A Swiss introduction by coffee

At first I was sad at the bill for a cup of coffee just past the Swiss border. But desperation for caffeine does not abide in a financial sphere. It stands commandingly beyond limits.

Train coffee. In a paper cup. And it was one of the bast damn things I ever threw on my poor mal-entertained taste buds. So this is Switzerland, methinks to myself. And then I fought back tears as the scenery swept past me. Just because people say things are beautiful doesn’t mean you’ll agree, or more poignantly, doesn’t mean you even know what that means or how you might prepare yourself. Real beauty is like death–sudden and awesome, larger than what is housed in your skeleton to easily absorb.

And let us never grow so old, complacent and bitter that a goddamn great cup of coffee can’t be a much-appreciated novelty in itself.

Another Year

And on to this planet we are born, and the rest is history…A bleeding goat running across the asphalt, a dog sniffing for its master. Such are the animal analogies that pass for a sense of the world. This is not the darkest night, but it is dark and the density of the darkness is its realization that the light is not merely absent but has forsaken it. For good.

Offensive blather of the year…

I just heard Jim Woolsey, former Director of the C.I.A. snarkily say in an interview on CNN, amidst the elation of Mubarak’s resignation, that the Neo-Cons were the only ones who believed in the democratization of the Middle East.  He specifically named George Bush, Dick Cheney and Wolfowitz.  Woosley made the bold claim that “There are a lot of Neo-Cons in Egypt now.”

What an asshole.

First of all, this is on the heels of Darth Dick Vader Cheney coming out of his crypt to say he regards Mubarak as a friend and and an ally.  In addition is the elephant of methodology best suited to a transformation from dictatorship to democracy.  The N.C.’s were pretty adamant about the change coming from the great swinging of the American dick, while Egypt was pretty adamant about a peaceful demonstration.

Is the obvious really such a slippery eel, and could Jim Woolsey be more of a jackass?  These are my questions.

In a Barton Fink funk

“I’ll show you the life of the mind!”

Just before the shotgun blast and the walls a’flame.  Now that’s the life of the mind, brother.

Cracking thought

VIDEO_So I’m trying something here.

 

God returning home

 

Shazbot

Shitting our pants as we read the constitution.  Evolution has a long way to go…Even the bible shows some sign of advancement, and Shakespeare hasn’t been beaten yet.  The eternal circle is a cycle and the cycle is a circle and the wound-up unwound as we rebound and the king falls on his crown.  That’s what’s known as a vowel rhyme.

All the bastards in the rubber rooms have liberal arts educations and the pages are all colored with some form of imitation.  You can tell me that the word is soft, but the word is hard and sharp, but the thing is the word is dead so it really doesn’t matter.  What matters is matter but that is beside the matter, and thus we find the universe asleep and uninspired.  All the trajectories of circumstance and idle personification are idle idolaters and such is the nature of bullshit.  Because it’s always “Bullshit, here I come.”

Stalking Mr. Ritter

An unsuccessful stalking of Josh in Hamburg.  Not really my style, but if the hero rides into the neighborhood…Saw him get into a taxi and realized I don’t have the stuff for hero worship.  I remained docile with my beer on the bench, waving away the vapors of external salvation.

Running on

And in this troubled time, in these trouble days, the world gets buried by snow as breath draws short and anxiety comes to ruin us with its digestive powers, breaking us down with its acid like a gastric mandate to mesh everything that was seemingly so palatable, then thoroughly deconstruct it, only without extracting all that nutritive goodness we had so optimistically anticipated once upon good fortune when the stem was green and the world was young, almost before the birth of memory, or at least a memory that could serve us better when, as now, the heap must be stepped over in the cluttered circumstances of our lives.

But I run on.

Noting the Irony.

Reflecting today on how it was necessary to flee from America to Germany to escape the dual fascism(s) of corporations and stupidity. And yes, I agree the word fascism is bandied about too much these days. But oh what a difference six decades makes.

The birds have gone to roost elsewhere.

Scrubbing the Season

As Hamburg entire pulled to a close before the nightmare that IS Christmas, the separation from my homeland became accute.  And over the next several days of isolation, nay total solitude, I committed a traitorous act:  the escapist burrowing into the hole of an American TV comedy.

Not by choice but by convenience I had at my disposal six complete seasons of Scrubs; a show holding only a passing familiarity.  So for three days I basked in the flippant wisdom, wallowed in the easy sentiment, and fell prey to the obvious humor.

Yes, my rhetoric about this is all over-the-top, but I’m spirited away by the melodrama the average American hopes his life will become, if only it were in pixels animated on a screen.  It is, I suppose, a predisposition I carried with me in my bags.  I escaped the soil, but am soiled nonetheless.

So like a bad, bed-ridden case of the flu or some other crippling malady, Christmas can be gotten through by vegetation TV therapy.  I can swear by it, I’ve done it.

Though I doubt I’ll turn to Scrubs in better times.