Cat Pictures, Pepsi, William Blake

 

For years I've thought that I might be some sort of mutant because I don’t feel much when I look at cat pictures or cat videos on social media. And I really couldn't figure it out - because I like cats. Tonight, riding my bike home in the dark, it hit me: The reason I don't really feel anything when I look at a cat picture or a cat video is because there is something about felines that does not permit their essence to be captured on film. They are like ghosts in that way. Central to their identity are stealth, mystery, cunning & mischief. So, they know to recede just a bit, to become a bit more generic or anonymous when captured on film. When I am around a cat, I feel like a switch inside of me is activated; I can feel electric with fascination just watching them. Such is not the case when I see a cat picture. There is a flatness or, in the videos, an anodyne goofiness that I don't sense in person.

Cats inhabit their bodies the way a tai chi master does. The grace and flow of movement is multi-dimensional; it radiates something powerful that we can sense, but not only with our eyes. Their stride, their poise and their leap is what the dancer aspires to and what the painter seeks to embody in her brushstroke.

Cats are such riddles that they invite the wildest speculation. When I was a child, I believed our cat, Pepsi, was actually a small man dressed up in a cat suit who walked around on all fours. I always expected him to unzip the suit and reveal himself one day, but he never did.

The house cat does not prowl the jungles of India stalking prey. Nonetheless, in her we can recognize something of the fierce beauty and mystery that can be impossible to capture in a photo, but that William Blake captured in his poem, “The Tyger.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? 

Make America

Make America good not great

Make America write dreampoems in the night

Make America rhyme

Make America forget to forget

Make America say my fault

Make America stop running

Make America ungreat our greatness is killing us

Make America talk to the children of the people

it tried to vanish

Make America talk to the animals

who are almost gone

Make America listen

Make America stop commanding God

to bless us

Make America let go

Make America kick a can climb a tree

jump into waterfalls

Make America exit the ring

For the first time

For the last time

***

Painting by Bob Watt. Bought from him on Center Street in Milwaukee in the 1990s.

Play or Money

Americans believe the possession of material plenty will equate to the experience of happiness or wellness. It does not. It is a misconception of the most basic, elementary sort -- one that children of six or seven years old can and do make. After a day spent playing outside in the park or the woods -- running, jumping, imagining -- they understand that this is joy and that they did it for free... 

It is the objective of marketing and all of the other institutional apologists for consumerism to convince you to forget this, to get you to betray your elemental self and to dismiss that ancestral knowledge.

The Yellow Rose of Texas

Weird American moments. A friend in Brazil posts a picture of a yellow rose blooming in his garden. I think of the classic song "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and look for a link to this song to share with him. The first thing that comes up on YouTube is a fife and drum version, accompanied by a 19th century oil painting of a bloody battle on horseback. I had never thought much about the lyrics; I only know a few words of the chorus. I look up the words to the tune and learn that it was written as a minstrel tune, to be sung by a white man wearing blackface and in a caricature of African-American dialect. The " yellow rose" of the title refers to the light-skinned black woman the fake black man singing the song left back in Texas.

Looking at the comments to the song, it is clear that it is seen as a rallying cry for the far right, neo-Nazis, and white "identitarians." Reading a bit more on Wikipedia, I surmise that this is due more to the fact that the instrumental version of the song became a rallying cry for the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Fascists from Germany and Greece check into the comments section to offer their support to the American fascists commenting. I leave a couple pointed anti-fascist comments and exit the thread.

Our songs are like shards of pottery from an archaeological dig. They contain, in layers, the story of our history as a nation, as a culture. Mercifully, not all American songs carry such a demented backstory.

Samuel in the Desert (10-minute play)

 

Setting: A desolate patch of the Nevada desert, a short ways from a highway. However, the play can be performed in any open space – empty parking lot, alleyway, vacant theater stage, etc.

Characters:

Mr./Ms. A, aka Nathaniel: Middle aged man or woman. Can be portrayed by actor/actress of any gender and any adult age.

Mr./Ms. B, aka Samuel: Middle aged man or woman. Can be portrayed by actor/actress of any gender and any adult age. Actor ideally feels comfortable pronouncing a couple of lines in Brazilian Portuguese.

Mr./Ms. C, aka Felix: Middle aged man or woman. Can be portrayed by actor/actress of any gender and any adult age.

***

A: What are you doing here?

B: What am I doing where?

C: Doing here. In this land.

B: In this land. In this land.

A: That’s right. That’s what I’m asking you.

B: In this expanse of restaurants, gas stations, muffler shops and 7/11’s. Women’s prisons. (Pause). I’m passing through.

A: No, you’re not. You’re not “passing through.”

C: You’ll be staying here tonight, Samuel. (Pause).

A: Do you understand, Samuel? You’ll be staying here tonight. For at least tonight, I mean.

C: Perhaps longer.

A: Perhaps longer, Samuel.

B: (Pause). Perhaps longer. In this expanse of dropped coin sundowns and silver moon miles shooting west upon the asphalt. (Pause).

A: Uh-huh.

C: Uh-huh.

A: Uh-huh. Well, you need to get into the van now, Samuel.

B: (Imitating Mr. A) “Well, you need to get into the van now, Samuel.”

C: Yeah. That’s right. You need to get into the van now, Samuel.

B: “You need to get into the van now, Samuel.” Sounds like the title to a gospel song written by Marilyn Manson. (Pause)

C: Fuck you, Samuel.

A: Yeah. Fuck you, Samuel! Now get into the fucking van.

Mr. A lunges quickly at Samuel and Samuel dodges him. Mr. A misses and stumbles in the dust.

C: Samuel, when did you get here? To this town. When did you arrive?

B: Faz dois dias.

A: Faice what, you bitch? You dog. Speak English, Samuel.

B: Eu cheguei aqui faz dois dias. I got here two days ago. (Pause)

A: And you’re just passing through.

B: That’s right. I’m just passing through. And after this, I’ll just mosey on into another calendar sundown. I’ll project myself into the past - into the wagon wheel past. On through the Oregon Pass.

A: The Oregon Trail. Do you mean the Oregon Trail, Samuel? Have you ever heard of the Oregon Trail, Samuel? You freak.

C: You ne’er-do-well.

A: Have you ever walked the Oregon Trail into a sundown town, Samuel?

C: Do you think you’re a hobo, Samuel?

A: Or a drifter?

C: Are you some kind of a drifter wandering through the western states like a wagon wheel come off of its axel? (Pause).

B: I am a bobcat that’s left its den and now I’m in the Western plains, searching. I’ve lived centuries of sundowns looking for a way into the gray, distant dawn and now I’ve think I found it. (Short pause). I think you’ve given me my way. (Addressing Mr. A) How do you feel right now?

Mr. A mumbles pained noise.

B: That’s right. When you rushed me, I dropped a scorpion into your T-shirt.

A: What?

B: You’re dying, Nathaniel… (To Mr. C) Felix.

C: What?

B: Felix.

C: I said “what?” You hoo-doo son of a bitch.

B: The desert rises dark gold at night, Felix. It grows cold. And I’m going to walk west, backwards into the past, before any of this occurred.

C: So what?

B: So, I’m leaving you here today in the desert. You will not see me again.

C: Don’t say that. What if I said I love you?

B: You do not love me. You’ve forgotten how to love anything but pets. And I am not a pet. Goodbye Felix. I have the keys to the van and now I am leaving.

Samuel walks west disappearing stage right.

C: Come back, you hoo-doo motherfucker! Samuel! Samuel!

***

"Samuel in the Desert" is free for anybody to perform anytime, anywhere. It may be particularly easy to adapt to a Zoom performance. It is only required to let the author know about the performance.

An Open Letter to President Donald Trump

November 16, 2020

Dear President Trump,

Are you done yet? Are you done yet? Are you ready to finally sad-trombone walk yourself out of the White House? Because we are. We are done with you. You make us weary. You do not console us. You do not comfort us. With each crude phrase you declare, with each enraged message that you Tweet, it is evident that you lack even the tiniest drop of pity or the mildest feeling of concern for us. And that is why - after all of the thousands of questions you've been asked, after all of your displays of feigned victimhood, after all of your bullying and braying, your dodging and over-explaining, after the always-expanding ocean of your lies – there just remains one final thing to ask you: Have you left?

Silence. Does that word mean anything to you? It should. Because silence must be your next act. Precious little time remains for you to claim at least one brief moment of redemption, one moment free from the angling for advantage, from one-upping the other guy, from forging a false reality to dominate actual, lived reality. Precious little time remains for you to experience at least one human moment, however fleeting, of being vulnerable and open. For you to have just one experience not defined by a struggle for power, but by a struggle to listen, you must become silent and you must leave. Leave us to march on without you. You bring us down. There are many of us who’ve become much worse people because of you. It is time to end the charade.

It’s funny - your life has actually been one long and dramatic string of endings. Marriages ended. Affairs. Businesses built up in a flurry of midnight energy and then collapsed under the weight of their own fraudulent nothingness. Trump University. Trump Steaks. Trump Hotels and Casinos. The “Taj Mahal.” Mirages. Places where magic and success were on offer and where a crass swindle was delivered. A sleight of hand. Like games of Three-card Monte without the grace and subway elegance. 

It may be that between the ball kicking and the number subtracting, between the sand trap and water fables, between the brash declarations of, “I cheat on my wives, I cheat on my taxes, you don’t think I’m going to cheat at golf?” when confronted on your fairway trickery, that you had a moment or the slightest intimation of a moment that approached silence and a pause in the hustle… When the sun hit your back and the light through the trees in that New Jersey wood was honeyed, tinged with something that could not be explained, by memory, perhaps… This is to where are you must return now. To that moment that you sought to banish from your mind as soon as it occurred. For that to happen, you have to leave the presidency. Fortunately for you, you have lost the 2020 election. That fact cannot and will not change. It is a stubborn fact, immune to your gold plated BS. You’ve not made America great, you have made many, many graves. Now go. 

Sincerely,

Dan Hanrahan

Chicago, Illinois

Take My Country

 

They say they are patriots and that they love their country. But they do not love its lakes or rivers or skies or soil or Billie Holiday or Henry Threadgill or Toni Morrison or Ishmael Reed or a gift/a kiss/a moment of unexpected kindness between two people. They do not love the accidental thought that became a poem or a melody that was forgotten later. It was so powerful, like shimmering blue sound roaring out of a cave on the California coast. 

They do not love the song improvised in 3/4 time on a clarinet in a subway station or was it a stage, the Velvet Lounge perhaps, that made the listener picture a fawn walking out of the forest to the edge of a meadow covered in the mist of the morning to nibble on wildflowers. Mwata Bowden was the player’s name.

They say they are patriots and that they love their country. But they do not love whale song. They do not love the orcas swimming beside Kwakiutl long boats that break the waves, that break the rays of the distant sun. They do not love Michael McClure, Henry Miller, Richard Brautigan. They do not love Diane Di Prima. They do not love Fannie Lou Hamer. They do not love the Staple Singers. They do not love Bob Dylan. They do not love Mr. Tambourine Man or The Byrds. They do not love Woody Guthrie or Cisco Houston.

They do not love Mark Rothko. Not even the painting of his that hangs in the Art Institute and that emanates an almost unspeakable force that sometimes feels like love and that sometimes feels like loss. It is a force you can also hear radiating inside of your head like song.

They do not love the Fuel Café, which is now closed. They do not love the coffee at Fuel Café. It was coffee that everyone hated, but loved that they hated it. They do not love Dave at the Fuel Café, seated at the white formica table beside a tower of books. They do not love Deacon at the Fuel Café who sat reading zines, his eyeglasses hanging down upon his chest, suspended by a drugstore gold plated chain. They do not love Dano at the Fuel. Dano wrote 4000 limericks in the 1990s. And then they were gone. He went into the hospital and then the 4000 limericks were gone. He showed me the designs that he made with colored markers while in the hospital. They were curled and swirling shapes with colors that looked like they could have been painted on the backs of desert turtles. I still have the drawings and look at them. They do not love these drawings.