Anecdotes, Tidbits, Random Notes

My neurotic mind

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

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Quote from James Baldwin’s ‘Notes of a Native Son.’ (Sound familiar?)

“After the funeral, while I was downtown desperately celebrating my birthday, a Negro soldier, in the lobby of the Hotel Braddock, got into a fight with a white policeman over a Negro girl. Negro girls, white policemen, in or out of uniform, and Negro males—in or out of uniform—were part of the furniture of the lobby of the Hotel Braddock and this was certainly not the first time such an incident had occurred. It was destined, however, to receive an unprecedented publicity, for the fight between the policeman and the soldier ended with the shooting of the soldier. Rumor, flowing immediately to the streets outside, stated that the soldier had been shot in the back, an instantaneous and revealing invention, and that the soldier had died protecting a Negro woman. The facts were somewhat different—for example, the soldier had not been shot in the back, and was not dead, and the girl seems to have been as dubious a symbol of womanhood as her white counterpart in Georgia usually is, but no one was interested in the facts. They preferred the invention because this invention expressed and corroborated their hates and fears so perfectly. It is just as well to remember that people are always doing this. Perhaps many of those legends, including Christianity, to which the world clings began their conquest of the world with just some such concerted surrender to distortion. The effect, in Harlem, of this particular legend was like the effect of a lit match in a tin of gasoline. The mob gathered before the doors of the Hotel Braddock simply began to swell and to spread in every direction, and Harlem exploded.”

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NOTES ON SELF WHILE IN CALIFORNIA (2019)

1. I need to get more honest with myself

2. I need to release my grip on the illusion of control

3. Let go: There is a safety net below you (recovery; friends; freedom)

4. Stop trying so hard

5. Smile more

6. Stop being so needy and desperate

7. Trust God/HP

8. Take at least SOME direction (even if not all)

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OVERHEARD IN NYC

‘The IRS is a fictitious entity.’ Barista (male, Latino I think), Bean to Bean coffee shop on west 26/8ave.

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A Poem by Me (2018)

This fizzy, furry thing inside,

The black ball, covered in hair:

Fear,

The thing I want to run from, obsess over,

The thing which threatens to take me down hard.

Prison, bars made of shadow

I try to rattle my cage, break free

But I am alive

Still

No one is stopping me

I am sane,

Held by a thin blue thread

Rational but nutty,

Afraid but courageous

Because I just. Keep. Going.

Never stop. Never lose. Never give in.

Be present. Let go. Be free. Accept here and now.

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From The SPOOKY ART OF WRITING (Norman Mailer)

“MFA can’t give you experience. Experience is key for a writer and must be real, existential, and out of your control.”

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Carl Jung

“To be normal, is the ideal aim of the unsuccessful.”

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Notes from a biography on Anton Chekhov

1. lost virginity age 13 at brothel

2. Incredible poverty and debt growing up

3. Anton tutored kids for money

4. Father a preacher (in debt)

5. Read Goethe’s Faust; Shakespeare; Gogol; Turgenev

6. Moved to Moscow, went to university

7. Brother Collier: artist (painter)

8. University of Moscow for medicine

9. Abandoned for two years by folks as early teen

10. Each student in college had a dead corpse of the poor and hanged and crushed bodies etc to study in biology.

11. One brother was painter; other was a writer (Alexander)

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From a biography on Martin Luther King

1. Operation Dialogue

2. King understood that it’s economics, not race (distribution of wealth is necessary); dem socialism

3. Attack the ghettoes (Chicago/NYC)

4. Public is not sophisticated enough to use critical thinking

5. Economic boycotting

6. Anti Vietnam and anti apartheid in Africa (King)

7. FBI // J. Edgar Hoover

8. Chicago slums: ‘internal colonialism’

9. Privileged vs underprivileged classes, regardless of race

10. MLK liked many different views to be presented in movement; used Hegel’s Dialectic

11. Stokley Carmichael: SNCC (.young radical) who conflicted w King and older moderates: ‘Black Power’

12. Black power/ black nationalism: MLK loathed this and saw it as racist. Used by young SNCC.

13. Pressure on real estate industry in Chicago (Chicago rental board)

14. White racism and black power: both are extremes (King said)

15. K supported a ‘guaranteed annual income’ of $4K for low income blacks

16. ‘Social revolution.’

17. Teamsters and jimmy Hoffa gave $50K to SCLC in exchange for King and SCLC organizing hospital worker unions

18. ‘Democratic socialism’

19. War on poverty was being ruined by Vietnam war (too much money going to war)

20. Morality (moral imperative)

21. Critical of capitalism

22. Felt Appalachian whites and Mexicans were minorities as well as blacks

23. ‘A revolution of values.’ Radical distribution of economic and political power.’

24. ‘America is a hypocritical nation.’

25. ‘Underlying economic conditions’ which push black riots etc

26. Roen: Black journalist criticized king saying he was a communist and disloyal to America a la anti Vietnam

27. ‘Economic justice.’

28. Nonviolence and civil disobedience

29. K supported republicans as well as Dems

30. King believed in dem socialism (vs ‘black capitalism’)

31. King felt he himself was ‘privileged’ and hadn’t worked for much of what he’d been born into and had been given

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Email to a magazine editor about an article of mine they were going to publish but were worried about

Hi Linda,

Thanks so much for publishing the piece. Feel free to remove the details of his book etc. That’s fine. But one word about that. Not only did he leave the white power movement but he’s dedicated the past 23 years to fighting AGAINST hate. He’s done incredible work. He was recently interviewed on 60 Minutes, Sarah Silverman, NPR, etc. He’s becoming quite well known in the US. A quick google search for anyone shows them who/what he is now. Just wanted to say that in case it changed your perspective. His book is all about leaving hate and changing. It’s a powerful redemption story. I think it’s a very important story, especially right now.

But I respect your choice. So like I said, if you feel you need to take out the details related to him/his book, I understand. I don’t want to lose your platform.

Thanks again for taking the piece. I’m very grateful. I love the articles you post.

MICHAEL

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Notes on Charles Bukowski

1. The Genius of the Crowd

2. Buk's father was a great literary teacher: he taught him to write by beating the pretense out of him.

3. Anti Mickey Mouse: New York Quarterly: 'true artist'; anti 'Disney-fication

4. John Martin, Black Sparrow Press: Buk lived on $100/month; Martin gave Buk 25% of his income ($100/mo) for life whether he wrote or not in exchange for Buk quitting post office tenure job (12 years) and writing full time for BSP)

5. Capitalism: the incredible waste of a life dictated by others

6. Buk liberated poetry from the academics

7. There's a Bluebird in My Heart

8. The 'ember' (to be a writer)

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   WHITE NOISE (1985): Don DeLillo

   A. 'What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation.'

   B. 'Something ominous in the modern sunset.'

   C. 'To break off from the crowd is to face death alone, as an individual.'

   D. 'The family is the cradle of the world's misinformation.'

   E. 'We are fragile creatures surrounded by hard and hostile facts.'

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Writer I Met at New York Public Library (2017)

Met at New York Public Library. From France. Lived all over. England. New Calcedonia. Educated at Oxford in economics. Now NYU for writing MFA. Almost 33 years old. Being paid to move to live in Paris. Full scholarship to NYU writing program. Studying under Jonathan Safroen Foer. (40 now.) David Lipsky (The End of the Tour.) Rick Moody. His debut 2013 novel: Black Chalk; Garnet Publishing (indie UK publisher). Agent: Peter Strauss, UK, big deal in UK publishing. Found many articles on Alla; theatre in Paris; book Doctor editing writing blogs etc. New novel is 200,000 words! Says he'll get blurbs from Foer; Lipsky; Ann Enright; etc. Says he'll "switch" agents from UK to American. Nice guy; a bit arrogant. Likes Paris more than New York he says. Says NYC agents are lined up for his book cause has connection via Peter Strauss and NYU/ Foer/Lipsky etc. Likes MFA program. Had dinner together. Said he'll get connections and I'll stay in "the wilderness." Friend of a friend of Emma Cline. (Told him my story.)

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NEW YORK CITY (spring 2017)

Bumpy plane ride, touch down, Uber carpool for $35 with Florida couple back from visiting Hawaii with son. Drive into Manhattan. Snow, beautiful and sloshy and everywhere; muddy sometimes. Takes forever to get into Manhattan. Highways, tunnels, etc. finally drop gilt in back seat off at east 43rd. Then back into chaos w older Florida couple. Traffic horrible. Honking. Taxis. Excited to be in NYC again. But exhausted from no sleep on flight. Uber driver goes off Lexington towards 7th ave to drop them off. I say Fuck It, I'll grab my bags n walk. The Florida couple and driver are surprised. I want to say, Hey; I walked Camino de Santiago! (But I don't.) I get out on Lexington and E. 48. I walk nearly 30 blocks, up cold streets, air blowing out mouth/nostrils; crunching snow underfoot; people everywhere doing the same. Beautiful scenes of sunlight and snow. Trench coats and thick clothing. Boots crunching on snow. People plowing. Cars covered in snow. Funny: 3-4 cops trying to clear their NYPD cruiser, covered in snow, one Asian, one white, laughing. Pass E. 50s, 60s, businesses, bagel shops, many Starbucks, etc. Carrying two bags, my messenger over shoulder and Oakland Raiders over shoulder sitting in front against my stomach, like some counterweight.

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"You cannot rebel against people's perceptions." (Me)

"The intelligence of silence." (Me)

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CAMUS "THE PLAGUE"

1. Categorical

2. Discursive

3. "Stupidity has a knack for getting its way."

4. "A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE"

5. 1:57:00: great conc deets!!!

6. "Key shafts of memory that stung like fire."

7. Exile

8. "The vast indifference of the sky."

9. Biography of NORMAN MAILOR

10. "A conventional emotion; a grief that is sold on the marketplace; mass produced."

11. "Gaze" used way, way too much

12. "The language of reason, not of the heart."

13. SOCRATES BIOGRAPHY OR HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

14. Religion: "threshing" the fields; separating the wheat from the chaff: good vs bad; biblical idea. Fear drives action and stupidity and jingoism and cooperation.

15. Plague references: Black Plague; Constantinople; Greece; Egypt;

16. Forgetting God

17. "Prophylactic"

18. "Abstraction"

19. Anti Christian; anti authority; anti anti death penalty

20. "The truth with a capital 'T.'”

21. "Ignorance stems from an inability to clearly see things as they are." (Buddhism!!!)

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Buddhist talk:

‘An open-hearted embrace of the totality of our existential situation.’

‘Right now it’s like this.’

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Random Greyhound Bus Ride

Story idea: on San Joaquin train, 712, reading novel and hear girl/woman crying down row of seats. Get up and walk down to her. Concrete details etc. Train bound to Bakersfield. Then bus to Santa Barbara to get picked up by mom. Long wide green corn fields. Open golden wheat fields. San Joaquin Valley, a la I-99, California’s fertile agricultural base. Stockton, Modesto, Merced, Madera, Fresno (mom’s mom and father Bond), Tulare, Bakersfield. Railroad tracks. Small towns. Dirt roads. Streets paralleling train. Farm land, rows of green plants and agriculture.  Then bus. Down The Grapevine (I-5). Stinky people behind me. Food stamps. Hanging head (man). Toilet open like a mouth that’s vomited. Man sitting ahead of me has tan arms w loose flesh and bad faded ink tats. Weird gray eyes. Dark charcoal gray short hair. BS ref to Jane: ‘the condescending, calm way she deleted my experience.’

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The End