Scenes inside a Gold mine (2)

The Barmaley Fountain in the Russian city of Stalingrad in 1943:

The unbroken circle of children dancing and playing  around the crocodile immune to the war torn city burning all around them.

This was Stalingrad, the pivotal battle of World War II.

If the German's drove the Russians from the city, potentially all the oil and natural resources of the Caucasus could be powering the Nazi war machine for years to come.

The statute survived the battle.

The German 6th Army did not.

The same German soldiers who two years earlier marched victoriously into Paris on top of the world

were now surrounded, freezing, and starving:

What did they think of the dancing children?

Or the inscription at the base of the statue:

"Little children! / For nothing in the world / Do not go to Africa / Do not go to Africa for a walk! // In Africa, there are sharks, / In Africa, there are gorillas, / In Africa, there are large / Evil crocodiles / They will bite you, / Beat and offend you - // Don't you go, children, / to Africa for a walk / In Africa, there is a robber, / In Africa, there is a villain, / In Africa, there is terrible / Bahr-mah-ley! // He runs about Africa / And eats children - / Nasty, vicious, greedy Barmaley!"

The Dancer (4)

Then she had this dream that followed her around during the day. 

She was on this wildly spinning carousel with flashing strobe lights.  It was a gigantic party and everyone was drinking and the room was still spinning.  The gyrations became faster and faster and then there was a scream.  Then there was blackness and she was lying in a pool of her own vomit.  The carousel was deserted.  The town around her was dilapidated.   It looked like a German town in the 1940s after being bombed.  It was in the morning.   She heard a church bell.

She walked through the empty streets to the church.  There was an organ playing.  She walked inside.

At the front was a huge bloody crucifix.  It was still bleeding.  It had been decapitated.

She started yelling.

"Fuck you, how can you treat women like this!"  "You fucking priest bastard"

The music stopped.

She woke up.

The Zen Guy (6)

"There've been times when I wander
And times when I don't
Concepts I'll ponder
And concepts I won't ever see
God isn't one of these
Former or latter
Which did you think I meant
It doesn't matter to me

Bug, It doesn't matter


Bug, It doesn't matter


Bug, it doesn't matter

(Thoughts faded)

Bug, it doesn't matter

(Overrated)

Gold in my hand
In a country pool
Standing and waving
The rain, wind on the runway
Spending or saving
Credit or debt
Which did you think I meant
Nothing I see can be taken from me."

From the sociology experiment in Peoria

The Music Lover (6)

"I'm always hearing voices on the street,  I want to shout, but I can't hardly speak.  I was making love last night  To a dancer friend of mine.  I can't seem to stay in step,  'Cause she come ev'ry time that she pirouettes over me. And I only get my rocks off while I'm dreaming,  I only get my rocks off while I'm sleeping. I'm zipping through the days at lightning speed.  Plug in, flush out and fire the fuckin' feed.  Heading for the overload,  Splattered on the dirty road,  Kick me like you've kicked before,  I can't even feel the pain no more. But I only get my rocks off while I'm dreaming,  I only get my rocks off while I'm sleeping. Feel so hypnotized, can't describe the scene.  Its all mesmerized all that inside me.  The sunshine bores the daylights out of me.  Chasing shadows moonlight mystery.  Headed for the overload,  Splattered on the dirty road,  Kick me like you've kicked before,  I can't even feel the pain no more. But I only get my rocks off while I'm dreaming I only get my rocks off while I'm sleeping. " (from off broadway) Then this: I found myself singin' Like a long-lost friend The same thing that makes you live Can kill you in the end. Can we get it together?"

Things that don't go together (5)

What do the Pruitt-Igoe buildings built in the 1950s in north St. Louis

have in common with the World Trade Center?

Well for starters, they both were designed  by the architech Minoru Yamasaki.

For seconds, they were both demolished by intentional, though markedly different means:

There seems to be a lot of failed utopian ideas at play.

Pruitt-Igoe was built in two separate groups of buildings.

The Pruitt complex to house african americans and other minorities

Igoe for the whites.

This had to have been back in the 1950s.

The complexes were later integrated

Never achieving more than 50 % occupancy

Architecture journals praised the complex as a beautiful example of International Style housing

which would alleviate and even end poverty and to cure society's ills.

Some residents, upon moving in, said it looked like a dream come true.

Crime, vandalism, decay.

This was before the planes impacted the buildings.

Flown by people brandishing an entirely different type of book

and a radically different type of dream.

Things that don't go together (4)

Given the chance, people believe mostly in people

all this stuff you read in books

about God, souls and other ideas

don't cause anyone to get that aroused

unless they hear it from the source.

But I could be wrong--having never made love to a God

or have I?

Hitler was supposedly lousy

in bed

and only had one testicle.

But I read that so i don't know if that counts.

I can't imagine anyone getting that enthused

about reading Mein Kampf.

I was supposed to read it once in a class long ago

but I had a headache and couldn't finish.

Those mass rallies must have been something

causing the stolid Martin Heidegger to lose his rationality

and play follow the madman

and they certainly triumphed the will of Leni Riefenstahl

who never needed any help in getting people turned on.

Just give me that old fashioned religion

the kind before the printing press

where they burned people at the stake

for heresy or lack of humor.

(from the penny lane garcia tribute thing)

The Music Lover (5)

"What a beautiful space (sic)
I have found in this place
That is circling all round the sun
What a beautiful dream
That could flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye and be gone from me
Soft and sweet
Let me hold it close and keep it here with me, me

And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be
In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me, me

What a curious life we have found here tonight
There is music that sounds from the street
There are lights in the clouds
Its (sic) ghost all around
Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me
Soft and sweet
How the notes all bend and reach above the trees, trees

Now how I remember you
How I would push my fingers through
Your mouth to make those muscles move
That made your voice so smooth and sweet
Now we keep where we don't know
All secrets sleep in winter clothes
With one you loved so long ago
Now he don't even know his name

What a beautiful space (sic)
I have found in this place
That is circling all round' the sun
And when we meet on a cloud
I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all"

(last line is the best, coming into smithboro, all songs considered)

The artist (4)

Endless rows of suffocating itchy cornfields

providing no shade.

Why was she doing this again?

She had to get away

that woman wouldn't let her breathe.

She had plenty of freedom now.

And it totally sucked.

She kept rethinking her dream from last night.

Hoping to find something in it, something special, something she could create with.

That was the whole purpose of this trip, right?

She was in the Middle East

in the back of a van.

There was an envelope mixed in the stack of papers

containing a billion dollars.

It came from someplace it shouldn't, it was going to someplace it shouldn't.

She leaves the van and goes upstairs.

And watches and knows that the other people left in the van are in trouble.

The black man with a toothless smile wearing glasses gives the signal.

And a large machine gun takes aim

and unloads

completely shredding the contents.

She is brought back to the wreckage.

He knows the money is there and wants her to find it.

She goes through the rubble piece by piece

She comes to the folder with the money and

and conceals it from the man

smiling as she has tricked him.










.

The Music Lover (4)

"drink up, baby, stay up all night
the things you could do, you won't but you might
the potential you'll be, that you'll never see
the promises you'll only make

drink up with me now and forget all about the pressure of days
do what I say and I'll make you okay and drive them away
the images stuck in your head

people you've been before that you don't want around anymore
that push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still

drink up, baby, look at the stars
I'll kiss you again between the bars where I'm seeing you
there with your hands in the air, waiting to finally be caught

drink up one more time and I'll make you mine
keep you apart deep in my heart separate from the rest
where I like you the best and keep the things you forgot

the people you've been before that you don't want around anymore
that push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still"

The zen guy (5)

The zen guy still couldn't dance

but he began to loosen up

or so he thought.

If humor is the barometer of such things

he was the self anointed purveyor at zen sesshins.

See, these sesshins are ostensibly devoid of humor:

when you sit facing a wall there is no room for talking, looking around, or any other sort of mischief.

There are even rules about these sort of things.

However, to the zen guys knowledge, there was no express prohibition against note passing.

Hence, when the zen guy learned that an older practitioner from Chicago had an affinity for a


"certain" football team with a hirsute mascot there began to appear at conspicuous places satiric notes


extolling the virtues of a former Packer quarterback, long the nemesis of the windy city team.

These notes were later condensed to the simple affirmation of the jersey number "4".

But there is always more going on here than meets the eye

if you pay attention.

And zen is all about paying attention, right?

Paying attention and perhaps a subtle protest.

For who in their right mind would sit facing a wall all day?

What is the hidden agenda behind those crazy wall sitters?

Is it possible to think you are getting in touch with yourself at the same time running from some other aspect in your life?

I wonder.

Well, whatever the zen guy's motivation, he always by my count had issues with authority

and a practice of withdrawing when things didn't go his way.

That's not really that funny--kind of infantile, don't you think?

And this was apparent long before he wore the Santa hat into the catholic church during Christmas service.

But I digress.

What happens when he has to finally face things besides the wall? 

I wonder.

The hippie chick (4)

The hippie chick is an elemental force

compressed by a stifling nurture of suffocating curfews and relentless mean spirited jabs.

When the spring inevitably sprung

ain't no way that bitch Pandora was ever going back in the box.

Unleashed was a warm sad tender angry compassionate whimpering force

that took in everything and everyone in its wake

especially the orphaned hurt abused hurt frustrated neglected.

No stone was left unturned, no path not experienced--

especially those prohibited.

Hey, but every storm has an eye, no?

and every genie escaping the bottle gets three wishes, right?

And if you use your third wish to wish for another wish doesn't that leave you with four?

Four children.

The eldest hedges restraint and irony.

I'll give you three guesses what he studied in college, but you won't need them.

Psychology.

I'll give you one guess what he does for a living.

Law enforcement

Even the youngest wants to be a cop.

What happens when you cross an irresistible force with immovable objects?

A family.

(mostly on the way to denver, on a plane, but then in a loft on wazee)