Howl

Another rain in the car story. I was dropping my sister off at her therapist's place, and decided (since her sessions only run like forty minutes) to stay in the car. I hooked my trusty MP3 player, Doctor Constable, to the car's speakers and queued up Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," which I had gotten earlier that day. I liked how the poem was stationary, but I could move. I moved through the car, listening to how the poem changed as I did so. And it's such an incredible poem. This recording of it is 20 minutes long, and it becomes such an experience, listening to this dead man speak, and he sounded dead, even then, but in such a way that he remembered what being alive was like even more than we do now, experiencing it.

I was parked with a beautiful view, a small creek in front of me, with tall grasses and cattails reaching up. The sky was blue and spread open. The mountains green and bursting full with wet color from the rain. Black birds with orange shoulders flew through the vegetation, landing on the cattails. Color, is what I am saying. All around, and shining. Like an impressionistic painting, the view through my windshield. (what a brute of a word, windshield. All literalism and utility. What does this thing do? It shields us from the wind!)

And my thoughts, and the poem, and the colors of the scene, all smeared together. Such a journey, running howling through Alan's mind, and Ashland, and life, and America, and in circles over the seats in my tiny car, in the rain.




listening to an audio recording of alan ginsberg performing "howl" in my car in the rain: ****

This World...

Today, I was driving home from work to get all dolled up for a job interview. I missed my usual turn, and so had to do some improvisation to get home. On one of these strange new streets (OK, actually, it was just Normal ave. (really)) I saw what looked like a single soap bubble floating in mid air, above the road. The sky was clear, blue, and the bubble had rainbow bands twisting through it. Stunning. Totally puzzled, I looked around, but didn't see anyone there to make it. I think it might have been a glass globe or something, hung down from a powerline, but when I looked in my mirrors I couldn't see it. It might have popped.

So I don't know, team. Mystery bubble? Strange glass globe? Weather balloon? Alien probe? It was beautiful, and took my mind off my troubles.




seeing a lonely floating soap bubble (or something), thinking (in vague, general terms) of fragility and meaning, beauty, and seeing it all reflected in those rainbow whorls: ****

Rain and a Box

Aging is rough. It tears at you, attacks you, and so you build up defences; walls and barriers to make you safe. Whatever. You know all this. How all of a sudden you have to do things right and not wrong, how what other people think matters, how there's never enough time, or too much, how maybe someday you can do the thing that gets someone to have sex with you.

So all that sucks. But, sometimes, there are things, moments, water thrown onto the baked desert of the mind, that awaken childishness in you. Rain is one of those things for me.

Yesterday, I was waiting in the car for my sister to get out of school. In a strange twist for Summer, it was cool and raining, fat drops all around. My sister was late, so I was reading, and waiting, and listening to the rain. My dad (who I share this car with) keeps the back window open, and as I glanced backward and saw that open window, with (of course) the rain streaming in, getting the seats wet and drowining the trash in the cupholders. And in the moment of looking-back (which should really be a word in English. I mean, we should have a word that means that) I saw a spaceship, a crucial panel blown open, sparks flying, the void flowing in. Needless to say, I disengaged my harness and kicked myself back there, sealing the damage.




suddenly seeing the insides of my car as a spaceship, tapping childlike faculties of imagination and wonder: ****