The Visit

He decided it was a good day to visit with her. She was expecting him and opened the door with not the clenched hand of anger as per usual, but with a gentle, almost child-like caress. He stepped back — his legs were still sore — and took it all in. He felt confused, yet also felt like maple syrup between her fingers. Sweet enough to attract bees, but sticky and almost everlasting. The combination of those attributes almost made one think it was not the greatest of ideas, one of impulse rather than logic. Not the worst thing, really — sometimes playing it safe was no longer the name of her cat, nor danger the name of her dog. Security was the name of the game and that is what she deserved. So from then on her goal was focused and absolute. No longer was it about the straight path; the easy road. The time was now. Here. Right. Now...

© 2009 Lee Greenfeld

Then Wear The Gold Hat

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!"

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

A.I.T.A. Hall Of Fame: The High Numbers

"Clean living under difficult circumstances" -Pete Meaden

"Dance To Keep From Crying"
"You Really Got Me"
"Young Man Blues"
"Green Onions"
"Improvisation"
"Long Tall Shorty"
"Pretty Thing"
"Smokestack Lightning/Money"
"Here 'Tis"

Download: Live At The Marquee, 1964

Quote Of The Week

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." -Henry David Thoreau

Hero Takes A Fall

Photograph by Lee Greenfeld © 2009

Archaic Torso Of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Goodbye Teacher Man

Frank McCourt
Rest In Peace
"His former students will tell you that Frank McCourt, who died Sunday, was too attuned to the false note ever to declare, once he had become a huge success as an author, that he missed teaching high school. Even so, he spent three decades as a teacher of English and creative writing in New York City’s public schools. And he was the first to say that those years, while depriving him of the time actually to write, were what made a writer out of him. He had long been retired by 1996, when his first book, Angela’s Ashes, was published." ... Story continues here: The Storyteller Begat The Teacher Who Begat The Writer (NY Times)

Buy: Angela's Ashes

Quote Of The Week

"Look not mournfully into the past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future, without fear." -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"And That's The Way It Is"

Walter Cronkite
Rest In Peace
"Walter Cronkite, who pioneered and then mastered the role of television news anchorman with such plain-spoken grace that he was called the most trusted man in America, died Friday at his home in New York. He was 92." ... Story continues here: Walter Cronkite, Voice of TV News, Dies (NY Times)

Buy: A Reporter's Life

On Theological Dishonesty

"One kind of honesty has been unknown to all founders of religions and their likes — they have never made of their experiences a matter of conscience and knowledge. "What did I really experience? What happened in me and around me then? Was my mind sufficiently alert? Was my will bent against fantasy?" — none of them has asked such questions, none of our dear religious people asks such questions even now: they feel, rather, a thirst for things which are contrary to reason and do not put too many difficulties in the way of satisfying it — thus they experience "miracles" and "rebirths" and hear the voices of angels!" [from The Gay Science]

"Whoever has the blood of theologians in his veins, stands from the start in a false and dishonest position to all things. The pathos which grows out of this state is called Faith: that is to say, to shut one's eyes once and for all, in order not to suffer at the sight of incurable falsity. People convert this faulty view of all things into a moral, a virtue, a thing of holiness. They endow their distorted vision with a good conscience — they claim that no other point of view is any longer of value, once theirs has been made sacrosanct with the names "God," "Salvation," "Eternity." I unearthed the instinct of the theologian everywhere; it is the most universal, and actually the most subterranean falsity on earth." [from The Antichrist]

(Be My) Suicidal Heart-Throb

Pain and possibility — sickness unto life.
Bound. Clouded. Broken. Crowded.

Spinning wheels — her grace is far from the reason.
Grasping. Slipping. Losing. Crashing.

Walk the bridge again.

© 2009 Lee Greenfeld

Quote Of The Week

"Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved." -William Jennings Bryan

Here In Status Symbol Land

"Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the
volume of the week" -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Download: "Sunday Evening" by Beat Band G-66
Download: "Sunday You Need Love" by Oblivians
Download: "Sunday World" by The Radiators From Space
Download: "Sunday Morning" (live, '69) by The Velvet Underground

Trouble Bound

"One of the remaining original Sun Records artists, Billy Lee Riley is in very bad need of help! Billy has had his share of health problems, and is now battling stage four bone cancer. Although Musicares is helping with house payment, car and such, he and his wife Joyce are totally out of money and can barely afford to eat. This is a call for help — please send something today to Billy and Joyce."

Billy Lee Riley
723 Crest Drive
Jonesboro, Arkansas 72401

Download: "Red Hot"
Buy: Classic Recordings, 1956-1960
Read: Rockabilly Hall Of Fame's feature on Riley

Wild Nights! Wild Nights!

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds
To a heart in port,—
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!

-Emily Dickinson

Stepped On Out

Drake Levin
Rest In Peace
"Drake Levin, lead guitarist for Paul Revere & The Raiders during the quintet's hit-making prime in the mid-1960s, died Saturday at his home in San Francisco after a long battle with cancer" ... Story continues here: Drake Levin, Guitarist, Dies At 62 (LA Times)

Buy: Kicks! The Anthology 1963-1972

Quote Of The Week

"Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt." -William Shakespeare

This Land Is Your Land

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York Island

From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway

I saw above me that endless skyway

I saw below me that golden valley

This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps

To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts

While all around me a voice was sounding

Saying this land was made for you and me.

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;

Sign was painted, it said private property;

But on the back side it didn't say nothing;

(That side was made for you and me.)

This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling

And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling

A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,

This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York Island

From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and me.

- By Woody Guthrie -

Download: "This Land Is Your Land (Private Property version)"

Photograph by Lee Greenfeld © 2009

Be Drunk

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it — it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking... ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

-Charles Baudelaire