East Is East and …

Posted on by | Leave a comment

Poet Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

I like to write about Charles Bukowski, partly because he is completely honest about himself. The following is an excerpt from a 1985 New York Quarterly interview conducted by William Packard. He asked Buk the question “Over the last few decades California has been the residence of many of our most independent voice poets—like Jeffers, Rexroth, Patchen, even Henry Miller. Why is this? What is your attitude towards the East, towards New York?” His answer follows:

Well, there is a little more space out here, the long run up the coast, all that water, a feeling of Mexico and China and Canada, Hollywood, sunburn, starlets turned to prostitutes. I don’t know, really, I guess if your ass is freezing some of the time, it’s harder to be a “voice poet.” Being a voice poet is the big gamble because you’re putting your guts up for view and you’re going to get a lot more reaction than if you’re writing something like your mother’s soul being like a daisy field.

New York, I don’t know. I landed there with $7 and no job and no friends and no occupation except common laborer. I suppose if I had come in from the top instead of the bottom I might have laughed a little more. I stayed three months and the buildings scared the shit out of me and the people scared the shit out of me, and I had done a lot of bumming all over the country under the same conditions but New York City was the Inferno, all the way. The way Woody Allen’s intellectuals suffer in N.Y.C. is a lot different than what happens to my type of people. I never got laid in New York, in fact, the women wouldn’t even speak to me. The only way I ever got laid in New York was to come back three decades later and bring my own with me, a terrible wench, we stayed at the Chelsea, of course.

The Zoo Lady and the Politicos

Posted on by | Leave a comment

Sharon Matola (1954-2021) and Scarlet Macaw

I just finished reading a book about the difficulty of fighting an environmental battle in a developing country. The book was Bruce Barcott’s The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman’s Fight to Save the World’s Most Beautiful Bird (New York: Random House, 2008). The story is set in Belize where a naturalist from Baltimore named Sharon Matola founded a zoo consisting solely of critters from within the borders of the country.

Sharon was particularly proud of her scarlet macaws. Now these are a kind of bird that is not endangered in South America; but the Central American variety, a legitimate subspecies, could be found in the valley of the Macal River, where they had their nests. When suddenly it was announced by the Belize government that a dam (to be called the Chalillo Dam) was to be built smack in the middle of the macaws’ nesting territory, Sharon went to war against the forces behind the dam.

These included not only a Canadian firm named Fortis but a number of Belize politicos who stood to gain from kickbacks and other underhanded tricks possible when dealing with large construction projects such as Chalillo. Barcott’s book not only gives us an excellent picture of what the tiny Central American country of Belize—formerly known as British Honduras—is all about, but gives us blow-by-blow accounts of Sharon’s war against the Powers That Be.

Well, in the end, the Powers That Be won, and the dam got built. The politicos were so irate about this gringo lady’s attempt to subvert “cheap electricity for the masses” that they scheduled a massive landfill to be created right next door to the Belize Zoo. Fortunately for the Zoo Lady, that project failed when it was demonstrated that a river important to longtime Belizean residents would become badly polluted.

In the end, she had other irons in the fire, such as reintroducing harpy eagles to Belize. Alas, however, Sharon died of a heart attack at the age of 66. Fortunately, her zoo continues on; and I have earmarked it for a visit if I can take a trip to Belize.

“I Asked A Thief To Steal Me A Peach”

Posted on by | Leave a comment

The following short poem by William Blake (1757-1827) is not what one would expect. The All Poetry page from which I copied the poem contains an interesting comment, saying that the poem is“Part of Pickering Manuscript; distinguished by blunt depiction of collaborations across moral dichotomies.” That’s an interesting way of putting it.

I Asked A Thief To Steal Me A Peach

I asked a thief to steal me a peach:
He turn’d up his eyes.
I ask’d a lithe lady to lie her down:
Holy and meek she cries.

As soon as I went an angel came:
He wink’d at the thief
And smil’d at the dame,
And without one word spoke
Had a peach from the tree,
And ’twixt earnest and joke
Enjoy’d the Lady.

Corporations Are NOT People

Posted on by | Leave a comment

Contrary to what Mitt Romney claimed during his failed presidential campaign, corporations are not people. At least, not as a general principle. They represent the aspirations of corporate executives and board members who stand to gain power or money from the corporation.

As far as you, me, and the general population are concerned, the only say we have is when in large numbers we refuse outright to buy a corporation’s products or services. And that only happens over time.

But it does happen. Years ago, I used to subscribe to Forbes magazine.I remember one article with compared the largest U.S, corporations at the time of publication with those in the year 1900. Out of 100 or 500 (I forget which) corporations in 1900, only two or three were still in business.

Unfortunately, that¹s no help when your Verizon service sucks right now or your Swanson’s frozen dinner which you bought yesterday contained broken glass.

What does one do if that is the case?

Well, one could pick up the phone and dial the company … and get stuck in an automated attendant loop that refuses to accept any calls impugning its products or services. The options with which you are presented by the automated dialog all relate to advantage for the corporation. None of them relate to advantage for you, the customer.

Sometimes I get the feeling that the road to promotion in many corporations is to implement decisions which benefit the corporation at the expense of the customer. Like, for instance, adopting an automated attendant system making it near impossible to file a complaint.

I keep thinking of many of the commercials on television with their assumed posture of positivity. That does not sit well with a person like me, who at times is negative for cause and wants the corporation to know it. In the long run, I can’t see this as being a winning strategy.

Arts & Crafts

Posted on by | Leave a comment

This evening, I was watching a local newscast on television that made an interesting observation. It regarded arts and crafts as a single thing. It showed young people busily at work in San Pedro at an old army base creating what I see as crafts only. Many of the objects created were interesting. Some were pseudo-random pieces of garbage. Nothing approached the status of what I consider to be art.

It’s like putting an article in Cosmopolitan or a wood carving of an American Indian at the same level as a poem by Emily Dickinson or a novel by Honoré de Balzac or a painting by Rembrandt.

Mind you, crafts are great for making children and teens busy and keeping them out of trouble. They’re great for adult hobbyists who want to create something with their own hands. But they are not an acceptable substitute for high art.

What is happening throughout America is an unwillingness to engage with high art because it is “difficult.” People seem to be less willing to read James Joyce or study a painting by David Hockney or a poem by John Donne. And the older the art is, the more that people shy away from it.

In my own life, I try to engage with difficult art. Why? Because it is more rewarding. I just finished reading a postmodern novel by Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2025. In his early book The Melancholy of Resistance (1989), each chapter is a single paragraph. The point of view changes with each chapter, and the work is set in a Hungary around the time of the fall of the Communist regime, during which many writers anticipated mass social disruptions.

Each month, I attempt to read at least one difficult book to keep my hand in the game. Also, I love visiting the Getty Center and allowing myself to be challenged by the art on display. It’s worth all the trouble.

The Spaces Between Scenes

Posted on by | Leave a comment

Japanese Film Director Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963)

I did not post yesterday because I was enthralled by an evening of Yasujiro Ozu films on Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Likely, I will be equally remiss on the remaining Tuesdays in May, because TCM will be screening his films on those days.

If not the greatest filmmaker who ever lived, he is certainly one of the top three. Ever since I saw Late Spring (1949) and Tokyo Story (1953) at Dartmouth College, I have been enthralled by Ozu. I literally cannot let a film of his go unwatched if there is any chance I could see it. Consequently, I was up last night past midnight watching a triple feature of:

  • The Ozu Diaries (2025), a biopic directed by Daniel Raim based on the director’s diaries
  • I Was Born But … (1932), a silent feature by the director
  • The Only Son (1936), the director’s first sound feature

I could have stayed up until 3 am to watch A Story of Floating Weeds (1934), but I was starting to flag past the midnight hour.

What makes Ozu’s films so special?

Most of the dozen or so features I have seen to date concentrate on family relationships, especially where children are involved. This is interesting because Ozu never married. In fact, he lived with his mother until her death in 1961. Yet his portrayals of female characters and children are second to none in the entire history of the cinema. If you see Setsuko Hara as Noriko in Late Spring or the little boys in I Was Born But …, you will know what I mean.

No other filmmaker so lovingly includes scenes in which (apparently) nothing happens. Perhaps there is a scenic shot in which a train passes by. Other times there are empty rooms or laundry hanging up to dry or simple kitchen household objects. In one of his diaries, Ozu admits to being interested in “the spaces between scenes.”

Very Buddhist, this. In fact, Ozu and his mother are buried under a stone in which the only identification is the Japanese character mu, “Nothingness.”

At times, Ozu’s directorial touch is so perfect that even God Himself could do no better if he took a turn behind the camera.

Hap

Posted on by | Leave a comment

British Poet and Novelist Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Although most readers know Thomas Hardy as a novelist, do they know that in mid-career he gave up on the novel and concentrated on producing a body of verse that is as great as his prose, as the following poem demonstrates:

Hap

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Man of the West

Posted on by | Leave a comment

Count Agoston Haraszthy (1812-1869)

The history of the American West is full of restless and heroic figures. One such was a Hungarian count who, among other things, founded the California wine industry when he established Buena Vista Wineries in 1856. He was also sheriff and U.S. Marshal in San Diego and the first U.S. assayer of rare metals. His ending was a tragic one: He disappeared in Nicaragua, where he was active in starting a rum distillery business. Rumors were that he was dragged under by an alligator.

Today Martine and I attended the Majalis Fesztival at the Grace Hungarian Reformed Church in the San Fernando Valley. There I met up with an acquaintance who is active in the Karpatok Hungarian Dance Ensemble. He told me that they were developing a song and dance concert celebrating the life of Agoston Haraszthy.

This afternoon, they previewed one of the numbers in costume:

The Dancer in the Top Hat Plays Haraszthy

I had known a few things about Haraszthy going back to the early 1970s when I fancied myself a wine connoisseur. But, curiously, in time I became more interested in rum, like the Hungarian count. I guess I just have to stay away from Nicaragua and Alligators.

Ever-Spreading Chaos

Posted on by | Leave a comment

Hungarian State Railways (MÁV) 4-2-4 Steam Locomotive

In Lászlo Krasznahorkai’s great 1989 novel The Melancholy of Resistance, a scheduled train that never shows up throws waiting passengers into a tizzy. A Hungarian novelist, Krasznahorkai is the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (2025), the International Booker Prize, and numerous other international literary accolades. Here is a selection from the first page of George Szirtés’s excellent translation of the novel.

To tell the truth, none of this really surprised anyone any more since rail travel, like everything else, was subject to the prevailing conditions: all normal expectations went by the board and one’s daily habits were disrupted by a sense of ever-spreading all-consuming chaos which rendered the future unpredictable, the past unrecallable and ordinary life so haphazard that people simply assumed that whatever could be imagined might come to pass, that if there were only one door in a building it would no longer open, that wheat would grow head downwards into the earth not out of it, and that, since one could only note the symptoms of disintegration, the reasons for it remaining unfathomable and inconceivable, there was nothing anyone could do except to get a tenacious grip on anything that was still tangible; which is precisely what people at the village station continued to do when, in hope of taking possession of the essentially limited seating to which they were entitled*, they stormed the carriage doors, which being frozen up proved very difficult to open.

  • Earlier in the paragraph: “[T]he only two serviceable old wooden-seated coaches maintained for just such an ‘emergency’ were coupled to an obsolete and unreliable 424, used only as a last resort.”

100 Years of the Mother Road

Posted on by | Leave a comment

Route 66 at Amboy in the Mohave Desert

If you’ve used the Google search engine today, you will have been reminded that this is the one hundredth anniversary of U.S. Route 66, the “Mother Road” that stretched from Chicago to the Santa Monica Pier two miles from where I live. Of course, now it’s California Route 2 between Centinela Boulevard and State Route 138 near Wrightwood.

As John Steinbeck wrote in Grapes of Wrath:

66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there.

I have ridden three segments of the Mother Road. My favorite is in Arizona between Seligman and Oatman, where I visited Grand Canyon Caverns, which is run by the Hualapai Indian nation. The first time I took that road, I picked up a Hualapai hitchhiker who needed a lift to the Greyhound Bus Station in Kingman. We had a pleasant ride there until I discovered that the tribal police were waiting for him there to take him into custody. Apparently he had been to a wild party the previous night and did something to put him afoul of the law. I never did find out.

The other two segments were thus:

  • A short stretch in California between the Amboy Road and Kelbaker Road through the now deserted crossroads of Amboy
  • A very desolate stretch in New Mexico between Laguna Pueblo and I-25.

I don’t count the stretches of Route 66 that are coterminous with the Interstate system. It’s an entirely different feeling on the Interstate.