. All is True, True is All True All IS. to quote: GOD IS ALIVE MAGICE IS AFOOT MAGIC IS ALIVE GOD IS AFOOT ALIVE IS AFOOT, etc.
at least, i think, you understand what it is to be crazy, and this could strike a certain chord in you if your mood at the time of reading this letter is that fertile mood in which you are able to forgive the failings of the letterer and understand him despite his fumblings.
'red is the rose' is a better song that 'loch lomand.'
since in my current state (the state of a fumbler) i am unfit to address matters of grandness, i will try to humble myself by forcing anecdotalness.
and have i got a story for you.
long 'bout 4 weeks ago i was visity my friend mike in the debuque state forest in hawley, massachusetts, about 2 hours west of here, where he lives and works as a member of the student conservation association, which is affiliated with the CCC, which if you're into American histlry you'll recall was founded by FDR as part of the new deal. it works into americorps, somehow, or americorps works into it, i'm not sure, either way , i was visiting him in the debuque state forest, in hawley, mass, where he lives with 15ish other people doing conservation and conservation education work. me and dave, whose adventures i believe you've heard before, arrive after darkand i had a killer toothache. everyone there was having some beers (don't tell their bosses) and generally enjoying themselves they way conservationists who don't have TV would. i spent much of my first hour or two there in a dementing type of pain which i tried to soothe with clover powder from their suprisingly well stocked kitchen. despite the fact that i was rubbing amakeshift salve onto my gums and i had a grimy abortion of abeard at the time (i said that i wouldn't shave while on vacation, so i wouldn't no matter how silly ilooked.) this girl was talking overly interestedly to me. everyone cleared out eventually, and mike announced to me that him and dave were going to get our stuff from my car. i assuemd he wantedme to leave with him, so i got up, but corinne, an incredibly nice minnesotan, told me to stay, or rather, "steyyy", so they headed out and e and the girl were left alone. we shuffled into a small room with a door, which had a piano in it. i was to find out later that it was the piano room.
this would be a good tie to describe the young lady that i'm about to bed.
she was short, and pale skinned with blue eyes and blonde hair, of course, of the kindthat comes along with very blonde eyebrows. she was mexican, and i believe hold citizenship there. she at one point believed in peru? as well as france? and illinois, in a chicago suburb. then moved to wisconsin where she obtained a bachelor's degree in biochemistry, i believe. her accent was a bizarre mix of mexican and midwestern. she was pretty in the dark. i was later reminded that her name was angela.
several theories of mine were validated that night, chiefly that if you put me in a room with a crazy person, we'll find each other. also it was proven that i have relations in an alternating pattern, specifically tall_short_tall_short_tall_short. she was wearing a sports bra which was okay since her breasts were the unflattering pointy kind with bristly nipples. i had some trouble getting her pants off of her ankles, and she was wearing simple cotton underwear. we had our sex, and it was alright. she seemed like the type who in her entire life will never have great sex, due to her own misgivings and apparent character flaws which you'll hear more about in a minute.
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