i had a dream

willie loman in arthur miller's "death of a salesman" had a dream inspired by an older salesman willie knew when willie was young. the older salesman would come into a town, check into a hotel, contact his customers, and they would come to his room and do business. that was the man's way of life. willie admired that, and it was his dream to live like that. it did not work out. times got harder, contacts got fewer and sales fell.

i once imagined that the same dream applied to a nylon hose salesperson named anna who always stayed at a hyatt hotel and was known as hose anna in the hyatt, but that is just a little humorous aside.

i have such a dream now. i envision a way of life that keeps me largely occupied now in my old age, living my life largely on the internet. i know those who fairly successfully do so...at least in their retirement. i live in a comfortable senior home and don't always have a lot of contact with the outside world. i only have a cell phone and limited minutes. i do have a car, but very few funds for operations. i look after my invalid mother at another facility and her little dog that lives with a friend nearby. security is tight here, because of the neighborhood; so i don't have a lot of visitors. the people here are nice, but we mostly just see each other at meals. i try to generate a little internet activity withe email, facebook and now this blog. i don't advertise the blog a lot, i don't feel like pushing it, but i would not mind if some responses or comments came in. i'm not trying to be contraversial, just honest to what i think and believe. i tell a number of stories and i record a number of actual dreams. would be glad to hear from just about anyone. further correspondence is always a possibility.

another c

concerned compassionate conscientious catholic christian conservative

how's that? still seem contradictory. read the sermon on the mount...and then consider Revelation or the Apocalypse. in fact, consider the Whole Bible. it's God's love letter to you. and me. difficult to understand at times, hard to accept perhaps, but i still believe that it presents the Ultimate Reality. i did not get here overnight. i just started reading, more and more, and paying attention to what was going on around me and inside me; and it finallly became apparent. my doubts were cleared, and i was Set Free. and oh yeah i started going to church, episcopal at first because that was where i came from, and finally back to the Catholic Church where i really already belonged.

eliotic eliotanna

started reading in, about and around t.s. eliot again this morning. learning things that had not registered...like that he wrote "prufrock" while still a student. i agree with eliot about so much in matters of politics and religion, although i am now a roman catholic and no longer strictly anglican, that's it's almost always sort of a homecoming to come back to him again after ranging "far and wide" as robert duncan has written. i am largely in harmony with spears as well, although he, like his great subject auden, remained high church anglican also. i chose or was chosen roman because i believe it to be more universal, agree more fully with its doctrines and positions, and believe it to be the church Jesus Christ establihed...on the rock of Saint Peter. it's a comfortable position, one i have been moving towards for quite a few years, and solid now for a year and a half.

i Have been reading contemporary new york poets quite a bit. i have learned a lot from a lot of them, although i disagree with the tenor of much that i read. a lovely lot, but largely misguided. i'm not a revolutionary, not at all. i'm a conscientious compassionate conservative catholic christian. that's about it. wish i had more money for books. wish i had held on to more of what i had. have a few eliot essays. wish i had more. apparently it's time to reimmerse myself in classical english modernism...a happy prospect, happy indeed.

meeting ted berrigan

in march of 1968 i traveled from berkeley, california, to new york city on my way to europe, seeking some relief from a nagging depression that had followed the disastrous failure of the most important romantic attachment i had experienced up until that time. i stayed at an upper westside apartment with the son of my berkeley landlady. the most memorable events of that stay in new york were chancing upon the organizational meeting of the international yippie party in grand central station, where heads were getting busted outside while you could slip in peacefully on the subway; and i ran into a fellow berkeley graduate student from spain as i exited the train. inside it was a big party that eventually poured out into the streets and proceded to the sheep meadow in central park.

about the same time i somehow found the residential address of the poet ted berrigan, peraps in the periodical where i first encountered his work, "mother", co-edited by a poet from texas. i was writing experimentally myself at the time and had been significantly influenced and liberated by a berrigan poem entitled "tambourine world". i don't know how i had the nerve to do this, but i brashly called at the berrigan apartment in the east village about 10 in the morning. his wife informed me that ted was sleeping, after having worked all night. she told me i could see him at the poetry reading at saint mark's church poetry project in the village that night. i did, and i spoke to him. he said he had wondered who had called on him that morning. i told him of my admiration for "tambourine world" and how it had inspired a number of poems i had recently written. he shared that it had been very liberating for him as well. that was my only night at the saint mark's project. now i am reading in an anthology from the history of that institution and once again am very impressed. although i don't necessarily still write or think in the same vein as i did in the sixties, it was a very exciting time to be alive and to be involved. those good times continued for almost six months in europe and for years afterwards in texas and california.

significant dream

i had been reading obscure new york poets, ones i rarely understand, when i fell asleep and dreamed i had moved to brooklyn, new york, where i promptly lost my car, the blue olds Dad had bought for me while i was still at Rice.

i encountered a young poet i had once known, or at least thought so, and also thought i remembered his wife with whom i had had a date; but it turned out he was married to someone else. we barely got along.

i knelt behind a seated Catholic priest who was holding a meeting and i asked some questions. then i said, "see you at mass, Father". his church, a large Gothic, was just down the road.

a child and his father helped me look for the car. as did authorities. i found the civil war monument that was near where i parked the car. then i woke up...ten minutes late for breakfast.

in the apartment furniture had been disturbed and other things. my apartment was just one room of a larger apartment, a third floor walk-up. the rest of the apartment was rented now. i had been away for a while. a door opened from my room into the building next door where i knew the people who lived there. the new occupants of my old apartment were difficult and semi-violent. i would soon have to move.

good morning monday

it has been almost eleven days since i have blogged. i haven't felt very well, and i have not felt very public, or good about writing in public. i'm starting to feel better now. i've been to see father john; i girded up my resolution and resolved a few areas of uncertainty, and now i am ready to get started again. i began a short story about a close girl friend from my youth. we aren't really very close now, but we have some notice of each other, and i'm fairly certain we still care about and feel warmly towards each other. i've read my morning scriptures (somewhat poignant at this point...the widow's mite which brings me round once again to reinforcing my resolutions). i could not access poems.com and it's too early for poet's dot org. nothing new on facebook. no new email. did not sleep especially well, but feel rested. no interesting dreams. i imagine it is freezing outside. probably will not go out again today. maybe tomorrow.

catching up

i'm back from breakfast now. want to write about something that happened yesterday. in the momrning i read online a notice about the walt whitman award for a first book of poetry, a notice from the american academy of poets. i thought the entry fee said $20. i decided i could invest in that remote possibility, so i spent the day preparing the manuscript, a 78 page book. in the evening when i got ready to post i found the fee to be $30 which was a little bit more than i wanted to invest. i decided not to do it this year. i went back to look at the original notice, but i could not find it. i sort of wonder if i might not have hallucinated that $20 figure, wishful thinking. i've been known to do that sort of thing. i don't take even my own most certain perceptions too dogmatically. i know i can be wrong sometimes. but i will say this: i don't think the Word of God is ever mistaken in its essential message to us. it may not always be perfectly factual in some of its details; it's not a book of history, it's a book of theology, the story of God's relationship with and to His creation and His people. "His love never fails". if we believe in our hearts that He loves us, and try to live accordingly, we can count on Him to bring us through even if that includes sickness and suffering and death...we will come through to the other side and be with Him in paradise.

good morning

every morning, when i wake up, whether i have time or not, whether or not i might be late for breakfast or not, i try to take time to praise my God, to thank Him for another day, to ask Him for guidance in this day, and as soon as possible to read His holy scriptures. my dreams this morning are a muddle. i almost overslept, but, praise God, I haven't missed breakfast since I've been here, at the Grove Home, for over two months. stayed up late watching youtube. discovered that I already knew who Erik Satie was, and was familiar with one of his pieces, the Gymnopedie #1, a excellent composition.

summer in maine

great night. slept well. dreamed i was going to maine for the summer, possibly by plane, more likely by bus. anxieties about packing. one bag or two. stopping over in boston i see gerald o'grady, my old professor, on a tv monitor going out the door. i try to reach him but fail, and then i think we had a conversation. encounter with gerald t., an old friend from dallas. up early as usual. headed to jps, mother and the bank. will drive. reading about liebnitz and spinoza. philosophy is hard...but interesting. have freshened my resolve to try to live right, pure and clean...what other way is there?! another encounter in my dream with an old or possible girl friend, maybe someone from colorado, on the night before i leave for maine. she was living in a subsidized high rise. dorm like atmosphere. trouble near the tcu campus. possible rioting, violence, terrorism.

9 AM

just woke up. a pastor friend's voice inside my head. dream like an old black and white silent film. egyptian priests approach altar in temple expecting to find sacred object, but sacred object has been stolen away. guilty party escapes by swamp boat in reedy marsh. as part of an elaborate plan to transport the apparently small object, a hole has to be drilled into the back of a live goat's head. the goat is anestheticized (sp?), but sometimes it wakes up and the anesthetic has to be readministered. that's all i remember.

will probably not go out today. it was freezing at 6 am. accomplished a good bit yesterday. if thursday (presumably warmer) goes well, it will have been a successful week. may try to go crosstown to st. andrew's on saturday evening.

dream at 5am

was talking with a friend in an open garage in the dark outside a house where people were sleeping where we did not belong. suddenly he hijacked an old blue thunderbird, and i bolted, disappearing into the dark. earlier i had been outside a club (perhaps with him, perhaps casing the joint) on a bench or a car with two young women i did not know. one of them approached me and we kissed. it did not go any further. there was some kind of refuse (sticky and messy) on one of the bushes that got on our hands and our clothes. the bush was like the one where someone i was dating hung an expensive jacket of mine after we got separated, after an argument. then i was inside the club. it may have been a poetry scene. there was just one show, and i was watching it, and then i wanted to get out but had to dodge baby carriages and try to quiet babies. near the door there was some confusion about beige all weather coats. i spoke to the owner of the club whom i sort of knew. there was an afterhours club attached. i wandered in and found a homeless friend all cleaned up and waiting tables. he had two pieces of french toast for me, and a long large strip of fried egg crisp. his lady friend was asleep outside in a garage annex. there were some art supplies...oil paints. turned out to be doug and kelsey.

earlier in the bar during the show someone showed up who was notoriously athestic and anti-religious. the owner shouted out "let us pray" and i felt obliged to pray, as one of three left standing. i said amen and slinked away.

was going to write

something controversial,
but thought better of it.
it's not nesca sara lee
everybody's cup of tea.

speaking of everybody's,
there used to be an everybody's
department store in downtown.
it was connected to stripling's
department store by a long corridor
underground. along that corridor
stripling's sold housewares and
fine china. stripling's also had
a bargain basement where i once saw
a pale orange sport coat very cheap
but did not buy it. the lunch room
at stripling's was the pink flamingo.
i used to meet my aunt dodo there.
she worked for leonard's at that time.
i'd have a club sandwich and a
chocolate soda in a tall glass.
it was near the hosiery and hat
departments. i bought the yellow ochre beach suit at stripling's; it came with a funny hat. i first saw it on a mannekin. it's the one i'm wearing in the oil painting of me by dodo. i was wearing it at a high school picnic, buried in sand with the hat over my face, when somebody grabbed it and tore off the little cup shaped appendage it had on the top.

monnig's department store also had a tea room and a bargain baement.

what i remember most about leonard's (leonardo's) department store, besides the fact that it took up a whole city block, is the toyland at christmas. it was a veritable wonderland, complete with scenic ride and a mystery gift you could get for a quarter. we went there every year. also i remember coming down the escalator into the basement and watching men and women demonstrate cooking appliances and accessories. sometimes they gave out sample snacks. and there was a nut warmer where you could buy a few in a little paper sack.

one time my brother pat and i were hired by a lawyer to distribute election pamphlets out on the corner, "i'd appreciate your considering will wilson for attorney general"; and that was the same corner where the old blind man played the guitar and his wife an accordion, selling pencils and collecting donations. we were pretty well paid for that job, and we liked to go to the penny arcade near the remnants of the old "hell's half acre" when we took a break from hanging out at the Y.

the fair, at seventh and thockmorton, had an interesting book department with a lending library at one time. striping's had a good book department also where i used to buy little devotional books in purple colors. one was "the jefferson bible". cox's was across the street from the fair. i remember the beauty shop mezzanine and the vacuum tube system that submitted your payment and sent back change.

then there was woolworth's, that had live birds and fish, and succullents among other plants. and the card shop (perhaps bob bolen's) where i used to buy strange little sculptures called "li'l horribles".

then there were the restaurants, like the picadilly cafeteria and the barbecue sandwich shop (mrs. boyd's, i think it was) underneath russell stover's candy store. the richelieu cafe. a whole host of places. all gone now. downtown was a livelier place back then. what happened? where did it all go!

almost forgot

got an early christmas present from mr. steve,
a fine limoges haviland cup and saucer,
pre-1941, perfect for drinking tea...
translucent bone china, with gold leaf
outside And inside the cup.

making tea

am steeping tea in the microwave,
the only cooking i do in my rooms.
there is no food in my rooms.
i only eat what's served to me
in the dining room.
it isn't all that much,
but it's decent.
still i don't seem to be
losing any weight...
i should.
and i should
buy myself some
better tea.

listening to

alban berg violin concerto
perlman, ozawa
"dedicated to the memory of an angel"...
the daughter of walter gropius,
founder of the bauhaus...

bowwow house

one of my favorite pieces

dream at 8 pm

walking barefoot
with douglas pedersen,
douglas o. pedersen,
over hill and dale,
toughening our feet...
firestorms exploding in the sky
directly over me,
strangely erotic.
he is thinking of
getting back together with
kelsey and moving to
his old home town,
in ohio?,
and going back to work.

i tell him i would still consider
sharing space with them
once again even after
all of these years.

there were strange magazines
in the doorway
leading down the path,
the dirt path,
where we were walking.

someone was tagging along,
lagging behind
at a distance...
could it have been gary
or my brother pat?

i wake up from the dream.
it is after nine o'clock,
and all of the lights are on here
in my apartment. i have
fallen asleep on the couch
after watching videos,
opera and piano,
on youtube on my
new computer.

perhaps doug has been in-
carcerated
for political reasons
and recently
released.

i am getting old now,
and doug has been gone
about six years.

i don't dream about him often,
but when i do,
it's really deep.

early afternoon

in a lazy, daydreaming consciousness,
somewhere between sleeping and waking,
i got what i thought was an email alert
from a friend in california.

i went to the computer but
there was no such message.
so much for prognostication.
my subconscious must have been
hungry for a little attention.

went to town early this morning
on the bus. took care of some
business for mother.

tomorrow it will be very cold.
thursday i'll go to the county hospital
just to register in case
i need a little dental work.

i'm sorry if this post seems boring;
there's really not much happening here.

had chicken and dumplings for lunch.
just woke up from a little nap.
feel good about what i managed
to accomplish this morning.

5am Almost Time for Breakfast

sitting at my computer, i cruise off into a painting going deeper and deeper into the landscape. it is dark reddish brown like a rembrandt. the bed is in the corner near the window. it looks slept in. i don't remember a lot else, at least not at the moment. i think i hear reverend doug's voice in my head. i often hear and write in voices.

this blog must be published in california. it is two hours earlier there. i hear the blaring horn of a train outside, a lot like in recent years and long ago in childhood in t.c.u. now i am in east fort worth, almost to handley or arlington. earlier i heard a dog barking, possibly a neighbor's. i was able to relax a little. got an hour's sleep. breakfast is at 6:30.

new dream

am crashing on a large canyon estate in san francisco, 9+ acres with rural tank swimming pool, and large sauna, multi-level, cheap rent. hippies come down out of the hills with packs of dogs, beautiful dogs. i have my little dachshund mia with me, at least on loan. randy fickey is there, deceased. i am in a position to possibly become the principal resident. there is a woman there, old at first and then young. we cuddle and talk. she says she is an artist, but then turns out her medium is business. i tell her about my work, as a poet first, but thinking of going back into art. tell her about robert duncan and jess collins, that one was a poet and one was an artist. that i knew robert. we were friends, sort of. she moves up into a nearby sleeping loft. i can see up into the hills from downtown and see a large red mansion near the summit. i'm not at all sure i want to live in san francisco again. was hoping for new york or maybe boston or back to europe. tell a young gay man about my dreams. have tried it both ways. unlikely to go back gay again, it's been about ten years now, but need to be honest about it. room to grow food. someone in the sauna holds me under, but i come up out of the water. it's a little like paradise; just as this, my home at the Grove, is paradisial. wonder what it all means, where i am headed. a pleasant dream. interesting. thought i could not sleep...just one hour ago. time for another dream perhaps, but i feel rested. g. it's essentially a large one bedroom place, tall ceilings, rough wood, perhaps connected to a larger establishment. zen center perhaps or wealthy landowner. 3am

Bus Stop Poems

FOUR BUS STOP POEMS alone in america alone in america, a homeless vietnamese woman carries her blanket over her shoulder as she boards the bus near the walmart on the city’s eastside. months later, at the transfer center, now she has a shopping cart and a middle-aged friend, probably homeless himself, who brings her coffee from the mcdonald’s across the street. i had known her many years ago at a burger stand on the westside. she didn’t seem so crazy then, just a little paranoid. people make room for people like her, with all of her bags... and the elderly woman with a large portable ice chest and a whole kitchen in her gear. at the bus stop the wild verbena, purple as lent, quotes itself verbatim ad infinitum, while a daisy, lackadaisical at first, stands out in early march winter green and shouts “yellow” at the yelling streets swarming with angry cars. automatic staring at the old boarded up horne street hardware store from the bus in como, coming back from the viola pitts medical clinic, i automatically think of the horn and hardart’s automats in new york city in the 1960’s... full of andy warhol wonder stars and horned up hardhats looking for love. fantastic i drank a fanta orange soda in the hot streets of madrid just before i encountered the spanish infanta (little princess) with the court dwarf in attendance in velasquez’ “las meninas” at the prado museum. this poem comes back to me as i watch a very short man drink a fanta orange soda on the bus this early chilly morning.

Four Early Berkeley Poems

Narcissus Scorned Go, love, Choose some more classic passion For the harrowed heart. Your hysterics, Mere test by tears, Still flow with bitterness, Freshly bitten. Search out some mild indifference, An aesthetic rule of regulated sense. Be numbed! There is more true tenderness In mirrored forms fixees Than dithyrambic lays. Assault again this sulking heart, Having returned in subtler fashion... But calmly. Caravan these desert sands wind blown expand. designs have grown from fig seeds sown among the reeds an oasis breeds. our wandering races have forgotten faces, wind-begotten, ripe and rotten. dry winds have rent twelve nomads’ tent. twelve ancients clad in shadows had watched spectrum close while four winds rose. twelve colors blend, each strand worn thin inscribes the morning pageant born. red snowflakes bake on the parched lake where camels marched, their pink tongues arched; now limply hung, they cower, sung of distant towers, one blue pale flower beneath that veil, we forsake and fail. TREE WEEPS IN TEXAS CROWD PAYS FOR TEARS what wonder you cry? sap runs dry after forty years sweating august heat. let them meet beneath languishing limbs, limp seeking shade, they will pray you, “bless us”. you, dying, may fade drowned with hymns, filtering tears they drink in Texas. song clouds ripple beneath us, blue cast sky washing. we are angels bathing, watch fire spread on shores. night quenched, moon-dipped, dry the sands shifting. bright sphere floaters sing we, home she sifts.

Three Houston Poems from the Eighties

Christmas, Fort Worth, ‘68 The trees acknowledged me, appreciating my attention. As I pressed my back against its bark, an elm tree yielded a soft embrace and wrapped its trunk around my trunk. The sandstone flagstones in a deserted gazebo displayed themselves, as they performed translucent patterns. Walking home, where nobody walks, I noticed people staring from cars, as I picked up scattered cotton boles near the cattle barns where the Stock Show would open. Cotton, boy, I said to myself, what do you know about cotton? I asked and then my father drove up in a brand new Oldsmobile and asked me to listen to his stereo. SHUNYATA SONATA for the “Dharma Bums” who picked beans in Oregon for 50 cents an hour while the overseers bootlegged wine to the derelicts who slept in bunks in Portland for $2.00 a night, while a squidgy-faced old woman sat on the steps of a slumlord and laughed. a sonic boom shattered their high as they stumbled out into the streets, stoned and dazed – “Nixon was coming...”. their heads were shaved and like antennae picking up every vibration became aware of F.B.I. listening devices sprouting in the park like the beans they ate for salad late at night, attuned to the symphony of sirens rising near and far, in city streets, inside their heads. All Aboard for Alligators Near the mouth of the Brazos (the arms of the gods) a reptilian ancestor stretches webbed limbs on a sun-drenched sandbar, his bellowing grunt betraying a hunger as deep as his lineage. On the steep banks of the slow, brown river an armadillo roots in the brush, his pink snout raw with the red dirt’s abrasive grit. Deer grazing in the nearby clearing enjoy protective custody. Humans tread narrow paths; but do not disturb pristine areas deceptive in simplicity. I think I hear the grass growing; permit me this moment in high moving shade.

rationale

i was unable to access my old blogs anymore, so i established this account. the only thing i anticipate posting right now is my dream journal as it develops from here on out. i probably won't post a lot of new poetry or opinion pieces. it would disqualify the poetry from publication in many venues. there are, however, two books of my poetry at lulu.com: "findings" and "frankincense and myrna loy", as well as my autobiography "tripping like crazy"...listed under "gerald george". i look forward to starting to post again.

this morning's dream

so there we were, mother and me, in that big house on hillcrest (big for us), on thanksgiving, just the two of us. someone, maybe someone we know, came by to pick up someone else, maybe one of mom's grandkids. the driver might have been one of her former daughters-in-law. that person also borrowed a couple of sturdy blond chairs. it was a small car, filled to the brim. i told the woman about the priest at mother's church, and what he had done to my mother...how he essentially banned her from the church. that was when we went back to our old church, ten years ago. after the people left, i was alone with the dog and getting ready to write. i realized i must be dreaming (this entirely within the dream), because i told myself that we had not lived in that house for twenty years. mother was gone, but the little dog was still there. i looked in a desk drawer and found paper and pen.

testing

just trying too see how this works