Thursday, March 04, 2010

the freaks come out at night

whew, just this last month kicked the shit outta us for reasons too complicated and too personal to list here. my reading and my movie watching and all sorts of daily rituals were thrown out of whack. not that i'm complaining. life moves at an incredible clip and sometimes the struggle to keep up can make you winded.

and but then today began with reading a little berrigan where i came across that quote i posted below. life sure is hard but it is a blast [as ernesto priego reminded me in an email, a blast both positive and negative] all the same. i'm reminded that sometimes, as our cat ernie tells us, you gotta stop and eat the flowers.

okay then the walk home was lovely. the rains have stopped for now and the clouds cleared to reveal a sky so blue and open that, as roger daltry once sang, i can see for miles and miles. the streets were packed with people enjoying the early spring evening. the grocery store and the tacqueria were jammed. it seemed, at least to this old coot, festive.

fuckin' a. praxis of life is poetry is life again. ain't it. at least for this old coot. almost old, i mean, half-way there. depends on one's perspective regarding age. but what the hell. even when i was young i thought i was old. the praxis of poetry is to make mistakes and keep on going anyway. the same goes for a life. i'm no longer interested in the well-made urn. i am fascinated by how the process of writing makes the poems and that that process is centered in how i live my life.

shit, all this useless beauty, as declan mcmanus once declared. indeed. and it is all i need.

2 Comments:

At 6:57 AM, Blogger John B-R said...

Richard, Wavy Gravy told a story on himself, which I'll slightly paraphrase. He used to say there were two kinds of life, the show-show, and the life-show. The show-show referred to the times the Hog Farm was putting on a show, i.e. setting up the stage, etc, you know roadie stuff. The life-show was the rest of the time. A friend had to take him aside and say hey Wavy, you're not quite all the way there yet: there's also the life-life. I guess last month was a little life-life round your place.I'm glad you've kupt up/got back your spirits, and yes, please remember that you too are part of all this useless beauty. Even on the bad days.

I'm glad Ernesto's giving pep talks. he's a great guy.

 
At 1:32 AM, Blogger richard lopez said...

thank you, john. yes, ernesto is a great guy. i have only one wavy gravy story, and it ain't much. i remember back in the early '90s when the neo-hippies were still in their ascendencies there was a kind of celebration, what sort i can't recall, at u.c. davis. the place was filled with the scent of pathouli and cute hippie chicks clad in outfits that looked only like a system of put together veils. so there's wavy gravy who just puplished a book sitting in his clown outfit, make-up and all, at a tent. not one neo-hippie went up to talk with him. he sat in that tent with copies of his book looking more bored than a five-year-old with a calculus textbook.

that's it. i observed him for a bit and that was all. boredom. i thought damn people have short memories.

ah what the hell, i'm sure wavy gravy is crying, as liberace said, all the way to the bank.

 

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