No you Don't Know

Thought of u 2day. “It took four years 4 me 2 knw whch drawr was the silverware drawer, whch cupbrd the glasses were in”


“that happens 2 me”



Excuse me? “My daughter or husband will put something somewhere and I wont know where something is”.



“No we are not talking about the same thing”



“So you walk into your Kitchen and everyday have no idea where you store silverware- no idea which closet the coats are in- you walk into where you live and have no idea where anything is!”

Anyway – thought of you because that’s why you were the last of the group of us that I saw or wanted to talk to because I knew, I knew it’d be

FB messaged yur Mom. I always thought that she had trouble pronoucing my name but that's not what it was was it.
 
I never had much imagination for such things. It was a joke right- how she pronounced my name. I always thought it was because she had a hard tmie pronoucing it- but even at but even at Al's wedding. It was a joke wasn't it- a long running not at all funny joke.
 
It took me a long to 'get it'. Took me until recently.

Attention Herbert Hoover

Dear Herbert,




Is it okay if I call you Herbert? Well I just did so if it’s not- oh well! Plus you’re dead so…sorry about that but according to current rumor your memory has been stripped and you are now living in an undisclosed location BUT just in case you are still in the loop I thought I’d give you an update.



Remember those dossiers you kept on oh so many if not all of us- you know the ones those beatnik-hippie-flower-power-types gave you so much crap about even after you were dead?



Well sir you’ll be gratified to know their children and their children’s children have completely embraced the concept.



Shocking I know- so I hope you’re sitting down and wearing a dainty frock for this.



Oh and if the dress thing was just a vicious rumor then I take back my last comment but the truth is sir: if you liked wearing dresses then I hope you got to be put in a woman’s body for your next round trip. After all you did for your country - you earned it.



The dream of citizen dossiers has finally come true. I know you always knew the day would come so maybe its not such a shocker but here‘s the twist: would you believe the citizens themselves are creating them? I myself have created a substantial dossier on myself including pictures, thoughts, beliefs, preferences, contacts, former contacts.



Future contacts?



No that’s the job of the N(A)SA and I wouldn’t want to step on any toes.



Plus would you believe it all happened just like President Jelly Bean said it would? I don’t know if you and President Jelly Bean ever met formally but I feel sure his dossier made for interesting reading. He was an actor after all. Since I think you missed that chapter I’ll fill in the blanks. Redemption went like this: Profits are the ultimate good.



But that wasn’t a very catchy jiggle so someone wrote him great lines about a city on a hill and that we could spend our way to it. Actually he said we’d spend our way out of debt. Sounds like something out of Alice’s not so wonderful trip to a deck of cards doesn’t it?



See by the time President Jelly Bean came around Coke was no longer a delightful beverage which made voodoo economics much more appealing and nearly everyone bought the lines as President delivered them so very well.



Fastforward and here we are today on verge of an IPO for something called the book of faces: the ultimate synergy of citizenry and commerce. Imagine it sir: intelligence gathering, entertainment and profits all wrapped into one. Though you and President Jelly Bean “died” the “dreams” didn’t die with you but are alive and well and living in SIM cards everywhere.



It’s beyond anything you ever dreamed about for if the zoot suits ever do a round up they’ll know just who to look for, where and through whom but really it would and does make more sense simply to route and/or reroute, deny and prevent access or provide it this way and that. Perhaps in such matters it’ll earn the players more points or more chips- as whatever their form they’re largely one and the same.



Gotta pay that guy at Styx after all -or at the very least keep up with Joneses on Quasar 5.



Lastly Herbert I hope you’re enjoying the educational programming President Jelly Bean willed you: Strawberry Shortcake. But I suggest not following their fashion sense- one girl to another. That and should you and President Jelly Bean ever meet towards the hike to Big Rock Candy Mountain: Beware! I hear Ike is still broadcasting and suspect he’s none too pleased at a blind march toward a military-industrial-social-network-entertainment- program.



I know, like anyone would ever watch that show!



Sincerely,



Anonymous

(As if !)

PS: (Ididn't) disabledland.com/dandruff-is-a-germ-disease-newbros-herpicide-1900
PPS:(Idid) http://beholdtherelish.blogspot.com/2011/10/herbies-purple-shoes.html

Herbie's Purple Shoes

PS:


10.10.11: News Update:



Actually its old news: Habeas Corpus died.



Of course there’s no headstone for Habeas and I don’t know if there was a funeral or if the Corpus family would dare attend because of how Habeas died.



Of course the reliability of this report is contingent on the media I receive but according to the media I receive an American was executed without trial by a drone flying not over American soil, but new world order sand.



Which means its-time-to-do-the-time-warp-again.



Remember “The List”? The Enemies List.



The enemies list belonging to your pal Dick? (Nixon not Cheney) Back before SIM cards you could follow Listees around, have the IRS audit them yearly. There were lots of them but I wonder how many priests were on the list?



I know. That information is classified and what with your stripped memory you don‘t remember anyway but wow what you could have done with that list in a post 911 corporately unwritten world.



I knew one of the priests on The List- one of those hippie, questioning authority, power to all the people types- he even included women on that people list. He made it onto “Nixon’s Enemies List”. Back then you could call the listees a name like “Commies” put ‘em on a list and watch ‘em, give ‘em a hard time but you couldn’t call them commie and just have them killed. Although who knows maybe you did and we just never heard about it, or maybe you just sent some of them to Vietnam.



Now however after 911 a new word came into fashion: terrorist. And that has become a very special word giving special powers to special people who deem themselves as very, very special.



Everybody’s using the word, the name: Terrorist. Call someone a terrorist and be you a Middle Eastern dictator or the Leader of the allegedly, and now officially former, Free World: you can just call someone a name, ’that’ name and have them killed. That’s how Habeas died.



His name wasn’t Habeas, I don’t know his name. What I do know, or at least what I’ve been told, he was on a List, next to his name was a word: terrorist. Or so we’re told.



Oh- he was an American. Did I mention that?



Rather an important detail him being an American because having been born here and his family having fought wars and paid taxes meant he was supposed to be entitle to face his accusers. That’s what his lineage was supposed to have bought him and his forward but the contract has been altered.



I know! Like how happy would that have made you and Dick if you could have just killed everyone on “The Enemy List”. No trial- just call them a name, give the order and the trouble maker is gone- and not gone to Canada or Europe gone but maybe not forgotten but executed without trial never to be bothersome again.



Oh did I mention the no trial thing?



Should have as that was a rather important nuance to this latest development in pursuit of the Nixon Cheney Double Dick Dream: President as King.



Two Dick’s one dream.



How could this be worse for civil libbers like me?



America’s first black President pressed the button.



Not that he actually pressed the button, no that job belonged to some guy or gal with an affinity for videogames. That’s the new system: the Presi-king calls you a name, someone playing a videogame remotes a Pentag(on/ram) toy. The human drone pushes a button signaling the metallic drone to kill, neither drone questions the order and one of the drones hopes s/he does get caught in rush hour traffic.



Today the name/the accusation of terrorist and anyone can be killed but tomorrow, under these rules, it could conceivably be having allegedly worn purple shoes.



“We have purple-shoe-wearers in our midst -do not be alarmed when armed drones (robotic or flesh variety) appear and execute the purple shoe wearers on sight.”



I know Herbert, purple shoes are a problem. They go well with navy blue but can be a bit loud with black and you really have to know who you are to wear purple shoes. Personally I don’t think anyone should be killing anyone because the King says your shoes are purple. Ones person‘s purple is another person‘s aubergine. Such are, and always were and will be, the problems that come with having Kings, be they Presi-kings or just plain Dicks.



For instance: your shoes are lapis, or worse eggplant …though the worst is when you’re wearing chartreuse shoes and yet the King is pointing a finger at you proclaiming you’re a purple-shoe-wearer when your shoes are clearly chartreuse.



That happens with Kings, as well as Queens because there’s nothing you can do to prove yourself to not be a purple-shoe-wearer and that you were and are in fact wearing green shoes which can not be confused with lapis therefore this talk of purple shoes is unjust!



You know you’re not wearing purple shoes, heck the King may even know you’re not wearing purple shoes but now, now in America the Presi-king can declare anyone s/he wants: a purple-shoe-wearer and they’re very clearly nearly dead. So today, yet again, some King, or Queen can say “H(is/er) shoes are purple - off with h(er/is) head!“



But of course no one uses axes anymore.



A kill order is signed, a few phone calls and/or emails are made and a drone takes off from somewhere and someone who makes a point of not thinking about they did at the office/base pretends its all just a videogame.



That’s pretty much how Habeas became a corpse Herbie. An American Presi-king created a precedent. There had been a previous precedent Presi-king, see that’s how all this started “military tribunals” which broke the law but Americans didn’t much care because the purple-shoe-wearers/terrorists were foreigners so trying them a) without a trial and b) outside of America was no threat to American non-purple-shoe-wearers.



The Next step was killing an American citizen without trial…abroad. See that was very important because there’s an acceptance curve occurring.



Here‘s what happens next- I‘d say they‘ll wait a good decade or two before pulling the next maneuver to absolute power:



Drone kills of Americans (purple-shoe-wearers/terrorists) -not off American soil- but on.



Herbie, I realize they’ll have been called purple-shoe-wearers but me I’m old fashioned: I want to see the shoes. I don’t want some guy or gal saying “The shoes are purple really they are- trust me the shoes are purple”. No- I want to see the shoes.



M(r./iss) Hoover I know all this talk of shoes probably has you wanting to see if you have an appropriate handbag for the occasion so I‘ll wind up this long PS.



Be sure to cross check your color palette in broad daylight because we girls have all been there. You think the attire matches but in broad daylight you find your black separates not only don’t exactly match but don’t even blend, sometimes they can actually clash. One black isn’t in the same family of black as the other black and then where are you! Wearing black and not quite black but not close enough to grey for the outfit to work.



So check your black facts against sunlight as it’s the only way to be sure.



That and should you ever the visit the grave, the site, the spot -perhaps simply the date or maybe should you just want to give a nod to what we’ve lost: wear your purple shoes.

A Strange Holiday

Easter always struck me as odd and kindergarten I finally dared to think it: giant bunnies delivering eggs and candy which is coincidentally sold at the store?

This of course meant Santa too was blown into retail fairy tale land but even without the cartoon strangeness of these holidays- fact is I'm uncomfortable with each. The gatherings are nice but the story, the story that got told - the one every one goes to church on Sunday and nods their heads to...

I think that when you've known hunger and being cold or desperately needing to bathe and none of these things are available in any other form than the entry below... And really those big churches, all that body heat when it was so cold outside and a bit of bread and wine guaranteed and a man reading a book written by other men for other men about a man who was tortured and murdered because what he was saying threatened to upset the apple cart. "His murder means you're free!"- I am of course paraphrasing.

"He died for our sins". That one particular theme/thesis is not only way to read what happened - and what happened after what happened.

Drinking blood every weekend, believing torture and murder can ever be a good thing? That doesn't sound like That Which Is- seems more like the sort of thing Darth Vader or Voldemorte would be into.

I can't believe it. Google turned back time or policy and let me in witha none google acct. Okay- I c u and raise u- or maybe g ur right on q

Title: Fall 2008




“The reason people treat you like you’re nothing is because you are nothing,” the police officer bellows.



The female police officer continues sharing this and other pearls of wisdom as her male partner in protection and service pats down over fifty women. My hands are against the wall; I and all of us are still in our pajamas, half asleep and half in shock and we know we‘re not dreaming just re-awakened into a new chapter of this nightmare. The woman next to me is shaking and looks like she’s about to cry. That last part surprises me because she’s done time -more than a few of them have. Me, I just try to keep my head down and my mouth shut.



How did I wind up lined up against a wall in the middle of the night being patted down, or felt up, depending on your perspective? It all started at a red light. I stopped and waited for the light to turn green. I know - they tell you in traffic school that is this exactly what you’re supposed to do and so theoretically it shouldn‘t lead to being frisked in the middle of the night for a cell phone but it has.



If you ask the local medical university whose bread, butter, jam and crumpet’s come from psychopharmacological research I’m lined up against this wall because I suffer from a delusion that I was ever sitting in front of that red light in the first place. The other part of my delusion is that I was a dean‘s list student twenty hours short of graduation with an acumen for system analysis and investigative journalism.



I kept restating what I regard as the facts of my life which the medical university selectively declared as delusions. After which I made a series of requests that to me seemed logical. The doctor hadn‘t seen it that way “I’LL SEND YOU TO THE STATE FACILITY IN COLUMBIA SO FAST IT’LL MAKE YOUR HEAD SPIN !” he’d yelled.



I’d asked for a neurological consult . The university had refused. I had asked for a medical release of information from the original admitting hospital. I was given a form, filled it out and told the hospital never replied. I’d refused the university upping my beta blockers from 10 milligrams to 50 or 60 milligrams. Why would that be necessary? What? if 10 is good five or six times that is better? It didn’t make sense to me and that‘s part of how I got in hot water.



Too, I’d asked for data supporting the use of the latest medication the university now wanted me to take. Which to me seemed like a reasonable request since the last time I’d trusted the medical university with a prescription pad I’d gone into saline toxicity. I was released from the university while in saline toxicity wearing clothes I‘d been given from the charity bin. The university had ‘lost’ my clothes, I filled out a form but nothing ever came of it. I was then transferred to a $180 a day a half way house. I was told I would be going directly to a homeless shelter from there. I never could figure out if they didn’t believe I had a car and possessions or if someone somewhere had decided I wasn’t allowed to have them anymore. Obviously my clothes were something someone at the university had decided I wasn’t allowed to have anymore, didn’t really need, or they liked.



I don’t know if saline toxicity is lethally toxic only that the personnel at the half way facility (half way to what?) called the medical university saying “We are not equipped to handle a medical emergency”. At the time the half way medical bureaucrat looked worried. “She’ll have to be readmitted”; there was some heated debate but eventually there I was back at Med. U asking again for a neurological consult again. Then again refusing anymore than ten milligrams of inderal and now requiring documentation for the next drug they wanted to put me on. It was that last bit that put me before a judge. On my end I simply wanted to know whether the medication was or was not contraindicated for brain injuries.



“I’ll have you locked up…Columbia…then we’ll see how feel about taking what I decide to prescribe you!” Dr. Kelp had yelled.



I seem to piss people off. Though I think its more the questions I ask and maybe that I do, that I did. I was provided an attorney and curiously the judge informed me that “this has never happened before” which at the time struck me as strange and unlikely in and of itself: that no one in the history of the program had said: no I‘m not taking that unless you provide me with some supporting documentation . I won that small battle. Dr. Kelp didn’t get to ship me to a hospital in Columbia, the residents and a nurse practitioner produced some documentation but the medical university isn’t above holding a grudge. Gods don’t like being told they’re not.



But all that was months ago and now my job is simple “spread ‘em, keep your hands against the wall- DON’T EYEBALL ME!” the cop yells at someone who let their eyes drift from the wall toward either her pacing behind us or her male partner running his hands over our bodies and up and down our legs. The Personal Responsibility Counselor on duty feels the introduction of such and guns is in order because a cardinal rule has been broken.



“If you don’t take personal responsibility for your things and something is stolen that is your fault.”



There are rules to live by here. The rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to you anymore- if they ever did- and you better start accepting that. Those rules do not apply here. On this particular evening the Personal Responsibility Counselor had left her cell phone out unattended and the cell phone had been stolen. That theft is now the responsibility of all the “guests” as we’re called. This is would seem and in fact be in direct contradiction to the cardinal rule- but that’s the great thing about being a Cardinal of Personal Responsibility: the rules don’t apply to you.





“You wanna know why you’re here?” the female officer asks. No one raises their hand. Even those who if asked to couldn’t define the word rhetorical know a rhetorical question when they hear one.



“You’re here because you’re scum.”



I’m scared like everyone else but more so now because the questioning has just shifted to “Every one of you knows who took that phone!“ I feel confused; in part because I can’t figure out if the officer actually believes what she’s saying. How can we all know who took the phone when most of us were asleep?



“We can stay here all night,” the cop says but I start to get the feeling maybe we wont be lined up against this wall all night and I may get some of what passes for sleep here. I haven’t figured out whose responsibility it is for me not getting sleep when the flashlight this Personal Responsibility Counselor sports at night gleams in my eyes, probably mine.



Before the cop leaves she gives us something to think about after she’s gone “I’ve taken a good look at all your faces- this isn’t over ”.



I go back to bed with my heart pounding. One of the usually hardened criminals is crying in her pillow and I don’t need her telling me to know that this has happened before -but a cavity search or some private time with a guard. I realize I’m crying too but not for her. I’m scared all the time and mostly I just don’t want to die. Though that’s not the worst that can happen here. I know the worst that can happen- that’s what scares me. I’ve already seen it and I’ll see more before my year is up.



* this is my final entry to this blog- or any blog owned by google. Sorry guys but telling people, arguing that what people produce on your platform is owned by you as if you own them- not okay. It would be like facebook saying they own faces, identities and the grids of human interaction (which I suspect they'd more than happy to argue)
 
But back to the googlings: You didn't live these words and y'all sure as shit didn't compose them- so thanks for the platform but its time for me to go somewhere with a none"we own your ass and your shit" attitude.
 

Synecdoche, New York

I saw the above recently.
One reviewer found and finds the film so depressing he always needs to drink after viewing it though I suspect he needs a drink regularly and not just after Kaufman movies. I didn’t find Synedoche, NY depressing, sobbed at the end the first time which was quite lovely because it sneaks up on you and though there’s no sneaking up on you the second time there is the awareness of why it would set your tear ducts to pour.


Whereas Synecdoche depresses some viewers I found it life affirming because we’re all building a city with our cast of characters, recasting the role of this person or that, denying that this or that person are even on scene with us. Sometimes walling up years; maybe because we’ve already seen everything that vignette has to offer or maybe because we just don’t want to see it again and would rather forget some rooms because we ourselves weren’t truly there.
Yet another player plays the role of someone we’re reminded of, some loss or gain in and as an aspect of someone so pinnacle we’ll recast them again and again for shoes left unfilled waiting to be tripped over, risen above or slipped right into like fuzzy slippers...and sometimes too, quite oddly one drops suddenly from somewhere and then are shoes begin dropping from every which where.


The past and present and future are always onstage together. If we could rewrite, if we could just see it clearly as it was, see precisely where we were or are or am could we do it better this time, next time; are we truer now?

In a Kaufman’s reality there’s that memory of you, how you coded yourself and decoded someone else, each always a bit off the mark, not realizing, not knowing but feeling surely you have a clue- except for where you don’t and the mystery isn’t who died or how they died but how did you arrive at this very moment? And who is this that I’ve cast just as much as they’ve cast themselves to be right here right now?


And then, there you are again- same scene, same characters?

Well not entirely the same because you’re not really you anymore, your cells have died away and been replaced and died away and been replaced and then of course there is the matter of time. Time, the illusion made real in wrinkles, and coughs and that first liver spot? Or is it a mole I’ll need to watch and measure?


As with every meaningless and grave decision we make we seldom know which is which. “Millions and millions of strings” all attached to other strings of choices and decisions- each, be they grave or meaningless are tied to the invisible strings of others. We don’t see our choices when we’re making them, not really. But upon review we find a Sam in the background watching us watch ourselves, taking notes as we sleep through conversations we’ll have some day but seldom do.
Meanwhile, life writes more and more and more.


I look in my memory and knowing me I know the moment happened. And knowing me I most certainly brushed it off? Was too afraid or unsure to ask?

The moment surely happened when one of those strings, one of those insignificant decisions was decided in a request I didn’t make. So right now, this minute I am Caden Cotard and I’ve decided to go back, way back, back to that day, that split second. I couldn’t direct someone to build a set for that moment because I don’t know precisely where it happened. I can’t find what the weather was like, or what you or I were wearing. Or what I might have said instead or where I stood or sat or laid when the thought surely flitted across my brain. I can’t find the moment but I know it happened. I didn’t log it maybe because I didn‘t register it as important? but then again maybe because I did.


Line:
Could/May I call you Henry instead?

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