Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Fate, Fortune --Red’s Blog #3

Fate, Fortune

Dear Children, let me tell you a little story—an educational one—being that I have lived on this godforsaken earth longer then most of you and know a few more things (probably) although there are things I do not. It is a story told before:

I had this dream. I was in someplace and someone brought a bag and gave it to us—one full of pies. Pie stacked on top of pie. A big brown shopping bag. There was a woman who neatly slipped into the position of holding this bag—although she had not been there a split second before. And she reached into the bag and took out one pie. She put it aside in a bag of her own. I stood right beside her, next in line to get my pie. There were others milling about in the background, and they too would get a pie. The woman had reached into this bag and was taking out another pie. I thought to myself: in a moment I will get my pie. Yet the woman still held the bag and was taking out even another pie. The room was full of people. Bewildered, I stood there; I was next, but still the woman kept on removing pie after pie. Finally she walked away, vanishing with her own bag of the pies. I took the sack. I looked inside, amazing, there were no more pies left! The bag was empty! I didn’t get my pie! Tho I was next in line and there had been pies enough for many people, now there was nothing! ---I reached my hand in and got some crumbs, a few splinters of pie innards, and licked my fingers. The others got nothing. Later, on looking back on this dream—of a decade ago—I realize two things. By being right next to the source of this event, I did get at least some crumbs---but another thing; I got to see the dynamic, by which all these pies were removed. They were removed illegally, unfairly, and in a totally selfish manner, with no consideration; with almost a psychotically insane greed. —Pies for many, but one person gets absolutely every pie. Now those standing next in line behind me, they too knew one single greedy woman had stolen all the pies, but the ones on the outskirts of the crowd probably had no idea what had happened. Soon they would come upon the scene and see a greasy crumpled sack and think: oh, somebody had some food… they would not know there had indeed been food, and this food had been meant for them! For all!

My Dear Children, you see. YOU SEE what has transpired in this last decade in our country, its long spiral into defeat—politically, economically, and socially. No matter the best work of all our revolutionaries, our prophets, our academic lecturers, and our poets! No matter the illumination shined on the faux presidency of several elections ago—no matter the newscasts, podcasts, broadcasts, chat fests, both domestic and foreign, telling so much about America’s inner workings—this dismantling of our marvelous America is taking place—right before your eyes! Robbery! Theft! False Imprisonment! The abridgement of Civil Rights! The curtailing of Free Speech! The eradication of blax ghetto men who are turned into monsters then murdered by their own brothers and by terrified/and or racist police. We see the rise of an insanely wealthy 5% uppercrust, and the descent of the middleclass into struggling poverty, and the crash of the poor totally. Seemingly no matter how we vote or what measures we endorse, our Beautiful America is fast and truly becoming Amerikkka whither we like it or not and we are stuck in it!

Men & women walked down the streets of those times, in San Francisco on Lower Nob Hill, dressed in new casual wear, carrying take-out food, busy on their routes, most of them were young and much better off economically then much of our nation, not to mention the world. They had come here to this scenic metropolitan city, which was an international port; some of them were intelligent, sensitive. —Many of them, might have wondered what the Old Man was writing as they passed by him in the streets. It was something now private, which would some day be given back to the whole human race.

Fate! Fortune!

So this is fate, my Dear Children—we must be ever-aware of it, least we be like the unrequited lover who sings his aria, brings his flower bouquet, kneels at the feet of the object of his adoration—his lover—who stands, haughty, statuesque, against the stage prop wall gazing into space, barely hiding her boredom—and there, behind them both on the wall is scrawled in red paint Viva Escimello! ----The name of his archrival! —For already the die is cast! Fate is set! The fortune wheel has been turned & has stopped! The croupier is raking in all your green money! His plight is hopeless, but he will not recognize it, blind, kneeling clutching not her hand, but the wilted flower he himself had given her.


***
Car pulled up to the curb, its insides beating like a pulse. A blast of cold air issued out of it, as the door opened, and an upscale new-transplant to SF stepped out. These people are pleasant enough—just they don’t have any idea how their position as a rich presence is destroying the casual underclass of this place—like a coral reef being poisoned by the acid bath of a metals-factory discharging their leakage into it. & if they don’t develop this conscious, they remain soulless.

We poor, in this big city are like a coral reef of urban habitat. Everything I see on TV is being usurped. Everything I see around me is being eroded—by money, by power.

Megan Wolfe likes to see her name in my writings, so here it is—Megan Wolfe, a fine painter-drawer. That is somebody that draws, not a dresser drawer!

David Young V has his Grand Opening @ art gallery—and I forgot which one!!!!!!! It’s this New Years Eve! Drat! From 8 to 10. It will be there all month…. Oh, I bet it’s Space Gallery, specifically Lo Po Gallery. Be there or be Square!

Well thanx to Comancho, owner of the former Babylon Falling bookstore am putting up pieces of my fine trash on smashwords.com. Recently put in a chapbook THE PASSION OF ART. Written 2008, what memories it brings back of the old bookstore days and visits and diatribes many of our old group. Look for it on Smashwords and read a lot of it for free.

I hope to see you all this Wednesday!

Go buy Red Jordan Arobateau’s books on Amazon.com; Lulu.com; his art books
w/paintings & text at Blurb.com, and his fine arts prints at Fineartamerica.com.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

STILL PO' Red’s Blog #2

Sometimes I wonder how I veered so far from childhood… What did I want back then? I wanted to grow up—so I could be free and leave where I was and go out and find something… what was it I wanted to find? To be happy again—like before, just a few years back when I was even younger, and our family was happy. I wanted to go all the adult places… then in my teens I decided I wanted to be a writer, a painter… I always knew I wanted to find happiness again.

A writer’s art is a tool for justice. Thus begins my book Lamentations In The Cool Of The Evening; a book w/everything with quotes from everything from the Maoist International Newsletter to the Holy Bible... I’ll give you a few excerpts:

Saw a fellow traveler yesterday-- a bum from whom I turn my head at first glance assuming to be an intrusive insane panhandling pest, but as walked by with a quick step noticed on the sidewalk at his feet an oversize attaché case covered with duct tape & streaked with color, --- and a tell-tale folio bulging with painted-on paper of an artist! Another special being of God(ess), another 'set aside' out of the common realm and work-a-day-world. Suffering quite obviously.

I realize now God has filled the sails of my desires with inspiration-- it was my great love to see things in a super interested way and jot it down in verse on paper or a quick sketch in a drawing book Likewise this starving watercolorist on a bench, he is gifted—as well as afflicted. He must persist thru the adversity! And also I am here to inform you that the great artist does not really desire fame—but for their works to survive—if that takes fame, to push their art out of the impermanent shadows of obscurity and invisibility into the blazing light of day within some spotlight, so be it! A great commotion might be needed!

My documents might be considered subversive by agents of our current government! Does it say somewhere in the US Constitution that treason means disloyalty to the nation itself, but not necessarily to a current body governing our nation? Back under the last administration I was most upset with then president—Shrub? Was that his name? Shrub? Because I am a patriot, but loath, hate & detest almost every single thing that particular stolen-presidency puppet had done! Have you see what the French are doing? They are burning down their whole city just to protest the government only for raising the age of retirement by 2 years! While in America our government—which is becoming a front for korporate kapitalism—is robbing all of us poor people blind, literally, having taken away renters rebate, eyeglass care, dental care and are talking about cutting Social Security payments, and also robbing the middleclass to the point they are fast falling into a high state of disrepair!

I’m poor in 1967! I’m poor in 2010!

Let me tell you the story as I sit here and eat my delicious hotdog---of the 25-cents hotdogs. First in 1967, that TL (Tenderloin) Market Street hotdog stand, that featured 2 hotdogs for 25-Cents, with all the trimmings you could dish up—unlimited ketchup, mustard, piles of onions & relish. It was a simple, slum joint with counters that ran around the walls and red plastic seat barstools w/silver legs, w/napkin dispensers placed intermittently. The service counter was in back. You pushed over your feeble quarter and received two dogs in a bag… Starving Young Transman woofed down one, licking his fingers w/relish—then saved the other precious dog for later that night, it was all he had to eat all Sundays. On Mondays a $10 check from his father faithfully arrived. This supplemented the Welfare food vouchers he received from the City, being jobless—tho not artless.

Now, this early evening, some 42-years later Old Transman w/his $10 gift coupon has come from the Supermarket without his food for their ‘bargain sandwiches’ aren’t bargains at all, just more price-trickery. He goes hopefully to the nearest Subway sandwich shop on the instructions of a kind Asian checkout lady, but there finds that Korporate engaging in more price trickery, so he leaves, still foodless, tho not coffee-less, for he already has his bottled, vanilla-flavor. Right nearby is a smaller convenience store, w/several poor people milling about. T goes inside and again discovers the $1 hotdog! Yeah! Just when you need them, these $1 hotdogs pop up! It is the deal that for a buck you get this dog on a bun in a big plastic carryout container—and the joy of it is @ the condiments station, the push of a button dispenses a geyser of chili, and another button, one of cheese—as much as you can pile on so it overflows the container! He did this, pressing both buttons until the dog was completely buried under a mountain of hot chili & cheese; then scooped up free red tomatoes and onions & dropped them ontop of that. Grabbed 20 packets of mayonnaise in one fist for his food bank tunafish cans @ home, a spoon, napkins, and out he went! Hovering behind him was a shabbily dressed poor blax brother holding a dog, who was waiting to do the same thing! T thought: I hope the Ethiopians who run this concession don’t go broke, ‘cause I’m coming back again! He found a ledge around the corner at the foot of some gigantic billion-dollar building and sat regally w/a spoon dining on chili, and drinking his StarFucks bottled coffee.

1-Penny.

Aw shit, looken’ thru my crap to find something to read @ Tracy Jones’s Poetry Reading @ Space gallery next week! All this crap I’ve written but can find nothing to read!!!! Aurrughhh!!! Well, here is some gossip—David Young, & John Felix & Shaun Roberts are back from Miami, they went there wheatpasting & photographing—and I’m sure will hear about the Art Festival in South Beach. Oh and Dominique Leslie is finishing up her novel Our Lady Of The Gutters. Jean Genet will be pleased I’m sure.

Is anybody else’s pets acting strangely? My birds have been have been driving me crazy the last 2 days! Is it the weather? Are we about to have an earthquake? Is it my holiday stress they’re picking up?

You’re in the church, the font of all gossip.
--Sherlock Holmes to the Minister

Oh my God(ess) here is something so funny, so tragic that I must tell it—even tho it is confidential—so won’t say who said it or to who:

Someone came in and told a story about being summoned for jury service. They went in, and stated:
I’d like to serve on the jury.
The official asked this person:
what do you do for a living?
And they replied;
I’m a poet.
& they were excused from jury duty!

Isn’t that a sad commentary to us who are poets!!!

I’ve heard of those who walk politely in and sit down and put on a pair of glasses and begin reading an oversize copy of the Communist Manifesto—one with a red cover (red like the color of Mao’s Little Red Book—but this being a Gigantic Text version of the commie manifesto for the visually impaired, so it can be seen from a distance), and just silently sit there turning page after page, pensively reading until they are told: Sir, or Madame, you are excused! However this sad case of someone actually being eager to serve then being turned down—for being a poet! Aurgh!

Does anybody out there have access to a machine that can turn manuscripts into PDF files—fast? And for FREE! Some Korporate machine, not some dinky machine, which requires tedious scanning page by page.

Lamentations In The Cool Of The Evening (See lulu.com to get a copy or read some of it for free on Google.)
Go buy Red Jordan Arobateau’s books on Amazon.com; Lulu.com; his art books
w/paintings & text at Blurb.com, and his fine arts prints at Fineartamerica.com.





Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Red’s Blog

Have to begin this goddamn Blog. I’m opening up my diary—and it’s kinda embarrassing.

Well here it is culled from the days madness, and the past too!

I remember the first time I was able to be alone w/myself & my accomplishments, & be happy, even tho no friends nor loved ones were there (besides the animals) in a house I’d bought by hard work, strung w/red, yellow, green, blue, Christmas tree lights; a dinner I’d cooked steaming. A full-on turkey w/stuffing’s, yams, marshmallows, corn-n-the-cob, biscuits; dinner worked-for @ a job. And felt, I don’t mind being alone. I don’t mind being here.

@ Café. Tonight they had talked abut fires, and how artists, performers, writers, many had lost all their worldly belongings in house fires, and receive absolutely no recompense from the landlord. We all looked up @ each other, each face set in an expression of innocence lost. For tho we all had thousands of dollars of our fine art in our studios, nobody among us had fire insurance.

A nice group: Red Jordan Arobateau, Megan Wolfe, Shaun Roberts, David Young V, D. B. & V, Chris McCreary, K. —the publisher of a popular ‘zine.
.
The familiar trio of Meg, Shaun & Red stayed together for the evening’s gab-fest. Red mentioned a person & said: s/he’s another one I worry about going over to the dark side. To which one of the trio responded: S/he’s too loopy to go anywhere. S/he's too loopy to go in any direction for any period of time. A few hardy laughs, analysis of others, wisdoms.

Do your best. Then keep doing it. As long as you can.--Upon seeing Igor Stravinsky

Headed down busy street what did he see! 4 canvases! Discards—their canvas slashed, but the frames in excellent to foul condition! Being in a hurry to Trans Space he went ahead, barely mumbling out a mental prayer that the canvases would still be there; grabbed a quick chicken then a girl who he so disliked (everybody hated her) who has turned face about and become sweet & helpful hands him a jacket—which he is wearing today, (turns out it is worth $300 according to somebody fashion conscious) a rain jacket, a perfect fit (a bit snug, he needs to diet) then consulting online discovers he has not received his funds.—The main purpose of his visit done. Dashing away down stairs he headed back to the curbside treasure trove— in the distance, the wood stretcher bars appeared and quite soon he was upon them! Hastily called Megan Wolfe and began binding smaller ones to his silver cart. Meg arrived, said she’d carry the largest one (4-feet X 5-feet), so back down the street they went, Transman w/his cart, two bags full of goodies and 3 canvases, Meg with the large canvas. What a find!

Contents of the old Man’s Cart:

One very expensive Halle Hanson brand coat-- yellow
4 semi-rotten, delicious peaches
Container of beans & salad
2-delicious pieces fried chicken
2 containers of coffee
4 canvases

It was quite humorous discussion at Miss B’s group in the upper room @ the clinic that night, discussing surgeries:

You got to pay for a sex change, that’s all there is to it. Health care, the government, disability, they ain’t gonna give it to you. If you want titties, a nose job, if you want your lower surgery, your dick, whatever—you got to pay for it. They’ll take lay-a-way. Put those titties, that nose job, that dick up on the shelf and when you finish paying off all they money then they take it down and put it on you, --that’s what’s happening.

Ain’t no program gonna pay for all that surgery!


Discussed the San Francisco health program, who, when confronted with hoards of trannys scuffling to get on it because they said that they do sex reassignment procedures; they now say simply, they are running out of money for that, and aren’t taking any new additions to their program—so there.

You want that nose honey, you gotta pay for it. I paid for my titties, my pussy. I sent the doctor my money every month; he set my titties, my pussy up there on lay-away, and you better get there the day your surgery is scheduled, or they charge you $5,000 to reschedule!

Murderous news. First must tell you —am remiss in saying the other night there was a huge fire, directly across from a facility Transman utilizes in the Nob Hill region. The entire building—6 floors— is charred, broke out windows, blackened inside, and the front entrance boarded up. Every tenant was evacuated. In addition the building facing up to it on one side has its entrance grill chained shut. It too had to be evacuated entirely because of the fire, which spilled over. Now Transman & one of the new girls (a mature woman still forcibly presenting as male, and a still not-operated-upon Trans guy stand and stare:

Looks like arson to me.

I bet it was arson.

It was probably the landlord.

It was probably a disgruntled tenant whose sick of these slumlords, who torched it.

It was the landlord I bet, who wants to get rid of all the tenants so they can condo-convert it and make 1 million dollars per unit.

Its arson, and its either a mad tenant, or the greedy slumlord.

They do a lot of that—landlords, burning down their own buildings for the insurance
money. And so they can turn them into condos.

Well mad tenants and landlords both--they did that in the Mission a lot. And an old woman died in one fire, and somebody else died in the other.


Now, the murderous news. This 6-story apartment building shell—burnt to black carbon, —is owned by the AKKKadamy. A highly profit-motivated, realestate wheeling/dealing institution. Yes. That realestate mogul disguised as an art college—a very expensive art college.

This is what its like, how dirty bottom low it gets when you deal with big money, and high rent buildings in desirable areas.

Saw Brother C in streets, carrying his small dog in a backpack. He is homeless. He is among the working poor. We stopped/talked on some apartment steps:

Some have privilege; they have families, they have families who care about them & visit them; they have college degrees, money, respect of society.

L’Ange. A 1-Pallet Knife/15-Brush Night.

What a struggle.

Well, this is excerpts from my ongoing journal which numbers about 50 chapbooks so far, this particular book is titled SAINTS, --up to page 20.

That I have committed these thoughts into words is something special—don’t you think?


Go buy Red Jordan Arobateau’s books on Amazon.com; Lulu.com; his art books w/paintings & text at Blurb.com, and his fine arts prints at Fineartamerica.com.