Life is messy.

A snapshot of my life in this Sunday-morning moment would be deceptive. Chaos reigns across the living areas of my apartment. In the kitchen, on Friday evening I cooked a piece of salmon, with a covering of mustard seed, pine nuts, bit o' bread crumbs and lemon, and some capers thrown in for good measure. That was then wrapped in a bit of pastry dough, which was then brushed with some egg, and baked in the oven. The random remains were left in the kitchen, where they still are this morning. Then, Saturday morning I made a strawberry cobbler, of which I proceeded to eat half. Again, much of the remains and dirty utensils, sit still on my counters, largely where they were left when I put them down, having exhausted their use. Then, last night, I bought a chicken, and ate it piece by piece by dipping it in barbecue sauce, garlic yogurt, or sriracha sauce, all while priming the engine with a beer so bad it nearly makes me gag when I drink it. The sauces, of course, still sit out in the kitchen. On the floor, there is a pizza box, containing, yes, pizza. Thus, in short, my kitchen is a mess.

My living room has only a few disordered items of its own, chief among them being a brackish bowl of greasy water containing in it's discolored depths some salmon skin, some carrot pieces, and some lettuce. I know it sounds like that soup you once saw in a Vietnamese restaurant, but it isn't. It's just turtle food. You see, if I put their food in their main tank with them, the water gets all nasty much sooner. But if I feed them in a separate bowl, then I need to change the water less often. On the couch where I sit, there is a lap-desk, (bean-bag type construction on the bottom, black plastic on top,) which sits upon the sofa beside me, because it is really more useful at providing a stable base upon which a coffee cup might rest within reach than a lap-desk for the laptop, which balances on my leg which, wrapped in a blanket, balances on the coffee table, just fine. The coffee table itself is strewn with electronics - two hard drives of what a few years ago would have been considered phenomenal capacity, but now, given my penchant for taking photos and downloading TV shows, are both brimming near capacity. Were that not enough memory and entertainment electric, my ipod, wrapped in its little white cord, is also on the table, beside a computer mouse. Cords from all these devices in different directions writhe, each with its own kinks and folds rising and across the table snaking as though they had life.

When I said the living room had but a few disordered items of its own, I meant that - well, there is also my jacket on the chair across from me - but most of the mess in the living room is actually spill-over from the dining area. Yesterday I bought a rose bush. It is about 6 feet tall, and is supported by a reed which it twines around and up - I set it in my living room, next to the window, over the turtles, and it so pleased me to have a rosebush in my living room that I decided to I had to re-pot some other plants, but quickly ran out of soil. The project having been suddenly abandoned, however, the pots still sit scattered around the coffee table, looking, but for their new-ness, like something you would expect to find in the back shed of a gardener. Beyond the pots, on its side, lies an empty beer can, and beyond that a rug, having been thrown from across the room last night, lies crumpled, under a chair which supports an empty pizza box.

The pizza box is not there because, like so many other items, I just left it where it was when I was done eating pizza - no, I went and pulled it from the rubbish to put it on that chair, because I wanted to cut a circle out of it. In the end I didn't, or rather, I cut a circle out of the flyer pasted onto it instead - (it was just easier that way-)which goes some way toward explaining why there is a cut up Little Ceasar's flyer on the floor in the dining room, next to the pages of newspaper and magazine spread out over the floor. There are about 9 of them, and they were intended to protect the floor from the paint which was aimed at the poor canvas which sits atop them. Given the amount of paint on them, I suppose they did a bang-up job, but given the amount of paint on the floor, it would appear I should have used about 29 sheets, as opposed to 9. I don't suppose Jackson Pollack worried about this sort of thing . . .

Naturally, then, upon the dining room table overlooking the brightly colored floor and newspapers and of course, canvas, sit tubes and bottles and bottles and tubes of paint, plus a large bottle of milk that ought to be in the fridge, about half a chicken on a rather smeary plate, and a pile of bones and excess skin off to the side of the plate. There are brushes, tape, string, glue, pens, and a pallette with paint crusted over it. Yet let's not get too caught up there.

Allow your glance to travel beyond the table, and you find, across the back of a dining room chair, and scattered across the floor next to the bookshelves and the rugs that hang behind them, dirty clothes. Not just run-of-the-mill dirty clothes, but workout-dirty clothes. Amidst the mix I can also pick out a pair of boxing gloves and hand-wraps, though my view is somewhat obscured by a large pot, like the others in the living room, intended yesterday to receive a plant.

The plants I speak of are all around me - literally on four sides. Most of them are blooming right now - putting out runners and blossoms and blooms. There are wide, spreading spider plants, long trailing leafy vines, small pots of flowering plants, some meter-long bamboo stems, and a couple of things that could pass for small trees. And a rose bush, of course. We mustn't forget him, as he is rather my favorite, and I shall soon name him.

As we leave the living room, I was about to say that my entryway is ok - but it is not. Upon the table, there you will see receipts from food delivered, along with spare change, a wallet, various bank cards, and possibly an open switchblade. On the floor in the entryway there are two plastic bags which contain glass bottles intended for the recycle bin. Due to a recent wine-tasting I here hosted, there are, if memory serves, 6 empty wine bottles, as well as 1 empty each of vodka and bourbon and beer - but let us leave here.

My hallway and bathroom, I am happy to say, are uncluttered - or at least no more cluttered than typically passes for well-ordered and clean. The hallway, however, leads unfortunately to the bedroom. Upon the floor of the bedroom is a rustic Turkish hand-woven nomadic carpet, brilliant in its reds and oranges, many of which you cannot see because of the pile of jeans and t-shirts and sweaters that begins upon the rug and travels like a great amorphous all-consuming living being from the floor to the foot of the chair and then up the chair, where it ponderously perches and surveys, via the window, life in the street below. The pile grows, and moves, from day to day, shifting its bulk this way or that depending on its mood. As of this morning it has crowned itself with a small black bra, the front straps of which each bear four little pearl-like beads suspended under a fine-tiny golden ring.

As our gaze approaches the bed, across the floor are scattered water bottles, perhaps three, empty all as of this morning. The bedside table upon which they stood one-by-one when full in turn, is currently covered in books, which were once stacked neatly, perhaps five in one stack, three in another, next to the lamp by which they were to be read, but which now lays over at a 45-degree angle, tilted precariously into upon and against the books that saved it from a crashing and untimely end. Scattered beside the perilously piled books and off-kilter lamp are three bracelets of a gold color, and a largish gold colored swatch watch, of the sort that seems fashionable these days, but which I think is a bit big for her very small wrists, which she holds beside her head which uses no pillow, but lays directly upon the red sheet. As her face is turned away, I from the door see only long black hair, and those slender hands with long fingers, stemming from her tiny wrists. Stretched out on the bed, even covered by the red duvet, she looks even longer than she is. She woke me this morning coming in at four. After when we were finished at five, shortly she began to snore. It was the first time I had heard her snore - it was, in an odd way, endearing.

The turtles are moving now, in their tank - banging about and having small dramas, I suspect, in which way they quite remind me of humans. They have heard me typing, and as the sun is now up, they know in their tiny brains that soon the morning sun will soon reach them, and they will take up their basking spots on the stacked rocks to sun themselves.

And I - I will clean today. I will put away the tubes of paint, and pick up the newspaper from the floor. The beer cans and barbecue sauce will go into the kitchen, and the chicken will be stripped from bones and wrapped in plastic and frozen in the freezer like in a civilized household. The flowerpots, empty, will go back in storage, to await the arrival of soil. The painting will go up on the easel, with the others, where I can look at it and think. The clothes will go in the washer, the boxing gloves, stuffed full of newspaper, so they may stay freshy-smelly, put away. The rancid turtle water will be flushed, the turtles brushed, and every rock cleaned in the shower. The dishes I'll wash, coffee I'll make, a new cake I'll bake - a strawberry cobbler, perhaps, again. What I won't do is scrub the floor - I rather like the paint splatters, and there will be time enough in life for scrubbing when I am older and done with the living.

A slice of cheese, two half-bottles of wine, and TV downloaded from the internet, were paradise enow'!

One of the advantages of having wine parties, or wine tastings, if you will, is that the poor suckers who attend tend to leave half-finished bottles of wine at your house. And furthermore, you know exactly which ones are best.

I can't exactly say it offsets the cost of all the cheeses and olives and dips and strawberries and grapes and apples and walnuts and little hand-rolled whatnots, but nor is it to be overlooked.

One of the advantages of having a bunch of half-drunk bottles of decent wine sitting around is that they go so well with sleeping pills, and what's more, they make television really, really good. Ok, not really. I mean, the show I am thinking of was good even when I was sober. So - really, I would have enjoyed it in any case.

'Tis a piss-poor blog entry, really. But the aforementioned sleeping pill has caught up with the wine, and the two together are doing a tag-team whammy on me brain.

May the force be with you all.

Poetry, and again!

Please note that all poems here quoted are done so from memory, and are thus likely to contain errors. You are encouraged to compare them with the originals, and upon finding errors, write me derisive emails containing cutting remarks.

I'm continuing on with the topic of poetry, since that is the thing that is occupying most of my excess mental time these days. Since the last post, I have taken up the habit of pausing morning and night to recite the poems that I have thus far memorized.

She walks in beauty, like the night
of cloudless climes and starry skies
and all that's best of dark and bright
meet in her aspect and her eyes
Thus muted to that tender light
Which heaven the gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired that nameless grace
That waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lighten's o'er her face
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their resting place
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow
So soft, so pure, yet eloquent
the smiles that thrill, the glints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Ok - I know for sure I fucked up a line there - specifically the fourth from the last, but you get the point. What bothers me about this poem, and a number of others, is that it starts out so well - the first few lines are absolutely immortal in sense and sound - I think had that line been spoken by anyone, including the most bumpkin of a farmer, in the most rural of late-night pubs, one off-hand night, these lines would still have caught on and been quoted and bandied-about and written on a napkin and scrawled on a wall, and probably would have ended up as a lyric in a popular song of the day. Those lines are just so damn good that I cannot imagine them being birthed into the world and the world not stopping to acknowledge them.

But we start with an image, of beauty, like the night - we have repeated references to dark and light, day and night, but she - she walks in beauty, like the night. Beauty in motion, she is. She has the beauty of a starry sky in a cloudless clime. She has a dark beauty that the brilliant day could never aspire to. And then she starts expressing thoughts serenely sweet and pure and dear!

Do you see my problem there? I was seeing a woman of cream-white skin, and raven-black hair, walking graceful as the night - with an almost feline-like movement, the white of her skin and the glints of her looks dodging between the dark-as-coal locks of hair reminding one of of a starry sky on a cloudless night. And suddenly she turns all serenely pure and dearly sweet? I guess if we are going to end up with a saccharine-child, I need a different image to start from:

She laughs her joy, dark-trilling bright
That tells of youth and hopes and dreams,
And 'twixt the raven falling locks
A starry soft-lit side-glance gleams,

As though a star on cloudless night
In race-play 'gainst far-off moonbeam
Should 'midst the forest my face see
and worthy to taste her lips me deem.

OK - do you see what I mean? Introduce the "Innocence" early in the poem, so we can start with an appropriate mental image. Now, obviously that was a rather imperfect two stanzas, but I'm just doing this off the top of my head, and I am not . . . help me here . . . who is this . . . Lord Byron. And he had ALL fucking day to work on this! That's what "Lord" means - it means you have all day to do fuck all except recover from hangovers, shag the domestics, engage in the odd war of liberation against the Ottomans, and write bleeding poetry! And that being the case, it ought to be fucking good, and not give me jarring notes that cause me to go from having an enchantingly dark creature of amazing feline-like grace moving about an enchanted night-scape to some simpering little butter-coated creature of 12 expressing thoughts of serene innocence and purity while sprinkling sugar on her crumbly scone!

Which brings me to my next poem of a problem. I chose this one of Whitman's, because it was so . . . antagonistic, and pompous, that it seemed to suit me well. And perhaps it is slowly growing on me, but I still cannot help but think that this poem really is a great example of a work that precisely characterizes a lack of all the things that poetry is supposed to have - like, I don't know - rhythm, artistic merit, etc.

Are you the new person drawn toward me?
To begin with, take warning, I am surely far different from what you suppose.
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover?
Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy'd satisfaction?
Do you think I am trusty and faithful?
Do you see no further than this facade, this smooth and tolerant manner of me?
Do you suppose yourself advancing on real ground, toward a real heroic man?
Have you no thought, o dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?

To begin with, the poem's lines seem jagged - there is so little rhythm in them that I feel as though I am swallowing my breath and at every line break. That, and the writer's supposition that others would naturally find or assume him to be heroic, coupled with a completely superfluous, apropos of nothing, reference to eastern-mysticism shoe-horned in (to the detriment of what little rhythm there was,) at the end, just unintentionally confirms the portrait of the author as the full-on jackass he seems to have intended to imply that he might be.

But enough about suck things. Let us go on to talk of a book that left me breathless when I was 18 or 19. I am speaking of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. When I was first back in the states after high school, I ran across this book in a second-hand bookshop, and was transfixed to the spot as surely as if someone had nailed my shoes to the floor.

The first 5 quartos made little sense to me - it took me a few pages to catch on to the types of images and metaphors he (or Fitzgerald,) was repeatedly using, and the direction in which his comments were drifting, but after that I just couldn't get enough. I've always been a sucker for mortality metaphors, and people extolling the wisdom of wine, women, and song. But then to go on and ask the Almighty: Who here has done more to create this situation, and who has done less? Why do I, who only walk this path, when my foot slips, ask pardon of you who not only created me, but created the treacherous path, and then strew it with snares and traps? I mean, if YOU created the world, and YOU allowed sin in, and then YOU allowed me to be born into it, exactly to what degree am I to blame vs. YOU?

Throw in a minor dash of the romanticism of the far-off east, and I was hooked.

Amazing, though, how a person with sufficient time to write, (or translate) such a poem would need to begin multiple stanzas with the same trope:

Come fill the cup, and in the fires of spring
The winter garment of repentance fling.
The bird of time hath but a little way to fly,
and lo, the bird is on the wing!

Ah, come fill the cup that today clears
of past regrets and future fears.
Tomorrow? Why tomorrow I may be myself,
With Yesterday's seven-thousand years.

But - as he said - the bird (of time) is on the wing, and Turkish class starts all to soon, so to the store I must go, or I will not drink milk tonight.

Think! In this battered caravanserai,
Whose alternate portals are night and day,
How Idiot after Idiot blogged his bit,
Abode his hour, then went his way!