I'm sitting here eating silkworm pupae. I'd been curious for awhile now, and today I just decided to go to the Korean grocery and see if they had them. Blam! They were on the shelf with the tuna, pretty much the first pile of canned stuff you see when you walk to the aisle. The ones I got are those ones toward the bottom of that page I linked. "Silkworm Pupa in Seasoned Sauce".
Anyway, it's a not-unpleasant flavour. Kind of nutty, with a lingering flavour I haven't yet figured out how to describe. I decided to just taste them as if I'd been handed one and didn't know what it was and had no reason to suspect it was a bug. Not that I'm particularly squeamish, anyway.
I also bought some frozen ones later, when we went to the bigger Asian grocery for some of their delicious variety of fake meat products. I don't know what to do with them, but they were cheap. I was thinking maybe stir-fry with some vegetables.
So, anyway, I'm sitting here eating a bowl of silkworm pupae in seasoned sauce. With a fork.
I just now took my first sip of scotch for the evening. Not a bad combination. Probably a necessary combination for a lot of people trying this particular delicacy.
The sound of this recording used to frighten me as a small child.
The song is music wrapped around the text suddenly dropped into the midst of a steamy sex scene at page 197 of the Bantam 1967 3rd printing of Leonard Cohen’s suffocatingly beautiful novel “Beautiful Losers”. I must admit that I last read it at least 20yrs ago. I have my Dad’s tattered paperback, sans outer covers, with this (among many others) section marked with a ”+” in the outer margin. I swear when I open it and put it to my face and inhale I can smell the vigourous ghost of my 1969 home on Stanton Avenue in Castro Valley. Not that that has anything to do with the book itself.
The narrator of the story, unnamed, is a heroin addict, grieving a dead wife and in love with his best friend, F. I'm working with mostly hazy memories, but it seems F is somewhat of a heroic sensualist, admired and envied by the narrator.
The narrator is also deeply in love with Catherine Tekakwitha , a Mohawk maiden who was sainted by the Catholic church and who died some 250yrs before the story takes place.
The story is just going along for 196.6 pages or so, then, when our narrator’s hand has just got to the point where it’s slathered in vaginal juices and sloshing heartily beneath a steamy skirt, suddenly and non-sequiturially:
Old friend, you may kneel as you read this, for now I come to the sweet burden of my argument. I did not know what I had to tell you, but now I know. I did not know what I wanted to proclaim, but now I am sure. All my speeches were preface to this, all my exercises but a clearing of my throat. I confess I tortured you but only to draw your attention to this. I confess I betrayed you but only to tap your shoulder. In our kisses and sucks, this, ancient darling, I meant to whisper.
God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is alive. Magic is afoot. God is afoot. Magic is alive. Alive is afoot. Magic never died. God never sickened. Many poor men lied. Many sick men lied. Magic never weakened. Magic never hid. Magic always ruled. God is afoot. God never died. God was ruler though his funeral lengthened. Though his mourners thickened. Magic never fled. Though his shrouds were hoisted the naked God did live. Though his words were twisted the naked Magic thrived. Though his death was published round and round the world the heart did not believe. Many hurt men wondered. Many struck men bled. Magic never faltered. Magic always led. Many stones were rolled but God would not lie down. Many wild men lied. Many fat men listened. Though they offered stones Magic still was fed. Though they locked their coffers God was always served. Magic is afoot. God rules. Alive is afoot. Alive is in command. Many weak men hungered. Many strong men thrived. Though they boasted solitude God was at their side. Nor the dreamer in his cell, nor the captain on the hill. Magic is alive. Though his death was pardoned round and round the world the heart would not believe. Though laws were carved in marble they could not shelter men. Though altars built in parliaments they could not order men. Police arrested Magic and Magic went with them for Magic loves the hungry. But Magic would not tarry. It moves from arm to arm. It would not stay with them. Magic is afoot. It cannot come to harm. It rests in an empty palm. It spawns in an empty mind. But Magic is no instrument. Magic is the end. Many men drove Magic but Magic stayed behind. Many strong men lied. They only passed through Magic and out the other side. Many weak men lied. They came to God in secret and though they left him nourished they would not tell who healed. Though mountains danced before them they said that God was dead. Though his shrouds were hoisted the naked God did live. This I mean to whisper to my mind. This I mean to laugh with in my mind. This I mean my mind to serve till service is but Magic moving through the world, and mind itself is Magic coursing through the flesh, and flesh itself is Magic dancing on a clock, and time itself the Magic Length of God.
Old friend, aren’t you happy? You and Edith alone know how long I’ve waited for this instruction.
—Damn you, Mary Voolnd spits at me.
—What?
—Your hand’s gone limp. Grab!
How many times must I be slain, old friend? I do not understand the mystery, after all. I am an old man with one hand on a letter and one hand up a juicy cunt, and I understand nothing. If my instruction were gospel, would it wither up my hand? Certainly not. It doesn’t figure. I’m picking lies out of the air. They’re aiming lies at me. The truth should make me strong. I pray you, dear friend, interpret me, go beyond me. I know now that I am a hopeless case. Go forth, teach the world what I meant to be.
—Grab.
It came to pass, through friends and net acquaintances, that I possessed two tickets to see Bob Dylan at the Portland Memorial Coliseum. If you know me then you know this is a wonderful thing. Dylan's been in my life all my life. My Dad was a giant fan as far back as I can remember, and I'm thinking that my earliest musical memories may well be Bob Dylan music.
I was born in 1963, the year of his second album, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan".
I have one of those flashbulb memories, me crying about something -- I think I was saying I wanted to see my mommy, as this was a time during which my parents were separated and passing me back and forth between them on a weekly basis or something. I've always estimated that I must have been about three at the time of this memory, and I just now checked the discography and have verified that this is probably about right. Anyway, the kernel of that memory is that I was standing in the hallway of our College Street apartment, looking up at a mobile dangling from the ceiling, thinking about 'Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again'. I thought that song was about being stuck inside a mobile, not stuck inside of Mobile.
I'll refrain from recounting my life with Bob, though.
I know some people don't like him, and apparently they're not objectively wrong to feel that way. I try to understand. If a person is accustomed to the musical equivalent of the candies you get out of those quarter machines at the mall, I can see where his voice might startle. If all your musical needs are satisfied at Sam Goody or via the local 'alternative music' FM franchise you're not going to be interested in actually listening to something. You might find it boring to sit through complete sentences with complex descriptives if you're into Justin Timberlake or Janet Jackson.
And I'll even confess something: I haven't been eagerly absorbing his productions since 'Slow Train Coming', some 25yrs ago. I've dabbled, but nothing really caught me under my skin until this latest album. It wasn't that I disliked the music, just that it didn't really do anything for me.
I really liked his recent film, though. 'Masked & Anonymous' I'd recommend it, even to certain non-Dylan fans, but who knows?
Also, I remember the first time I ever heard him live, on 'At Budokan', decades ago. I remember not liking it that his songs didn't sound the way I knew them. I recently saw someone complaining about going to a Dylan concert and not even being able to identify the songs.
So, while I was happy to be able to be finally seeing Bob live, it was with some trepidation. What if I didn't really like it? What if it didn't really do anything for me? What if he's really 'washed up', like someone elsewhere on vox recently said?
Well, as it turns out, those people are -- if, arguably, not objectively -- wrong. It was a fantastically good concert, and I really enjoyed it.
Most of the audience, expectably, was my age and older. There were some younger people, and I was pleased to see that some of them even seemed to be enjoying the show. My daughter was very excited and pleased, and when I leaned over to her and said in her ear at one point "Oh, this is on the new album, huh?" she said "Yeah, this is one of my favourite songs."
It's true, you can't sing along with your favourite Dylan classics at the show. He violently rearranges them all, usually making some faint reference to a certain musical hook, sometimes really playing up that hook with dramatic aplomb. Sometimes I had to listen for several seconds before recognizing something, and sometimes I tried and failed miserably to sing along.
I really enjoyed that, actually. It was the same songs, but with actual attention payed to them instead of just zombiing them out like an old pop star at Vegas. The reworkings were vital and entertaining and worthy of the originals.
On the way out I heard one guy ask another guy why he hadn't sung any of his "old stuff". This is funny, because out of the 16 songs he performed there were four from the current album and one from each of his two prior studio albums. The other ten were "old stuff". Granted, the guy who said that seemed either drunk or otherwise impaired.
A couple came in and sat down beside us right after the opening band, Kings of Leon, had finished up. Berkeley and I agreed that this was probably a good strategy. KoL seemed okay at first, a heavy guitar band, reasonably entertaining; but they grew old after a couple tunes, and their attempts at slower-and-ballady were pretty terrible. Who knows? Maybe it was just the sound setup. Anyway, this couple came in, the guy pretty drunk. He asked if KoL had already played, and I told him yes. He looked instantly bummed. They left after a few Dylan songs. The couple on my other side also left about halfway through the Dylan set.
I think we were in a section of seats given to people who'd won them through radio station promotions. They were good seats, though.
The audience really reacted positively when he broke out in "Masters of War", a masterpiece of rage which always makes me seethe and cry at the same time. When he finished that song, when the applause died, someone shouted "Sing it again!"
"Simple Twist of Fate" brought cheers at the first few seconds. I guess I don't know anyone who listens to Dylan, so I don't know what people like. That's a good one, and I always want people who don't like Dylan to try sitting down and really listening to the "Blood on The Tracks" album. Yeah, I know, I know.
The band was really good, with a strange versatility. The music shifted from swing to more country to a weird kind of music I was trying to figure out. It struck me that maybe Bob had developed a new kind of hard rock, as heavy as metal, that doesn't sound like any other hard rock at all. It was bone-crunching, gut-churning hard. I think that's part of it, too, part of what makes people not dig a Dylan concert. This isn't your "Highway 61 Revisited" or "Blonde on Blonde" or "Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, Volume 2" album that you've spent all those decades listening to while enjoying a cup of coffee, sitting in the shaft of sunlight through the window. This is challenging and engaging music, not your old worn, comfortable cushions.
So, I don't know, I was shocked and a little pissed at the responses to the "Who is Bob Dylan" question I saw a few days ago. I know I'm an old dude, and all that, and I know everyone's got their own musical tastes and aesthetics; but it's truly ignorant to refer to Bob Dylan as a boring washed out old 60s dude. But you go ahead and enjoy your Clay Aiken and your Beyoncé and whatever modern fake punk band you're listening to.
Here's the set list for the show:
Tombstone Blues
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
Rollin' And Tumblin'
Masters Of War
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
Just Like A Woman
Highway 61 Revisited
When The Deal Goes Down
Cold Irons Bound
Simple Twist Of Fate
Watching The River Flow
Workingman's Blues #2
Summer Days
(encore)
Thunder On The Mountain
Like A Rolling Stone
All Along The Watchtower
What was your very first job?
Submitted by Laurel.
Probably hauling hay. What great work that was, really.
I don't remember when I started, maybe around age 16. My brother Kevin (same age as me -- we're step-bros) and I had a friend named Alec Briggs, who I think got us into it. He and his brother Curt (Kurt?) were in their early 20s, and they were cool to hang out with on Friday and Saturday nights, driving around drinking alcohol and smoking pot and listening to rock & roll.
I've actually tried to find Alec since then. I spent those couple years in Missouri a few years ago, and I thought it'd be cool to get with him and drink some alcohol and smoke some dope and listen to rock & roll and just talk about whatever'd happened to us in the world since those days. He was a great guy, the best kind of bad influence, really pretty responsible, considering the terrible irresponsible behaviours in which we partook.
Anyway, hay hauling. It was usually me and Kevin and Alec and Curt, one of us (I don't think it was ever me) driving the truck, one of us on the back of the truck, and the other two walking along beside, picking up bales of hay and tossing them up to the guy on the truck who would then stack them. Fucking sweaty work, and we'd suck back water and pop salt pills all day and pour water from our pores in steady streams. It really got you into good physical shape. I remember my friend John Nelson saying something about how I was always walking around without a shirt, showing off my buff body. I really wasn't showing off, I just wasn't embarrassed to go without a shirt in the oppressively hot and humid Missouri summer.
One year, the day after the first day of hauling, I literally couldn't make my body move enough to get out of bed. My Dad harangued me and hassled me and finally made me get up, but it took literal herculean effort and I could barely move.
When we first started out we used to each get 3 cents per bale, but we were very good and got a good reputation, so we got to a point where we'd get 5 cents each per bale on jobs. Sometimes a job'd be 1000 bales, so $50 at a time or so was good for alcohol and whatever meagre requirements I had as a teen.
I should write more about the Friday and Saturday partying with Alec and Curt and Kevin. I'm drinking right now, so it's all feeling like pleasant memories...I miss feeling good, even if I'm not sure I ever did.
Do you play any musical instruments?
Wasn't this a QotD before? Is vox trying to rub this in my face, or is it trying to rouse me to learn to play guitar?
I can play kazoo and Jew's harp!
How many pets have you owned in your lifetime? Tell us about them.
Submitted by jennajellopy.vox.com.
When I was too young to remember any details beyond the dim sensation of riding I had a horse named Champ.
At about age 3 I got a couple of ducklings, but for some reason Dad gave them away after a very short time. At that same apartment (College Street, Berkeley) I got a pet baby cayman that I dearly loved, but it got somehow mortally wounded in my bath.
For awhile there Dad also had a rattlesnake in the cupboard in a Quaker Oats box. He'd retrieved it from someone's property, and ultimately ended up setting it free somewhere.
Later, maybe age five or six, we had a cat named Gingerbread and a dog named Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. I think I named her.
About that same age I remember one day when Dad came to pick me up at the Unitarian Universalist daycare/Sunday school/whatever they have he presented me with a long cardboard box that turned out to contain an iguana. One day I had my hand in its aquarium and it climbed up my arm. I panicked and shook it off, where it slammed against its heating rock and died.
We had a goldfish around that time, too, but my toddler sister Barbara climbed up on the counter and bit its head off and spit it on the kitchen floor.
Also, I had a rabbit when we lived there. I used to feed it lawn clippings. One day we came back from a day or two away and it was dead. I remember Dad tried to pick the corpse up by the ears and the skin of the ears slid off in his hands. I was appalled, of course.
And one day Dad looked out the livingroom window and saw a red tailed hawk in the neighbours' back yard. A kid was about to shoot it with a bow and arrow, so Dad jumped out the window, leaped over the fence, and yanked the bow out of the kid's hand, harangued him heartily, and brought the hawk home. He called the animal people, who let us keep it and exercise and feed it (it was somehow wounded) until it could fly. Then they came and got it.
Around third or fourth grade my brother Kevin and I each got a guinea pig, which died somehow, and hamsters, which escaped and died somehow.
Kevin saved up for a parakeet (budgie) around that time. I was terrible about saving allowance, so I couldn't afford one of my own, and then an amazing miracle occurred. I don't think my Mom *ever* came to believe this, but I swear it's true. I was walking back from Sun Valley Mall in Concord when I saw a blue budgie on the sidewalk, just standing there. I very slowly edged forward until I was close enough, and then I just reached forward and picked it up and took it home. Mom was sure I'd ripped it off, as I'd recently gotten into some trouble for shoplifting.
One day he got out of his cage and was killed by our cat Anastasia.
Anastasia occasionally got pregnant and pooped out babies which she then ignored and allowed to die.
A cat we called Ed appeared one day when we lived there. He had a flea collar on, which he'd worked one foreleg through and had subsequently sunk beneath the surface of his skin. We had to perform back yard surgery to take it off.
We also got a puppy named Ralph, but he was killed by the neighbourhood sociopath kids, Mike Mills and Jeff Hanawalt. They threw green peaches at him over the fence until they killed him.
We also had a beagle named Yo-Yo. He didn't like living in the suburbs and ran away. We put out an ad and had him returned, only to have him then run away again.
Oh! And one day Dad brought home a coatimundi he'd caught behind the dumpster at work. That was such a wonderful pet, basically a cross between an anteater and a raccoon. He liked to stay in the rafters in the garage. He also liked to steal butterscotch candies out of the candy bowl and take them behind a chair in the livingroom where he'd unwrap them and eat them.
He ran away one day, and later a girl in my class, Venita Stevens (or however she might have spelled it) shared with class that they'd found a coatimundi and turned it over to the animal services people.
Mom one day brought home a rat-sized puppy, a chihuahua-pekingese, which we named Fang. She ended up being that family dog that lives with the family for decades.
On the way moving to Missouri Anastasia escaped into the desert in Nevada. She ran out chasing a jackrabbit or something, just tore out and dissappeared. Remember this, as Ana shows up later in the story.
In Missouri we started farming, and we treated all our livestock as pets. We named and befriended all the animals, and it was difficult when it came time to eat the meaty ones. We weren't a religious family, but we thanked Porkchops and Pig at meals before we ate them. They were good pigs. The chickens, jesus, we had lots of them, and they had or we projected personalities each.
Kevin and I each got a pony, mine was Molly and his was Cricket. Molly once stillbirthed and had serious complications. The vet had to come out and chop up the foetus to get it out. Molly then spent a long time in a big full-body sling, and I had to go out daily and clean the fly eggs out of her gaping wounded vagina. She got better, and she was a good pony, if a bitch.
So one day Kevin and I were out riding Molly and Cricket, and we went a few miles out to the home of the weird vegans. They ate their placenta when they had a baby. They fried it up with onions, as I recall. Anyway, they asked if we'd like a kitten, as their cat had recently had babies. When we went back to see the kittens we immediately recognized the mother cat. It was Anastasia!
They explained that one of their parents were travelling out to visit, coming from California, and had stopped to visit some friends on a native reservation in Nevada. The people there had given them a cat (Ana) which had wandered up to their home, and they'd taken her to Missouri and given her to the weird vegans. ! So we took her home. We had her for a few more years, until she had kittens once and decided to raise them ferally. We saw her occasionally, but she never came home to roost.
We had a cat there, also, named Bob's Cat (we got him from a friend named Bob). Bob's Cat liked to go swimming with us, and he'd follow Kevin and me around when we rode Cricket and Molly. He made friends with all the livestock, and it was common to see him out lying in the fields cuddled up with a cow or calf.
For awhile one summer I kept two or three leeches in babyfood jars full of water and fed them my own blood, but they ultimately died in the direct sunlight.
Bob knew a guy who had some spitzes, 'toy Eskimo' dogs, and we went to get a couple. We picked up two females, which we named Hellion (after Bob's wife Helen) and...crap, I can't remember the other one's name. The guy was about to shoot another one he had, because he said it was too mean, and Dad wouldn't let him. We took that one home, too. His name was Tobias.
Tobe was mean, alright, as he was expecting everyone to kick and hit him for no reason. We just let him live in the front yard and treated him nice, and eventually he adopted and loved us.
Tobe was funny. Sometimes we'd be sitting out in the front yard and have a visitor, and Tobe'd go up and lie down next to them. They'd start petting him, but if they ever paused or stopped he'd growl menacingly until they started petting again. We always acted like we didn't notice.
Tobe killed a couple kittens that wandered into his doghouse. He just went in and brought them out dead and dropped them on the ground. I saw it all. It happened fast. Once I saw a bluebelly (fence) lizard on a rock when Tobe and I were out for a walk. I pointed and said "Sic 'em!" and he did. He went up and killed it and came back to me.
I still have a small scar near one of my eyes from where Tobe bit me when I once tripped and fell on him.
For a short time we also had a hunting dog named Blue. I guess he was a bluetick hound. All I remember about him is that we went out 'coon hunting a couple times. We never got any raccoons.
During my time in Missouri I had lots of pet spiders, scorpions, preying mantises, lizards, and snakes,which I'd keep in captivity for short periods and then release. Oh, and I often kept several ant lions in small cups of sand and fed them ants.
There was a dog, a border collie or something, that came by and spent a couple weeks just looking at us from the edges of our property. He'd just sit there and watch, but never come in out of the edge of the woods. I named him Fringe. Eventually he moved in. I learned that I could reach out and call him and he'd jump up into my arms.
My first pet as an adult was a sweet tabby named Mickey. I eventually handed him over to my parents when I joined the Air Force.
Later my wife insisted on a pomeranian, which I warned her were terrible creatures. After a few weeks of shitting all over the place we gave it away.
Next I had a boa constrictor named Jehovah. At that time I accumulated a horned toad lizard I smuggled from the Nevada desert, folded up in an envelope in my shirt pocket on the airplane, to my home in Georgia, a gecko whose name was only pronounceable in my head but who I told people was named 'Eep', two cats, Vishnu and Trillian, and a cockatiel named Nietzsche. One of the cats killed 'Eep'. Jehovah became quite ill after I fed it a pigeon, and I ended up selling him for $50 to some kid.
Later we had a couple of terrible conures. They were terrible creatures and I shamefully admit to having treated them terribly as a result. I hated them. I let them go. We lived in Biloxi, Missisissippi, and there were a few tropical birds living in the trees there.
When I got to California I ended up catching a black widow, Gretchen, who lived in a jar for a year or more. During that time she hatched out thousands of babies, which I took out and set free in fields. We also had a lizard named Jesus, a rat named Big Rat, and a tarantula named Big Spider (toddler Berkeley named those two). Gretchen eventually died, we gave Big Spider away because I felt bad about the small space we had for her, and Big Rat got a giant tumor and we had her euthanized.
One day Berkeley and her Mom and I were out for a walk when I saw a one-legged cockatiel sitting on a fence post. I walked up and caught it, and it lived with us for quite some time before escaping out the front door. Its name was ECCO (after Lilly's Earth Coincidence Control Office).
Later we got Cosmo the cat from the humane shelter, and a year later we got Frank (whose name at the shelter was Cosmo, but Marie didn't want two cats named Cosmo). Frank and Cosmo are lounging their worthless selves on the couch next to me now.
Somewhere in there we got a couple of African emperor scorpions, but they died of something.
I don't know, I'm sure I missed twelve or fifteen creatures in there somewhere; but you're not reading this and I'm tired of typing.
I wish I were intelligent, knowledgeable, and eloquent. I wish it so much that I could cry sometimes. This feeling can be spurred by reading the rich voxposts of dear friends, from listening to certain "singer/songwriters" (tonight I'm checking out Counting Crows, whom I've only really bumped into on the radio over the years -- also, I'm reading Adam Duritz's [singer/songwriter of Counting Crows] weblog).
Is it just egotistical to want to touch people, to affect them the way I'm affected, the way I ache from the hollow or from the overload, from the mortality or the desolation of my own vanishing smallness?
This is why I hardly ever listen to music anymore. I can't stand it. It's some kind of agoraphobia in the spaces of my own skull.
Everything's slipping away so fast, and I don't have any idea how not to be alone. And I haven't even started drinking yet tonight.
There's nothing to me, nothing to notice or discuss; I don't know about anything, I don't have any hobbies, I don't do anything, and my focus just continues to fade, like declining years. How can a person not even have any interests worth persuing?
So all of this, of course, propels itself down its own road.
And yet, the overwhelming richness of these feelings I avoid seems in itself significant, somehow, almost like substance.
What's the last thing you usually do or think about before you fall asleep?
For awhile now I've been listening to audiobooks in bed. While I'm finding where I left off the previous night, I usually spend some time thinking that I probably shouldn't be listening to audiobooks, as I tend to get to bed around 3:30am and have to get up around 6:30am.
My current audiobook is the "Ender's Game" saga, which seems better than I expected.
If I don't have the audiobooks I just stew in freefloating anxieties and regret and all that.
I stopped by a thrift store on the way home yesterday, where I came across an ancient sphygmomanometer. Upon closer examination I saw that the mercury was leaking out from under the edge of the column, so I gathered and poured it out into a little plastic coffee scoop and carried it all up to the counter to tell the guy.
He showed obligatory concern, thanked me, and started to take it back into the back room. I offered that I'd properly dispose of it if he wanted, if he was planning on just dumping it into the trash, which I explained was the wrong thing to do.
"Oh, no," he assured me, "I'm going to dump it into the sink and run lots of water to really wash it down."
"No," I said, "that's also a very wrong thing to do. Really, I'd be happy to take care of it." I didn't want this guy to be in possession of this stuff.
So he hands it to me and thanks me, but then his supervisor, or whatever, tells him not to do that. They don't want to get into any legal trouble. So he takes it back.
He asked what he should do, and I suggested that he call a waste disposal service and ask them.
He thanked me again, and I left.
I have a terrible feeling that guy or someone else there just dumped it.
