Head Space

Movies that I've seen often stick back in the time when I first saw them, rather than when they were made or set. Not in the time's greater cultural meaning, but in that certain headspace--in some layer of accrual of brain cells, of knowledge or of forgetting.

Therefore it's kind of interesting to read Pauline Kael's review of the Coen Brothers' "Blood Simple," which is up on the New Yorker's website. I think I first saw "Blood Simple" in 2002 or 2003, or in one of those stages where I thought I had grasped some knowledge about life. Somehow seeing an old movie had given me some knowledge about life, about movies, about irony, about accrual. Pauline Kael was less excited about forgotten dogs and incinerators that don't deliver in 1985 when she saw it. Read her review (bottom of page two). It places the movie in "The Current Cinema" with "Witness."

"It’s like opening day at a miniature-golf course," Kael says of the look of "Raising Arizona," which I saw around the time of its release. That damned scary biker was perhaps the scariest thing I'd ever seen, although the review reminds me he was only blowing up a bunny rabbit and setting fire to a daisy. The Current Cinema, April 10, 1987

I was going to edit that. I will. But this is pretty cool. Keep clicking on the words. Keep clicking!
http://barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com/

The pull down to the sidewalk
as I bent. Attitudes I lifted
from your inside. Carry
that bulky cooler. Pack
my soul in a grocery bag.
The plants are dropping
their reproductive leaves.
This fish is chewable ocean,
just ocean to me.
Recycle your bags;
now we don't use them.
The pull to the ocean
unassailable, akin
to dropping off people
at their doorsteps,
to a bucket full of bread
by your side. This plant
lives because I love it.
Your plant dies
and your television attitude
that you like dropping off to,
shoves to the sidewalk, free.
Or throw away soul
that I made in college
before it jumps the shelf
in boredom. I don't
believe in that state,
but believing is suspect
as per.

salient

Best email I received about my chapbook (thank you scientists & artists):

"Oh, also, I received "Untoward" in the mail. My favorite is the
symmetrical one, dead-center on the binding seam, no less. I had to
look up "morpheme" - it reminded me of this:

Superformula

"I also like "Boar's Ears" - it reads like your email! And the cover -
the cover is really great."

I'm glad to be back. Back in San Francisco strangely. Strange to be in San Francisco. I've got to get back to poetry. Math Braille is kind of hard. Math is easier. This post needs a picture. This couch is for sale. This couch was at the karaoke party where we sang to mourn the end of a television drama. Those people were sleepy; others were singing.