April 12, 2012

Two Months, 515 Unread Messages

It's where I'm at

And I've made peace with it

I could tell you about hints of vanilla

And that'd lead to chatter and chatter about Tahiti

My favorite head massage

Pink ties

Vision quests in the desert

Pretty people

This is the motherfuckin' life, motherfuckers

Do you worry about asteroids hurtling toward Earth, or real estate values on Neptune, or the chances of a tsunami in the mid-Atlantic?

We'd call that shit a tidal wave

Right?

Bring it

Percussion is melody tonight



Location:Penn St,Baltimore,United States

Review: Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room


Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room
Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room by David Weinberger

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



The good of this book is really good. But it goes on to get repetitious and loose and at its worst moments downright trite. So here's the deal... Read it, get revved up, and when your enthusiasm wanes, just put it down and move on. The good you get from it up to that point, though, is well worth it.



View all my reviews

April 11, 2012

Every Home Has Hundreds of Spiders In the Walls, Keeping It Healthy


Warm bricks

Patois

Communication across generations

Defenders of our shores, defenders of our homes

Counting from one until you're through

When you set your mind to something you try not to forget

Unpaired and roadside

Fried food

It's as if your garbage can has a lid made of lead

Squinting your eyes to get the contrast

The ease of turning your head a bit vs. lasting change in public sentiment

The neatest pile ever piled

More angels, more trying, more now

Breathing exercise

Like jumping, like your way back, like the shuffle, like the Golden Age of the Big Four, like you got this, like what they'll say afterward

Breathing


Location:Portland St,Baltimore,United States

April 10, 2012

More Than Company




To run incredibly fast from one place to another

To make decisive movements but without reason

A particular object slipping out of your grasp

Or the once-solid becoming nothing before your very eyes

Somethings may take a long time, but everything happens

Let's tie reason's slumber to the tail of an angel that isn't paying attention

Don't worry, he won't smite you

Let's hide our problem out on the salt flats where witches fear tread

Let's get ourselves a nutritious meal and tip generously

This haul won't get any shorter

Hills and un-hills, alike

Like fever and cold clamminess dancing across your forehead

A whole bunch of likes

Little things standing in for big things

Every thing that brings me back to you

A solid as

A couple of buts

Like like like

Turn it around

You won't find it cheaper

Location:Portland St,Baltimore,United States

April 9, 2012

Can't Stop or Won't Stop?




Good night, Ms. Dall -- I find myself looking for facts that just don't matter

I remember sitting on a dirty floor in the basement of the Tokyo Rose, having abandoned my post at the bar

Transfixed

You, and the others that night

Rumors of messy love triangles that also didn't matter

For that 30 minutes nobody was getting a drink and nobody needed one

+++

I think I'm driving to New York tomorrow for dinner with a friend and hopefully some other friends that are more like brothers actually

And the situation is shitty because that's what it takes to get us together

And that's shitty, too

+++

You look back and you look forward and you hope not to walk into shit

+++

I used to write like this

+++

I like that Cold War Kids song about taking family vacations and swearing you'd not take another drink

But I'm having a drink right now and that's not a problem

+++

All kinds of things make you look in all kinds of directions

Lefties say the darnedest things

Racists say the darnedest things

Almost dead people say the darnedest things

Hey you, you know who you are

If you lie to me I'm going to want to punch you in the goddamned mouth

I already want to punch you in the mouth

I wish I had punched you in the mouth back when

You really could've used it

But my daughter was with me and she really thought your girlfriend was great

And I just don't punch people in the mouth

I don't know that I have it in me


Location:Portland St,Baltimore,United States

April 8, 2012

There Is a One, and There Is a Two




I don't know

What's your favorite reference coin for scaling a photographic subject?

What's your favorite white for a living room?

I don't have the strongest opinions on countertops.

I remember roofs more than roof-decks.

The sound of hooves in the distance and my life rarely cross paths.

The sound of a train in the distance late at night.

Industry in my city is more often dying industry.

A rooftop, summer, early early morning, flat on my back, been out all night, someone's sheer-ish shirt over my face softening the light. Pretty perfect.

Wrap-around porch, between ocean and sound, North Carolina, sun on its way to set, blood pressure on the floor, warm skin, cold drink. Also pretty perfect.

I'm sick of this cough

It'd be a winter-echo if I didn't love winter so much

That's what I've got

Location:Portland St,Baltimore,United States

April 7, 2012

The Third Person in a Moderately Sized Group of Individuals


An ongoing struggle between cardinals and dogwoods

A war that keeps it local

A correction concerning quotes from subjects in varied states of mental disarray

Cannon fire before lunch

Blood before smoke

You take a pole and drive it deep into the earth

You take another pole and you do the same

And then another and another and eventually you have something stable

We've built on rock and sand and mud and less

We used to levitate

We used to laugh about it

One, two, three, four

Tell me about elevators, tell me about France

One, two, three, four, five

Tell me about annuals and Arbor Day and the last last last


Location:Bernard Dr,Baltimore,United States

April 6, 2012

Make Up the Make, Model, Serial Number

(or "Something About a Rain Delay Leads to Double-Header)

Something like showers and flowers

Something about this being the first day of 180-odd days

Weak attempts to connect a past-time to something larger

A discussion of the economics -- all the way to the ground -- of American baseball would be fascinating

Like Moneyball but actually about the money

Like when you step back and you start looking at every industry as "workfare," like that view you take sometimes where you see television networks as merely optimized ad delivery channels

Cars, seen from a plane at a certain altitude remind you of ants and there is absolutely nothing new in that

From low orbit a variety of features -- man-made and otherwise -- are visible and while that fact is interesting it is more or less useless on most days

What you can see from wherever you are has wildly fluctuating value

What you can see is changing

How you see is changing what you see

What you see is changing how you see next

Like tomorrow and so on

Where I'm at:
Armchairs, butterflies, quarterbacking, under-investment.

Risk portfolios, raise the stakes, urgency, some things do really matter, priorities.

A little bit of a chill, time with me people, time with me, sunlight.

Digestion.

More to come.



Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States

April 4, 2012

The Bellow Something Softly

Believing. Beautiful bubbles. A battery of thoughts.

A full complement of thoughts.

Tattered shawl of desire.

Nineteenth century aphorisms vs. the tiers of avarice.

Twentieth century sentries.

Drawings of drumming centaurs.

Sea shells and sea shores.

Football and shaggy dogs. Shetlands. Hinterlands. Dimanche.

The dimmer the anchor the further the haul.

The fur. The hand. The brow.

Ham-fisted hat-erdays.

What's it worth?

What's it worth to you?

It's always cobwebs we're shaking. Always for no good reason.

Tilt you head to the side till it makes sense.

Scoop up earth and sift it through your fingers.

Still outstretched. Still bumpy.

Hold it in the light.




April 3, 2012

Be Scared


This one goes out to all the 911 dispatchers

Like a comfy change of clothes, but for everything

I'm working on earning it and thinking it till then

I'm saving up for a celestial-scale warm iron that's gonna make everything OK

I say could great things about living in Baltimore and you either hear me or you don't

I can get loud when I'm frustrated

My great grandfather was pretty much blind before I was born

There's this thing about neck tattoos, this other thing about "survival," this thing about freeloaders vs. accountability, this thing about plateaus, this thing about a good meal or a good drink or remembering to eat lunch

This thing about teen moms, this thing about 911 dispatchers and suicide lines, this thing about the Fall line up

This thing about unbridled hate, this thing about tortoises, this thing about baby anything

Some days it's like all stripes

Some days Johnny Cash

We've got two more left, you guys have been great

I've got to hold it in my hands

I've got to, got to, got to

Location:Penn St,Baltimore,United States

April 2, 2012

No Freebies Here, Son

Outstretched.

Historic.

Blocked out.

Viennese fodder, meet mid-century meat grinder.

How do you draw a pony?

How do you quarter a match?

There is spit-up all over your dream journal, my precious.

Come.

Come sit by the fire and we'll chit-chat the finer points of god's eyes and lengths of lengths.

Banded.

Bejeweled.

Forever in spectacle.

Day or night I will go

Where there is a floor strewn with everything I have.

Let's focus on the smells.

I've got a few more boxes to get through.

This one says "Misc"

Real fucking helpful, Jamie.


Location:W Cross St,Baltimore,United States

April 1, 2012

Colonel, Where Are You Taking Us? I Thought We Were Staying in the City

Maybe we've misjudged ice cream

Maybe we couldn't resist chasing after the forgers

We're training

We're learning to outrun translation and confound surface tension

It's a good night for a walk

Ahead of the rain

Count your lucky stars

Give thanks to hydrogen bonding, it's the bestest bonding we've got

Give thanks to the Spanish language, it is among the dopest

How many nights have I lain half in love with a language isolate

How many foolish nights, how many ignorant days

I'll tell you, though, the training is paying off

By the end of the week, I'll be levitating through walls and bend stones to my will by merely staring

The future is hidden under our new, ridiculously comfy mattress

In nine short months it will be ours

Everyone, everything

What's with the fake accent?

It is. It is.

Location:Melvin Dr,Baltimore,United States