The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

by Joni Mitchell

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I heard
Was a song outside my window, and the traffic wrote the words
It came a-reeling up like christmas bells, and rapping up like pipes and drums

Oh, won’t you stay
We’ll put on the day
And we’ll wear it till the night comes

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I saw
Was the sun through yellow curtains, and a rainbow on the wall
Blue, red, green and gold to welcome you, crimson crystal beads to beckon

Oh, won’t you stay
We’ll put on the day
Theres a sun show every second

Now the curtain opens on a portrait of today
And the streets are paved with passersby
And pigeons fly
And papers lie
Waiting to blow away

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I knew
There was milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges, too
And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses
Oh, won’t you stay
We’ll put on the day
And we’ll talk in present tenses

When the curtain closes and the rainbow runs away
I will bring you incense owls by night
By candlelight
By jewel-light
If only you will stay
Pretty baby, won’t you
Wake up, its a Chelsea morning

I place the white pill on my tongue, daily communion, self-delivered, this is my body, absolving me of one thing or another.

There is no music there, but there is dancing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_and_Lefty

Dan and his friend Phil playing guitars in the sun-room, New Years Day 2009.

Living on the road my friend is gonna keep you free and clean
Now you wear your skin like iron, your breath’s hard as kerosene
You weren’t your momma’s only boy, but her favorite one it seems
began to cry when you said goodbye, sank into your dreams

Poncho was a bandit boys, his horse was fast as polished steel
He wore his gun outside his pants for all the honest world to feel
Poncho met his match, ya know, on the desert down in Mexico
No one heard his dyin’ words, but that’s the way it goes.

All the Federales say, they could’a had him any day
They only let him go so long, out of kindness I suppose.

Lefty he can’t sing the blues, anymore like he used to
The dust that Poncho bit down south, ended up in Lefty’s mouth
The day they laid poor Poncho low, Lefty split for O-hio
Where he got the bread to go, ain’t nobody knows.

The poets tell how Poncho fell, Lefty’s livin’ in a cheap hotel
The desert’s quiet, Cleveland’s cold and so the story ends, we’re told
Poncho needs your prayers it’s true, but save a few for Lefty too
He only did what he had to do but now he’s growin’ old.

And all the federales say, they could of had him any day
They only let him go so long, out of kindness, I suppose

Yes a few old gray federales still say, they could of had him any day
They only let him go so wrong, out of kindness, I suppose

Sketches

– Driving on the Northeast Extension, 476, behind an Oversized Load Tractor Trailer, kicking up pebbles with its dirty wheels, one flies into our windshield — like a little bullet-hole. The lawyer in me realizes that we should get the license plate and the phone number and website so I drive up behind the truck and then parallel to it — having the Little Bumblebee Girl write down all the infodata.  

– Wegmans parking lot, Scranton, young teenage girl in a Honda hits us in the parking lot, Little Bumblebee Girl takes off running across the parking lot. I go running after her, but cannot find her. I meet her back at the car. Miseries. I call the special bakery and get directions.

– The special bakery. The register boy can’t make change for a twenty. The women standing behind him scowls and takes over, handing Little Bumblebee Girl her money.

– Arrive in Hawley. Wait for ten minutes in the Second IGA (not the first one).

– Go to a diner. Order a BLT and coffee. I am sitting next to Little Bee, kitty-corner to Yogi Avishai, and across from Brooklyn Law. Much eating, little talk, discussion of stealing a salt shaker.

– Second IGA. Grocery shopping. Interminable — can’t make a decision about anything — how many avocadoes go into a guacomole — me and Mr. Don begin playing the weighing game — weighing a lime, a lemon, a tomato, a canteloupe, a clump of bananas, and a newspaper. Later, a woman walks by with a small dog in her chest — Excuse me, do you mind if we weigh your dog? Thoughts: Measuring things, holding one thing in one hand, one thing in the other — relativism, figure and ground, foreground and background.

– Cabin. Dead animals all around, awesome.

– Fancy dinner at the Sleepy Inn. I order the Filet. Long table — difficult to talk to people. Surrounded by the girls.

– Back at the cabin. Some drama about Rectal Exam’s boyfriend — when he is coming, when we will pick him up, etc. etc.

– We play a game of Kurducken at some point.

– We go out and look at the ice-covered lake. It is absolutely dark. Emptiness true.

– Little Bee’s friends all around.

– Mr. Don is applying to MFA Fiction programs.

– Fights about who’s sleeping there. Someone wants a couple’s room, and someone doesn’t. No one is budging — girls (young women) refuse to be assertive — I attempt to draw lots with letters, but girls do not see the necessary fairness of this — Little Bumblebee (my lover) wins — and I make a decision, deciding whose claim is more meritorious

– we sleep in a narrow bed separated by a little space from another couple asleep in a narrow bed. A Zebra skin hangs on the wall behind us. We are bundled, and it is not too cold. I toss and turn in the night, searching for the best position in a small space.

– The next morning, I wake up at ten and call the public library. I have procrastinated heavily and put off applying to jobs to the last minute, and at the last minute, the website died. So now, on New Years Eve, I have to drive into town and find some internet and apply. Brooklyn Law is in the very same boat. The library closes at 1PM, the voice on the phone tells me. It is 11 and change. I wake up Brooklyn Law, people start to gather, I get a map from Mr. Syracuse. We go — it has snowed heavily the night before — I cant get the car out the front, so I have to back up, with the car door open and Brooklyn Law directing me from behind. A snowplough has just gone through. Driving down the road, I experiment with downshifting and upshifting — it seems to work. The drive through the woods is beautiful — it is a narrow road, and the white ground, and evergreen trees makes me think of sleighrides in Siberia I’ve never been on.

We drive into town and stop at the library, where we find out the deadline has been extended. I sit and read about the war in Gaza, and try to communicate with my girlfriend. She sends us to the grocery store where we buy paper plates, purell, and cough drops. Then we head to the wine store, only to learn at the last moment that Mr. Syracuse’s parents do not like wine. What did we go for? Across the way is the Arby’s where we pee’d at yesterday. There is some issue with the septic tank overflowing, and we are attempting to limit our output, as Mr. Syracuse put it. We spin around to the Arby’s, where I get a roast beef sandwich and Brooklyn Law gets a coffee. I go and take a long and difficult shit. When I’m done, we drive back to the cabin.

The directions back are generally pretty good except for the last moment, a fork in the road. I don’t know what to do until I see the “Slow Children” sign. I had made a joke about it to Little Bumblebee the day before when we had driven in. My asshole-nature saves me once again. We get back to the cabin safely.

1. Catch up with old friends
2. Make new friends
3. Fall in love with New York (love the one you’re with)
4. Go to all your classes
5. Find an interesting job for the spring and summer
6. Start exercising
7. Read two books a month
8. Listen to one new album a week
9. Write two blog posts a week
10. Call my family members more just to say hello
11. Go to all the museums in New York
12. Go see Phish
13. Go see Elsewhere
14. Go visit a state I’ve never been to

Edward Yellow is back in Philadelphia, in the spacious country house his parents bought in the early fall. After the tumult of New York City, the disappointing setbacks, the nervous walks down crowded avenues, the sad narrow room where he slept and studied, Edward is glad to be here, with the strong pillars of humanity that created him, that love him, that respect him. He is happy to be here in his own room, a place of his own, finally. He has unpacked his books, and surrounded by them, he feels a certain contentness he has not felt in a long while — fetish objects against the loneliness, maybe, or magic receptacles of thoughts and ideas that can stir the waters of his mind on gray days.

He is dirty. He has not bathed himself in a day and a half. It cannot wait much longer, but he holds off, strong still in the state of himself, relishing the rest that comes after many battles.

The future is no brighter than it was a day ago. He still has no job for the summer and a head full of uncertainties — the unknown judgments of all the corporate lawyers who had sat across from him and found him not good enough — he is not a lawyer, they thought. Good, maybe they thought, but not better than — Edward wonders how much of it is his own reticence to go back to the officeworld of commerce and timeshares and money — something sterile about those fluorescent lights and large windows and beautiful views of the city –

Perhaps it would not be so terrible, to work late in one of those offices, if only for the views.

On the other hand, juniors probably just stare at the building across the street, looking in at the similarly-situated also toiling for someone else’s money.

One must be superior in one’s own sphere, Edward thinks. How is this superior? How will it make me my own man? A savings account?

To touch the very skeins of society, and tug on them and make them dance. To plunge headfirst into the superstructure and bang out a tune on the steel rods of the law — these options might be open to him — he does not always pass the straight-face test — they think him a dabbler or a dilettante, or the truth, a liar, hungry only for the money that will grant him freedom —

That’s one way to get freedom sure. The other way — be willing to starve, be willing to wait –

Learn to wait, says Rabbi Nachman of Breslov across the quiet centuries, if despite all your determined efforts you cannot seem to reach your goals, be patient. Between acceptance and anxiety, choose acceptance.

The quantum physicists talk to us about other worlds — some of them must be almost identical to ours — and in some, our counterparts have done different things — taken different paths — in every choice, a world unfolding, and somewhere, out there, or next to us, in a greater world than the one we know, hypothetical observers observe with peacock eyes the larger picture — he’s a what he’s a what he’s a newspaper man — shall we call these observers angels? The angels of our better nature — the consolation of the disappointed — wheels within wheels and everytime a bell rings an angel gets his wings and if you clap your hands and pray real hard Tinkerbell will rise from the dead (dead for our sins, nonbelievers every one) where do we go? what shall we do? the possibility presents itself that there is more to our lives than we see — the Great Deep Mystery, that God Was Born in History Two Thousand and Eight Years Ago (I don’t believe it of course, why would God be Jewish?) the Incarnation, but what of the Daily Incarnations, the Little Mysteries, the blood that makes the great journey from the top of our heads to the bottom of our toes, the great dance of breathing we enact with the grass we tread on and the trees we walk beneath — Go, what will you do with your live? What have you already done? Who have you touched? Who have you saved? Who is out there in the night carrying a secret torch for you? The love we create, the Good, not the God, twist around, unfolding like an origami flower, paper airplanes ride along the air currents, swallows dive above and below, surprised, and in the planes, I sit, and stare out at the universe and think “This, this is something new, this is something new that humans do, fly, and though I will die, I have flown up into the very heavens and looked out upon endless cloud landscapes and that is enough, that is sufficient, I am in love with the world and it is all very beautiful and in these quiet moments I am able to see it and then when I begin jousting with the others — my bloodkin and my friends — the quantum wavefunction collapses, Time grows grey and mournful, and the weight of unrealized possibilities dangles up above, bursting with gravity and potential energy —

A bell is ringing. An angel flies. Time is the ocean we swim in, together.

said it best.

“Enjoy every sandwich.”

Same as the old boss. Maggie’s farm. F-22 vanguards flying low over the desert. The Great Game we play — great big GoogleEarth chessboard, with the countries colored in with different colors. Young Prince Blessing, what will you change? What will do now, We Young Americans? Continue to munch away at our Chicken McNuggets and our Burger McBurgers and our Milkshake McMilkshakes — ironic — Chicken, Son of the Nugget, Ancient Hibernian. Scream the Nightmare History playing itself in your bonetheater — the World is out there, Screaming. Same boss, same old boss, the world is old & sick& dying in seven different ways — the pounding at my head — is it Wisdom breaking out, come Vulcan with your Hammer. Rage, rage against the dying of the light machine, rage against the injustice and the poverty and the inequitable moneymachine which is the only way the thing ever works — Freedom to Starve — too many people only have the Freedom to Starve