Buick is a Bird

We never do outdistance childish egocentrism,

Never do permanently...
Tired moments catch up with us,
Experience not strictly physical,
Based in the senses, depth of life
Returning in tired moments, and we see
Again, as we did as a child.

A flower among the garbage may
Bring vastly differing reactions out
Presented to a crowd, white Styrofoam evoking various responses,
Bright petals offer contrast for the eye,
And so a moment differs as we differ over a lifetime;
Details of cans or candy wrappers cause
A different response, a rippling in the breeze
Moves us in different ways at one time,
Another very differently.

Frames. We frame everything with or without:
He had been previously a wedding photographer
And aspirant key grip which is why
We trust his eye.
One snatch of how the projects had a look
Of an upscale tract, palm tree framed
Conveniently, luxurious, excluding squalor,
Shoes over telephone lines nowhere in the photo.

All you need is good luck, luck and a bag of chips,
Then you have everything, and a bag of chips.
Moments like fluttering bright petals
Among white Styrofoam and bottles, candy wrappers, paper scraps
Stirred by a breeze,
Images juxtaposed without a cause,
Just sounds articulated lacking context.

That, and a bag of chips.
Enter the seagulls, this feast for the eye
Without explanation or a reason why.
We never permanently distance ourselves in
The moments we find randomly when
Luck strikes, luck and a bag of chips.
A bag of chips strikes like a seagull digging in a bag of chips
Among the garbage, petals of a flower fluttering,
That and a bag of chips.

KLK
7-2-14

Objects Appear

Sleep is not always sleep, the difference

In the way we slip into dreams, and that

Creates a different experience.

Sometimes one says I cannot sleep and will

Just rest and wait for dawn; but then one slips

Into a state of odd impressions still.

The mind has moved unwittingly per chance

To gain advantage over its own lack

Of effort to lose headway and advance.

The mirror magnifies those things we saw

Some other time and places them too near

For deep reflection ever to be clear.

It is a place one oddly wants to stay

Because it is disconnected from the day.

KLK

3/3/20

All Calls Are Recorded for Quality

The call fell out of queue and the agent answered with, “This is…, and how can I help you?”

“That’s one of my favorite names.”

She laughed.

“What information do you need for your process?”

“Your details are already on my screen. What do you need help with?”

“I see my deductibles have been reached but when I view this latest set of claims, it says You Pay all these dollars. I want to understand this. Can you help with that?”

“Yes, I can help.”

“Great. What I want to understand is this. Are these charges outside the deductibles? If I’ve met my deductible but still each month, I’m going to be paying thousands of dollars, I might just kill myself because it’s not worth it.”

She laughed again not nervously, unreservedly.

“Let me take a look. What’s the dollar amount, the total charges, you’re seeing?”

She was able to pull up the records on her side and mumbled as she read the notes.

“See, I have to plan for payments like this.”

“It looks like we’re waiting for more information from your provider. These charges are pending.”

“So, does that mean I’ll have to pay them eventually? I have to plan in advance: How many liquorstores I need to rob and how many little old ladies’ purses I need to grab.”

She laughed again.

“It’s just the way the charges appear at this point. Since you’ve met the deductible, we’ll cover the charges.”

“Great. Don’t worry I was only kidding. About suicide. The liquor stores and purse snatching, I’d appreciate if you keep that to yourself.”

    

KLK

3/1/20

Hungry Gorge

HUNGRY GORGE

"That's what you think." A disapproval stated
As indirect as it can be equated
With secret failure and a secret sorrow
We know and don't; tomorrow and tomorrow,
A parent oddly states a contradiction
When you expected accolades, prediction
Of something more, a history unspoken
Of expectations, and great promise broken.
It says directly you have missed your place
But indirectly you're a great disgrace.
Context abandoned, this is straight emotion
From some strange and familiar devotion
Missed in the moment of reactions of
Mystification with the ones we love.

KLK
9/13/19

Russian Dolls and Mirrors Facing Mirrors

  I used to live in an apartment with one bathroom that had two mirrors opposite each other. A friend pointed out how this created an infinity of mirror images. I had not noticed it until he pointed it out to me. He was a refugee from Latvia, from the former Soviet Union, and had come to the United States under the asylum process with his family. Some other time perhaps I could write about him, his daughter, his wife, either as straight reporting or as a fictionalized version. Maybe I could do both. Both or either would have a rhetorical purpose.

  I have this set of ideas. I could write a story about a person who writes a story about a person who has tools for detecting radioactivity and, in the wake of a nuclear war, warns others not to eat the canned food because of high levels of strontium ninety. The others ignore the warning and eat the canned food and die. The one who warned them takes bitter satisfaction, having been right and having been ignored, having tools that go beyond what others can detect, and the person in my story who wrote the story would be supremely satisfied, thinking about the others in the world who ignore insights, who lack the tools so to speak.

  I have written a description of story and about an actual situation. It is about an aspect of actual story. I am not satisfied with it or with its echoes of ideas because I lack confidence that anyone including myself has the tools for measuring the levels. Think of stories with unreliable narrators. What is really going on with those? For instance, that story by Thomas Mann about the train wreck. Does it really work on reflection? Who really writes a story? Who is the author of meanings and interpretations? Is the writer hiding behind a conceived author? Are the readers putting up an author of their own imagining between themselves and the author’s idea of the writer, between themselves and the text, between themselves and themselves reading the text?

 

I have this set of ideas which reminded me of many other things. If only I had more face to shave. That place with the mirrors is not remote. It is just down the street and owned by the same partnership that owns the building I now live in and have lived in for eighteen years. What is strontium ninety? Why did I include that specificity? Is that detail a source of satisfaction to the imagined author, the writer you imagine?

Let No One Put Asunder

Years, decades ago, when the board of Santa Monica schools and the college split, my father considered running for the college board. My mom had been on the combined boards for some time. My dad had attended meetings because even after working a full day he loved to spend time with my mom, driving all the way into Santa Monica with her. He learned what the boards did and thought he could do a good job.

He went to one forum about running for the college board. At that meeting, a woman said to him, "Why don't you go back where you came from?" He was stunned. He replied he lived here now and his wife was on the board and running for re-election on the school board. The woman said it was good about my mom being on the board. She was going to vote for her.

After that my dad decided not to run. It wasn't worth it, dealing with someone like that. Dealing with that kind of obvious bigotry and subhuman hatred just takes the humanity out of everyone. My emotional response even now, as I talked to my dad on the phone about it, dehumanizes that woman. I'd kill her. I'd kill her children and put them in a cage. Right? No. I wouldn't. But that's the emotional response. And some weak-minded people, as well as the demagogues like Trump, fall victim to their own unexamined emotions and imaginary scenarios of difference and division.

That's not America. If we can claim any kind of greatness it is this: The value of all human beings is what we stand for and, in the immortal words of our founders, yes, for all their flaws and failings, We the people hold these truths to be self-evident, that all of us are created equal, endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There was no footnote with exceptions. There was no appendix with a hierarchy or a table with relative valuation of life and rights based on country of origin, sex, or religion, sexual orientation or any other false delineation used to dehumanize one group or individual. All of us created equal with equal rights is what the founders established in order to create a more perfect union.

E Pluribus Unum. From the many one is the familiar Latin phrase in our national parlance. Let us now add this: From Difference, Community. From Diversity, UNITY. Like the thin straws easily broken if separated but when held together unbreakable let us understand once and for all time that what has made this country exceptional is inclusiveness, and what makes us stronger is understanding of what we share matters more than what divides. That is our great common heritage, regardless of our origins and, yes, even of our differences. The differences are small when we understand them in the light of what share, what we have in common. We are all dedicated to the aspiration that our founders set forth on this continent. Let us continue in that common endeavor together. What our founders and their successors down to us have brought together let no one put asunder.

KLK
7/15/19

The Secret Life of Emotional Response

Walter Mitty Revisited

The original short story by Thurber does not lead to actual adventures in the main character's life. His fictional life remains ordinary. Unlike either the Danny Kaye or the Ben Stiller films, the story ends quite poignantly and defiantly delineating a permanent difference between the character's daydreams and his mundane days, filled with routine errands and awareness of his own short-comings; but his submissiveness to his wife and knowledge of his own lack of practical heroism or heroic capability are offset by his fantasies and a capacity to imagine himself heroic. His ultimate lapse shows he is a hero. His imagined defiance to the imaginary firing squad, as all his daydreams, is an emotional response. His final daydream is a metaphor for his defiance to his ineffectual and ordinary life.

This is the psychology most of us live with to some degree. Although we may not imagine ourselves doing grandiose things in battle, in the operating room, overcoming mechanical and natural challenges with aplomb while others watch in open admiration, we like to believe we are better than we are at what we do, and thought of more highly than we may actually be from moment to moment by our peers. We create these pockets of notions about ourselves moment to moment, and how we would like to be seen, in order to fend off the slights and errors of our ordinary life which seem outrageous to the ego and cause the id to writhe eloquent in emotional soliloquy.

On a further consideration, this psychological perspective is adolescent. That is, the desire to impress and be admired, the need to prove oneself and gain approval of others, ought to wane in adulthood and be eclipsed by a growing acceptance of actual limitations. As we age and mature, we learn to take satisfaction in what we can do. A mature person takes pleasure in the ordinary events of his or her life, and does not see them as something less than acts of physical bravery or publicly acknowledged excellence. Indeed, mediocrity replaces excellence easily in our minds, analogous to our pleasure with bad food over fine cuisine when we are truly hungry and happy to have something to eat at all. In the story, however, his wife's dominance and his submissiveness differentiate the character from most of us. The marital relationship indicates why the character has stagnated. He has a conflict in his choices, and his daydreams are paradoxically both a cause and a result.

Similar conflicts show up for most of us in how we respond to fiction. What stories grab our attention indicate what lapses into fantasy we use to contrast with our own limitations in order to bolster identity and stave off what we may believe subconsciously to be our short-comings. Movies, TV shows, books, songs, news reports, viral videos, and even a passing joke, can reveal what's going on under the surface. We all have a submissive marriage with reality and a secret life that keeps us going.  

This then is perhaps my secret life. As much made up of illusion as allusions, and of self-image imagined as of ideas expressed, I find satisfaction and comfort in putting words together in a way unique to me. This is a persona none may ever know or admire, but in my own mind I become the hero of my story. Whether it is good or bad does not matter in the end because I know the simple act of thinking makes it so.