=jr050314 JOURNAL FROM 14 March '05 Input from PM March 14 thru 24 March was direct-input onto topdoc =jr050307 This doc then continues as =jrp50325, Input from 26 March '05 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Re: IHT 28 Feb '05 (Gall), Spraying herbicides, apparently Roundup (which they used at HaOn, and I think made me crazy) to eradicate opium poppy crops in Afghanistan If there is one essential aspect to the USA radical right that runs the Bushie Administration, it is a simplistic moralism. And behind that is simple-mindedness, supported in large part by stupidity, and in lesser part by an ingenious evasion of reality. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Title waiting for a poem: (photo caption, IHT 26 Feb '05:) The Igualada Cembetery in Barcelona offers an escape from the relentless pace of moderniztion into a more intimate inner world: ------------------------------------------------------------------ 14 March '05 -- 4 Adar Bet -- The evening news reports an arson attack on the Lugano synogogue, apparently be neo-Nazis. I do not believe it was done by anyone from Ticiono canton. And I do not believe it was done by anyone Islamic. I doubt it was done by anyone from Switzerland. One would hope that Switzerland would be recognized as neutral territory. It does underline the risks of allowing the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state. For instance, it could serve as a haven for neo-Nazi groups and fugitives. Øn general, I think that enhanced Zionism is the best response to anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli attacks, whether on persons, property, or sacred places; since it slearly demonsrates that such actions are counter-productive. I think the neo-Nazi movement is essentially apolitical, more nearly an expression of homosexual S&M . And culurally very lower-class. Am acting-out of hate with whatever symbols are at hand. So it is just an accident of history that neo-Nazi-ism targets Jews. Nazi-ism presented sadism, with a few pseudo-mythologic trappings through a masque psycopathologic hygienic hysteria. Well, that is a powerful witches brew. And as others have noted ("Morning of the Magicians", a paperback popular in the late 60s, which I ain't even glanced at.) there was more than a dash of black magic in it. I mean one should take them on a day-trip to the morgue, let them bugger a few corpses, and be done with it. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Un / a- (/ customed as I /am to public /speaking /) I / shan't / (resist the temp/tation to a/ttempt a bit of / tweaking) of the XX of parameters of this /rap / crap / an adolescent with an attitute who can't get past the platitude-/ s of "rapid pitter-patter but it really does't XX and it really doesn't matter" (Gilbert & Sullivan, Iolanthe(?)) "matter matter matter matter matter matter matter matter" (Ibid) x Y & x Y & X -- like a /clown on a /skateboard amok on the /sidewalk who swoops / down on the /clowns of the /town -gown / town-gown / town-gown what's the /reason for this / frisson that's a-/ peassing us this /season and en/hance the /assonance THIS IS AUGMENTED WITH DIRECT INPUT ONTO =JR050307 Both are still just notes. they won't read the /Bible they say they're not /liable this is a return to the stressed-verse of early Anglo-Saxon poetry -- maybe the Ilian too -- maybe a basic feeature of oral tradition -- It is time, not (as in post-oral poetry) beats that define the unit. But rhythm is fixed. ------------------------------------------------------------------ They see a Jew with a beard and think this must be a barbarian down from the mountains to steal the sheep he can wear unwashed clothes sleep in a kennel and "shit in in the woods". (Campra, 26 March '05) Ref: "does a bear shit in the woods" If you look like a bear, talk like a bear, and act like a bear, there's no cause to get miffed if they take you for a bear. ---------------------------------------------- A Pre_Easter Confession: Shabat night. The owner perhaps lacking in communication skills has asked me to move from my laudry-dry/cookroom by changing the lock. I say hello to the restaurant manager who answers with a sharp loud growl like a surprised cornered animal. I decide to lock the door tonight first time in this shack. I have told Maya in case of emotional trauma take a shot of schnapps. I take a shot of Calvados to acknowlege Purim and another shot after Mincha for a seuda and then for my Shabat meal of leftover bread and cheese from hotel breakfasts a bit of the local wine. Wakingù I slip on my shoes laces trailing fumble for the lock finally get it open and bump my way outside pissing against the wind again I dribble on my chinos. Once chose were quite the uniform with a sky-blue broadcloth cotton shirt from the Coop of course with the Harvard crowd. I grew up in Cambridge. Once I told Carolla I have bad dreams -- what can one do She said, brush your teeth before bed. Now I don't know where she is. Shortly before 3 in the morning the witching hour -- best for meditation they say I dream that they've given me a ticket to the ballet if only I will go naked they say, no one will notice There is some cake they say, if you eat it all you die I start to eat it they say, you can buy something to eat but we think it supports the people who make the cake I say, I'll take one they say, hamburger or cheeseburger I find myself saying, oh hell, cheeseburger, I might as well enjoy it since I'm done anyhow. Then I lean out over an overhang and "shout out" in fright as if at attempted rape by a deamon and realize I don't want to die so I wake myself up. To hell with that dream. Turn on the computer and start breaking mitzvot. So far I'm up to about two. I'll try not to do my accounts. If I wash my pants today rather than waiting for Easter Sunday and find somewhere to dry them it's another Shabat avera or two but I do want something to wear into civilization and another pair saved for whenever I get out of here. But if I don't do something I might go crazy and "what good would it do" suicide's a bad move too instead of oblivion you're still there with the same problems and diminished options. (Campra, 26 March 05:30, overcast morning) --------------------------------------------------------------- LUGANO -- RECOMMENDED LODGING -- The Chinese Restaurant next to the Grande Hotel Splendide (swimming pool available for non-guests), about 20 meters from the Dan Hotel (Kosher, Glatt Kosher I think). An acceptable and inexpensive alternative to lodging at the Dan for the High Holidays, Purim, and Sukot. The outdoor dining area, at which guests have a 20% discount, features a wide variety of pigmeat, is guarded by pagan deities. However the rooms are at a seperate entrance, on the same side street as the Dan Hotel. This was an old residence or maybe hotel. The rooms are large, with french doors opening onto a balcony. A small potty and shower have been built into the rooms. Price advertised at SF 55 per person, and billed at SF 60, at least for a single. The restaurant is closed one day a week -- Tuesday, if I recall -- but rooms are available, though of course must be booked in advance. Telephone: 091--994-1041 Via Riva Caccia 9, Lugano ------------------------------------------------------------ Re: IHT 26 Mar '05 (Nagourney) -- Campaigning to keep a brain-dead woman on artificial life support is 'religious' only if one worships zombies. ---------------------------------------------------------------- For the Swiss, money is not merely the media of business, it is their linguag franca. Anyone with money is a gnteleman, and anyone without becomes, if only temporarily, an unperson. --------------------------------------------------------------- She goes to the guru gets a revalation and now will barely speak to me. Maybe I leaned upon my love for her. I had wanted to bring her some happiness. (25 March '05 -- Purim / Good Friday) Notes: "The water is wide, I cannot cross over; neither have I wings to fly. Lend me a boat that can carry two, and both shall row, my love and I. [ Well, any boat can carry two or three, but most rowboats don't have two sets of oarlocks. Whoever wrote that was not from Maine. ] "I leant my back / upon some oak / thinking it was / a trusty tree / but first she bent / and then she broke / just so my love / proved false to me." (USA folk song, 1800s I suppose; but it's rather shlocky to have survived as a folk song. "A ship there was, that sailed the ocean. She's loaded deep as a ship can be. But not so deep as the love I'm in -- I know not where I sink or a I swim." { The tune is better than the words. For starters, a deep-loaded ship will be more stable but less manourveable, far's I know. ] ----------------------------------------------------------------- 'He's unpredictable.' Am I Halley's Comet? shoot him up tie him down and lock him up that he not go too close to the sun, to the moon or to our earth. "a spiritual bypass" (PVK) "a psychologic bypass" (PVK) as "roads of limited access" (sa) miss old the old towns and tunnel under mountains "man proposes and G_d disposes" (folk-saying) stay loose, Moose -- heed the feedback "tentative as a man in ambush" (1) wrote Leary seeing the Tao on LSD Of PVK they always said "schedule subject to change without notice." (Rhazuns valley, 24 March '05) Notes (1) Leary, Psychedelic Prayers, Imitations from the Tao te Ching ------------------------------------------------------------ The Feed-Our-Zombie case shows how a small-minded sentimentality, fueled by ostensibly if not pseudo-religious fanaticism -- for surely Jeb and George Jr. are pseudo-religious -- can become grotesque. From the media cirucs, youl would think this was a national kulturkampf. But CNN shows a pciket line of scarcely a dozen people, not the thousands that a bona fide issue would bring out. So it boils down to a deliberate political publicity stunt by some right-wing group, tro which George Jr. was unwisely joined gy his politial strategists, who play for the right-wing yahoo's - - the group that brough in Nazi-ism in in Germany in 30s. One must fear a 3rd-term putsch, if not by Junior then by another figurehead -- they're already saying Jeb Bush used this issue to play to the yahoo's. ----------------------------------------------------------- Unless, as the Japanese suspect, El Al owns Switzerland -- Ariline ticket prices, unlike train and bus, are irrational and exploitative, and showuld be suhject to government regulation. El-Al, which seems to take its customer base for granted, charge twice in price in Zurich for a round-trip ticket between Zurich and Tel Aviv, twice that price for a one-way ticket, and 6 times that basic price to allow the return flight to be made within a year than tahn 2 months, although amortized cost to the airline is the same per flight. (El Al Sf 1100 Zurich-TA, about USD 550 T.A.-Zurich rt, about SF 3000 if I recall for a 1-yr. rt. AlItalia Euro 400 rt 1 month from Milano. --------------------------------------------------------- "Hat Gottes Sohn Sex?" Headline, Daily Blick (Switzerland) on Holy Thursday (24 March '05) so every other mohter's son has doneù or rather, his father. We long to flee carnality to an indulgent deity and sheltering beneath his wing we won't have to do anything. ------------------------------------------------------------- I telephone the Arosa Kosher Hotel The owner is at his prayers. I call back. He says, You can't afford us but if you go to Lugano for Purim and gaze into the lake you will see a masque. (Rhazuns, 12 Adar-Bet ) Judy, ask this guy for tzdaka: ---------------------------------------------------------- "You look like a Swiss character." "Somone has to and the Swiss are too busy." (Lugano, Purim / Good Friday, 25 March '05) ---------------------------------------------------------- Purim Sermon -- Thoughts while walking along the Lugano lakeshore promenade: No man is too put-up and small to tie up a dog, order it ack and forth, and dominate even its penis. ---------------------------------------------------------- "Spring is sprung the bird [ boid ]is on the wing. But that's absurd the wing is on the bird. Spring is here Christianity has won and may retire. ------------------------------------------------------------ * Down to my last francs I go back up to the Alp stop at the Post and see they sent me back all the gifts I tried to give her but none of the hundreds I'd lent. :"'So I'll eat it myself,' said the little red hen." (Childrem's story, USA 1940's or earlier. I recall my grandmother quoting that phrase." ------------------------------------ [ Directly input onto topdoc =jr050307.txt if memory serves: ] I lend them three books amongst the most precious in the world within still-recorded time. He says, I'd rather you did not place them on my land like border-stones. Notes: Those three books are: Genesis Interlinear (Edition Rashi Chumash, JPS 1954, nor for the Rashi but for the larger type -- for it is mostly old men, with their weakening eyes, who turn at last back to their inherited and disregarded religion.) HIK, Collected Sayings, available from Omega Press, The Abode, New Lebanon, New York. In addition to the Gayan, published seperately and in German and French if memory serves, this includes the Aphorisms and The Bowl of Saki (the latter also published seperatly.) A book of Klee, not for the text, which I have not read, nor even for the line drawings, which I do not yet "grok" (that is, comprehend as a gestalt, the term is from Heinlein, 'Stranger in a Strange Land'), but for his recognition and presentation of the harmony of colours, as Bach did for the emotional and maybe spiritual harmony of tones. Henry Moore's sculptures, ostensibly of strong nude women, show a harmony of -- spaces, more than shapes, one might say. I once thought Franz Kline showed a harmony of two-dimensional shapes. As to the border-stones -- this is not Frost, 'Mending Wall'. If you walk about 15 minutes from Kibutz HaOn, which is on the eastern shore of the Kineret ("Sea of Galillee), to the base of the Golan Heights, you see a pillar that marked the 1967 border. ------------------------------------------------------------ Shortly before Pesach she threw my hiking shoes out on the front stoop with the hametz. On the other side of the Ocean or another side of the Sea Jesus is crucified or so they're sure they've heard. The "knock me off" (R. Shlomo) to share his suffer and tidy up their relationship. In a day_and_a_half Christ will arise (agon over, what's for dinner) I'll try to work on it. (1) (Campra, Good Friday /Purim '05 ) (1) "Sorry, you're too old." "I'll work on it." from "A Chorus Line" --------------------------------------------------------------- Honest George is the proverbial 800 pound gorilla, playing with a doll's house. If he doesn't give himself a healthy outlet for all that power -- for he barely ever does a stick of physical work -- the snow lay unshoveled on his terrace all winter -- no doubt he thinks physical work would demean him -- that he has risen above it and fears he might fall back -- He may some day snap and hit someone. I try to keep my distance, abide his petty slights, and hope to pay my restaurant bill before they think they have causus belli. Notes: (USA 1960s -- "Where does an 800 pound gorilla sleep" -- "WherEVER he WANTS to." (My brother told that, with perfect intonation) --------------------------------------------------------------- The strange woman stands at the crossroads and says: Every day the same, every Shabat too -- "let go of it" and come to me. Just so the day you do she says, Sorry, I've got to go out tonight. Don't wait up. 'Strange woman' is from Proverbs "let go of it" -- Psychobbable maxim Just so -- Kipling, "Just So Stories ------------------------------------------------------------- My Purim / Good Friday Sermon By Lake Lugano a well-to-do woman walks a dog on a leash who should be running the alps and follows behind picking up his turds. 25 March '05 ---------------------------------------------------------- On the edge of the town of Campra, which is 3 buildings , 1 chalet, and assorted shacks, there is on the highway a sign, in screaming dayglo green, saying in the 3 Swiss languages that this road may be closed at any time for military reasons of national security in which case one must drive on to the other side of the pass without stopping or looking. In autumn, I added 3 explanatory signs, written on stickypaper from blank tapes: De peur d'un invasion de Luxembrouge, Wir furthen das macht der Armee der Lichtenstein, and Contre il Duchy resurgente de Milano. It's spring thaw now, and those signs are still there. -------------------------------------- With the mist or clouds slowly lifting on the fresh dusting of snow, I have copied the text. It is faded -- I had not covered the writing with cellophane tape -- but still readable. I will use the accented characters on the European keyboard, but also add the standard-alphabet make-do's. That is of course the workaround for typing Polish characters, etc. So: (U)= u-umlaut (German) (O\) = o accent-downhill (Italian, not on keyboard) (A) = a-umlaut (German) (E-kippa) = e, accent circumlex (French) On this keyboard, I can put the circumflex after the character with the left Alt key, but I don't know how to put it on top of the character. (E-skilift) = French, accent acute (the uphill one) (A-piste) = French, accent grave (the downhill one) ----------------- Contre il Grande Duchy di MILANO! La strada pu(O\)o [ puo ] essere chiusa in qualsiasi momento per motiva di sicurezza. Transitare senza sostare entro gli orari indicati. ----------- So frchten [ furchten ] {f(U)rchten } wir das macht von LICHTENSTEIN! Die Strasse kann jederzeit aus SicherheitsGrnden [ SicherheitsGrunden ] { SicherheitsGr(U)nden } geschlossen werden. Durchfahren ohne Halt w„hrend [ wahrend ] {w(A)hrend } den angeGebenen Zeiten. (German, like Hebrew, needs a bit of orthographic reform to make compound words readable. A few caps and non_breaking dashes -- _ -- should do it. ) --------------- En case d'un Invasion par LUXEMBOURGE! Le route peut e^(E-kippa)tre ferme‚(E-skilift) …(A-piste) tout moment pour des raisons de s‚(E-skilift)curit‚(E-skilift). Transiter sans staionnnement entre les horaires indiques. ----------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------- An Israeli can always improvise. ------------------------------------------------------------------ ================================================================ MOTZI SHABAT, 16 Adar Bet, end of Shoeshine Purim -- For when the Jews triumphed over their enemies in Shusan the Capital, their enemeies were broken economically and had to take the most menial of jobs, such as shining shoes. ------------------------------------------------------------- Shanti. Chantilly. Shiskabob. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Postscript to Signoff, 27 March '05, Yom haRishon, 16 Adar Bet, and also Easter Sunday, a grey overcast day at Campra, occasional drizzling rain, but with fresh snow just above, at about 1800 m. --------------------------------- That's from the T.S. Eliot, the first of the post-modernists, who looks more and more awkward and obsolete with passing years. 'Chantilly' is from 'Chantilly lace', whatever that is, a pop song by the Big Bopper, USA 1950's. "She had a Audrey Hepburn haircut -- a shiksabob." (sa) My compliments to the Purim/Shabat half-bottle of Calvados. Fat Larry used to say, there is no problem to big to walk away from. So I says to Maya, in case of emotional trauma, do not take it as learning experience, take a shot of schnapps. The Talmud says, the Rabbi, said, Do you wish neither the suffering nor the reward. He said No, and so the Rabbi cured him. I says to Maya, even PVK implied something of the sort, for (as memory serves) he once said, in answer to a question, (Abode Camp 1970s), if you have reached a point where there is absolutely nothing more you can gain from life, then you can take your own life. (my paraphrase, I don't recall more of his words than "then you can".) Sarge had attatched himself to the Chabad crew, college kids and a gung-ho Rabbi, in Venice, that was 1999. He always said, "Keep on driving." He had been in World War II, maybe in the final invasion, I think in ordinance, not transportation. Mr. Natural used to say, on behalf of the Hippies, "Keep on Truckin'" That was Zap comics. But I guess that is an older Negro phrase, as in "Keep on Truckin' Momma", a song Shrager used to sing. Wherever Shrager is an is at now. Creely, that "cigarette short-winded poet" wrote, our islands wash away in the Heraklitean river of time. My compliments to the luke-warm coffee. ================================================================