Edward Yellow and Little Honeybee Blue
sat sitting at a table at a bar in August in Washington DC
and made eyes at each other
till one of them
– can’t remember which —
worked up some nervous nerves
to make the first move
“kiss the girl” sings a crab to my right
as I row my boat across the water
“kiss the girl” he says
India is the world, and the world is India — rich and poor, poor gathered around the rich — it’s turtles all the way down, the old woman said — people standing on top of each of other, pushing each other down, grasping for straws, climbing up for air — death and filth — but love, true love, slumdogs, rat bastards, liars and thieves, the hope of other days, he will guess the answer, it is written, time, destiny, the skeins of our lives pulled long across the days into years, we are unable to read the patterns written in those tapestries — boy beats dog and man beats boy — written poems — great large skyscraper condo towers, rising up above where slums use to stand — Athos, and Porthos and …. shitdive at the beginning, internal homage — dance with me at the end of the story, my true heart, ani l’dodi, v’dodi li — God is Great, they say — God is Great — There is One God, and He Loves Each and Everyone of Our Precious Moments, and mourns our deaths as we slip out of the world — the world where God lives — destiny, and stars, and reaching out and making it for onesself — loose ends, the story of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, how he got on the show — Twelve Questions — and in them, the Chance for a Better Life — Once, the World was Young, and One Day, it will be Young Again.
black man in the white house — and I’m only twenty seven — “I’m carrying your suitcase outside of Alphabet City” — in someone else’s life — the poetry of others’ poems — the songs that others sing — where will we go when the going goes over, where will we stand when the earth falls away? Dance dance human, dance, dance revolutions around the rosy — all of the modern plagues, or that great big sucking sound at the bottom of your father’s 401(k) — or the broken bridges and broken roads across this Great Exceptional Nation — with a black man in the white house — and I’m only twenty seven — already this is the new normal — what was so strange about it? nothing, nothing so strange, not at all — I love everybody and everybody loves me — city of brotherly love with a knife sticking out of my side — trash in the streets but people singing, people dancing, blissed-out pill-poppers, hello, hello, goodbye, another year is coming, 2009, like 2008 before it, the World Depression Two (as my sister points out, they called World War One the Great War before the sequel came along) but everything will work out eventually, just love each other, buy a kid a toy, donate a meal, do handstands in the dark, take singing lessons, learn to play the flute, run, run back and forth down the block and then further, to the city limits, to the river, past the river, to the ocean, up to the mountains, and down to the mountains on the other side, rucksack on my back now, here I go, I am a wanderer now, the road is my destiny, the people I meet along the way my comfort, the rooms and the clearings, sleeping on the grass while the moon falls across the sky overhead — what’s around the next bend in the road, what cities are there still to see, where else will I be going before the end of days — taste the new optimism, enjoy every sandwich, and die with your loved ones around you — it will be hard for them but wonderful for you so wonderful for you and as you gather up the rucksack for the last final journey into dissolving foam the love in the room will rise up — everything transient about it will be fixed forever in the upper firmament with Artemis, Orion, and all the other old stories of heaven —
and then you’ll be gone — happy!
In the Fall of 2008, Edward Yellow slowly lost his mind. He had moved to New York City in August, changing horses in midstream, transferring out of the middle-tier law school he had done so well at to attempt to graduate from a more prestigious one situated on the lower half of the island of Manhattan. He arrived in a whirlwind, barely having time to say goodbye to all the friends he hadn’t bothered to see that summer. He found a small room in a small apartment on Craigslist. He stayed for a couple of weeks at his aunt’s apartment while she was away traveling, before the lease on the small apartment began.
His girlfriend was headed for Connecticut to study psychology. On the weekends he took the train to see her.
As the weeks went on, he would put on one of his two suits, tie his tie and go interview at large law firms. He tried to smile, but found their questions off-putting. He struggled to explain what he was doing there, why he deserved to be hired, paid so much money. He was not persuasive. The firms did not call. As October dawned, he realized he had struck out – his purpose in coming to law school had been thwarted. After this — he could feel the deep turbulence of his soul come welling up — he tried to keep it pinned down for a moment, knowing that if he despaired, he would be done for, and as best he could, he picked himself up to try again, to start a second round of job searching, even as the wider economy went into a freefall, even as his father called him two weeks later to tell him that he had lost his job —
Characteristics of the Sabi religion (Seboghatullah)
Sābi’ūn know Allah as the Rabb al-‘alihah and ‘ilah al-‘alihah and speak to angels in their meditations[22] , each of whom they believe dwell in different stars, which has led to the erroneous beliefs among some that Sābi’ūn worship angels while others derogatorily call them star-worshippers (and so it is said in Arabic saba’at al-nujūm, meaning “the stars appeared”). Sābi’ūn read from the Zaboor and use the sun for a Qiblah facing the equator at mid day[23][8][9][24] . Their fundamental teaching is “La ilahah il Allah”[5][6][18] , but besides this ardent unitarianism, Sābi’ūn are quite akin to Christians[10][25] . Unlike their Mushrik Sabian cousins, who consider themselves the people of Idris’ son Sabi, Hanif Sabians are more universal looking to Noah as their prophet of the Din[2] Sābi’ūn have five daily prayers[26] (though Zohar can join Asr while Ma’ariv can join Isha giving the appearance of three). They believe in all prophets reiterating the Din of Noah and, not in the same way as the Muslims, believe in The Seal of The Prophets[27] . They also fast for 30 days[28] .
Sabians who adopt Abram as a patriarch distinguish themselves from other Sabians by calling themselves Hagarim (Hagarenes) and were based around Petra. The culmination of the journey to enlightenment will be marked by a circumcision ceremony for most of those male Hagarim who get to this level called Yagur. This branch of Seboghatullah has thus been dubbed “Hagarism”.
JOHN SHARMAN, young bank trader, has lost his job with hundreds of others in the collapse of one of the largest investman banks in America. He stands in a crowded elevator holding a box full of his belongings. He is surrounded by other people holding their own boxes, blank looks on their facese. In John’s box is a coffee mug, several CDs and folders, a Tyrannosaurus Rex toy, and the Yale Book of Quotations.
There are many different kinds (does that word mean families?) of people in the world, all kinds of people, and as I reach the apex of my quarterlife, sad realizations spur me to recognize which kind I might be. I think I am a dreamer; an imaginer; it explains my love of reading and TV and movies — different kinds of dreams. I think the hard real scares me — where a grown man (I don’t feel much like a man, that’s the rub isn’t, this kidlike nervousness) gets off being scared is another question — and eventuallsy I will have to look myself in the mirror and tell myself to cowboy up, geronimo, but there it is — my natural state, or my vulnerable state, or this state — doesn’t like reality, is overwhelmed by it, would prefer to drape such realness in red lampshades like Blanche Dubois reliving her youth.
The hard look. The true gaze. The theory of mind. What are you thinking? I can’t help you — the sad real. The melancholy sadness. The Apollonian fences we build around ourselves, and I realize my Dionysian Revels are mere construction, one more dodge, step to the left and out of the way of the the baby grand piano that’s crashing down from the skyscraper above, oh, yeah, move out of the way, son — dim light, here’s the reality, listen to a song and wait for the next note that’s sort of expected and sort of not, surprise yourself and surprise others, here we go here we go, pedal steel gutiar moving fast typing faster than him here I go – paint the picture with words tell me what you see I see a black computer dell, a magazine open, pile of CDs, cousin and her boyfriend standing in the other room, old 1960s-style house in a part of town that isn’t mine bought my parents from an old woman and her dying lawyer husband — to my right is what they call the sun room the great big and large sun room with a big window that looks out over the back yard and a beautiful creek that is always flowing — it is peaceful here — quiet — a man could rest here — one more dodge? more dim light? maybe.
flyting – ribald insultery — rap battles — but where do they come from — ??
“The term “the dozens” is believed to refer to the devaluing on the auction block of slaves who were past their prime, who were deformed, aged or who, after years of back-breaking toil, no longer were capable of hard labor. These enslaved human beings often were sold by the dozen.”
courtesy of the late (allegedly) great (not that I’m doubting, I just have not yet read) David Foster Wallace –
http://www.salon.com/books/bag/1999/04/12/wallace/index.html
The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees 