Life By Dictionary

Homo Homini Lupus
“Man is a wolf to man.”
popular Roman proverb by Plautus (dead 184 B. C.), in his Asinaria.
Thomas Hobbes later used it in his “De cive, Epistola dedicatoria”

“Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us in nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.”

Rebecca West
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

“Man’s destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing. Proud and terrible king, he wants everything and nothing resists him… from the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound… from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child - his table is covered with corpses… And who [in this general carnage] will exterminate him who exterminates all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man… So it is accomplished… the great law of the violent destruction of living creatures. The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.”
Josef de Maistre

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass

The Civic is in the shop; the timing belt, water pump, and an oil leak just behind the T/B to be repaired. This is not a repeat. I had the timing belt replaced in our CR-V two weeks ago. Sigh.

I burned my right hand while cleaning the bike. There is an awkward heart of burnt skin between my thumb and forefinger.

The Body as Braille

He tells me, “Your back
is so beautiful.” He traces
my spine with his hand.

I’m burning like the white ring
around the moon. “A witch’s moon,”
dijo mi abuela. The schools call it

“a reflection of ice crystals.”
It’s a storm brewing in the cauldron
of the sky. I’m in love

but won’t tell him
if it’s omens
or ice.

–Lorna Dee Cervantes

I’m cooking red Snapper with a side of risotto funghi porcini. The sound & fury of my clumsy kitchen skills helps calm me when I’m falling off of the cliff. Luckily there are no literal cliffs in Dothan.

I canceled both Sirius accounts. I give up on their shoddy hardware. Tonight if I’m lucky enough to make time I’m going to play the guitar and dream of mountain mists pulled thin against the Smokeys.

TALK ABOUT THE PASSION

Original tab by: ?
Corrections by: George Belkin (gxb101@psu.edu)
and Michael Cummings (gt3677a@prism.gatech.edu)


{Main riff:}
E------------------------------------------------------
B-----------------------------3-------------3-2-0------
G-2-2-------2-2-------------0---0---------2--------2--- (repeat)
D-0-0-0-2-4-0-0-0-2-4-0---2-------2-----2--------------
A-----------------------3-----------3-0----------------
E------------------------------------------------------


{Verse riff #1:}
E-0-0-0-0-0-0--0-0-0-0-0-0---3-3-3-2-0-0-0-0---------------------------
B-2-2-0-2-2-0--2-2-0-2-2-0---0-0-0-0-0-0-3-3---------------------------
G-2-2-2-2-2-2--2-2-2-2-2-2---0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0---------------------------
D-2-2-2-2-2-2--2-2-2-2-2-2---2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2---------------------------
A-0-0-0-0-0-0--0-0-0-0-0-0---2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2---------------------------
E----------------------------0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0---------------------------
This is like A, Asus, and a variation on E-minor

{Verse riff #2:}
E-------0-------------0-------------0-------------0-0-0----------------
B-----3---3---3-----3---3---3-----3---3---3-----3---3-3----------------
G---2-------------0-------------2-------------0-----0-0----------------
D-3---------3---2---------2---3---------3---2-------2-2----------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------------

{Bridge riff:}
E-2-2-3-5--2-2-3-5--3-3-3-2-2-2-2-2-------2-0--------------------------
B-3-3-3-3--3-3-3-3--3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-----3------------------------------
G-2-2-2-2--2-2-2-2--2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-0-2--------------------------------
D-0-0-0-0--0-0-0-0--0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0------------------------------------
A----------------------------------------------------------------------
E----------------------------------------------------------------------
The fourth verse begins the same way as the other three and fades out
repeating the A / Em stuff.

—

Intro: {main riff}

{Main riff}
Empty prayer, empty mouths, combien reaction
Empty prayer, empty mouths, talk about the passion
Not everyone can carry the weight of the world
Not everyone can carry the weight of the world

{Verse riff #1}
Talk about the passion
Talk about the passion

{Main riff}
Empty prayer, empty mouths, combien reaction
Empty prayer, empty mouths, talk about the passion
{Verse riff #2:}
Combien, combien, combien de temps?

{Verse riff #1}
Talk about the passion
Talk about the passion

{Bridge riff}

{Main riff}
Not everyone can carry the weight of the world
Not everyone can carry the weight of the world
{Verse riff #2:}
Combien, combien, combien de temps?

{Verse riff #1}
Talk about the passion
Talk about the passion
Talk about the passion
Talk about the passion
Talk about the passion
Talk about the passion

I have a soon-to-be-released chapbook in the wings: “Eggs Of American Song Birds” that I am hoping to have compiled, critiqued, edited, and set out by mid-April, with a May release target. I’m going to include a selection of poems from TCHOW and the bulk of work that I’m pleased with from writings over the last two years.

Perhaps I’ll share the title poem here? Nobody else has seen it yet. What say ye, internets?

Yes, I know this is not wise. Yes I know that my teenager doesn’t care about wise. Here we go anyway.

for i in *.mp3; do mpg123 -s "$i" | sox -t .raw -r 44100 -sw -c 2 - "$i".wav; done;

The above extracts the wav from the mp3 files. You run this while IN a directory full of mp3’s that you want to eventually burn to a CD.

Now we normalize the wav files.

normalize-audio -m *.wav

And then we get our burn on.

cdrecord -v -audio -pad *.wav

I gotta learn how to do this in Nautilus.

No Saints this weekend (imagine that!) but I’m making the most of the days off to brew an Abita Turbodog (made from a kit I purchased at Austin Homebrew Supply). I also rubbed down a pork picnic shoulder that will get put in the smoker early tomorrow morning. I plan on pulling it by late afternoon & making us sandwiches to devour just prior to the start of the SuperBowl.

This morning E. woke up early enough for us to get in some driving lessons. She’s had the class in school already, but was away at Mardi Gras when it was her time to test. That was over two years ago. Now that she’s working there’s a renewed interest on her part to finally upgrade her permit to a proper license. The lesson went fairly well. I think she’s more than prepared for the driving exam. At least she won’t freak out about the emergency brake this time.

Everyone else in the house is sick with allergies or colds. I’m the lone healthy survivor. (Knock on wood.)

This poem struck a chord:

All My Pretty Ones
by Anne Sexton

Father, this year’s jinx rides us apart
where you followed our mother to her cold slumber;
a second shock boiling its stone to your heart,
leaving me here to shuffle and disencumber
you from the residence you could not afford:
a gold key, your half of a woolen mill,
twenty suits from Dunne’s, an English Ford,
the love and legal verbiage of another will,
boxes of pictures of people I do not know.
I touch their cardboard faces. They must go.

But the eyes, as thick as wood in this album,
hold me. I stop here, where a small boy
waits in a ruffled dress for someone to come …
for this soldier who holds his bugle like a toy
or for this velvet lady who cannot smile.
Is this your father’s father, this commodore
in a mailman suit? My father, time meanwhile
has made it unimportant who you are looking for.
I’ll never know what these faces are all about.
I lock them into their book and throw them out.

This is the yellow scrapbook that you began
the year I was born; as crackling now and wrinkly
as tobacco leaves: clippings where Hoover outran
the Democrats, wiggling his dry finger at me
and Prohibition; news where the Hindenburg went
down and recent years where you went flush
on war. This year, solvent but sick, you meant
to marry that pretty widow in a one-month rush.
But before you had that second chance, I cried
on your fat shoulder. Three days later you died.

These are the snapshots of marriage, stopped in places.
Side by side at the rail toward Nassau now;
here, with the winner’s cup at the speedboat races,
here, in tails at the Cotillion, you take a bow,
here, by our kennel of dogs with their pink eyes,
running like show-bred pigs in their chain-link pen;
here, at the horseshow where my sister wins a prize;
and here, standing like a duke among groups of men.
Now I fold you down, my drunkard, my navigator,
my first lost keeper, to love or look at later.

I hold a five-year diary that my mother kept
for three years, telling all she does not say
of your alcoholic tendency. You overslept,
she writes. My God, father, each Christmas Day
with your blood, will I drink down your glass
of wine? The diary of your hurly-burly years
goes to my shelf to wait for my age to pass.
Only in this hoarded span will love persevere.
Whether you are pretty or not, I outlive you,
bend down my strange face to yours and forgive you.