Musings of Erin

The New York Public Library has bought an archive of William S. Burroughs’ work (author of Naked Lunch and much much more). They’re anticipating making the archive public by next year - now I just need to NY. Maybe they’ll create a site for it like they did for Ginsberg.At 12 years old, I was in love with Allen Ginsberg and everything he represented to me as a quirky, nomadic beat poet of the 1950s. He’s just as relevant now as he was then.

I wanted to ressurect the beat generation (or channel them, at least) and build a commune in the Rocky Mountains. A philosophical-beat-revolutional commune. Funny how that never got off the ground. Maybe I can blame the government for that.

America
By Allen Ginsberg

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.

I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I’m a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they’re all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don’re really want to go to war.
America it’s them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader’s Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Tags: Beat Poetry, Allen Ginsberg, burroughs, NY Archive, news, entertainment

I just ran into some of the ‘crew’ from high school - it was weird, really. Weird to see how much they’ve changed, and how much they’ve stayed the same. I guess I never thought I’d see someone who’d crashed his head into asphalt more times than I can count to grow up to be an investment banker. “I dare you” got JL to do just about anything… and still will

I’m not sure that I’d hire him to help with my finances, though. (sorry, JL)

Seeing them makes me want to go play in the snow. I’m going to plan a trip to Breckinridge or Aspen next season - it’s too late for this season. And, this time, I’m not going to sit in the condo, I’m really going to go out there and take some friggin lessons. I wish I could hire someone to be my nag - you know, come and wake me up in the morning, make me go to the lift, etc. etc. Who would want that job??

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My birthday is in 5 days - March 2… I made a stupid wishlist, mom, just like you wanted. you can find it here http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/3RLZHW1HNFUP4
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I was reading a recent article Malcolm gladwell article in The New Yorker - Troublemaker from the 2-6-06 issue. It’s really good, deals with generalizations and stereotypes. My favorite lines:

“It doesn’t work to generalize about a relationship between a category and a trait when that relationship isn’t stable—or when the act of generalizing may itself change the basis of the generalization.”
Sometimes it only takes a single sentence to throw me into a tangent… my husband has been hearing all about it tonight.

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It is universally acknowledged that preschool plays a critical role in the educational and social development of children. proposed in his new state budget a provision that would grant all three and four year-olds access to preschool, regardless of income. While Oklahoma, Georgia and Florida currently offer pre-k to four year-olds, Illinois would become the first state to provide genuinely universal preschool in the country’s history.

Finally, we’re moving in the right direction.

I say we change the whole system to something like Belguim’s. There, all the funds for public education are attached to the student, and not the school. Therefore, if the school does a shitty job of educating students, the students leave to another school. If enough students leave, the school goes out of business.

What a novel idea, eh?

Sweet Victory: Preschool for All

Tags: preschool, public education, education reform

Boris Artzybasheff

I grew up in Napa, California. The beautiful land of wineries, grapes, and all-around merriment… and thanks to all that nasty weather, this is what it looks like now:

This is about 1.5 miles from my childhood home… which means my childhood home is flooded too. It’s amazing what happens with too much rain there. I remember being a child last time it flooded this bad… I covered a washing machine box with duct tape and offered ’swamp tours’ to the neighborhood kids… at a quarter a trip, I think I made $15 that day… a fortune in my eyes. I suppose I’ve always been an entrepreneur