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Delhi Dog
Trad climber
Good Question...
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Sorry, I couldn't help it.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Someone did some research recently that showed that Barack Obama and Dick Cheney are distant cousins.
The Obama campaign's comment: "Well, there's a black sheep in every family."
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Crowley, are you channeling Richard Brautigan?
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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"Death Is a Beautiful Car Parked Only"
For Emmett
Death is a beautiful car parked only
to be stolen on a street lined with trees
whose branches are like the intestines
of an emerald.
You hotwire death, get in, and drive away
like a flag made from a thousand burning
funeral parlors.
You have stolen death because you're bored.
There's nothing good playing at the movies
in San Francisco.
You joyride around for a while listening
to the radio, and then abandon death, walk
away, and leave death for the police
to find.
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WBraun
climber
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That's it Gary perfect analogy.
The body is an empty shell without the driver.
A walking corps ....
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Brautigan's best, Werner.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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I always liked A Confederate General from Big Sur
buying the alligators to silence the frogs... classic...
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nita
climber
chica from chico
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In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar. I'll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant.....
Our lives we have carefully constructed from watermelon sugar and then travelled to the length of our dreams, along roads lined with pines and stone. R.B.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Bump for Brautigan.
"ROMMEL DRIVES ON DEEP INTO EGYPT"
—San Francisco Chronicle headline
June 26, 1942
Rommel is dead.
His army has joined the quicksand legions
of history where the battle is always
a metal echo saluting a rusty shadow.
His tanks are gone.
How's your ass?
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nita
climber
chica from chico
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"It's very hard to live in a studio apartment in San Jose with a man who's learning to play the violin." That's what she told the police when she handed them the empty revolver.
Revenge of the Lawn. R.B.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Good one, nita. I'm getting all nostalgic, gonna have to brush off some dusty books. The Hawkline Monster is around here someplace.
"All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace"
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Nov 27, 2007 - 12:27am PT
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Richard Brautigan, 1935-1984 apparently killed himself because he lost his audience.. you can check out a quick bio of him on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Brautigan);...
his 1970 collection of poems, Rommel Drives Deep into Egypt was evoked by this thread title... so this is a little bit of a thread hijack, but since the original thread topic has died, or at least quiesced, I thought it was doing little violence... I have a copy of that book of poems, I bought it in 1973 probably while I was at UC Berkeley as a freshman. The title is a title of a poem within:
ROMMEL DRIVES DEEP INTO EGYPT
 San Francisco Chronicle Headline
June 26, 1942
Rommel is dead.
His army has joined the quicksand legions
of history where battle is always
a metal echo saluting a rusty shadow.
His tanks are gone.
How's your ass?
As Gary posted above...I marked the ones I liked at the time... but this was not so marked...
The other poem posted by Gary, "Death Is a Beautiful Car Parked Only" is in his collection of poems The Pill Versus the Springhill Mind Disaster
that poem:
When you take your pill
it's like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside of you.
His "novels" were a lot like his poetry.
There are some hilarious ideas... but also a weird connection to other reading... in particular Dick Dorworth talks about Ecclesiastes and while I was looking in that book I came across two chapters that set up the funny scene I remember. I think I bought the book when I was in high school... anyway:
Preparing for Ecclesiastes
A little while after dinner, to avoid the sound of the frogs that were really laying it in now from the early color of the evening, I decided to take my farts and belches to the privacy of my cabin and read Ecclesiastes.
"I think I'm going to sit here and read frogs," Lee Mellon farted.
"What did you say, Lee? I can't hear you. The frogs. Yell louder," I farted.
Lee Mellon got up and threw a great big rock into the pond and screamed "Campbell's Soup!" The frogs were instantly quiet. That would work for a few moments and then they would start in again. Lee Mellon had quite a pile of rocks in the room. The frogs would always begin with one croak, and then the second and then the 7,452nd frog would join in.
Funny thing though, about Lee Mellon's yelling "Campbell's Soup!" at the frogs while he was launching various missiles into the pond. He yelled every kind of obscenity possible at them, and then he decided to experiment with nonsense syllables to see if they would have any effect, along with a well-aimed rock.
Lee Mellon had an inquiring mind and by the hit-or-miss method he came up with "Campbell's Soup!" as the phrase that struck the most fear into the frogs. So now, instead of yelling some boring obscenity, he yelled, "Campbell's Soup!" at the top of his voice in the Big Sur night.
"Now what did you say?" I farted.
"I think I'm going to sit here and read frogs. What's wrong, don't you like frogs?" Lee Mellon farted. "That's what I said. Where's your spirit of patriotism? After all, there's a frog on the American flag."
"I'm going to my cabin," I farted. "Read some Ecclesiastes."
"You've been reading a lot of Ecclesiastes lately," Lee Mellon farted. "And as I remember there's not that much to read. Better watch yourself, kid."
"Just putting in time," I said.
"I think dynamite's too good for these frogs," Lee Mellon said. "I'm working on something special. Dynamite's too fast. I'm getting a great idea."
...
You can actually hear Brautigan read the next chapter [url="http://www.brautigan.net/audio/general.mp3"]The Rivets in Ecclesiastes[/url]...
the chapter I remember is the solution to the frog problem:
A Farewell to Frogs
Elaine cooked dinner that evening. What a joy it was to have a woman behind the stove. She was our fair queen of grub as she fried up some pork chops. It was then I realized for the first time the extent of the damage Lee Mellon's cooking had done to my soul.
I don't believe I have ever fully healed spiritually from his cooking. I have built defensive mechanisms around those tragic memories, but the pain is still there. If I but for an instant diminish my defenses, the cloven hoof of his bad cooking prances again in all its dubious glory on my palate.
Lee Mellon built a grandiose fire and we sat around the fire drinking cups of strong black coffee. The cats were in there with us, stretched out like furry ferns in front of the fire. Everybody was nice and comfy. While the cats purred up from the depths of their prehistoric memories like rusty old plantlike purr -- they were so little used to contentment -- we engaged in dialogue.
"What do your parents do?" Lee Mellon said paternally. I choked on my coffee.
"I'm their daughter," Elaine said.
Lee Mellon stared blankly at her face for a few seconds. "Sounds like a vaguely familiar story. Conan Doyle, I guess, The Case of the Smart Ass Daughter," Lee Mellon said.
He went and got one of our brand-new apples out of the kitchen. He began to work on it with his six teeth. I knew the apples were crisp but there was no sound coming out of his mouth that would have indicated the presence of that quality.
"My father's a lawyer," Elaine said.
Lee Mellon nodded. There were hand grenade fragments of apple around the corners of his mouth.
Elaine reached over and put her hand on my thigh. I put my arm around her and leaned back against the wooden wall. Lee Mellon was enthroned upon the his stale deer hide.
Night was coming on in, borrowing the light. It had started out borrowing just a few cents worth of the light, but now it was borrowing thousands of dollars worth of the light every second. The light would soon be gone, the bank closed, the tellers unemployed, the bank president a suicide.
We sat there quietly watching Lee Mellon valiantly attacking the world's longest apple, and then we were close to each other, and then we went back silently to Lee Mellon and the apple, and then back to ourselves and finally we were not watching the apple masquerade any more but were totally involved within our closeness with each other.
When Lee Mellon finished the apple he smacked his lips together like a pair of cymbals, and we heard the first frog.
"There it goes," Lee Mellon said, preparing immediately to send his calvary in, dust rising in the valley, an excitement in the time of banners, in the time of drums.
We heard the second frog, and then we heard the first frog over again. A third frog joined in, and then they all had a good one together, and then a fourth frog came on through, and three other frogs popped like firecrackers, and Lee Mellon said, "I'll go get the alligators." He lit a lantern and walked through the hole in the kitchen wall and up the path to the car.
Elaine must have dozed off suddenly. She was lying on the floor with her head in my lap. She was a little startled. "Where is Lee Mellon?" she said. I barely heard her.
"He's gone to get the alligators," I said loudly.
"Are those the frogs?" she said loudly and pointing to the noise that was beginning to boil all over the dark pond.
"Yes," I said loudly.
"Good," she said loudly.
Lee Mellon came back with the alligators. He had a nice six-toothed smile on his face. He put the box down and took one of the alligators out. The alligator was stunned to realize that he was not in the pet shop. He looked around for the puppies that had been in a wire cage next to his aquarium. The puppies were gone. The alligator wondered where the puppies were. Lee Mellon was holding the alligator in his hands.
"Hello alligator!" Lee Mellon shouted to the alligator and put the alligator carefully down into the pond. The alligator lay there stationary like a toy boat. Lee Mellon gave him a little push and the alligator sailed out into the pond.
There was an instant silence over the pond as if the pond had been dropped right into the heart of a cemetery. Lee Mellon took the second alligator out of the box.
The second alligator looked all around for the puppies. He couldn't find them either. Where had they gone to?
Lee Mellon stroked the back of the alligator and put it down into the pond and floated it away, and the silence in the pond was multiplied by two. Silence hung like a mist over the pond.
"Well that takes care of the frogs," Elaine whispered finally. We had been hypnotized by the silence.
Lee Mellon stood there staring incredulously at the dark watery silence. "There gone," he said.
"Yeah," I said. "There's nothing in there now but alligators."
what I remember these 30 years later was "the silence in the pond was multiplied by two"...
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