"The Lion For Real"

can we go back to allen ginsberg for a minute? check this out.

The Lion For Real by Allen Ginsberg

"Soyez muette pour moi, Idole contemplative..."

I came home and found a lion in my living room
Rushed out on the fire escape screaming Lion! Lion!
Two stenographers pulled their brunette hair and banged the window shut
I hurried home to Patterson and stayed two days

Called up old Reichian analyst
who'd kicked me out of therapy for smoking marijuana
'It's happened' I panted 'There's a Lion in my living room'
'I'm afraid any discussion would have no value' he hung up

I went to my old boyfriend we got drunk with his girlfriend
I kissed him and announced I had a lion with a mad gleam in my eye
We wound up fighting on the floor I bit his eyebrow he kicked me out
I ended up masturbating in his jeep parked in the street moaning 'Lion.'

Found Joey my novelist friend and roared at him 'Lion!'
He looked at me interested and read me his spontaneous ignu high poetries
I listened for lions all I heard was Elephant Tiglon Hippogriff Unicorn
Ants
But figured he really understood me when we made it in Ignaz Wisdom's
bathroom.

But next day he sent me a leaf from his Smoky Mountain retreat
'I love you little Bo-Bo with your delicate golden lions
But there being no Self and No Bars therefore the Zoo of your dear Father
hath no lion
You said your mother was mad don't expect me to produce the Monster for
your Bridegroom.'

Confused dazed and exalted bethought me of real lion starved in his stink
in Harlem
Opened the door the room was filled with the bomb blast of his anger
He roaring hungrily at the plaster walls but nobody could hear outside
thru the window
My eye caught the edge of the red neighbor apartment building standing in
deafening stillness
We gazed at each other his implacable yellow eye in the red halo of fur
Waxed rheumy on my own but he stopped roaring and bared a fang
greeting.
I turned my back and cooked broccoli for supper on an iron gas stove
boilt water and took a hot bath in the old tup under the sink board.

He didn't eat me, tho I regretted him starving in my presence.
Next week he wasted away a sick rug full of bones wheaten hair falling out
enraged and reddening eye as he lay aching huge hairy head on his paws
by the egg-crate bookcase filled up with thin volumes of Plato, & Buddha.

Sat by his side every night averting my eyes from his hungry motheaten
face
stopped eating myself he got weaker and roared at night while I had
nightmares
Eaten by lion in bookstore on Cosmic Campus, a lion myself starved by
Professor Kandisky, dying in a lion's flophouse circus,
I woke up mornings the lion still added dying on the floor--'Terrible
Presence!'I cried 'Eat me or die!'

It got up that afternoon--walked to the door with its paw on the south wall to
steady its trembling body
Let out a soul-rending creak from the bottomless roof of his mouth
thundering from my floor to heaven heavier than a volcano at night in
Mexico
Pushed the door open and said in a gravelly voice "Not this time Baby--
but I will be back again."

Lion that eats my mind now for a decade knowing only your hunger
Not the bliss of your satisfaction O roar of the universe how am I chosen
In this life I have heard your promise I am ready to die I have served
Your starved and ancient Presence O Lord I wait in my room at your
Mercy.

Paris, March 1958

****

ok, i am going west. we're going to madison, and then vancouver and then san juan islands and then spokane and then sandpoint and then boise and then up into the sawtooths and we are leaving tomorrow in a sporty red car (i hope my window works, it wasn't working tonight. that might be not so awesome) and we're packing lots of snacks for the car and treats for our handsome dog and waking up at the crack of ridiculous tomorrow morning. and i will not be back until august 24th. so that means, i will have sketchy internet access and you will probably get a random email or text message about wolves and fishing, the gorgeousness of it all and of course, trees. the text message will be like this: "T-R-E-E-S A-R-E B-A-N-A-N-A-S"

i stood out in the thunderstorms the other night, starting the lathe of heaven and i wanted to say to my friend, like ginsberg said to dylan: "You're the king, but you haven't found your kingdom... i'm presenting you. It's about time. This country has been asleep. It's time it woke up."

what else. i was at rite aid today getting my 'scripts refilled and i was two day too early and almost had a meltdown. all the pharmicist said really was you're too early. the insurance won't pay for it. me: oh my god are you for real and was about to get all wound up with my voice squeaky and then she was all, well you can still get it it's only $40 instead of whatever, but not covered. i was like, oh ok, wow that's kind of reasonable. i cannot imagine what these people have to deal with, they are so good at being impassive. absolutely nothing phases them. not even an eyebrow shot up. and their voices are mild and relaxing. i bet i could fill scripts for prozac, clonoprin which is a benzo, maybe throw in some xanax and some epilepsy medication just for the hell of it and maybe some viagra and they would be all, "whatever". they must get training. she dealt with my slight and growing hysteria and capitulation to their jedi mind trick very well. she did say after i paid, "well now you'll have a good trip." no inflection. none. like, yes, we are the only rite aid in the entire united states. they don't exist anywhere else and we just averted a severe crisis. i still get giggly when i pass the condom section or i see someone buying them on line. "you're going to have sex!" i say to myself.

i'm really excited because malcolm loves it more than we do out there, the last time we were there with him for a long period of time in the summer, on the last day, we were all packed and ready to get into the car and malcolm was just sitting on the porch. he wouldn't come. "je refuse" said malcolm, "i said, good day".

i was just talking to c. on the phone and she has this thing where she has to ask about the geophysical location all the time "where am i?" so she can feel safe. she was really cute in the car to fire island that one weekend. "where are we?" "that's the world fairgrounds" and she wouldn't ask for awhile. then she would ask again. "now we're past kennedy". she still had no idea, but she felt better. i can relate to that so completely. it makes no sense, actually, compulsively situating oneself, i have to have this narrative in my head, and there's water over there and i can't get lost.

i love the poem up above, there. the last two stanzas make me shiver with pleasure. it wouldn't have two or three days ago. but now it does.

i'm going to leave you with some advice, and i will take it too. it's good advice.

"if anyone goes batshit in the car play "mountains" by prince and everyone will dance and calm down"

talk soon.

xo

Friday night I loved.

Friday night I loved. And either that’s an antiquated way of saying Friday night was the object of my love. Or else you can take it as the setting for some objectless love. Loving as an intransitive verb. Like being. Night was its setting.

No fucking! Or at least not until later. And only amongst ourselves. The two of us I mean. Friday at least. (Saturday’s a different story. But not quite yet a story. Fragile spot. Undefined.). Lots of boys around. At our gay neighborhood bar. The Cox. It’s the place you go because you don’t know where else to and because everybody who thinks they are someone to the gay Parisian scene’ll be there anyway. Although. T and I. Have a history of going there. And our coupleness takes over. We talk to each other and feel silly. For not “having” a gang. But recently. Since I’ve decided I live here. That’s having its effects. Like St. said to me the other day. “You’re part of the galaxy now.” He reads us here, so he knew what he was talking about. So we hesitated before going. Because I wanted to see Kung Fu Panda. Like I said to B while we were skyping that afternoon. “I need culture.” “Right,” he replied. “The panda.” But we went. B was there. Other people milling around. At least when they go to the bar. Because otherwise milling around is not possible. At the Cox, there’s an outside section. But also arguments with the neighbors over whether or not they have the right to have people drinking there. So now they’ve roped off bits of the sidewalk to stand on. Which involves keeping us drinkers packed behind the ropes like sardines. In some ways this is good. It forces proximity on you and whomever you’re standing beside. You just have to know how to have your tongue in the right gear. To say something clever and keep the conversation rolling. And things can happen. So Friday night. We started out up against the wall. B and part of one of his gangs not far. But several sardine packs away. So glances and smiles from not so afar. Until there was a clearing. T led the way and we filled in.

J is a designer. He was chatting with B. So was E. Sexy guy. Who didn’t use to talk to B until B started taking pictures of the bearded among us. And now finds lots of things to say to B. J has a beautiful smile. And designs things. Like he has a project for candles. In the shapes of bottles. And penises. We did a little market research. Because at some point a very weary looking P climbed over the ropes and joined us. Somehow I knew. His grandmother’s been sick. And she isn’t any more. Before he even told me I knew his tired eyes had seen things he’d hated seeing. Plus? She died the day of his 40^th birthday. Hard week. But he was there in his chaps and ready to work it out. And willing to be part of the test market for penis candles. He didn’t think it was such a good idea. Because. Like, what. You can’t stick it up your butt because it’ll melt. We decided maybe it would be fun for radical feminists who want to watch penises burn. But that for those of us who like them. Maybe not so much. Beer flowing. Conversation about Berlin. E saying he not liking all the men in their major uniform gear. Like we’re in ’39 or something. I saying later to B. Just wait ‘til he sees me. B giggling. Because in a lot of ways. It is like we’re in ’39. It’s just so different we don’t quite know how to get our heads around what exactly is going on. At borders. In retention centers. In Gitmo. We all know and we all have no idea.

Hunger. Desire for culture. Panda. B peddling “the best pizza in Paris.” A bike ride away. On the way up the hill to our house. J, T and I jumping on bikes. B on his scooter. Zooming up the hill. To the best pizza in Paris. Great conversation. Easiness. Being us. Just easiness. Something clicking. Settling into place. And shifting. Both at the same time. Stories. Friends. At the table and elsewhere, too. Great food. The easiness of a we that’s several I’s. Not looking for and just finding one another The other side of the destruction of me I was recounting the other day. Where any I I am is only itself with others. Friday night I loved. I finding myself thanks to others. In less melodramatic terms. I had a nice dinner in Paris with new friends.

directed by desire/happy birthday

the heat here, my lovely friend, is missed slightly. Just off to the edge of the street, there's wind and sun, flowers. the shock of the still slightly cold ocean after a day in nice shoes and a bright cardinal to wake me up on the day of her birthday. says Baby. And within the story of the earth outside my red curtains, a thunderstorm. early morning. it's too windy to fly, easy to grab a cup of coffee. Make little marks in the bedpost above my head, watch the light filter through clouds. changing the species i am for the day, a code-owner. a light in my own kitchen before my eyes are in "i don't have what you said. I don't feel what you said"

I can smell the rain, that's all I am.

someone today, asked me if i could find a specific poem. on the web. What the shit? many things were annoying as fuck right then, but this one seemed out of the blue. we are in the damn age of google, work it out. i don't want to go into it, but really. the request happened at the wrong time, in the middle of a thousand things and i was like, "nope". and then went back to writing an extremely low key email full of subtext and hate to a vendor or whatever.

ok, actually i did do a search myself and i couldn't find it. so i had more of an issue with the failure of the goddamn internet then anything else. because, word. who doesn't like to find a poem on the internet for someone who asks politely? i would love to, but the internet is failing today. FAIL.

ok, so because i'm me, i toodled home and got the collection off the shelf and flipped through it like a good little doggie, because who am i really to deny such an obvious request to pay attention to the Mountain and Sea and Singers and Just Stop Gods that rule my soul haha. uhm so it's a good poem, and i sat and read it to myself, and i read it with her voice and laugh, and she was there with me, and it was nice. she's dead. but you can still hear her giggle at the end of the stanza, the last breath before she comes home, and looks up. she read it to me over the phone once, in the first or second edit of the book it eventually ended up in. it turns out, the poem really was for someone else, at the asking. an allowance of someone's consciousness, the impulse behind asking. not my business. i am not, sufficient unto myself. i've always taken her words as scripture. who would want to be alone without them?

ok, so i found this:

WHAT IS THIS thing called love, in the poems of June Jordan, artist, teacher, social critic, visionary of human solidarity? First of all, it's a motive; the power Che Guevara was trying to invoke in his much-quoted assertion: "At the risk of appearing ridiculous . . . the true revolutionary is moved by great feelings of love." I think also of Paul Nizan: "You think you are innocent if you say, 'I love this woman and I want to act in accordance with my love,'but you are beginning the revolution. . . . You will be driven back: to claim the right to a human act is to attack the forces responsible for all the misery in the world." Neither of them, admittedly, was claiming the love of a woman for women, the love of a man for men, as revolutionary, as a human act.

Adrienne Rich, forward for Haruko/Love Poems by June Jordan

she said, who wants to write love poems? Not me. Neruda is the only one i can stand. Speaking for your highest good, I will say more to you, who have listened with joy.

I don't know why I sent you Neruda a couple of days ago after reading your post, but now I know. (via Patti Smith, of course. She's on Frida Kahlo today, but not for long.)

Unnecessary, seeing myself in mirrors,
With a fondness for weeks, biographers, papers,
I tear from my heart the captain of hell,
I establish clauses indefinitely sad.

Now I know. Discern me first in the Manifested Many.

xoxo

Torpor

It's like not even all that hot here. In Paris. Heavy. Like my mother used to say. It's actually gray a lot. Like there's going to be a storm. Which never comes. But lots of wind. Blowing something somebody's way. Last week. On the couch. I told my shrink that I had a lot to learn from torpor. So this kind of weather's workin' for me.

T and I started this experiment up recently. Under my impetus. And coming by way of a mutual realization inspired by Shortbus. I really like Shortbus. I don't love it. But I really like it a whole lot. And one of the things I like about it. That T and I agreed was one of its greatest contributions to society. For all that it concentrates on sex. For all that sex is the thing pushing all of the characters around. What it really shows the best. Is that sex itself is boring. If sex itself can be said to exist. What's interesting is what happens beside sex. What sex makes you see. What fucking brings to light. What is there thanks to sexual relation. Not a narrative. Just a different light.

Given that that's the case. That's what's interesting is what happens while you're fucking. What you see in a different light thanks to the fucking. T and I have made it a policy of ignoring our minimal collection of porn. And putting other images on the screen. Kiarostami's Ten has actually been great. Tarnation was a little bit too much, though some of the 80's singing sequences were great to see. Shortbus itself we haven't actually tried. I'm not sure it would work. But the thing that's been really getting me going? Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line.

OK. So it helps that it's a movie filled with sexy hunks often half naked and covered in mud. But there are two moments -- so far, because I think there are actually others that have the potential for the same effect -- that destroy me. Especially if the sound is on. But even if I'm just reading along with the English subtitles we put on. There's actually one moment in particular. Bell is one of the character's names. (Funny -- I'm tempted to turn him into an initial, too). Bell is in love. Bell is the only one we see in love. Off of the battlefield. In flashbacks to his babe. The camera looking at her as if it were the character paying attention to her beauty in his mind. They're really beautiful scenes. That don't destroy me. Except that I know they're setting up the moment that does. Bell and some of the rest of the troops have made it over a hill filled with Japanese soldiers. Sowing and reaping destruction on their path. Bell makes it and performs semi-heroic actions (though interestingly for a "war movie," none of the characters are really heroes). He can be semi-heroic because he's able to pay attention in his mind to the woman he loves. The one he calls "you" in the voice-over. The one who calls him "you" over some of the same images. Never in conversation.

But to get to the moment that destroys me. And when I say it destroys me. I mean of course I start sobbing. This last time it was really weird. Because usually when you sob. Your nose gets all runny and gross and shit. But this time it was just my eyes secreting big tears. And chopping my throat into sobs. No snot.

Bell gets over the hill with the rest of the boys. And they finally get letters from home. And the letter Bell gets from home. Begins by saying she's met someone else. The camera is showing us Bell reading the letter. And pans out to the opposite of the close-ups. Or mid-range close-ups. That are the general rule of the film. He looks like he's been hit in the stomach. He gets all small. Smiling. Troubled. Self-conscious. Looking around to see who might be seeing him. As he reads her voice telling him she's met an Air Force captain. And that she's fallen in love. Because it's just gotten too lonely. And we see him being lonely. Being hit by the solitude that overtakes him. In the scene just before that. We've seen him saying. To Fife. Another private. "I just don't wanna feel the desire." Which might be true. But doesn't stop him from feeling the desire. Because we've seen him with that desire many times up until then. And just after he says this. We see her. At a windowsill in twilight. Fiddling with the curtain. Turning her head away. Cut to a bird in the sky. We see the bird because she does. Standing outside something like military housing. In daylight. Like the bird is the desire they each feel in their solitude whether or not they want to. She looks like she's got a chill. She holds the top of her dress up to her neck, and then she sees someone walking in the shadow that runs along the side of the housing. She turns back, obliquely in relation to the camera, holds her elbows, as if she's trying to warm herself up. He's actually shot in very much the same position. Reading her words. Same distance between their separate bodies and the camera. She knows he can say no. "But I'm asking you anyway. Out of the memory of what's we've had together." This gets us close to my destruction when I watch this scene. The inordinate, immeasurable extent of her request. The fact that it is the memory of what they had together that gives her the authorization she needs for her request that he grant her their separation. "We'll meet again someday." And the camera shows her room again. You can vaguely make her out in the mirror which is decorated with a drawing of a plane. As we hear her saying that people who have been as close as they've been always meet again. The image then switches back to Bell. Who's flustered as he holds the folded letter in his hands. Before switching back to an unmade bed. In the half-light of a door cracked open. We hear her saying. "I have no right to speak to you this way." Before we cut back to him. Reading the letter unfolded again. Paying attention to it in a way his traumatized reaction didn't allow for in the previous sequences. To read her saying. "A habit so strong." He knows the strength of that habit. And allows himself to feel it. Reading her inordinately difficult request. And this is the moment that really gets me. She says. With all of his attention. "Oh my friend of all those shining years. Help me leave you." It's in the tone of her voice. It's in the fact she calls him her friend. "Of all those shining years." In a film that's full of a world that shines out from the midst of all the violence that also destroys it. It's probably also the impossibility of his fulfilling her request. And the fact that he might be able to do it anyway. All the things we say to people that we have no right to. And that we say anyway. Attention to that destroys me. Makes me fade into a populated solitude where any I I am is only itself with others. Where I becomes we.

Maybe. I'm speculating widely here. But I also thought this was a good way to start thematizing something we're interested in. Being beside narrative. I love the way you do that in your egret entry. The way you say "i would sometimes say that everything in the past few years has been just a whopping good story. and then. so. me personally, i'd never seen an egret on fire island." The way you tell yourself telling the story. You put your telling on display. And show yourself beside the story. In the event. Malick's films seem interesting that way. The broad strokes of the voice overs, pushed to the point of cliché, often go against the grain of what it is the images are showing. Put words in tension with what we're seeing. Show language to be inadequate to the stellar world. Another element of the world shining.

about that egret....

In Egypt the Heron is honored as the creator of light. A double headed Heron in Egypt is symbolic of prosperity.

As a Chinese symbol the Heron represents strength, purity, patience and long life.

In Africa, the Heron was thought to communicate with the Gods.

Most Native American tribes took note of the heron’s inquisitiveness, curiosity and determination. As such this set the heron as a symbol of wisdom in that this creature seemed to have good judgement skills.

Specifically, the Iroquois tribe held the blue heron as a very good omen, a very lucky sign. They recongnized the heron as an expert fisher/hunter. As such, they believed that sighting a heron before a hunt was a sign that the hunt would be a good one.

As a water creature the heron is also a symbol of acceptance, and working with the elements of Mother nature rather than struggling against her.

i wouldn't have paid much attention except, a) oh hello there you are, and i'd just been in a pretty spectacular meditation. plus kane went into complete shock mid-gallop. you know, i would sometimes say that everything in the past few years has been just a whopping good story. and then. so. me personally, i'd never seen an egret on fire island.

oh interesting! look:

aigrette
456; 721; 748; 813; Aigrette (from the French for egret, or lesser white heron), the tufted crest, or head-plumes of the egret, used for adorning a woman's head-dress, the term being also given to any similar ornament, in gems, &c. An aigrette is also worn by certain ranks of officers in the French army. By analogy the word is used in various sciences for feathery excrescences of like appearance, as for the tufts on the heads of insects, the feathery down of the dandelion, the luminous rays at the end of electrified bodies, or the luminous rays seen in solar eclipses, diverging from, the moon's edge.