Packing Up

It is Restriction.

Recently Eleanor returned from a extended trip in South East Asia.  She plucked this jewel off the wall of Guesthouse in Laos.  It is list of rules which appear to have been translated into English by someone with and a Lao-English dictionary very little knowledge of the language. My favorite rule is #5 "Do not any drugs, crambling or bring both women and men which is not your own husband or wife into the room fro making love."  Though 6 is also good. "Do not allow domestic and international tourist bring prostitute or others into your accommodation to make sex movies in our room.  It is restriction."

The Mouth of the Nile

Veronica left for Uganda from San Francisco on Saturday a few hours after I left for Portland, Oregon.  I arrived back in Boston early this morning.  Throughout the last few days, I've been trying to place V in the world based on my poor estimation of her flight times: let's see, Sunday a 5pm Western time... does that mean she's in Amsterdam?  Well, regardless.  I've started to get emails from her iphone of all things.  She sent me this picture this afternoon with the title "The mouth of the Nile."

I've never been to Africa.  The whole continent, let alone Uganda, let alone the Nile, is a mystery to me.  I have no idea what to imagine, if I try to imagine.  I guess the mouth of the Nile looks something like this.

San Francisco

Yesterday I went to the travel clinic where among other vaccines I was asked if I would like to receive a series of shots to prevent against rabies.  I said, "Give me everything."

Veronica tells me she turned down the rabies vaccine.  When I asked her why she said, "What?  What am I, a zookeeper!?" (she may or may not have said this is a schticky borscht belt accent - in fact, she may or may not have said this at all.)

I mentioned Veronica's refusal to my doctor, who looked gravely at the floor. "If bitten by a mammal she must assume she has been exposed." She said,  "She will need treatment within 24 hours.  The closest treatment to Tororo, Uganda is probably Nairobi, Kenya."  The doctor continued with her advice about malaria, yellow fever, etc.  But I descended into a dark day dream.

Veronica has been bitten.  We get in an old car.  I drive as fast as I can in the direction of Nairobi.  Hours pass.  Veronica asks me to tie her arms together for my safety, then she says, "It's been a good run, Skipper..."  Her eyes turn electric yellow.  She is trying to trick me into untiring her, but her wits have been slowed by the disease, so her attempts are lame and obvious. "Boy, oh boy," she says, "I think I'm just all rabies-ed out by this long drive.  You should probably untie me."

I tuned back in to the doctors advice in time to her her say.  "It is recommended that you avoid entering all Caves in Uganda as marburg hemorrhagic fever is present in the country."  She scanned the print out she was reading from and said, "Particularly you should avoid the Python Cave in the Maramagambo Forest."

I chose to get a rabies shot.  I'd like to think I would've avoid the Python Cave with a special remonstration.

Ha Ha: funny movies, funny poems

A little over a month ago I was at Mass Moca with Veronica and some friends.  I had given the galleries a once over and was feeling disappointed because I usually find at least one, if not more, really great exhibitions at this small museum. Then I went back and took a second look at a retrospective of short films by Guy Ben-Ner that was playing in a few of the rooms.

The first film I watched all the way through was Ben-Ner's adaptation of Moby Dick shot entirely in his kitchen with a cast of two: himself and his 6-year-old daughter.  This film, like all the others in the retrospective, was playful and hilarious.

At first I was attracted to Ben-Ner's work because it was at once artful and funny, but thinking about him and viewing the few clips of his work available on Youtube over the last few weeks I've realized that I am drawn to the work for another reason as well. I'm completely taken with his themes and how adeptly he deploys them. Ben-Ner is able to make movies about happy families without being cloying, and movies about the adorable without being cute.

Film is an art form with a long established history, from Charlie Chaplain to Woody Allen, of comedy being  taken seriously.  Poetry, unfortunately has not been so lucky. The occasional reader of poetry, let alone the general public, would hardly know that American poetry has spent the last 50 years learning the lessons of Modernism and busting a gut in the process.  There are any number a very talented very funny poets writing today. Among my favorites: James Tate, Zachary Schomberg, Rae Armantrout, Dean Young, Rachel B Glaser, Dorothea Lasky, Eugene Ostashevsky. 

In his essay "Poets Wary of Poetry", Charles Simic zeros in on why within the Modernist aesthetic "the comic sense" and "the poetic imagination"  are so appropriately wedded. "They depend on juxtaposition of unlikely elements, the joining of two distant realities whose resemblance has not been grasped till that very moment." (though, let's be fair, this observation applies to all the arts in the Modernist period equally - have you every really looked at Ruaschenberg?)

I try to write poems that take part in this equation.  But often, and I think it is also the case with some but not all of the poets I mention above, I find my themes to be heavy and my jokes to be dark.  I think Ben-Ner has shown me another set of themes.  He demonstrates that work that is both artful and funny can be made without a skull hidden the picture.