“I’ve perfected all modalities of transaction”

Oh, November. What I bumper crop of,
Ups!
Downs....
0.. Arounds..0

and not in the least amazing business opportunities.

Yes, you may not believe it, but since Oct 30th I have recieved 21 different email solicitations from 21 different personas to be part of an “absolutely risk free” financial transaction in which I help discretely transfer anywhere from 1.85 to 27.6 million dollars from what seems to be a very astute and trustworthy financial promissory in Muaritania/China/Ghana/South Africa/UAE.

There is a technical term for doing this with money - I know it, tip of my tongue -having to do with washing. rhymes with “pondering”…
but anyway, details.

...
What happened in November for me to get 21 of these things when they usual trickle at two a year? maybe the election? the Rapture? a massive failure of my email SPAM blocker? I’m asking questions here, people. Questions. But do not be deceived, because I've got some Andy Rooney going on -- the questions are rhetorical and a gesture of polite consideration at best. I have my own answers well-at-hand and already, before you or I were born, even.
...
Or do I? I don’t know, I really don’t know anymore. To be honest, these solicitations have really thrown me for a loop. I'm reconsidering Things. I'm thinking about my actions or lack thereof.

I mean, maybe it is true what Barrister John Ugo, of John Ugo & Associates of Lagos says about trying to reach the next of kin of the European fellow that died in the car crash in ’92 and left a pile of money, only to find no one. ((no one but little ole me))-- who apparently just happens to have the same last name as the deceased, wealthy European.

Thing is, Barrister Lagos “looks forward to hearing from me soonest” since he assures me I am the only person he has contacted about the matter. And? Two weeks have passed, a full fortnight, I’ve have yet to responded...

I have to admit, it’s been a hard month for me. I guess I’m depressed. and I’ve been travelling a lot. I mean, I have no other excuse for not jumping at this chance. Princess Cecilia Eisen, by chance of Lagos as well, also wrote to me. She opened her message, “Good Day and Compliments of the Season.” Of the season! it’s true, I have a weakness for season (but how did she know??)

Again, I feel lousy. For Princess impressed upon me that the 4.35 million dollars if not transferred immediately (out of Nigeria and into my account and of which I would be kindly renumerated 30% of that amount so stated) would then instead "be automatically remitted to the trust funds for arms & ammunition TO FURTHER ENHANCE THE COURSE OF WAR IN THE WORLD.”



Jeez-Louise. what am I doing. I feel like I’m chewing glass here. Sometimes I really wonder if I'm a lout. A lay-a-bout miserable with opportunity, with the ability to help a dying man in Pretoria, Mazulu Amed, give his wealth to an orphanage in Bulgaria, or stop the Course of War in the World, and all I can do is think about Myself.

Or get lost in myself...or them. I mean who are all these people with all this cash-money that doesn't exist. who am I given that? Has anyone actually even seen me in two weeks? Have I really been travelling? Why don't I recognize any of these clothes I'm wearing? More to the point, where is my 14.7 million dollars? Ms. Pilot Kathleen Melissa of the U.A.E. if you are reading this, please, could you email again about our transaction?

Thanksgiving-->Chana Masala

The people at Trinity House and associates kindly had me for Thanksgiving. Given the vegans around, it made complete sense to have a South Indian Thanksgiving. D. and H.A. used many recipes from the Indian cookbook my Mom gave D. for Christmas seven years ago. L., however, is from Madras, so she managed on her own.
Oh -- but the food was good.
...
After dinner and before dessert, someone had the idea to have us read Ch. 13 of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man at the table. A scene where the protagonist eats hot yams on the snowfallen Harlem street. Unashamed of the food he eats, and who this makes him. Black in America. or otherwise. or whatever. The yam was hot, buttered. and he ate three.

There is so much giving its hard to realize what you get (and but its even all the time). I couldn't be fuller. even if I had four bovine stomachs or two Siamese minds. it is overflowing. it is a steaming orange yam in my winter hands.

Texas

You say you’re not from Texas,
Man as if I couldn’t tell,
You think you pull your boots on right,
And wear your hat so well,

That’s right -- you’re not from Texas,
That’s right -- you’re not from Texas,
That’s right -- you’re not from Texas...
But Texas wants you anyway.

Even if that is not true, it is a nice thing for Lyle to say.
While I’m dubious whether Texas on the whole would want much to do with me, I think at least things with me and Austin are copacetic. It's a place I don’t feel out of place at all.

The rains rain warm in late November. and the trees, the L i v e Oaks; low, crowning giants they are. Their limbs are dense and make these earnest and dark marks everywhere you look along the landscape. It’s like Robert Motherwell was drunk on tequila and took a big brush to the place. It makes you blink your eyes. If you sit on a limb, and you might mistakenly think you are riding on the back of a great oxen.
No doubt, these Oaks know Life.


....
At this time when the notion of place seems to be so much of a preoccupation to me, it would almost seem beyond coincidence that a week after being in Massachusetts that I’d find myself in Austin, a place that I was all set to move to seven years back. That is, until the Lure of Learnedness led me instead to Durham at the last moment. funny, the ways that the coin flips.

But I actually had another purpose to be in Austin beyond nostalgic waxing. Really. In fact a visit to friends Bee and C. (and Thor the cat) would be all the reason enough. However I also threw in a stop to the annual philosophy and history of science meetings . You know, ‘cause why not? There could be something to it. or not. you never really know.

If you are lucky (and I always am. despite any or all evidence to the contrary) attendance to such kinds of conferences will provide some interesting juxtapositions. For example, what crafty events coordinator could have thought of a better pairing than to have the “Active Release” physical trainer’s conference take place side-by-side with the philosophy of science conference at the Raddison? People firmly inflated to the proportions of statues amongst the networking groups of cognoscenti dressed in appropriately intellectual tones of black. It was like a scene from the African savannah -- lions, zebras; hyenas, gazelle. Disparate creatures, and everything loitering together in one strange space.

In bearing witness to this, it came as a serious question to me whether there is anything really greater gained in reading “Philosophical Norms of Naturalism” than “The Art of the Lower Extremity.” The physical trainer with muscles overflowing the Ethan Allen chair in the lobby** was reading the latter, and looked downright sanguine compared to his academic counterpart sitting in the next seat. That fellow's eyes had a concertedly worried and sag-baggy look to them as he considered, with probably too much care, what Norm may ever be Natural in this natural of worlds.

For let's be clear, the trainer knows the fundamentals of the norms of nature already, like: drink plenty of water. let the leg hang loose after prolonged walking. stretch hamstrings before and following exertion. is there anything else we really need to know. you know, in the long view? Art is Practice, not Analysis, after all.


....
No visit to the Lone Star state would be quite complete without a vist to the state capitol building. It turned out that Trooper Sims, who greeted Bee and me upon entering the building, knew plenty about the place. and was eager to share.

Sure, from visual inspection alone a non-expert might be able to tell that the Texas State Capitol is taller that our National Capitol in DC (and would you have even doubted that?)

But would you have known that the painting of Sam Houston after the battle of San Jacinto hanging on the wall has him portrayed with the wrong leg broken? Or! that both Sam Houston and General Santa Ana (in the red vest) were big time morphine addicts in addition to being blood-crazed nationalists? Gratitude goes to Trooper Sims for this 411.

...
Finally and of course, STARS are the motif in these-here parts.
and I mean everywhere.

Whether you sit down..

or look up...


No, forget "Lone Stars," friends. Austin, and the capitol in particular, is a damned constellation if anything. you could go blind from the everpresent shine of this monumental branding campaign of a state that so badly wanted to be its own country, rather than just a one of 50. And yet, they have managed to buck the system at every turn anyway. I don't know, given history, might it not have been better to leave the the state alone to its Lone devices?

The city Austin at least, I consider a bright and shining.
....

** sidenote on lobbies:
Hotel lobbies are great places to learn things you may never need to know. People sit near you, they talk loud. Such voices can school you to the fact that the following things will prevent the Breathalyzer connected your ignition from letting you start your car.
Take note:

1- gargling with Listerine right before leaving the house
2- eating a sandwich with Boar’s Head brand white wine mustard
3- spraying perfume on yourself after fastening your seatbelt

Massachusetts

This last Tuesday I found myself in the Boston Museum of Fine Art.
J. had snuck me in, and I was most grateful. After strolling through the Art Deco exhibit the exit door spilled me out into a room of Expressionism. A huge Gauguin loomed along one wall, a painting of rising, and falling. breathing, tilting. standing up, and lying down. It was titled:

D’ou venons nous
Que sommes nous
Où allons nous
:::
Where do we come from?
Who are we?
Where are we going?

It was a fair question.
I was in Massachusetts again. Where had I come from? Among other places, Durham.

Two days before election day I bought a plane ticket. just like that. I think I sensed that I would need to go to some place that was a home. A home to what I would otherwise call “home.” or Home the way my family, many friends, and the autumn ponds still call it some 13 years after I left.

Where was I going?
Rob welcomed me at the airport. “Welcome to a Blue state,” he said. And this was an oddly comforting thing to hear. You know, given circumstances.

.....
Anything I might try to say here would only be trite to the feeling of fullness I had. in sharing time with everyone in the manner I saw you all last week, and prefer: on foot. by subway. over steaming bowls and cups. in the morning. & way late at night. It was a meal of days visiting.
and now my stomach grumbles.

Among all other things, I was lucky enough to walk around the clear water of Walden Pond. It is the kind of place where your companion may be a poet, their own hair as autumnal as their words. And Thoreau would be thoroughly happy with this, I think.


The people fishing said they weren’t getting any bites. Perhaps the brown trout were following the admonition painted on the a rock in the pond...?

...Only in a "Blue state.”

…

Hey. Hi.
And Where Are We Going?
I have not the faintest of ideas. It begs the second question anyway of Who We Are. And I suppose that could be asked in more ways than there are leaves on the ground. In a world of Red and Blue states, some may wish to redraw the lines bordering Canada, as the joke is now going. But I honestly wonder who we would bother to call “we,” and where the me or the you are located among that. Politically, psychologically, spiritually, or most otherwise, there is a placeless of being that makes Gauguin in Tahiti such an agitation in a museum in Boston, mid-November.

...
In the simple sense, sometimes I wish I was where I was last week. That is to say, back in Massachusetts. feeling full that way. But maybe that is about a sense of place more than place itself. Maybe the where and the who are all confused for me at the moment.

Of course, all these questions and their possible answers are flying through us like neutrinos do: billions at every moment and otherwise completely unrecognized.

That is, unless you buy a new CD.

I bought an album by Cat Power in Cambridge. Today back in North Carolina I am listening to the very end of its 18 minute melody. and I hear Gauguin rise from Chan Marshall’s very throat, as she sings:

Where are you from?
And where are you going to?

Can songs answer paintings?

>>
Where you are going
is where you do come from,
And where I will be
is with you.

(…..)
And how do you like them apples. Massachusetts MacIntosh.
The skin is red and green, the flesh white, and it tastes as true as anything could taste to me. The youth in the painting is reaching for a fruit. Another is eating one. There is not much else to do. It’s late. it’s early. floating in paper boats. and we are all very hungry.



……………
……………
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Postscript:

A note on what happens over five months time between visits:

Kids—that weren’t walking before are now.


Squashes—that we planted as fingernail sized seeds in June have done well enough that even holding one up is work plenty.


Cats—On the other hand - Naki over that same time is still white and black. I take comfort in those things which stay the same.


And this would include Molly on the farm. 23 years old, and still of this world as a cat. Also still black and white. Some things don’t seem possible but are, and holy for the fact. This rickety cat is evidence and she should be beatified.


Dad has jerry-rigged a light bulb contraption of (to me) Worrying Flammability to keep her feather-weight bones and body warm as she sleeps through late years. all day and all night. St. Molly of the bathroom hamper, bless us.

.....................................

The Day Inbetween

Today is the day after Halloween and before the election. As a biologist I saw put it at the beginning of her seminar today: “This Monday is like being between the devils and the deep blue sea. I guess the devils are past us. Let’s now just hope we don’t drown.”

So given the options, let’s talk about Halloween.
Halloween is the time to be either more yourself, less yourself, or both. Invited to a party themed around coming dressed as your adolescent former self, I was most happy to take out my skateboard, spiking hair, and doing all those other things that transformed me back into that 15 year-old. Into that better version of me.

It seems the whole night got carried away with the idea however, as I suffered something that happened regularly in my teen years – a failure of my green Subaru. True, it is a different Subaru than then, and a different green, but it is just as good at getting a flat tire right as you are planning to go somewhere.


...
Sunday was a little better. Although we got only a few trick-or-treaters at our door, some were simply as cute as little pumpkins.
Some in fact were little pumpkins.

This time I took a different approach to costume and character, I think with some success: And how hard was it hard for me to go as an obnoxious French philosopher named 'Jacques'?...


…unfortunately, not as hard as it should have been. Of course this raises its own existential issues I'll have to face up to, but at the least I was told my fake accent was tres bien. (Note the “weight of existence” hefted in the right hand, and the empty jar under the left arm. What’s inside? “Nothing. It is em-pty. zis is ze nat-ure of ‘uman life.")

And then there are the lives of some authentic American francophones of more immediate and central concern to many of us: Monsieur Kerry and entourage, I wish you the best of luck demain.
And the rest?
c’est la vie, comrades, c’est la vie.