We wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Fiesole 14 x 19,5 cm - 5,5 x 7,7''

 

THE WITCH OF LARCIANO

Ute, our landlady, is afflicted with

just enough craziness to make me

want to keep my distance—

but there is none. There are olive trees

and pine forests and some drop dead

lovely and untamed-looking chestnut trees.

You can hear the wild boar snuffling at two

in the morning helping themselves to weird

Ute’s vegetable patch. But there’s no distance to speak of.

Ute’s come to press magic feathers and beads

against my bronchitis, hold my hand, and chant something

medicinal. Maybe she isn’t crazy, she means well, she’s

eccentric. Maybe she won’t kill us in the

dead of night, slice and dice our bodies,

hang us out to dry somewhere in the garden

then store us in jars with her jams, peppers, and olives.

We’ll see. Most evenings I read Schopenhauer in a

deeply carved throne-like African chair crowned

with the pipe-smoking head of a village elder.

Weary of the German’s pessimism, no matter

how much I agree with it(look, if life isn’t

one long suffering road trip, etc.), I light 

my own small pipe, also made in Africa.

I then bless the valley below me with an improvised

slightly stoned gesture of acceptance, because

at this moment anyway, life is just too good not to.

Ute, dressed in threadbare sacred gown of

faded purple festooned with scattered moons, ex-

ploding stars and Zoroastrian charms, is crossing the dried

out lawn on bare feet. She’s bearing a cup

of peppery hot chocolate. If I could fly away

I’d alight and perch on the black tower

of Larciano, some hundred yards down

from us, and observe her from a safe distance

where, just beneath me, a wedding party would unveil its bride.

Philip Glass - The Kiss

A few takes on life in the East of Germany

Dark Edge 26 x 26 cm

 

PLAYING BOULE IN A BERLIN PARK

I have to admit that there are

certain parts of myself I don’t want to visit. Just as there are

a handful of market towns on both sides

of the Polish-German border, part industrial,

part rustic, and part something else

eerie if not downright frightening, that I

don’t want to visit either unless, you know,

I feel compelled one day to write

the history of Cabbage and its myriad manifestations—  

the Cabbage War of 1688-89, the annual Cabbage Parade and its Queen,

the putative Death of Cabbage, even the full-diaper stench

of sauerkraut on a Sunday afternoon in October—

and what it means to the people who live in that haunted scenery.

From my fourth floor observation post here

in the capital of all things Prussian, and where it’s

the potato rather than cabbage that reigns, I can see a pleasant distraction

taking shape: a half-dozen ex-roadies(long graying hair,

tattered Led Zep t-shirts)playing boule beneath the elms and beeches,

the hardening chestnut leaves, a dozen beer

bottles lined up on a bench. I can just make out some

of their routine insults, curses, an outraged complaint or two.

The color of their attitude and atmosphere is Newcastle Brown Ale.

And if they have anything to hide, they’re not showing it.

  The subtle music of Boule! This venue is actually quite close to where we live!

It's very, very cold in Germany

Humid Day - They only talk about the weather 40 x 30 cm

HOT CITY

Heat in any urban setting tends to remind

me of the day a trio of total strangers 

wanted me dead, or said they did—I was walking down

a Berkeley street, three women strutting

in my direction as if they’d just emerged

from the OK Corral, spoiling for a fight, one saying

to her pardners—twice,

in case I didn’t hear the first time—“Good

day to kill a man, don’t you think?”

I’ve never believed anything more in my life.

It’s not only the heat. There’s a suggestion

of indecent exposure in the air. On the doorstep

of a neighborhood youth hostel

lush cabbage roses, sated with

light, nod off like junkies.

Things that didn’t have

an odor before

have one now, multiplied x

number of times, some even taking on

elements of dreamlife. Reminds me of

a dream I once had— I’m standing in a corner

of a dance studio (New York City

I think or Chicago) my nose

twitchy with the perfume and sweat rising

from a young dancer’s skin as she stretches

into an arabesque, holds it, an arrow of desire,

her whole body vibrating slowly. The choreographer

admonishes her to stop moving. “I can’t,” she says

through clenched teeth, “it’s so fucking hot, I’m

so hot, “—then I woke up to

a voice on the BBC World Service saying,

“…after which the organism grew and multiplied.”

The Loving Spoonful - Summer in the City