As one dies, so is one reborn.
With an eye on the sparrow and his one eye on mine.
And, the singers of hymns look at me sideways, and the modernity looks on with eyes rolled at me.
Stranded between two sonars.
But, know what?
I sing because I am happy,
I sing because I’m glad.
I sing out of key, yet, wholeheartedly.
Because I am free and here is spring.
“I’m okay, today. Just okay,” she tells her, continuing on, “I so want to be a normie.”
“Between you and me, I think normies are a bit of a boring, drag,” she replies to her.
~
And, I think I see a splinter in your eye; but, I fear I am mistaking it for the log impaling mine.
So, she takes a walk.
It is mistimed; because, the sun is so bright she must cast down her eyes instead of holding her head high.
In her cans, she hears someone play chord C on a piano, repetitively.
Middle C.
And, while she cannot count the time, she times the steps of her feet.
Four between each.
The iterations end.
A voice asks her “What shall we play next?”
“Doesn’t matter much to me. Just
The Mæstro sat on the bench, aside the novice.
“We shall make a song. I will play middle C. Quarter notes. Choose any key and add a note.”
The neophyte pawed at G in the next octave up.
“Now add another.”
The beginner stutters in anticipation of selecting the proper note.
“Savor mystery momentarily, but do not consider. Do.”
A hammer strikes a string. An E resonates.
Now, scaling C in three octaves, the Mæstro’s eyes close.
I look over at the guy next to me.
“Last one, Kimber. Four fingers with a splash,” he says.
He turns to look at me.
“My nightcap. Whaddaya take to help you sleep?” he asks, patting his pocket.
“Two peanut butter sandwiches on white bread. Creamy,” I reply.
“Hugrhm?” is this noise he makes.
“Yeah, crunchy is more of an a.m. thing for me.”
“So you don’t wanna buy something?” he says, again patting his pocket, like I had missed his question’s point.
“I’ll buy your nightcap, there, if you can give a good answer to a dumb question,”
His pupils dilated as soon as he heard “I’ll buy.”
He swirls the spirits against three ice cubes, as if contemplating the offer.
As if he had something to lose.
“Okay,” he says after an impotent dramatic pause.
“What is the meaning of life?”
Without pause, he responds, “To find an answer to the question ‘what’s the meaning of life.’ “
“Put that one on my tab, Kimber,” I say.
~
I’m here to hear loud music.
I’m here to feel the second-hand smoke hurt my lungs.
I’m here for a headache.
I’m here to be alone in a crowd.
I’m here to eavesdrop.
People chasing highs; People stalking thighs.
Licking each other’s wounds.
I am here because it will help me to sleep.
As opening gambits go:
《There’s a man who has been out sailing》
is up there with
《Call me Ishmael》
And her heart is full and hollow like a cactus tree.
No rights: homage.
/Do your homework/
/hand it in/
/do your homework/
/you can’t win/.
⊙
The newly hired, seventeen year old busser arrives for her fifth shift.
I have been training her; and, she is under the mistaken impression that she answers to me.
She walks up to me and says: I know I’m supposed to wear all black, but I felt like wearing green today.
She wears a lovely army-style green button down shirt.
Am I busted or does it really matter?: she asks.
Yeah, it matters: I laugh: They’re gonna make you go home and change, I bet, but talk to J.
J. sends her home to change clothes.
I think: she’s gonna fit in just fine, on this isle of misfit toys, if she can deal with wearing the uniformed colour.
Elizabeth Cotton picking and singing Freight Train.Turns out this was the first song Lucinda Williams learned to play.
{Hither and zither, the sheet music “shows you which notes to pick”.
Giggle.
⊙
None of the clocks on my appliances match
the time displayed on the screens of my devices.
Because moments changed
Over night,
As if by magic.
The practicality of protracted wakeful periods during daylight hours.
The associated productivity increase.
You can get a lot of work done, outside, when you sleep all night
And only become conscious when the sun is up.
But, you can learn a lot by staying up all night and sleeping through the day.
⊙
My alarms continue their incremental resounding.
Like they do when I gotta work the restaurant.
But, not today.
Today
is my
off day.
⊙
/
[clears throat]
Al(l)right…
/
⊙
I let
the alarms
keep
going
off
⊙
/
Freight train,
Freight train,
runs so fast
/
⊙
I do strange things with my sleeping.
An alarm set at 3:33 a.m.
To force me awake to immediately resume sleeping.
I easily become lucid in dreams this way.
At the very least, it consistently improves my dream recall.
⊙
/
Please don’t tell what train I’m on.
They won’t know what route I’m gone.
/
…
I sleep upside down,
time
to
time.
Bed properly remade
Clean sheets
But with my head at my feet.
Pillows at the wrong end.
Feet by where a head usually is.
⊙
/
Place the stones at my head and feet
Tell them all that I’ve gone sleep.
/
⊙
I wake,
again,
thirsty.
Flit to the kitchen.
Make the mistake of reading poetic words
And I feel my heart beat.
Like the water had actually been coffee.
About the ghosts.
I wrote a lot today.
You are good at what you do.: Æ says.
What do I do good?: I ask.
Being yourself: is the reply.
Thank you kindly. I’m the best at being me. Nobody does me better: I giggle.
Ghosts of stories yet to be born.
Fetal.
Feral.
A deep Joni cut.
~
/”It takes cheerful resignation
Heart and humility
That’s all it takes,”
A cheerful person told me
Nobody’s harder on me than me
How could they be
And, nobody’s harder on you than you
Betsy’s blue
People don’t know how to love
I wish her heart
Moon at the window/
No rights: homage
to a song I cannot get enough.
Giggling my ass off since early this morning.
A lovely, silly diversion that lightens my mood.
Has a sort of Ian Dury and the Blockheads feel.
⊙
This album was released today.
Josh Homme has a disposition that attracts great talent.
From Queens of the Stone Age to Them Crooked Vultures (with John Paul Jones).
From Dave Grohl and Trent Reznor.
And, Iggy Pop.
And, now, Matt Berry.
Cheers
No rights: homage to a song that found its way into my mind this morning.
Howl great is the video? V. great. Contextual.
While most artists at this time where pumping out vacuous visuals of vamping lip synced monkies dancing around, pretending to be performing, R.E.M. did this.
No rights: homage to a song whose lyrics are still hard for me to make out after jamming this track for many years.
There is a certain mood that was made for this song.
It is here, today, on this slippery Sunday morning.
⊙
It reminds me of two words:
Hi-wa-itck: a Mohave tradition concerning lovesickness that is associated with insomnia, anxiety, light depression, and loss of appetite.
Front of center: (archery) the weight of an arrow tip that determines the penetration of the intended target.
⊙
/Lightly as we go.
I got ya hand inside my…
And where it ends nobody knows/
/So tell me what I’m supposed
To do
When all my thoughts get wrapped up in you/
/Was like an engine sucking steam
Just letting it slide/
/Just like your smile is so alive.
A bow and arrow shot you…/
/…coming unglued/
\Ahhhhhh let it go!/
No rights: homage to music new to me.
The feminine yet uniquely honest sound coupled with the visual sense of movement.
The interplay of gender.
Of calm and distress.
Tension of bound strings against percussion.
Just lovely.
Glad they make and share.
No rights: homage.
/I know I can’t afford to stop for one moment./
/I’ve tried but can’t take two/
/Cuz one step ahead is a step too far away/
No music rights: just homage to a soundtrackscape.
⊙
I am sick like dog: I say in my bestest, thickest Eastern European accent to the chef.
I am too ignorant to have a specific dialect, but the rasp in my voice is too deep to not enjoy, even if it hurts.
Ill since three a.m. The tasty haze of the deliciously grey day suits my fever.
⊙
Seven
a.m. texts go out.
1. The manager working.
I say: Ain’t well. Looking for a cover. If you don’t hear from me again, it means you guys are stuck with me doing my best.
I include exactly zero emoti-cons.
2. The potential covers.
I say: I’m sick. Host this morning?
⊙
No cover expected. Restaurant folk, generally do not rise before the early afternoon, at best, unless they are working. Were situations reversed, I would not come through either.
I sit on the patio and watch the day arrive between seven and eight.
Still and grey.
/Buckle up and endure, now, sweet thing./
I take puffs off my electronic nicotine machine, knowing full well it will help nothing.
My inhaler: I love calling it.
⊙
Ya know I can’t cite the source, but I recall a study saying folks are statistically more likely to prefer being shocked with a low charge, over sitting in a room, alone, in silence for fifteen minutes.
So I put on an album called electro shock blues.
I don’t mind stillness. I can shock myself with my own thoughts.
So who is the glutton for pain? The ones who like a bit of shock-pain because being alone is too painful or the ones who get off on stillness?
/well, hee hee hee hee/
⊙
/Next thing you know/ You’re eat’n hospital food/
⊙
I arrive to work. I am released and sent home after an hour. I think they wanted see if I would show up and try.
It’s good to have reasons to persevere and
over-come:
I say and i mean.
Because I get off on my intent to not let feeling bad make others feel bad or me feel worse.
Seems quite silly to say, as I put it into words now.
I am mostly light and love, but with a little bit of why-don’t-you-go-fuck-yourself for counterbalance.
⊙
Back home.
Bare beneath a grey robe.
Leg warmers over calves and most of my feet.
Earl Gray tea with a bit of cream and vanilla extract.
An American Werewolf in London Faux-Fog: I silently entitle the bootleg concoction, in homage of the traditional London Fog tincture.
⊙
Back on the patio.
The wind chops and dices the waters of
the Sound
into tiny, white-capped waves.
Little peaks of liquid mountains.
⊙
/What/
/What/
/I can hear you/
/I was…/
⊙
/Sing the one about the cat that’s always get’n wet/
Comes down the wires, from my tablet, into my Blue headphones.
I giggle.
No rights: homage.
From the album See It Another Way.
⊙
Having had the autumnal blues yesterday, I message a distant friend who offered me solace. I say: I can tolerate one more beer before my tolerance renders me incapable of doing a good job at the restaurant at 8 a.m. tomorrow. A night out has done my heart good.
Asat alone at a bar top. To my left is my sister, currently outside cancelling her plans with her man. To my right is my father, currently at the bar ordering a pitcher.
I finish my beer as the band launches into their opening number.
Tommy Tutone.
Jenny.
I know that gal’s number already: I think: had you opened with Lady Stardust? Well, I mighta hung around for he/r.
I get home. To my pack of cigs. I wanna smoke a square and pluck one.
My mind moves quickly.
I play the game I love:
What is the perfect song right now?
Macha. First track from the self-titled album?
No. That was the perfect song two years.
Do better. Dig deeper.
Last track. Same band. Album afore mentioned.
I walk and smoke tobacco leaf. To make sure.
My brow furrows. Hard. Like the force of thought incepting me right now.
I am sure. Perfect song for right now, indeed.
Coming from the state of LA to AL (now in WA), I am a snob about country music,
as most of it is pop music now; but some still continue the musicality.
Lucinda W. is not unlike a Patti S. to the Southern american music scene.
/Are you heavy enough to make me stay?/
/I feel like I might blow away./
/Let me know if you come across it./
/I don’t want nothing if I have to fake it/
/Never take nothing don’t belong to me/
/Everything’s paid for; nothing’s free/
No rights: homage.
Check this esshit out.
From Alabama Shakes to this.
Brittany Howard evolves.
Change.
Happy Autumn.
No rights: homage.
Also, homage to this channel, which posts Peel Sessions.
Track one had better put a smile on everyone’s face with its rambunctious ramblings. It’s only slightly raunchy, you’ll hardly even notice.
Track two gives a softer side. The addition of “yet” to “you don’t love me” charms me.
Track three: /maybe I’m getting too old for this but I don’t know what else to do….yeah/
Track four: remembrance of things past.
Sidenote: bongwater, like tape heads, should be cleaned regularly. Giggle.
Douglas Hofstadter wrote about Googel translate not too long ago.
As an American, foreign languages are not the priority of inner city schools, at least not the one I attended. Not, their fault either.
I failed Kiswahili enough times, in college, to blow the socks off of any Kenyan who I meet stateside.
Ninasema Casey.
No one speaks any “Swahili” here. Not enough to even make the general populace know the language is factually called Kiswahili.
Bless you, Bibi Jane. And, bless you end of term oral examiner.
Can I write my responses to your oral questions?: I asked.
No.: she responds.
Shit: I think.
⊙
I’ve worked in enough restaurants to learn functional Spanish and Kiswahili.
(A surprising number of Kenyan immigrants in B’ham, AL. Magic City
We got a Nemo walking in: Robert would call to his kitchen, at Tavern on the Summit, whenever a catch of the day ticket came through. Howlarious.
But fish don’t walk, Robert: I’d always say
[After dinner rush, in the alley, smoking a cig.
Me: I thought “fish” was “samaki” in Kiswahili.
Robert: No, dummy. Nemo, like the movie.
Howlarious.]
)
⊙
I listened to this show, just now.
A few phrases in foreign languages hooked my attention.
I connect to Catalan, Frisian, and Corsican.
Don’t ask why, because I don’t justly know.
I love playing with Translate ever since the Hofstadter article.
But, I don’t have friends like his, to give feedback on the intimacies of Translate’s inadequacies.
On a cru que les données allaient nous libérer: appears in type face on the screen behind the band.
I make haste to Translate.
To triangulate my linguistic location.
If the phrase is in Frisian it translates to: On a cru que les données allaient nous libérer.
It translates to itself.
If the phrase is in either French or Corsican it translates to: it was believed that the data would free us.
In Corsican, the same spellings translate to: where it’s raw than the others were waiting for release again.
Hot and beautiful. Both.
⊙
Désormais ton monde est ainsi fait: appears in type face on the screen behind the band.
I make haste to Translate.
To triangulate my linguistic location.
If the phrase is in Frisian it translates to: this is a ton of things to do.
If the phrase is in French it translates to: now your world is so made.
Howl.
WrittenCasey 