122009

It’s long-awaited winter in the city. Heavy snowfall is expected in the next 24 hours. Can’t imagine a better way to spend a Sunday, warm and dry and dreaming big.

*Lord’s-Jester*

My leather scent, Cuir du Farceur, is better than expected. For the first few moments it smells a little spicy; after a minute or two the leather doppelgänger creeps in, and it’s quite elegant. I’m really impressed with myself: I was able to intuit which notes would add to the leather effect with surprising precision. This is a perfume one would wear to meet somebody important; both men and women will enjoy this perfume. The question now is: which strength suits it best? It might be one like Ares (used to be Adam’s Amber) which I will offer in several strengths. Anya McCoy explained to me that a perfumer changes the basic recipe according to the strength of a given version; for example, it might be that one gets the sense the eau de cologne version of a perfume could use extra benzoin and lavender, while the eau de parfum version needs less of each. This is another area where I find I have excellent imagination; I can “picture” what needs to change.

I know now that I am nothing like other natural perfumers. For example, when I first started Mandy Aftel’s course, and read Essence & Alchemy, when she wrote about smelling a perfume while you’re making it, I found it didn’t work for me to do so; it took a couple of years for me to figure out that’s not the way I work. It does me absolutely no good to smell a perfume in process–all I smell is alcohol. I never really did much examination of individual extracts; others spend years just involved with individual notes. For me, from the beginning, perfumery has been about whole compositions; I have been concerned with making complete perfumes, all in one go. My perspective is that study of an individual extract does me no good at all. A given note will smell totally different in a finished perfume than it does on its own. Same for dilutions; some perfumers swear by diluting all aromatic materials; I _only_ pre-dilute those materials which I can’t use straight from the bottle (for example, orris butter, immortelle, and pine needle).

I am not trying to know individual components; I am aiming to understand how individual parts play in a finished perfume. So to “get to know” benzoin alone is a waste of time for me; I’m concerned with how it smells in a finished perfume. I have smells cataloged in my brain; I don’t need to be near my perfumer’s organ or extracts to compose a new recipe. My imagination for natural perfume is second to none. I compose in complete “thought forms.” Sometimes a given recipe fails; more often the finished product needs a little tweaking, more orris, less lavender, less in the top, like that. I make a perfume then wait two weeks to a month (perfumes with more notes need longer to mature than simpler ones); from there I can see what parts are working and what parts are not–by applying perfume to the skin, which is the only way to get a sense of a perfume, after a complete one mixes with skin chemistry. I don’t need to have an in depth relationship with, say, labdanum to know whether or not I used too much. It’s finished perfumes which concern me.

So how do I know I’m on the right track? Feedback from other natural perfumers. “Normal” people are not so reliable; why? Because olfactory education is non-existent–a serious thorn in my side. Despite the efforts of some modern philosophers, the olfactory sense is the highest of our senses, with more potential for sublime effects than any other. I know from experience that my methods are unique to me, and also that I can make perfumes with far greater longevity than most. Pleased is she who learns of natural perfume; this art, as it was practiced in days long gone, is truly sacred, inspiring us to live grander lives, helping us to sense honor, and grounding us firmly in beauty wrested from the earth. There’s a reason rabbis, priests, imams, and shamans were the original perfumers: sex and reproduction once were sacred endeavors. And (natural) perfume has always been about sex appeal. Now, if we only had olfactory language to use to talk about what we smell!

*Film*

I had three experiences (aside from years of still photography) in film and television: 1) took a course during high school (maybe earlier) at Weist-Barron, meant for TV actors, 2) I trained in doing voiceover work, for radio and television, and 3) I went to film school at NYU, The New School, and School of Visual Arts (SVA); I lasted about a year and a half at that.

The only experience I remember from Weist-Barron is this: one day I went in for my class with other young people but the room had changed; I accidentally went to the wrong room, full of adult students. I knew everyone else was older, for the first time, but I thought they were just mixing it up a bit. We went through the whole class, and at the end the teacher asked if I was a new student. I explained that I’d been studying with another teacher–he stopped me in disbelief. “How old are you?” he asked. It came out then that I was supposed to have gone to the _youth_ class. What I remember most is that the adults in the class, thinking I was also an adult, had behaved totally differently from any other group of adults I’d ever seen, ribbing each other, making statements full of sexual innuendo, and generally having fun. I remember thinking, “Cool! I get to have fun when I grow up.”

Voiceover work was loads of fun. I remember making some really killer demo tapes. The idea was that over time one developed a reel of their best work to send to interested parties. What I had the most fun doing was taking copy that was drab and boring and turning it into something completely zany. I remember one was a TV shoe commercial. For some reason, what seemed to fit the copy to me was a person speaking maniacally fast; when I played it, the whole room went into hysterics. I think our instructor thought I showed a lot of promise. In the end, though, casting about for callings,I made a conscious decision that voiceover work was not a thing I wanted to be remembered for.

My first experience with film was when a friend from Milton was going to NYU film school. One night we were hanging out, and Joe had rented a 16mm camera from the school for a project. He explained what he wanted to do: to portray an enormous plant-as-person erupting from a small pot in a split second. I thought on possibilities, and finally asserted that I had a solution. The trick was to zoom in tight on the edge of the pot; from there, anything rising from behind the pot would appear to rise _from_ the pot. Worked like a charm and Joe got the highest score in his class. I like to think I’ve always been quite adept at interpreting the world through a camera lens.

Later I went to film school myself. I started out at NYU, but quickly came to prefer The New School and SVA. I had a favorite teacher at NYU though; he taught film theory and I learned more about film aesthetics from him than anyone else. For example, I learned that the way car scenes are shot is an abomination, one we’ve learned to compensate for; if a camera switches directions for focusing on two different people on either side of the front seat, the background naturally changes direction too. But when you sit in a car, it’s all one direction. A good solution is to build a sidecar for the camera so one can shoot both folks from one direction, close up or far away as necessary. Most directors can’t be bothered with such trivialities. Trivialities! I think not.

In the end I found all the teachers at NYU (except for that one) to be far too staid. The teachers at The New School and SVA were much more to my liking, guys still working in the field, loads of hands-on learning, not as much about theories (except for that one) and film criticism, more about actually making movies. I decided finally that the best, and only right, way to go about things was simply to start working on films, starting at the bottom and working one’s way up. At the same time, though, I was having tremendous personal revelations, revelations which ultimately led me way from New York, up to Maine to start a homestead, and finally to the west coast. I had to do what I did, to live through what I lived through, in order to come out on the other side and be the person I am today. Besides, I knew the film world was about to change, from actual film to video and digital. What a swift transformation it has been.

*Quotations*

My deepest impulses are optimistic, an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect.
–Ellen Willis

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth the writing.
–Benjamin Franklin

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.
–Washington Irving

Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see Life with a clearer view again.
–Alex Tan

I always knew looking back on my tears would bring me laughter, but I never knew looking back on my laughter would make me cry.
–Cat Stevens

Tears are the safety valve of the heart when too much pressure is laid on it.
–Albert Smith

The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
–John Vance Cheney

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.
–Charles Dickens

Before the reward there must be labor. You plant before you harvest. You sow in tears before you reap joy.
–Ralph Ransom

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
–Edgar Allan Poe

Peace love and ATOM jazz

121309

I discovered this week where the name Mark Twain comes from: Samuel Clemens was a riverboat captain for years before he became a writer (and when he did it was almost by accident); “Mark twain!” used to be called out on riverboats to notify the skipper that the boat was in two fathoms (12 feet) of water.
_____

“I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature.”
–Edvard Munch

I read this quote and something struck me: this is exactly what it feels like living with MS. I always felt an affinity for his painting The Scream.

*Lord’s-Jester*

When I first started in natural perfume, about five years ago, recipes for me were quite strict, i.e. I had to use 60 drops aromatics in 15ml alcohol, had to have a top section, had to follow standard protocols. Now that I make perfume by weight (I still make samples volumetrically), everything has changed. I’m only worried about the total weight of aromatics; from there I can make any concentration, EdP, EdT, EdC, etc. I also am not so worried anymore about proportions of top to middle to base. Now when I draw up a recipe, I’m familiar with the odor intensities of different aromatics; I let that guide me in terms of proportions. I compose each section, look at odor intensities, and determine which part gets how much.

Recently, I was talking to Michelyn about a perfume with no top section, just base and heart. I have long thought of doing this, because often, when it comes to top notes, there’s nothing I really want on top; still, I’ve felt compelled always to create a top chord. However, recently Michelyn tried my immortelle perfume, Chronos, and her reaction was, “It’s fantastic, but I can do without the top.” Just the base and heart of that perfume are perfect; I added a top section only because I felt compelled to. No more. I’ve always been inclined toward base and heart anyway, and in truth, every note is in fact complete. Base notes contain base notes within them, as well as heart notes, as well as top notes. (Certain recipes of course do need a top.)

For example, with my osmanthus perfume, Phoebe (the latest version of which I’ve found to be delightfully powdery), the first thing I smell is osmanthus; I’m sensing the top notes of osmanthus which is, nevertheless, considered a base note. As to other perfumes, recently we remade Heracles, one of my boronia perfumes; it was a failure, too much black-currant bud and not enough boronia (17 notes all together). Another iteration is in order. Still waiting for the remake of Cuir du Farceur to mature. I am very hopeful about that one. On the NP email list this week, somebody asked what to do with failed perfumes. Anya McCoy responded that she does as the big perfume houses have always done: she makes “mille fleur,” which means literally “1000 flowers.” I’ve started a batch which I call 10,000 Flowers (in China they say 10,000 when they mean a whole lot; we’d say “a million”).

My article for Fragrantica, found at The Original Art of Seduction, was a big success. Anya McCoy, president of the Natural Perfumers Guild, raved about what I had written. Many other perfumers, natural and otherwise, were also impressed. Best of all for me, Mandy Aftel, the premier natural perfumer in the world, whose course I took and passed with flying colors, commented on the article; she too fairly raved, and said she was happy I’d be covering naturals for Fragrantica. The fact that _everyone_ was impressed I think bodes well for a natural-perfume presence in the main. I will see to it that no one forgets the way it used to be: natural perfume was part of the original arts of seduction.

*Facts*

Random factoids about our world:

1. Bee keepers can smell their own hive out of a sea of other hives. There are quite a few collective bee farms these days; many of them allow their bees to forage only on certified organic plants, in order to produce certified-organic bee products (pollen, honey, wax, etc.). And on these collective bee farms, no signs or labels are needed–a bee keeper can smell his hive from a mile away, and can pick it out instantly from 1000 other hives.

2. There is an awful lot of misinformation out there on engineering topics. One thing I want to be clear about: _do_ heat up your car. An auto produces some 70% of its emissions in the minutes after a cold start. This means every time you get in your car, you should heat it up quickly and keep it hot. The reason cold engines are dirty? _Incomplete combustion_. If you drive a car when it’s cold, most of the fuel coursing through the engine comes out of the tailpipe _unburned_. The vast majority of automobile greenhouse-gas emissions come from cars working at sub-optimal operating temperatures. Get it hot and keep it hot.

3. Digital TV means all shows and games are online instantly. It’s never been easier to keep tabs on your favorite shows and teams.

*Asia*

When I was living in Taiwan (in a small beach town called Hualien, where I lived for a year), my older brother Christopher did three months in Jakarta as a doctor. We agreed to meet in Singapore, then take a boat into the middle of Sumatra, where our great grandfather lived and worked for 40 years. Having lived in Nepal, I was fully prepared for the transition from developed east Asia to 3rd-world south Asia. Singapore itself is most definitely 1st world. We spent a night there and left by boat the next morning. I knew full well what to expect from the boat; my brother was unsuspecting. We arrived and he was stunned: what we faced was a large ferry with an enormous, empty central space for passengers. Folks were expected to camp out on the floor, make fires, make noodles, etc.

We were given food, as my bother had been told we would be; it was typical for south Asia: twice per day we were given plates of white rice with a single, whole dried fish and chili paste. Of course we supplemented this with “super mee;” folks who’d taken the boat before came prepared with ramen noodles to which they added eggs, onions, etc., and which they sold for a whopping couple of pennies. I must admit that another thing I’d learned well in Nepal was how to eat with my hand; my brother, on the other hand, had spent all his time with rich doctors (wealthy by Indonesian standards). I remember the first night on the boat, we were served our rice and dried fish; without utensils my brother was helpless.

Folks around us started complaining about the foreigner next to them who didn’t know how to eat (I experienced the same thing my first night in Taiwan: I was unable to use chopsticks to eat my noodle soup, and someone asked the owner of the noodle stand to give me a fork). I had to give Chris a quick lesson on eating with his hand. He was approaching it the way all westerners do at first: he grabbed a handful and attempted to bring it to his mouth; with each handful he dropped food all over himself. The trick, you see, is to hold your face near the plate; you bring your mouth to the food, not the food to your mouth (the same rule applies to using chopsticks) and for a westerner that’s quite counterintuitive.

The really shitty thing was that the riverboat captain decided he would earn extra money by allowing extra boats to tie on to the back of ours. This meant that we took twice as long to get where we were going; and to top it off, one of the two engines broke after a day and a half (too much extra weight). It was a fun trip, feeling very much like the trip up river in Apocalypse Now. Once we arrived in the middle of Sumatra, we had a fantastic time. One of my brother’s Indonesian doctor friends had a home in Bukitingi; we stayed there, and the house came with a maid, a cook, a groundskeeper, etc. We lived like kings for a few days. We even made it to the village where our great grandfather had lived, and found an elder who remembered him.

After we were done, I took a flight from Sumatra to Singapore, where I stayed for a few days before returning to Taiwan. Singapore, unlike Taiwan and Hong Kong, has a majority of folks who speak English; in places where folks speaking different languages live together, English invariably becomes the common tongue (in Singapore, there are speakers of Malay, Indonesian, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.). So Singapore has a lot of English-language book stores. I had been isolated in Hualien for some nine months, and I had wads of cash from teaching, so I stocked up on every book I could think of that I wanted. At 18, I had never gone to college, so I tried to make up for it by getting myself innumerable nonfiction books, books on Chinese history, ESL, tying knots, doing magic tricks, and anything else I could think of that interested me. I still have one or two of those books.

*Quotations*

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.
–Marie Curie
["Ask what makes you come alive and go do it."]

I never quite know when I’m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, ‘Dammit, Thurber, stop writing.’ She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. Or my daughter will look up from the dinner table and ask, ‘Is he sick?’ ‘No,’ my wife says, ‘he’s writing something.’
–James Thurber
[The line between life and art is one I explicitly ignore.]

In my soul rages a battle, without victor, between faith without proof and reason without charm.
–Sully Prudhomme
[I could never have said it better.]

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.
–Emily Dickinson
[Top of the head, to be sure.]

Literature can carry the consciousness of human times and social life better than anything else. Look at the movies of the 1920s, watch the Murrow broadcasts–you can’t recognize any of the people. Now, read Fitzgerald–that’s it. That is the truth of the times. Somebody has to be committed to the idea of truth.
–Thomas McGuane
[I'll be sitting quietly speaking Truth until the day I die.]

With modernism came this new notion that poetry is something that is not as direct or accessible, and poetry became something that needed to be deciphered, a kind of riddle. And, of course, a lot of people are put off by this. A lot of people read poetry, and they don’t understand it and it makes them feel resentful. They also tend to think if they don’t understand it that means it’s good poetry because you’re not supposed to understand poetry. You can have poems that are clear enough, accessible enough, that people can understand. The best of these are not going to be any less original than those poems that are obscure.
–Thomas Lux
[Even today there are many who espouse the obscurity principle. It does no one a spot of good. Clear and accessible is the only way.]

Life is never easy for those who dream.
–Robert James Waller
[The bigger your dreams the tougher your life.]

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.
–JFK
[Adversity breeds strength.]

Kind words are short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
–Mother Teresa
[It is often much easier to be kind than to be otherwise.]

It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.
–Gandhi
[My greatest days in the last 10 years have been days I made friends with the MS, not enemies, for enemies would entail vilifying myself.]

Peace love and ATOM jazz

120609

As winter comes on, I am only too pleased I won’t be alone this season.

*Grammar&Pronunciation*

Please don’t use ‘me’ when you should be using ‘I.’ There are many places where it has become colloquially acceptable; it’s still wrong and you will only sound bright and eloquent for using ‘I’ correctly. Someone says:

I think _you_ did this.

A typical response might be:

Who, me?

What do you mean to say here? “You think me did this?” ? No, you mean to say, “You think I did this?” So say that. Often, the use of ‘me’ is simply for expedience, but it’s never very hard to utter your sentiment correctly. Examples:

Me too.

No no no! It should be properly,

I do also.

Someone says,

I hate this crap.

Correctly, you should say,

I do as well.

Lastly,

I adore this music.

You might correctly say,

I do too.

or

I agree that this is phenomenal stuff.

or

I beg to differ.

There is always a better way than to use ‘me’ (except of course when it’s called for). It is a direct object, and was only ever meant to be used as an accusative, the object of pronouns, transitive verbs, etc. Please be concise in your language.

*Lord’s-Jester*

I have written my first article for Fragrantica, a very large perfume web-site. My significant other, Michelyn Camen, invited me to try being a guest writer, on the topic of natural perfume. The publisher raved about what I wrote so I think there’s a good chance I will become a regular writer for them. I’m just a short time away from launching my natural-perfume business, so this couldn’t come at a more perfect time. Fragrantica has some 550,000 registered users, and I encourage all my friends to join. If you comment on this, my first article for Fragrantica, you will be entered in a drawing to win a jar of my fabulous solid perfume, Anthea (now in its third or fourth revision).

The remake of Demeter is perfect. I intended to brighten it and that’s exactly what I accomplished. Sandalwood in the base, orange flower in the heart, and neroli, templin (distilled from fir cones), juniper, and pink pepper (among 14 notes altogether) combine to make a perfume that retains the earthy, smoky, sexy nature of the original, while resulting in a brew not quite so dark as the original, with some lift. I also made it slightly sweeter with more benzoin. I’m also waiting for three other remakes to cure: Cuir du Farceur (my leather doppelganger), Heracles (my first boronia perfume), and Chronos (based on immortelle, one of my favorite extracts).

For my application for Professional Perfumer (with the Natural Perfumers Guild), I plan to include five perfumes, 3 liquid and two solid: Ares eau de cologne, Demeter (name might change) eau de toilette, Selene eau de parfum, Anthea solid (my ode to jasmine, sultry, erotogenic), and Helios solid (made originally for my father, who wanted a smell like the orange-patchouli candle he came across a while ago, which was not natural; it is extremely difficult to scent candles naturally). I am working now to get ecommerce up and running on the Lord’s Jester web site.

Michelyn is a very successful fashion and perfume writer. I am an esteemed natural perfumer who will soon be writing the great American novel, and plays, and will soon be recognized for 20 years of great poetry. If all goes well with Fragrantica, I too may become a force in the fashion world. Something tells Michelyn and I are going to conquer the globe. In the mean time, I will be madly working (it might take years) on a signature fragrance for her. Michelyn and I agree that the best art has always been inspired by love. Perfumers making perfumes for their lovers has a long, long history. Natural perfume has been about enhancing one’s allure since the dawn of civilization. Onward and upward!

*Quotations*

When you do this sort of work, you pretend to be the sort of person that you could imagine writing this kind of stuff; then you write what he would write.
–John Crowley

It is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence–that which makes its truth, its meaning–its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream–alone.
–Joseph Conrad

Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.
–Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

There was much in such a society that was primitive and insecure and it certainly could never measure up to the demands of the present epoch. But in such a society are contained the seeds of revolutionary democracy in which none will be held in slave.
–Nelson Mandela

A good aphorism is too hard for the tooth of time, and is not worn away by all the centuries, although it serves as food for every epoch.
–Nietzsche

A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.
–Thomas Mann

Beauty is also submitted to the taste of time, so a beautiful woman from the Belle Epoch is not exactly the perfect beauty of today; beauty is something that changes with time.
–Karl Lagerfeld

In all the areas within which the spiritual life of humanity is at work, the historical epoch wherein fate has placed us is an epoch of stupendous happenings.
–Edmund Husserl

The human mind, I believe, cares for the True only in the general character of an epoch.
–Alfred de Vigny

A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
–Samuel Butler

*Music*

I downloaded Joe Henry’s latest, Blood from Stars. I’m a big Joe-Henry fan; Tiny Voices and Civilians contain sublime, bittersweet, heart-wrenching peri-millennial music. Blood from stars does not disappoint one bit; it’s every bit as great as the previous titles. Joe Henry has found his bag. He aims to write raunchy, Tin-pan-Alley type songs, and he most definitely succeeds, big time. This music is like jazz’s black-sheep brother, containing classic instrumentation, pianos, horns, violins, and also much more, distorted electric guitars when needed, bits of electronica as called for, whatever it takes to make the tune just right. One can tell Henry intends for every one of these songs to be anthems, to be music that will uplift, with intense lyrics, often dense, often reaching deep, often confessional, and so, unavoidable. The entire album is inevitable in the best of ways, and Henry’s stark, evocative, pining voice seems to be the only voice that would suit the material. The music on these three records I’ve mentioned is far too complex for most people I would say, but if you love it, you really love it. It is not your everyday music and it is not for everyday people. For those who are, like me, “different,” always dissenting, always unconvinced, forever disappointed with the commonplace, this music couldn’t be more highly recommended.
_____

This is from Kurt Elling’s first record. Astonishing; he was a master of vocalese from the beginning. He dropped out of divinity school to sing jazz. One can tell from these lyrics that his mind was still on the divine. Music by Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond, lyrics by Kurt Elling:

Once upon a time a cloud (a little cloud)
gathered her friends together and began to say, aloud,
“Friends, we can’t find God. Isn’t it odd?”

And they all agreed it was very odd, indeed,
to blow about the sky like a brainless seed.
“Something’s really gone awry when older clouds oversimplify,
when they say that it’s just another day.

It’s imperative we be somewhat more truly demonstrative
in becoming provocative.
Our parents neglect God, it’s true–all their world is askew.

They go about bickering and scheme of possessing things
as though they own us, too, and own all that we do.
Yet they can’t understand
just how foolish it is to build a house on sinking sand.

And when we cry
they say, ‘Oh my!
You’ll grow out of it soon
and start singing a grown-up tune.’”

So the clouds made a vow,
since the grown-ups had lost God, somehow.
They would pick something out that would keep them aware,
that they could take with them anywhere (like a lock of hair, or a pear).

Not an animal, or too big.
So the little ones looked around and up and down and in and out
and came up with a list:

They had a feather, erasers and string,
pen knives, and pencils, and pieces of things
that they found in their pockets to spare
(and which they began to compare).

The shiniest object, when looking them over, the thimble was brightest
and so they decided the thimble was rightest
for taking along and for knowing God was staying long and in their every day.

They knew where to find
their peace of mind
playing a game of tag or ‘fame’
they simply had to call out the thimble’s name.

Then, one day, the smallest
cloud took a big fall and
dropped the thimble from her hand.
And God turned to sand.

Just then, a wise old woman cloud happened along,
and she asked the little cloud, “What’s wrong?”
And the little cloud replied, “God’s gone.”

But the older cloud knew right away,
so she said to the little one, “Here’s your thimble. I found it today.”

Peace love and ATOM jazz

112909

This week my father told me he thinks I’m an “a-theocrat” rather than an atheist. I do believe in an essential life force that is what Tolle called Source. What I can’t tolerate is bureaucrats/theocrats trying to get between me and my relationship with the cosmos.

*Lord’s-Jester*

This week I picked up a perfume we made when I was in Florida; I was calling it Euros, but I think I’ll end up calling it Cuir du Farceur (The Jester’s Leather). To me the first iteration smells leather like, but it can smell more so, somehow. The salient notes, out of 15, are pine needle, orris-violet, frangipani, and jonquil. I toyed with the recipe a bit, and plan to re-make it with my assistant next week, with a total of 18 notes. Tobacco, cedar, star anise, and black pepper might turn it into something more like what I’m looking for. Old leather does strike me as basically dull with just a hint of sharpness. Leather scents are quite common in perfume, especially men’s.

It finally really struck me how easy it is to make the different perfume strengths, eau de cologne, eau de toilette, eau de parfum (EdC, EdT, EdP), and parfum. I made an EdC once with 140-proof alcohol, but it doesn’t really work (the alcohol isn’t strong enough to dissolve some aromatics). From now on I will make EdC and EdT with 180-proof alcohol, and EdP and parfums with 190-proof. Once you have the right alcohol (to make 180 from 190 is easy), all you need is the total weight of aromatics; then you can calculate exactly how many grams of alcohol to add to make a given strength. I take it this is not the way most perfumers do things.

To this end, I got a nice digital scale which can weigh up to 1200 grams; the digital scale I have now is 100 grams max. It’s accurate to .005 grams, whereas this new one is only accurate to .1 gram, so the old one is for aromatics and the new one just for alcohol. In this way I can be ultra precise, as I like to be with most things (poetry not so much Precision has no place in poetry). Here are the sizes of containers I will be using (last week I wrote about it in ounces which makes no sense at all): liquids in 5ml open-top bottles and 10ml bottles with three kinds of tops (open, atomizer, roll-on), and solids in 7.5ml tins and 20ml and 30ml aluminum with white glass jars.

*Poems*

The last of the rancor toward my ex-wife is, I believe, expelled with these “poems.” I apologize in advance.

We Kept On

We are the men who
kept on loving the women
we promised to love forever.
They’ve left us in the dust;
we’re still hopeless
and mystified.
How can one forsake
the oaths of a lifetime,
and the other be stuck
forever in some kind of
a robotic glitch,
always repeating mistakes,
a computer hung up on itself,
unable to proceed,
crashing into eternity,
re-initializing over and over?
We kept on loving because
we didn’t realize there was
any other way.
Like the streets we walked on
once that went on straight,
who turn once to look for us
before jumping, gasping,
we keep on,
one foot in front of the other,
honest to a fault,
dreaming our would-be world,
always longing for the way
it used to be.
We stamp our feet and
refuse to accept that
the way it was won’t come again.
We keep on straight for
the sake of the few who love us,
for the hope of what could be,
and because we realize
we never have been hopeless in truth.
_____

Always the Last to Know

I understand now.
I can’t relate but
at least I understand.
When I tell the story
of how I proposed
to you, on stage
in a skit at
an improv comedy
show, most people are
amazed and congratulate
me on a great idea.
I’ve never had
the nerve to mention
how you were not happy
at all in the days
to follow. Angry.
I had no idea why
but I finally figured
it out; and I realized
why your father took me
to task afterwards:
by making my proposal
on stage in front of
a hundred people,
I had effectively
removed your choice
in the matter.
You couldn’t then say,
“Oh, thanks. That was
sweet. But I have
no intention of staying
married to a cripple.”
You couldn’t have said
that; you knew it,
your father knew it.
Always the last to know.
_____

The Oil Company

After my ex abandoned me,
with half a friend and
no family for 2000 miles,
I didn’t decide to move
back home, as any sane person
would have. I stuck it out,
just to show her I could
make it without her.
Though I had arranged for
every single aspect of
our lives, I was so hard
pressed intellectually
and emotionally, still
recovering from a terrible
diagnosis and now from
desertion, I was simply
overwhelmed with all
the things I had to take
apart–she left it all
to me of course.
I must say I did
a damn good job,
but I failed at one thing.
When we moved in,
I was told I had to
set up an account for oil
(heated by an oil furnace).
Naturally, I assumed that
upon my moving out,
the property management
company would take the oil
account back to their name.
What a grievous error.
About five months later,
I got a bill from
the oil company
for the oil burned
all during a northern winter.
I called the oil company
saying there must be some
mistake; how could I be
billed for oil burned
in a house I wasn’t
living in?
Nothing to be done they said;
the bill was on me.
I called the property
management company,
expecting they would be
apologetic and fix things;
they were nothing short of
indignant, insisting I
should have called to cancel
my account. They would do
nothing. In the end,
it was $700 I lost
senselessly,
in much the same way
I did my ex-wife.

*Quotations*

I believe in the unsubmissive, the unfaltering, the unassailable, the irresistible, the unbelievable–in other words, in an art of life.
–Margaret Anderson

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
–Thornton Wilder

One’s own self is well hidden from one’s own self; of all mines of treasure, one’s own is the last to be dug up.
–Nietzsche

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Unless we place our religion and our treasure in the same thing, religion will always be sacrificed.
–Epictetus

God, as Truth, has been for me a treasure beyond price. May He be so to every one of us.
–Gandhi

It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
–Joseph Campbell

Though sages may pour out their wisdom’s treasure, there is no sterner moralist than pleasure.
–Lord Byron

My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light.
–Jung

Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.
–Chinese proverb

Peace love and ATOM jazz

112209

This week I went with two old friends to a buddy’s jazz club in Brooklyn, Puppet’s (Puppet’s). Had a blast and heard the Alex Blake Quartet. Alex Blake is a stellar double-bass player, and our friend Jaime played a mean trap set. Alto-sax player really shined. An excellent evening out.

*Lord’s-Jester*

Last week a lady came to my house who has some renown as a perfume writer. She loved my perfumes, in particular the one I call Demeter (used to be called Blondie), based on tobacco, hay, and 14 other notes. [We are in discussions now as to the proper name for it.] She said, with a very large readership, that as soon as I get ecommerce going on my web site, she will write about my stuff. She said Demeter is one of the best tobacco scents she’s ever smelled. !!! Also, I sent some samples to a friend in Australia (Selene and Phoebe); her business partner said my perfume is in the same class as Mandy Aftel. !!!!!
In natural perfume, there could not be a better compliment. Ms Aftel is without a doubt the best in the business, and founder of the Natural Perfumers Guild.

This week my assistant and I remade Demeter, and also Heracles. With Demeter, my goal was to brighten it up a bit, to give it some lift. To accomplish this, I added sandalwood in the base, and neroli, juniper, and templin in the top (templin is distilled from fir cones). We’ll see; I may go back to the first or second recipe. With Heracles, my goal was to tone down both the black-currant bud and the boronia, which were way too strong in the first iteration (which I called Down Under). Again, here, I took the total weight of the aromatics and calculated how much alcohol to add to make a light parfum. First whiff makes me think the black currant is still too strong. Time will tell.

I am simply overjoyed that I now have an ounce of orris-root/violet-leaf co-distillation; the only company I know who sells it has been out of stock for months. I can work magic with orris-violet, especially when combined with the orris dilution I now also have. A Facebook update: ‘I am beyond excited that a rare co-distillation is back in stock at Floracopeia. It’s like my life was on hold while they were out of stock. Magic has returned!’ And also: ‘I’ve discovered I have a sense of a certain completeness, knowing I have all the aromatics I need to make great natural perfume. I want for nothing if I can rest assured that task is feasible.’ I might even be able to get some more boronia soon.

Also this week I did more work on Lord’s Jester Inc. I got a corporate bank account, enlisted the services of an accounting firm, finalized packaging, etc. I will offer liquid perfumes in two sizes, .17oz (almost .2oz) and .4oz, and solid perfumes in three sizes, .25oz tins (cool retro tins that snap shut and are highly portable), .68oz and 1oz jars (great aluminum jars lined with retro white glass). The small perfume bottles have very small openings, small enough that you can turn the bottle over to put some on you finger, or put some drop by drop onto a handkerchief. [By the way, samples of handkerchiefs embroidered with the company name are on their way to me from India.] For the larger bottles, I’ve now got screw caps, spray tops, and roll-on tops; combined with a handkerchief, this will offer the user multiple options for application.

*Chi*

I want to understand more fully what Tolle is talking about in the following passage. I get it in theory, but how about practical terms? From Eckhart Tolle:

“The Unmanifested is the source of chi. Chi is the inner energy field of your body. It is the bridge between the outer you and the Source. It lies halfway between the manifested, the world of form, and the Unmanifested. Chi can be likened to a river or an energy stream. If you take the focus of your consciousness deeply into the inner body, you are tracing the course of this river back to its Source. Chi is movement; the Unmanifested is stillness. When you reach a point of absolute stillness, which is nevertheless vibrant with life, you have gone beyond the inner body and beyond chi to the source itself: the Unmanifested. Chi is the link between the Unmanifested and the physical universe.”

*Morals*

I am what some call a “moral atheist.” It perturbs me that the word ‘atheist’ must be qualified. Do people really imagine there are amoral atheists? In my experience, there are some apathetic atheists; they aren’t amoral so much as they just don’t give a crap, about moral questions, about the existence of god, about developing a code of conduct. Most of us are deeply moral, more so than your average theist, I must assert, because we had to develop our sets of ethics on our own. Instead of having it handed to us in a book, we’ve struggled over many years to make our own standards of conduct. I myself have no trouble with folks who do get their ethics from a book, whether it’s the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita, or the writings of Buddhist monks. What I do have trouble with is folks assuming I have no morals simply because I’m not a theist.

What is theism? The belief that there is a deity of some kind who gives rise to the universe. I do not believe that; my beliefs are most closely reflected in Taoism. In this statement I mean to bring up what is, for me, the best ontological argument for the existence of god, St Anselm’s, which says simply that god is that than which nothing greater can be conceived. For me that greatness is the sum total of all the events happening across the universe in a split second, from the formation of new stars, to the many life cycles of the earth, to the blood coursing through all our veins, to our intimations of divinity, to our deathless dreams; all of it at once is the cosmos, which is that than which I can conceive of nothing greater. The cosmos is my god.

*Asian-Ladies*

In my life, I’ve gone out with two Asian women. The first was a Chinese-Japanese lady in Taiwan; the second was a Cambodian woman in Seattle. I mention them just because my relationships with them were very different from all the others. With the lady in Taiwan, who called herself Ms Liang, our time together was riddled with dishonesty and subterfuge on her part. Every word the woman ever told me was a lie. I’ve no idea what her real name was, how old she was, what she did (other than burn through her parents’ money), whether or not her father was in the Taiwanese military as she claimed, or if in fact she was married, an idea she denied completely.

Eventually it came down to this: a man claiming to be her husband confronted me violently in public and told me to leave Taipei if I valued my life (in Chinese, which I was only just beginning to speak). One of the first things other foreigners had told me after I arrived on the island was that a foreigner’s hand must never touch a Chinese person in anger, in public anyway; to engage in such behavior would be to run amok–every man in Taiwan was required to do two years military service, so the streets are basically lined with trained assassins. When confronted on the crowded street, I had no choice but to run for my life.

With the Cambodian lady in Seattle, things were much tamer but still a little odd. I had thought of her as the most beautiful girl at Seattle Central Community College for a year and a half; one day in my new anatomy class I found her giving me clear signals that romantic overtures would be welcome. I asked her out that day, but it took a couple of weeks of convincing before she agreed. It turned out she was very traditional and couldn’t easily accept premarital sex; it didn’t take long for her to give in, but I did have to say I was open to the idea of marrying her, which at the time I was. We tried to make it work after I moved to Bellingham to finish college but we failed.

While I was still in Seattle, I did have ample opportunity to witness Cambodian-American culture. What I can say is that if you want to get an idea what it’s like, see Eastwood’s recent classic Gran Torino; the nature of the cultures of immigrants from south Asia is captured with such aplomb, it’s a miracle. In my Seattle girlfriend’s case, her parents both refused to speak English, her brother was a gang banger (South Seattle is one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the country), and the whole family was addicted to gambling. All Nikki ever wanted to do was hit the casino, which eventually was our undoing. Gambling addicts but ultra conservative; go figure.

*Quotations*

We are the living links in a life force that moves and plays around and through us, binding the deepest soils with the farthest stars.
–Alan Chadwick
[Mr Chadwick's work on intensive gardening led directly to the development of Biointensive methods, as practiced by John Jeavons and Ecology Action.]

If you can’t create physical life, you find a life force. If that’s in music, that’s in music. I started to find this deep, primitive rhythm, and I started to move to it. And I held hands with sorrow, and I danced with her, and we giggled a bit.
–Tori Amos
[It's all about giggling a bit.]

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
–Martha Graham
[Eloquent proof.]

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.
–Yoda
[My favorite wise man.]

Duct tape is like the Force: it has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
–Carl Zwanzig
[I am never without a roll.]

One day seven years ago I found myself saying to myself: I can’t live where I want to, I can’t go where I want to go, I can’t do what I want to, I can’t even say what I want to. I decided I was a very stupid fool not to at least paint as I wanted to.
–Georgia O’Keefe
[Insert "perfume" and "write" instead of "paint" for me.]

Over the years I have developed a distaste for the spectacle of joie de vivre, the knack of knowing how to live. Not that I disapprove of all hearty enjoyment of life. A flushed sense of happiness can overtake a person anywhere, and one is no more to blame for it than the Asiatic flu or a sudden benevolent change in the weather (which is often joy’s immediate cause). No, what rankles me is the stylization of this private condition into a bullying social ritual.
–Philip Lopate
[One should read my piece Some People Always Smile]

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
–Rumi
[I'm slowly learning the importance of this wisdom.]

I don’t have a career; I have a typewriter.
–Don Delillo
[I live more fully than I would otherwise because of my keyboard.]

A writer is committed to trying to make sense of life. It’s a search. So there is that commitment first of all: the commitment to the honesty and determination to go as deeply into things as possible, and to dredge up what little bit of truth you with your talent can then express.
–Nadine Gordimer
[With natural perfume, I give myself over to beauty; with words, over to truth.]

Peace love and ATOM jazz

111509

This week my old friend Adam got us tickets see a Letterman taping. We’ve been watching Letterman together for some 25 years–he only started 28 years ago. The show live is a total trip. He runs a very tight ship around the studio. Two things I noticed: 1) Paul has started singing a lot and he’s a terrible singer, and 2) while Dave does interact with the audience for a few seconds, it’s only to gather fodder for the bit he does (I realized it’s every single show) about something an audience member said; the rest of the show at commercial breaks he has several rows of people between him and the audience–zero interaction. I always imagined he talked to the audience for a few minutes; 20-30 seconds is all he needs. Way cool of my buddy to get some tickets lined up. Had a blast.

*Status*

Facebook status update, 11.13.09:

The most amazing thing happened yesterday, my 40th birthday: most of my life has been spent continually searching for romantic love (cut me some slack–I am Scorpio), but I realized yesterday I don’t in fact need it, or even want it, if I’m to accomplish what I’ve set out to between now and my dying day. I am finally free.

*Poem*

Ariell

Not long after my ex walked out
I met a young woman; she was 19
and I was 32. She was on the road
and I met her at a poetry reading.
That very night I invited her
to stay at my house; I remember
telling her that what I sorely
missed was simply company, was
knowing my house was not
interminably empty, was the simple
kindness we all take for granted.
One night I took her out to
dinner at a romantic Italian place.
What strikes me most when I
think back on that time is
the blind hope I had that I’ve
not had again. What strikes me
is that my reaction to being
deserted was to be thankful
and hopeful. But what I also
remember with no small amount
of discomfort is that we,
that I, walked most of the way
to the restaurant, without
even thinking about it.
I was hopeful once after being
abandoned but now I can’t walk
to romantic restaurants so
where does that leave me?

*Politics*

By Josh Hammond

“There is a rising chorus of impatient progressive bloggers, some on these pages, calling Obama a failure and a do-nothing president only nine months into his first of four years as president. SNL’s “do-nothing skit” on Obama may well have empowered some on our side to start playing on the fringes of the Limbaugh sandbox. While the charges and name-calling are not as vicious as the Limbaugh Lemmings, it has started nonetheless. So what has our newly-minted asshole president been doing for nine months?

“Let’s start with what he has not done. He has not found a cure for cancer, reversed climate change, ended poverty, brought peace to the Middle East, ended all wars, created enough new jobs, or created a single-payer healthcare system. These are big ticket items that no president will ever accomplish, so it is a little disingenuous to suggest a standard for Obama that does not apply to all past presidents or to future presidents. As Princeton economics professor Alan Blinder says in assessing what Obama has accomplished so far, “If he seems to have achieved little, it’s partly because he set out to do too much.” To which I would add, and we created an unrealistic agenda for what we wanted him to accomplish.

“Let’s continue with what he has done. First and foremost, none other than the Wall Street Journal, in an assessment titled, “Democrats Quiet Changes Pile Up”, says he has accomplished more in nine months than George Bush did in his first nine months. Let’s be specific:

“1. Significantly, he buried the Imperial Presidency of George Bush and restored the Constitutional balance of government by respecting the equal standing of the legislative branch of government. As a former constitutional law professor, this is a major matter of change of tone and style that he promised during the campaign, and he has delivered. (Not pretty or necessarily effective given the Reid-less leadership in the Senate, but we are a constitutional democracy.)

“2. Passed and signed the stimulus package, the biggest piece of legislation–ever–in blinding speed, thus being able to start to stabilize the economy, with GDP now projected to grow at the rate of 3 percent by the end of the year. Check the comeback of your 401K since Obama has taken over.

“3. Stabilized the top 20 banks without federalizing them.

“4. Reduced the rate of foreclosures inherited from the Bush administration.

“5. Signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that makes it easier to sue for wage discrimination, a dramatic reversal of the bill’s fortunes under Bush.

“6. Granted regulatory power to the FDA to control tobacco products, another dramatic reversal of the Bush years that industry has lobbied hard to prevent.

“7. Signed the Matthew Shepard Hate Act that expanded federal hate crime protection to categories of sexual orientation and gender, to the major consternation of the Religious Right.

“8. Killed the F-22 fighter jet program, a popular program with Congress, saving billions of dollars.

“9. With a stroke of a pen, enacted, by executive order, (see correction below in comments, it was a bill signing) the largest conservation measure in 15 years, spanning the Bush and Clinton records.

“10. Implement an electronic medical record system before any healthcare legislation was introduced. This new technology will be singularly responsible for saving lives and reducing the high administrative costs of healthcare, a key element of reform.

“11. Extended a $2500 tax credit to 5 million families to help with college tuition.

“12. Cooperated with Japan in bringing a $5 billion stabilization package for Pakistan.

“13. Engaged the Muslim world in a dialogue, beginning with his unprecedented speech in Cairo, followed by an interview with Al Arabiya, and face-to-face discussions with Iran, a total reversal of the Bush years of Muslim baiting and hate.

“14. Dramatically reversed the reputation of the United States around the world, with now most nations looking favorably on the US, and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize as one consequence.

“15. Agreed to plan for bringing the troops home from Iraq, at a slower pace than what he promised, but based on knowledge that commanders-in-chief, not candidates, have.

“16. Brought the White House online, doing for the White House what he had done for political campaigning. There are now online Q&A’s with the administration, and a White House blog.

“17. Released the names of all visitors to the White House, a total reversal of the secret Bush years.

“18. Told Mexico that the US is responsible for some of their drug problems, a no small, but truthful admission.

“19. Restored the rights of states to regulate the medical use of marijuana without fear of federal law enforcement intrusion.

“20. Banned the use of torture, and he has begun a complete review of the torture policies under Bush.

“21. Appointed the first Latina to the Supremes: Imagine what would have happened to the Supreme Court under four more years of radical Republicans. Obama has thus averted a long-term dramatic swing to the extreme right on the court, and appointed a progressive to keep matters in check.

“In summary, and to those on these pages and elsewhere who see things differently, I say this feels a little like Waiting for Godot. Let’s recall one thing that Samuel Beckett said in the mischievous play: “The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh. Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. Let us not speak well of it either. Let us not speak of it at all. It is true the population has increased.”"

*Letter/poem*

Dear Ariell

I love you too. You must know that you touched me deeply, while I knew you. I often pray for you, in my own way, specifically I pray that somehow, out from under the misery of divorce and disease, I managed to set you on some kind of a right path. I know that whatever path you have followed and will continue to follow in fact has little to do with me. I was destroyed, in total, by abandonment and I’ve only just started to emerge–to re-collect myself again from ashes. I had no capacity to feel anything when I knew you, and for that I am interminably sorry. But I have risen from ashes many times before. It’s frightening to reveal just how many layers I’m made of. My life has been peeling away the layers, and one day I’m sure to end up a single hulking mass of Central Nervous System.

You sang Summertime Rolls to me the first night we met. No one I’ve ever known has given as much to me as you did Ariell, no strings attached, free, loving. While I always felt I deserved that in some way, I have never gotten myself to feeling generally deserving of anything even remotely like that kind of unconditional love. The months and years after I met you were the darkest in my history. Somehow I made it back to where I belong. I’m alive again. I can feel every moment. I’d like to say I would treat you with the love you deserve now, but I can’t be sure I would. All I’ve known, the world over, has been straining just to stay alive. The MS has gotten significantly worse over the past few years; I’m still straining, and I will be indefinitely. I don’t think a person who struggles to get through each day could ever really love. I’ve given up the search.

I need to become the greatest natural perfumer the modern world has yet known. I need to become a brilliant novelist and playwright. These are my two objectives with the time I have left. It’s going to be a party. If love fits in somewhere, great; if not, so be it. Five years ago, I never would have said that. Being home again and being 40 have transformed me. I do love you and care about you a great deal. I trust now that everything works out for the best. We will see each other again–how could you never come to New York? This is the epicenter of everything great in the universe. It’s, “Show us what you got or shut the hell up.” Best of the best around every corner. Letterman, the UN, Broadway, poets, music, etc etc.

Hope to see you again some day. My thoughts and heart are with you. Love, Adam

*Quotations*

Whether it’s self-medicating, anger or violence, these are the consequences of war, and you have to think about all the people affected by soldiers coming home, the parents, spouses, children, brothers, sisters, aunts and cousins.
–Cynthia Thomas

One finds, especially by the time one reaches one’s fifties, that there are a limited number of types of people in the world, and you went to high school with every single one of them. You can visit the Eskimos, you can visit the Bushmen in the Kalahari, you can go to Israel, you can go to Egypt, but everybody you meet is going to be somebody you went to high school with.
–PJ O’Rourke
[I can't tell you how true this is. In China, I often remembered people by who they reminded me of from high school. The danger is forgetting that they are _not actually_ like those people.]

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

To be great is to be misunderstood.
–Mary Ann Evans Cross

No really great man ever thought himself so.
–William Hazlitt

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.
–GK Chesterton

There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.
–William F Halsey

A man can be short and dumpy and getting bald but if he has fire, women will like him.
–Mae West

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?
–Nietzsche

The young man who has not wept is a savage and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.
–George Santayana

Peace love and ATOM jazz

110809

Tonight I’m having a dinner party for my 40th birthday. I’m a little distracted and preoccupied, so this installment will be brief.

*Peace*

This week a Facebook friend emailed me about my saying I’m trapped but I’m at peace. I am definitely trapped–my inability to walk or do most anything for myself is _not a choice_, therefore it follows that I am trapped. But this lady seemed to think that I couldn’t feel simultaneously trapped and at peace. But I can and do. Why am I at peace? Because I do not fight anymore, my body, my condition, my person. I am not waging war on MS; I am waging peace, so with each new symptom that comes up, I learn what I have to do to accommodate it. I don’t fight it as many do–and I am better off by miles because of it. Please, please don’t ask me to do things I know I can’t do safely–I am at peace because I don’t struggle with myself. That certainly doesn’t mean I’m happy all the time, quite the opposite, but by not waging a war I could never win, I am at peace.

Think about how incontrovertible this is:

Peace will only come by not fighting.

How can you have peace if you’re fighting? You can’t. And believe me, it’s true what they say: to wage peace takes a great deal more courage, strength, and sheer gumption than it will ever take simply to wage war.

*Symptoms*

An odd heading. But I’ve realized that my needing to spread myself ultra-thin is not just indicative of who I am; it’s all symptomatic of the MS as well. I cannot do one thing. I always bring at least four areas to whatever it is I’m working on. I cannot imagine living any other way. Here’s a short list of the subjects I know a good deal about:

engineering, alternative fuels, electric and hybrid cars, sustainable agriculture, mini farming, organic gardening, basic construction, alternative homes, renewable energy installation and maintenance, physics, calculus, moral philosophy, environmental science, geography, transportation systems planning, land-use law, civic planning, film production, photography, graphic design, poetry, spoken word, playwriting, natural perfume, jazz music (as a player and aficionado, and especially contemporary jazz), being a radio DJ, being a producer of shows and concerts, Mandarin Chinese (fluent), Chinese culture, Nepali language and culture, Spanish, French, Latin, being an ESL teacher, etc.

It’s a tad frightening to think of all that stuff in my head! And more! None of these is a passing fancy. I’ve spent most of my life devoted to these subjects, and there’s no sign of my interest letting up any time soon.

*Poetry*

Here is another piece which helped to determine my writing identity. Written in 1943, it ushered in the office life of modern America:

Dolor
Teddy Roethke

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight,
All the misery of manila folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dripping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate gray standard faces.

*Maine*

When I left New York in 1992, I moved to family land in Maine with a new girlfriend. The only structure on the land at the time was the old barn; the fact this woman came with me, to live in a barn, having only known me a few weeks is a miracle. I guess I used to have a certain charm, a charm which has long since left me completely, judging by the many women who have said, “No thanks,” over the past 10 years. We had a hell of a time up there, alone in the woods, putting up a cabin, making love everywhere. God it feels good to remember! I have known love and lust, and if they never return, I made the most of them while I could. Here’s an old letter poem I wrote to Nicole:

Dear Nicole

I picked up one of my oldest books the other day
and I found a note from you in the back saying,
“I hope when you find this note one day
that you are thinking of me fondly.”
In an instant I remembered what it was like
to be just beginning, and so, unstoppable.
When we walked together into cafes and shops
and dance halls, folks used to turn and look.
I always felt like we carried The Great Middle Path
with us wherever we went. We were about
to discover, at any moment, every drop
of what had gone missing from all our lives.
We ate only the things that would help us
live forever. And I was straight for months,
months at a time. I remember what it was like
to be straight once, lucid, mindful. I remember
what it was like to not care about
not having enough hours in the day
to thoroughly live. But I do care now;
I am desperately rushed and cannot spare
a minute because too much time has already
been spent in the clouds. I used to think
I had extra senses, was just waiting to take my place,
finally, beside the North Star and the symbol
of the next epoch. But, you know what?
I haven’t remembered a single one of my dreams
in years. I’m fairly certain now it’s all in
black and white, though. I sleep and
I eat in black and white, and I can see the edges
of the universe from where I stand, no more
mysteries. I still carry that one December
in my head when you finally stopped me
in the aisle. We used to pass each other
almost every afternoon, and then, one day, that
was it, one simple, “Hey. What’s up?” was
all it took. We dropped everything a few weeks
later, piled what we couldn’t let go of into that
station wagon we borrowed, fled the city without
asking questions, drove slowly north into the last
winter storm. The snow was thick, and we pulled over
at one point for lack of clear vision. I felt
like Noah with the howling outside,
ice instead of rain, books and changes on the inside
instead of ducks and cattle. We were
thrown together. We were not ready. We were
like two young strangers must have been
in the old country, thrown together one day,
aiming for a hillside they could plant on.
We were strangers thrown together.
We were not ready. Most of all,
I remember our designs and visions. I remember
digging holes for posts to hold our floor, milking
enough stones out of the meadow to build
a whole new world. I remember sleeping
on a single mattress inside the little cabin
we put up. Being tightly knit like that,
but still alone together, just wasn’t enough,
was it? We were still ignoring some deep thirst,
weren’t we, Nic, the sort of thirst a person
just can’t shake these days? I laid down next to you,
listened to you breathe, listened to the wind
in the trees, and I thirsted. Thirsted for some answers,
longed for some old roads and some
new ways of living without having
to die so fast. Have you found a way to quench
your thirst? Have you found any water clean enough
to drink yet? I guess I’m writing mostly to tell you
I’m working on a book. Look for it. It will be
real and even larger than life. I am in it, of course,
and my part is that of a deliverer. No longer
like Noah, less like a simple vehicle,
now even more like a deliverer, like Moses. I am,
in fact, most like the sea that Moses parted,
divided down the middle, both sides
heaving and waiting to converge again.
There will be just enough time for
public flight through me back to the old country.
When we reach what used to shallow on the other side
of the sea bed, it will really be deep. Beyond
the banks of the sea, once the waters behind us
have met again, there will not be paths.
We will walk straight out into the expanses
we come upon nevertheless, will tangle ourselves
in the undergrowth. We will sit down peacefully
at the end of the day, and not go anywhere
again, and live forever at last.
If you can’t quite find the people and the places
you were looking for way back when, then
look for this book I’m promising you, and
come along for the ride. It will really be fine,
I’m sure. Until then, be sure to quench
your thirst as if you mean it, and be sure to live
as if your kids will never die.
All my love, Adam

God how convoluted! I was just at the beginning, of a world of learning, of immersing myself in the globe, of learning how to love. It brings me to tears to read this and remember the incurable idealist and romantic I used to be. I ask myself, “Where did it all go wrong?” I can really only think of one answer: the west coast. Good riddance.

*Quotations*

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
–Oscar Wilde

Perfume is a veil that reveals the soul.
Perfume is the fanfare of our individuality sounding differently to everyone who listens.
Perfume is a signpost to our true selves–a different journey for the brave to travel.
Perfume is the weather of our inner world bringing life to a personal landscape.
–Christopher Brosius

Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
–GB Shaw

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.
–Thomas Gray

A revolutionary poem reminds you where and when and how you are living and might live; it is a wick of desire.
–Adrienne Rich

When we are born, we’re born with a matchbook. The question is: how do we use it? Burn, baby, burn, brightly. You’ve got so much to give.
–Sonya Kitchell

The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn.
–David Russell

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.
–Kenji Miyazawa

Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail.
–Alfred Whitney Griswold

English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.
–Malcolm Bradbury

Peace love and ATOM jazz

110109

I would like to call your attention to a great word: heuristic (hyoo’ristik). The only person I’ve ever seen use this word with regularity is Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen in his seminal book, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, a book which, despite the efforts by many to disparage it, still reigns supreme and unarguable in this area. Heuristic, adjective: enabling a person to discover or learn something for themselves. GR always used it to talk about “A ha!” realizations. When a light bulb goes off and suddenly you understand a whole chain of events, that realization is heuristic.

*Herrings*

Here is reprinted one of five red herrings I mentioned last week. It bears repetition because it is so counter-intuitive, and so many people have it all wrong in their minds:

This one is obviously quite important to me now that I’m living where I belong, in the big city. When I left I had this foolish idea that one’s ecological footprint (I didn’t have a name for it then; my travels and studies have served me well) is smaller in the country than in the city. Total crap! Everything about cities makes it so that its denizens have a very small footprint compared to most: mass transit, many people living together in large buildings, being able to walk everywhere, etc. It’s not even a close contest. Cities will always win, hands down, even if you only consider one thing: in cities the vast majority of people rarely, if ever, use a car. One of my idols, David Korten, reformed World-Bank economist, took note of this non-intuitive fact in his great book When Corporations Rule the World; I mention this agreement just by way of pointing out _I am not crazy_.

*Perfume*

Lord’s Jester is officially an S Corporation in New York. Now comes the beginning of a life of bookkeeping.

The perfume we made a while back, Daphne, with 22 notes, a chypre, is working quite well. To my nose, the tonka is still a tad strong, but it’s definitely a working recipe. A little more tweaking is needed. Several people have asked me over the years, so I feel I need to emphasize this fact: all of my perfume recipes are totally original to me. They’re not based on, similar to, or inspired by anyone else’s recipes. I have arrived at my recipes after years of hard work, of trying, failing, and learning. It irks me when someone asks, “Where do the recipes come from?” What! You actually think I would ever be happy using someone else’s work? Please do not insult me so.

A recent entry on Lord’s Jester blog, written by Jean Baptiste, my stand-in and ghost writer:

Mr Gottschalk and I have agreed to share writing duties for this journal (or “blog” or whatever you people call it). I’ve heard him call me his “ghost writer,” which, I must say, I really don’t take kindly to; must you really rub it in, sir? In any event, I’ve agreed to lend my expertise to his new commercial enterprise because he and his group are dedicated to the art of perfumery as it was practiced in days long gone, with truly precious, unadulterated botanical ingredients (some animal ingredients too, of the same high caliber; it is not possible to make a great perfume without a touch of the animalic). Gottschalk and his people have a deep understanding of the alchemical nature of the art, and they understand that masters of perfumery often add ingredients which, in and of themselves, are objectionable; a master knows how to balance and tame all the disparate elements of a perfume. The result must always be greater than just the sum of its parts.

This bunch, I know, is devoted to the art in its original form, with nothing the earth itself cannot provide, no chemicals, no fakery. They are so dedicated because they feel, justly, wronged by purveyors of synthetic perfume who do everything they can to keep the truth from the public: starting about 90 years ago, all perfume, ALL OF IT!, switched from real essences and extracts to chemicals made in a laboratory. They draw pictures, pyramids, supposedly depicting the notes in perfumes, but it’s all cheap synthetic garbage, and many of the notes they mention are not in fact found anywhere in the real world. Watermelon? No such thing. Cucumber? We’ve been trying for hundreds and hundreds of years and we still cannot create cucumber essential oil. Amber? Fossilized amber has no smell; vanilla, labdanum, and benzoin combine to make a smell we think of as amber.

I want to be clear about something: I am not advising Lord’s Jester because I think their perfumer has a great nose; in fact I think Gottschalk has a rather unrefined olfactory sense. The man can’t even tell the difference between Atlas cedar and Virginia cedar! Or Tasmanian compared to Australian boronia? The subtleties are completely lost on this one. No, I’ve decided to help him because despite this failing, and much to my amazement, he has already produced some world-class natural perfumes. And he just won’t quit (despite my best counsel). If you simply stay at something long enough, remain confident that you will prevail, stick to your guns as far as what allowed and what’s not, well, eventually the greatness will come. Once I teach them a bit more of what I know, I’m certain Lord’s Jester will offer perfumes even I would say are great. And I’m a tough individual to please!

*Poetry*

Another piece which has been at the front of my mind with every poem I’ve written follows. Note that starting with the line, “An old man, he lay down,” the poem alternates between two threads, one about the Buddha, one about the sunrise. The remarkable thing is that one can read it beginning to end and be moved, without ever being aware of the two threads; it’s miraculous the way the two threads reflect and reinforce each other. Poetic virtuosity. From her book House of Light (1990):

The Buddha’s Last Instruction
Mary Oliver

“Make of yourself a light,”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal–a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he had thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire–
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

*Poem*

What’s in a Crush

It’s come to my attention
that numerous women
had crushes on me
in high school.
Almost universally
they say, “Oh, you looked
so confident and sure of
yourself I couldn’t bring
myself to say Hello.”
Oh my, ladies,
if you only knew how shy
I was then, and still am,
you almost certainly
would’ve seen how openly
any romantic overtures
would have been received.
Instead, there was only
one woman I had the courage
to talk to all through
high school.
What followed was a grand
affair, but I’ve remained
so shy I’m almost paralyzed.
In combination with being
unable to do for myself at all,
it makes for a 40-year-old
divorcée who is stuck
at home all day
lamenting all the pretty
women who might’ve
been his, all the choices
he could’ve made but didn’t,
remembering the terrible
choice he did make for
a wife. If I had known,
if my young, awkward self
could’ve seen women
looking at me with desire,
if I had been aware that
I wasn’t just a pudgy kid
who didn’t fit in anywhere,
my life would certainly
have turned out better.
But I am still lost.
I am still without love.
I am lamenting
all the wrong choices.

*Slam*

My first exposure to slam poetry was at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the East Village in the late ’80s or early ’90s. Back then I was a wannabe; I can’t even stand to be in the same room with my “poetry” from when I first started. I found myself in Seattle in 1994 (arrived Thanksgiving Day 1993) and found there was a slam at a place called the Emerald Diner, hosted by Dave Meinert and another fellow with a patch over his eye whose name I can’t remember. The poets at the Emerald Diner would be my people for the next couple of years, until I moved to Bellingham to finish college. They were a motley crew, and I say that with all the love in my heart. Poets are always “just raunchy enough, just Tin-Pan Alley enough” (as Joe Henry says) to hold my attention. I met up with other groups of poets, Bellingham and Portland, and they were generally excellent to me (with a couple of notable, individual exceptions).

At the old Seattle Slam, Meinert started every show saying, “Remember: the best poet always loses.” And that was the point of slam in its original incarnations: it was meant to be a ploy to get folks actually to show up for poetry performances; the idea was that there would be a bunch of crap, but then people would be exposed to good stuff too. There were always featured readers and special guests, who brought the good stuff. Getting people out of their skins for a bunch of hoopla surrounding a competition is a no-brainer; witness the popularity of competitions of every sort on television. Competition is a “lowest common denominator” which can bring folks out and ultimately together.

When I lived in Bellingham I founded, produced, and hosted the Bellingham Slam for six months. That show was extremely popular, and was an extravaganza which folks came in droves to witness (200 people on Monday nights once a month; in Bellingham? Wow!): an open mic to start things off, then a featured performer of some kind (I was friends with all manner of artists in the Pacific Northwest), then jazz music (a trio featuring my good friend Christopher Woitach, an amazing player; at first we tried to do it as an “open jam,” before the open slam, but the musicians rebelled after the first show I think, and the slot became just a time for really excellent jazz), and an open slam to end the night. I got a bunch of business owners to donate various goods and services, and the proceeds from the door provided cash prizes too.

That was an epic period of my life; I became a mover and a shaker in Bellingham (if you’re thinking, “So what?” you’re right to), and when I was host of that show I finally got up the courage to introduce myself to my ex-wife, whom I’d eyed with envy a half dozen times on campus (if you’re thinking, “A lot of good it did you,” you’re right to). Not long after came the end, a most emphatic one, to my life with slam. Hosting a very popular slam, I thought it would be good for me to go the national slam, which that year was in Austin Texas. I was supposed to stay for five days; I left after two and a half–what I saw there disgusted me. I had assumed that everyone knew “the best poet always lost,” so this would be “the good stuff” that the featured readers had always brought.

I couldn’t have been more wrong! My first day there I discovered that what was, invariably, winning was the low-brow, button-pushing drivel that I so hated, which I thought everyone else despised too. Oh, I was mad. There was supposed to be a three-minute limit to every poem, but I immediately decided that when I got up to the mic I would perform my longest pieces, just as a big “Fuck you!” to the trash I was witnessing. I did so well that even after they’d deducted for the three or four minutes I’d gone over, I still did respectably. Oh, but done, done, DONE!, was I with slam “poetry” for once and for all. I am a spoken-word artist with many fans, but I will not ever touch slam again (just like I will not ever step foot on the west coast again).

*Quotations*

In an age of explosive development in the realm of medical technology, it is unnerving to find that the discoveries of Salk, Sabin, and even Pasteur remain irrelevant to much of humanity.
–Paul Farmer

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.
–Emily Dickinson

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
–Oscar Wilde

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.
–Einstein

In all things it is better to hope than to despair.
–Goethe

Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
–Arundhati Roy

We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
–Obama

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
–Dale Carnegie

Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.
–Don Quixote

To sit patiently with a yearning that has not yet been fulfilled, and to trust that that fulfillment will come is quite possibly one of the most powerful “magic skills” that human beings are capable of. It has been noted by almost every ancient wisdom tradition.
–Elizabeth Gilbert

*Music*

“There’s only one constant
in this whole world
and that’s nothing ever
stays the same.
Some day my life will be over
and no one will remember my name.
That’s all right ’cause
what’s in a name,
and who needs another one
to memorize anyway.
Make no fuss over my grave.
Just plant something pretty
and call it a day.”
–Eilen Jewell

Peace love and ATOM jazz

102509

Lord’s Jester now has its own blog, Lord’s Jester blog. Jean Baptiste and I will share writing duties.
_____

Interesting tid bit: Van Morrisson’s famous song Brown Eyed Girl was originally titled Brown Skinned Girl. The suits in the 60s wouldn’t have it for a minute.

*Perfume*

The liquid version of Selene may well be one of the best perfumes I’ve made yet. It’s robust and tenacious, but powdery and unimposing. It’s salient notes are orris, orris-violet, and clary sage, though it has 16 notes all together. A revamped version of Phoebe, my osmanthus perfume, is almost perfect. The osmanthus is still a little strong, but it’s becoming harder to decipher. Another try or two and she’ll be good to go. Also, this week we made my first eau de cologne; exactly 5% aromatics in 140-proof alcohol. I’ve never made an EdC before; we used the recipe for Ares, which I love but which most everyone says is just too strong. It’s still quite robust but I’m hoping watering it down will make it more approachable.

This week I said to my assistant that I wanted to focus on perfecting recipes I already have, to the exclusion of starting new experiments. Terrible idea! There are hundreds if not thousands of botanical materials commonly used in natural perfume; I’ve had some success so far, but I still have a long way to go. There are far too many combinations I have yet to try; while I have a very good perfume imagination, and oodles of smells catalogued in my brain, there’s still a lot of grunt work to be done. For example, do oppoponax and cognac (from wine lees) really complement each other as well as I imagine? Innumerable experiments along those lines are still needed.

This week there’s been an ongoing discussion on the NP-email list about terminology and natural perfume. Some out there think the whole thing is bunk because even distillation is unnatural. All the processes used to extract the odoriferous principle from plants, distillation, expression, enfleurage, maceration, as far as I’m concerned are perfectly natural. One doesn’t need a lab or lab equipment to do these things; in fact, I think they are most commonly done outside. When you get into altering that odoriferous principle, creating “isolates,” removing acids, removing color, that’s when you get into unnatural processes.

How about organic? As most of you know, I’m all about organic, having studied in depth the dangers of chemical agriculture in college. Believe me, if there were any way to make real, professional perfume with all certified-organic materials, I’d be there. But the artistic imperative to me is to make fantastic perfume with _natural_ materials instead of fragrance chemicals. At the moment, one cannot make a certified-organic professional perfume; there are too many essential ingredients which cannot be found organic. The people out there who don’t understand how complex perfumery is, how much training one needs (even if it’s auto-didacticism), think all you need is to slap a few nice smelling materials together to make perfume. Not!

There is a number of ingredients which I’ve learned over the past four or five years is absolutely essential to fine perfume, ingredients which cannot be found certified organic, things like ambrette, costus, rose, jasmine, and juniper, to name a very few. Those out there who are taking a marketing angle which tells them organic is hot are doing harm to the renaissance of natural perfume. My own conviction is that natural perfume should not be so different from mainstream perfume that it seems like a different animal. When a person combines aromatics with no knowledge of how professional perfume is made, it gives us who are dedicated to the art as it was before 1921 (the year Chanel No. 5 was released, the first perfume based on synthetics) a bad name. People have the mistaken impression they’ve smelled natural perfume before when in fact what they’ve smelled hardly even counts as aromatherapeutic.

The worst part is this: one can make a perfume with fragrance chemicals, synthetics, and still call the perfume organic; this is because fragrance chemicals are not pesticides (though in many cases they are poisonous and could well be used as pesticides). Isn’t that a mind bender? People make perfume with chemicals, then call it organic and vegan. No one stops to wonder if certified-organic perfume can have fragrance chemicals in it or not. It can and does. If you run into perfume which calls itself organic but doesn’t say anything about being natural, turn and run. Perfumery is a complex art which takes years of training to suss out; those who do not jump through hoops learning about it are only distorting reality for those of us who take perfume ultra seriously.

*Poetry*

In the next few installments I will highlight three poems which have deeply influenced my poetry–I mean to say they’ve influenced, one way or another, every word of poetry I’ve ever written: Why I am Not a Painter by Frank O’Hara, The Buddha’s Last Instruction by Mary Oliver, and Dolor by Teddy Roethke. O’Hara was curator for MoMA so he was friends with many great painters; he wrote poetry in his spare time.

Why I am Not a Painter
Frank O’Hara

I am not a painter. I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
“Sit down and have a drink,” he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. “You have sardines in it.”
“Yes, it needed something there.”
“Oh.” I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. “Where’s sardines.”
All that’s left is just
letters. “It was too much,” Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems; I call
it Oranges. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called Sardines.

*Herrings*

These are bright red:

1. This one is obviously quite important to me now that I’m living where I belong, in the big city. When I left I had this foolish idea that one’s ecological footprint (I didn’t have a name for it then; my travels and studies have served me well) is smaller in the country than in the city. Total crap! Everything about cities makes it so that its denizens have a very small footprint compared to most: mass transit, many people living together in large buildings, being able to walk everywhere, etc. It’s not even a close contest. Cities will always win, hands down, even if you only consider one thing: in cities the vast majority of people rarely, if ever, use a car. One of my idols, David Korten, reformed World-Bank economist, took note of this non-intuitive fact in his great book When Corporations Rule the World; I mention this agreement just by way of pointing out _I am not crazy_.

2. Plastic isn’t piling up in landfills–it’s paper. Paper! Paper fills up more than 75% of landfills; if you doubt me, look up the work of an archaeologist named Rathje. Rathje’s work has revolutionized waste disposal. From his work we now know that _nothing_ decays if there’s no air and water involved. When he did his first excavation on a landfill, he chose Fresh Kills which serves New York. All his colleagues thought he was crazy; his mentor said, “You won’t find anything. Everyone knows decay happens in landfills.” Not! Rathje dug all the way to the bottom of the Fresh-Kills pile; way down there, among many other things, he found a newspaper 100% in tact, from the 1890s! He sent it to his mentor. Now plastic in the ocean is a bad thing, and the overuse of disposable plastic bottles is disgusting. Know that manufacturing and recycling paper is at least as toxic as making plastic.

3. My studies in college taught me an awful lot, but one of the most important things is this: huge organic farms are every bit as bad for the environment as huge chemical farms. It’s true that conventional farmers have the highest rates of cancer of all occupations; but as far as the soil, water, wildlife, etc., monstrous organic farms are just as culpable as conventional. To be truly of benefit, organic farms must be small, and must emphasize hand tools whenever possible; one example is that manual approaches to controlling pests instead of “organic” chemicals should be utilized. But everyone who cares about the future and our children must know this: organic foods are absolutely essential to our well being. Most important are organic fatty foods; pesticides concentrate readily in fat, so don’t touch peanuts, or dairy products, or meat, unless it’s certified organic. Soon enough, agribusiness will have to loosen its strangle hold on America; then researchers will surely discover that agricultural chemicals (did you know they first started using them after WWII when the DoD had huge stockpiles left over of chemical weapons; what a horrendous idea to use them on our farms) have a causal relationship with countless diseases, illnesses, and deaths.

4. I hate nuclear. But I have to agree with Dr James Lovelock (author of the seminal Gaia Hypothesis): the only way we’ll have any chance of making it through the next 50 or 100 years is if we adopt nuclear power. If we don’t, the voracious appetites of the developed world, and the developing world whom we’ve just convinced to adopt our lifestyles, will lead to massive energy wars. Sure there is highly toxic waste from nuclear, but there is from all non-renewable sources of energy. We’ll have nuclear fusion soon, and for now the nuclear waste can be buried in the center of the earth. Renewable energy will never make it. This doesn’t detract from the fact that all our lives must one day be renewable; we need something in the meantime. Climate change is from cars and coal-power plants; nuclear is the best interim choice.

5. Solar panels are definitely not the way of the future. It takes far too long for them to recoup the energy it took to make them in the first place. Additionally, it takes high-end labs to make solar panels. We will need low-tech solutions, solutions that anyone anywhere can put into action. The future will be made up of cottage industries in battery production, wind-generator production, electric-motor production, micro-hydro generator production, and straw-bale homes (the energy efficiency of straw-bale structures is second to none). Our futures must be renewable, but solar panels must not make up very much of that future; they’re too inefficient.

*Poem*

Portland,

You are not so kind and warm
as I thought at first.
Now that I am on
the other side of the world
it occurs to me that
it’s quite a miracle
you persevere. How can you
continue all skin deep?
Don’t you sense
that you’ve got no soul?
Suddenly it occurs to me
that you are just like
all the women I found myself
tangled up with out west,
the undeniable appearances
of kindness and altruism
but really selfish to the core,
speaking kindly in public
but utterly disinterested
and cantankerous behind
closed doors,
promising love but failing.
I am happier and happier
with each minute more
that passes away from your
cold grasp. Here’s to
never seeing you again.
None of my love, Adam

*Quotations*

Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience.
–AJ Liebling

It’s hard to argue against cynics–they always sound smarter than optimists because they have so much evidence on their side.
–Molly Ivins

Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.
–David Wolf

The forest is asking to offer its eco-system service to each and every one of us. The potential of the forest is not yet recognized.
–Chief Almir

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean.
But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
–Mother Theresa

Man is a creature whose evolutionary environment has been the open air.
His nerves, muscles, and senses have developed across three million
years in intimate contiguity with natural earth, crude stone, live wood,
wind and rain. Now this creature is suddenly–on the geologic scale,
instantaneously–shifted to an unnatural environment of metal and glass,
plastic and plywood, to which his psychic substrata lack all
compatibility. The wonder is not that we have so much mental instability
but so little. Add to this the weird noises, electrical pleasures,
bizarre colors, synthetic foods, abstract entertainments! We should
congratulate ourselves on our durability.
–Jack Vance

Society does not need more electronic gadgets, microwave-based communication systems, high-tech entertainment devices, faster computers, and fancier software. We need to anoint each other with fragrances that promote emotional openness, quiet the mind, build inner strength, overcome isolation, enhance intimacy, and support truthful communication. We need noble aphrodisiacs of sandalwood, jasmine, and lotus that help men transform pathological lust into passionate love, and help women transform their fear and hatred of men’s violence, aggression, and stupidity into nourishing powerful sensuality. When peaceful cities are blessed with myriad sweet floral scents, when healthy forests are filled with balsamic coniferous perfumes, when farms are enveloped in the earthy aromas of healthy soil and robust crops, when homes are infused with temple essences that bring joy and tranquility, we will understand why the ancients taught that plants were gifts from heaven.
–David Crow

If literature isn’t everything, it’s not worth a single hour of someone’s trouble.
–Sartre

I had sticking power, which is just as important as literary talent. I just got on with the work. And I think there are such things as writing animals. I simply have to write.
–Doris Lessing

The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It’s not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.
–Augusten Burroughs

*Music*

I think this is one of the best mixes I’ve made in some time. Great music on here:

Aromatic Journey #1 10.09

1. Kathleen, David Gray with Jolie Holland
2. Sweet Rose, Eilen Jewell
3. Headsoak, Andrew Bird
4. Stitched Up, Herbie Hancock with John Mayer
5. Burn Brightly, Sonya Kitchell
6. Minnow and the Trout, A Fine Frenzy/Alison Sudol
7. Easy Street (latin), Josh Rouse
8. Rain Roll In, Eilen Jewell
9. Jesus etc., Wilco (with Andrew Bird)
10. Nemesis, David Gray
11. Waiting to Talk, Andrew Bird
12. A Song for You (Leon Russell), Herbie Hancock with Christina Aguilera
13. Almost Lover, Alison Sudol
14. Water, Sonya Kitchell
15. Valencia, Josh Rouse
16. Nowhere in No Time, Eilen Jewell
17. How Indiscrete, Andrew Bird
18. Transformation, David Gray

Peace love and ATOM jazz

101809

Fresh Direct is a grocery-delivery service which is the key to a decent life for me here in The City. As most of you know, shopping (of all kinds) is a most-unattainable effort for me now; having someone else shop for me is too expensive and I never get exactly what I want. With Fresh Direct (Unlimited Delivery Pass for $10 per month) delivery is free for every order, and I can choose _exactly_ what I want.

*Poem*

Tall Paul

I knew a fellow when I was 17.
Tall Paul we called him.
He was one of those guys
I hoped some day to be as cool as.
Later in life, when we were in our
early twenties, I met Paul
for a beer. We were talking
about what we’d been reading.
Paul said he was into Truman Capote.
Ignoramus that I was then
(and maybe still am),
I thought he was talking about
Al Capone. “You mean the guy
with the vault?” I asked.
I will never forget the look
on Paul’s face. No, he explained,
he meant the writer. He eyed me
suspiciously, not yet convinced
I wasn’t pulling his leg.
Here he’d taken me for a literate
person. I wasn’t, not nearly so much
as I made out. And in this way, I have
blundered my way through my life,
hopeless, helpless, just barely
making enough sense for folks
to believe I’m compos mentis.
Bullshitting is my game.
The truth is I’ve lied to
everyone I ever met, aggrandizing
my life to some extent or other,
augmenting my experiences
as necessary, making myself out
to be whatever person was needed.
I lied on every job application
I ever filled out, and I filled
out hundreds. The fact that I
couldn’t have told you
the difference between
Al Capone and Truman Capote
was just one outward sign of
the blind ignorance which once
hid precariously beneath
the surface of my skin.
Still, the ignorance is there,
though in not nearly the over-
abundance it used to be, and
still, I blunder my way, proudly,
head held high, hoping no one
figures out what a fool I am.
If bullshitting is an art,
then I have taken the art
to heights it never knew
it could reach. I’ve always been
an artist. If, in some
absurd universe, I had to choose
just one art, I have little doubt
it would be bullshit.

*Engineering*

As hybrids and other “alternative” vehicles begin to be sold in earnest, I’m hearing a whole lot of hogwash; as hybrids are the key to transport in the interim, widespread misunderstanding of them is a serious problem. Having driven an all-electric car for a year, and having owned and loved two hybrids over the last eight years, I would like to offer a few important points:

1) In one TV ad, an actress declares, “It actually doesn’t feel like you’re driving a hybrid.” What?! As if you have loads of experience with hybrids? Did you assume it would be like driving a golf cart? In fact hybrids/electric cars have 100% of their available torque at stall, whereas combustion-engine cars have exactly 0%. In fact, one can burn rubber much more easily in a hybrid or electric than a regular car. It’s all because of the electric motor.

2) Know that an “eco” button on a hybrid just makes it automatically shut off at stop lights. “Eco” mode sets the electric motor in action–and that doesn’t mean you have less power! At lower RPMs in fact you have much more. When my father first drove my hybrid it took him a few minutes to get used to it; he was screeching and yanking our heads back and finally he said, “Wow, this thing is hot!”

3) When you hear GM talking about “100 years of engineering excellence,” know that they’re lying. Internal-combustion-engine (ICE) cars are in fact not 100-years worth of better. There is oil-car industry collusion which has kept MPGs at the minimum. We’ve been able to make cars that get 75 MPG for many years. GM released the EV-1 years ago that was the nicest electric car ever made, but they did _everything_ they could to stamp it out quickly (ever heard of it?). Their main interest is in maximizing oil profitability, during the waning of the Age of Oil, as gas steadily becomes too expensive even to get at.

The first car ever to get a speeding ticket in New York was an electric car in the 1890s. Imagine if we’d spent that last 100 years doing R&D on electrics, instead of the cash cows that are ICEs; we’d have electric cars by now which could circumnavigate the globe twice on a single charge. As I’ve said before, where we get electricity from makes all the difference; if it comes from coal-power plants, there is no gain over what we have now.

*MS*

Don’t know the original author but this essay has circulated widely. Those who care will please pay attention; every bit of this is my life. As much as I wish it weren’t so, these are the cards I’ve been dealt:

Open letter to those without MS

“Having MS means many things change, and a lot of them are invisible. Unlike AIDS and Cancer, most people do not understand even a little about MS and its effects, and of those that think they know, many are actually misinformed. In the spirit of informing those who wish to understand, these are the things that I would like you to understand about me before you judge me:

“Please understand that being sick doesn’t mean I’m not still a human being. I have to spend most of my day sitting on my arse, and if you visit I probably don’t seem like much fun to be with, but I’m still me stuck inside this body. I still worry about stuff and work and my family and friends, and most of the time I’d still like to hear you talk about yours too.
_____

“Please understand the difference between “happy” and “healthy”. When you’ve got the flu you probably feel miserable with it, but I’ve been sick for years. I can’t be miserable all the time, in fact I work hard at not being miserable. So if you’re talking to me and I sound happy, it means I’m happy. That’s all. It doesn’t mean that I’m not in a lot of pain, or extremely tired, or that I’m getting better, or any of those things. Please, don’t say, “Oh, you’re sounding better!”. I am not sounding better, I am sounding happy. If you want to comment on that, you’re welcome.
_____

“Please understand that being able to stand up for five minutes, doesn’t necessarily mean that I can stand up for ten minutes, or an hour. With a lot of diseases you’re either paralyzed, or you can move. With this one it gets more confusing.
_____

“Please repeat the above paragraph substituting, “sitting up”, “walking”, “thinking”, “being sociable” and so on … it applies to everything. That’s what this kind of illness does to you.
_____

“Please understand that MS is variable. It’s quite possible (for me, it’s common) that one day I am able to walk to the park and back, while the next day I’ll have trouble getting to the kitchen. Please don’t attack me when I’m ill by saying, “But you did it before!” if you want me to do something then ask if I can. In a similar vein, I may need to cancel an invitation at the last minute, if this happens please do not take it personally.
_____

“Please understand that “getting out and doing things” does not make me feel better, and can often make me seriously worse. MS may cause secondary depression (wouldn’t you get depressed if you were stuck inside for ages on end!?) but it is not created by depression. Telling me that I need some fresh air and exercise is not appreciated and not correct–don’t you think that if I could possibly do it that I would?
_____

“Please understand that if I say I have to sit down/pee/lie down/take these pills now, that I do have to do it right now–it can’t be put off or forgotten just because I’m out for the day (or whatever). MS does not forgive.
______

“If you want to suggest a cure to me, DON’T. It’s not because I don’t appreciate the thought, and it’s not because I don’t want to get well. It’s because I have had almost every single one of my friends suggest one at one point or another. At first I tried them all, but then I realized that I was using up so much energy trying things that I was making myself sicker, not better. If there was something that cured, or even helped, all people with MS then we’d know about it. This is not a drug-company conspiracy, there is worldwide networking (both on and off the Internet) between people with MS, if something worked we would KNOW.
_____

“If after reading that, you still want to suggest a cure, then do it, preferably in writing, but don’t expect me to rush out and try it. If I haven’t had it suggested before, I’ll take what you said and discuss it with my doctor. He’s open to new suggestions and is a great guy, and he takes what I say seriously.
_____

“In many ways I depend on you–people who are not sick–I need you to visit me when I am too sick to go out, I need you to shop for me, I need you to cook and clean for me, I need you to take me the the doctors, sometimes I need you to support me so I can walk to the bathroom without falling over.

“I need you on a different level too: you’re my link to the outside world, if you don’t set up my recliner in the lounge-room I can’t watch TV and if you don’t bring home a newspaper I can’t read it. If you don’t come to visit me then I won’t get to see you. And, as much as it’s possible, I need you to understand me.”

Not Done Living

*Prose*

My Ex

I realized that you never saw my troubles. MS, as it is for most, was completely invisible to you. I thought that by telling you about my numb feet, about the debilitating vertigo, about the impossibility of crowds, I thought as my wife you might understand and sympathize. I couldn’t have been more mistaken. You said to me once, “It’s not like you’re dying.” Do you know how much that hurt? Do you know there isn’t a day that passes that I don’t wish I were dying (more than we all are)? Do you know how much more awful it is to watch your body steadily disintegrate, until you can’t do anything for yourself, until you can’t remember why it is you keep pressing on, until you can’t do anything that would make you feel like a whole person? Of course you don’t, and you never had the courage to wonder what my life was like. Within two years of your deserting me, I got to a point where I can only barely walk a half a block; as I have a heavy disease-burden I knew this would be the case. Now walking is only the tip of the iceberg of my disability. If you’d had the courage to say no before we started, I wouldn’t have this massive, gaping hole in the middle of my life. I can’t work anymore, can’t go to poetry readings alone, can only just barely make it to the coffee shop on the corner, so I wonder if you can tell me how I’m supposed to meet women now? I’m trapped at home with an ailing heart and a faulty body. I wonder if you knew when you left that you would be the last woman I ever loved.

*Quotations*

If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.
–Elmore Leonard

I who know the smallness of my voice and the tiny stink of all our journalistic voices repeated wonder if any words of mine could matter much.
–Stark Young

When I feed the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why so many people are poor they call me a communist.
–Dom Helder Câmara

In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch enemy sorrow, one can
remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is
unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in
big things and happy in small ways.
–Edith Wharton

Personal disintegration remains always an imminent danger.
–Christopher Lasch

When one’s character begins to fall under suspicion and disfavor, how swift, then, is the work of disintegration and destruction.
–Twain

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.
–Freud

Just carrying a ruler with you in your pocket should be forbidden, at least on a moral basis. The ruler is the symbol of the new illiteracy. The ruler is the symptom of the new disease, disintegration of our civilisation.
–Friedensreich Hundertwasser

The loss of sex polarity is part and parcel of the larger disintegration, the reflex of the soul’s death, and coincident with the disappearance of great men, great deeds, great causes, great wars, etc.
–Henry Miller

We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that’s the thread we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.
–Paul Auster

*Music*

I downloaded three albums this week: David Gray’s latest Draw the Line, Eilen Jewell’s latest Sea of Tears, and an earlier Andrew-Bird album The Swimming Hour. I have never heard a David-Gray record I didn’t like, but Draw the Line is a real winner. If you’re a fan, this record hits all the right notes. It’s not quite as stellar as White Ladder but it’s excellent, with numerous deep hits. Favorite tracks are Fugitive, Nemesis, Kathleen (featuring Jolie Holland), and Transformation, but this is certainly a recording that’s easy to listen to from beginning to end. Evocative, intelligent, and lovelorn.

Sea of Love is another winner. Both it and also the above record offer the listener exactly what she or he would want. Ms Jewell’s bag is americana-rock/alt-country. As such, the guitar playing on every track is dynamite. Favorite songs are Rain Roll In, Sweet Rose, Shakin’ All Over, and Nowhere in No Time. “I’m just passing through; don’t pay it no mind. I’ll be nowhere in no time.” The only one I don’t like is I’m Gonna Dress in Black. Another success from one of my favorite artists.

Andrew Bird’s Swimming Hour is fascinating. It shows an artist still experimenting with sonic possibilities. It is not quite of the caliber of Armchair Apocrypha or Noble Beast; on those records, Bird had discovered his latter-day musical identity. Swimming Hour is a great portrait of a musician on his way to becoming what he is today. It’s very straight-up rock n roll, but as with Gray’s music in general, Bird (a violinist) shows himself unafraid of any and all sorts of instrumentation. Favorite tracks are Headsoak and How Indiscrete. Whereas the first two albums listed here are predictable in a very satisfying way, Swimming Hour is all over the map, from an artist still discovering himself.
_____

Lyrics to The Minnow and the Trout by A Fine Frenzy/Alison Sudol. “What we’re made of was all the same once” is a really stand-out lyric:

“‘Help me out,’ said the minnow to the trout.
‘I was lost and found myself swimming in your mouth.
Help me chief.
I’ve got to plans for you and me.
I swear upon this riverbed
I’ll help you feel young again.’
Not your every day circumstance,
hummingbird taking coffee with the ants.

“Please, I know that we’re different.
We were one cell in the sea in the beginning,
and what we’re made of was all the same once.
We’re not that different after all.

“‘Help me out,’ said the eagle to the dove.
‘I’ve fallen from my nest so high above.
Help me fly.
I am too afraid try.
Now saddled with a fear of heights
I’m praying you can set me right.’
Not your everyday circumstance,
elephant sharing peanuts with the rats.

“Please, I know that we’re different.
We were one cell in the sea in the beginning,
and what we’re made of was all the same once.
We’re not that different after all.”

Peace love and ATOM jazz