Monday, March 28, 2016

Spontaneous prose on a lowery afternoon

Sitting here without a breath to my name it seems ludicrous to avoid any insurgent uprisings volcano-like but brown not white even so they call me by a number not a name lord lord gotta do my time song lyrics bluegrass but then who cares about it even in the middle of the oceanic gateway to the stars. So what? he said and I told him so what but he went ahead and finished anyway saying no time like the present despite your protestations to the contrary Contrarian Blues seems like a good name for a band or maybe a song. Or both. Not to wax musical in a Kerouac blog but this is my lame effort (is that politically incorrect?) to post something spontaneous in keeping my streak alive with at least one blog entry per week which I've done for a number of weeks now, inspired by Kathleen Thompson whose book The Project-Driven Life you should really buy from Amazon but then you should buy a lot of books from Amazon not the least of which is Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, a beautiful book I am re-reading along with All the Wild That Remains by ??? about Abbey and Wallace Stegner. I can fill in those question marks later but then is it spontaneous so maybe I'll add the author's name as a post-script for those interested enough to find out. I've been reading more lately than lately than lately and one of the books I am reading isn't even a book it's a bunch of ones and zeros in my phone: You Can't Win by Jack Black 1922 or something a big influence on Burroughs but I'm also reading Victor Wooten's The Music Lesson (a birthday gift from TG) initials for confidentiality for no particular reason I don't think Tom would mind my invoking his name here on The Daily Beat perhaps it would be a good thing, I don't know, sort of like cheesecake when it goes bad and the cedar waxwings won't stick around long enough to do anything about it. I tell my students when I assign a spontaneous write to use a pen because the temptation to edit on the fly while typing gets in the way but I am typing this and yes editing on the fly for spelling because I cannot stand to let a misspelled word stay on the screen for more than the time it takes me to backspace and fix it and yes, I know there are grammatical issues afoot but I can live with them for some reason. Spelling is different. I can't abide misspelled words, even if they are in a draft and I can fix them later. I suppose there are two types of people: those who care about spelling and monsters. I saw that on a meme on Facebook about some other behavior and found it funny. That's probably enough for now and at least it keeps my streak alive and if you stayed with me throughout this ramble, I apologize, I apologize, I apologize: Deadwood was a great show and fans will get the reference. Ian McShane needs to be in more movies or maybe he is and I just need to seek them out. Richard and I learned about a film titled Next Stop: Greenwich Village that we both want to see. I need to see if it's available from the library. Wouldn't be hard to ascertain that what with the Internet and all. This hasn't seemed all that spontaneous but trust me it's the words that spewed out of my mind with as little conscious interference or interferon as possible. Don't judge me because it's not as profound as you wish or as shallow as you hoped for. Nothing is impossible if you live in a dream state and sleep outside on a ledge in a sleeping bag at least once a year. That's it I am done and done and done and plum ran out of dried prunes wait a minute I got that backwards funny what goes through the mind. Teaching about Buddhism next week a little bit in preparation for reading The Dharma Bums am I a bad person if I go back through this free write and italicize book titles? If so, let me be a bad person in that regard or any regard for that matter meter metier metronomic Kerouac riff raff Ginsbergian soliloquy amaranthine (new word my friend Vick taught me today) and a beautiful soul-stirring word it is at least to me and that's the first person to please where new words are concerned. I'm off to the races now so keep my seat warm and run the engine a little bit every day to make sure you keep the battery charged - my battery - filled with gasoline, too (spelled that gasoling and fixed it on the fly - told ya). Oh well, not every free write is a success wait a minute define success did I write endlessly for several minutes or not (the answer is yes although I forgot to consult a timepiece watch clock digital or analog or otherwise) random words are floating down the hallway like "primary care" and I don't want to know more than that but I can guess. What will you do with your one wild and precious life thanks to Mary Oliver? So be it.

P.S. David Gessner wrote that Abbey/Stegner book....

4 comments:

  1. Good stuff, and if Jack could go back and edit, correct, and clean up and still be the king of spontaneous prose... well then you can too.
    I say it is the thought, and the spirit of the thought that should not be changed if you want to call it spontaneous prose. Or, as the great Gregory Corso liked to call it, bop prosody.
    Richard Marsh

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  2. Funny but I am on my way to Big Sur, where I have never been, in a couple days, where I will listen to the wok-pshh of the waves and think of Jack and Robinson J. And Henry M. and don't feel bad about n0ot remembering my name since sometimes I don't and hope I don't while at Big sur.....David Gessner

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  3. Thanks, Richard.

    David, I'm honored you read my blog post, and thanks for not minding me forgetting your name (but I will remember it now!). Hope you enjoyed Big Sur. I've driven through that area - beautiful!

    ~Rick

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  4. P.S. In case anyone didn't make the connection, David was referencing poet Robinson Jeffers and novelist Henry Miller, who both lived in and wrote about the central California coast area, particularly Big Sur.

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