Compulsively Aimless

Sweeping more fragments out to the curbside blog Combos Where I Couldn ' t Make Up My Mind   Heat and Stupidity Heart and Stupidity   Comic Dance Cosmic Dance   Honor a Horror Horror of Honor   Maniacs Ate Grapes Great Apes Ate Grapes   Dark Hoses Dark Horses Dark Houses   Unclaimed Baggage (fragments left in my notebook) Reach in the falling rain and descant that drink  in your easy jeans ***   A child raised on maps sits on the crust of the earth ***   The cat uses silence as a weapon ***   We've Never Been Here   Do you ever wake up and think, " I 've never been here before." Here being this point in time; and neither has anyone else.  Every moment is unknown for everyone. Infinite Questions   Does infinity have a map Does infinity have a tail Should I call it Mr. or Mrs. Where does infinity send its children to school Does it have a handicap Does infinity envy any other fact of nature It's What You've Been Wa...

Every so often when I finish a book, I try to write a poem from it, this one is a Cento from Robert Price's Ford: The Men and Machine   The Rouge One of capitalism's alters a vast satanic cathedral All night the Rouge growls its fires and flares cast flickering shadows its furnaces glow dull red around the base of its brooding bulk The industrial guts of America Europe has its palaces but America celebrates her native genius with monuments of a rougher sort. —A Cento with credit to Robert Lacy, Ford: The Men and Machine

I mentioned I liked roads. It's a recurring theme of this blog starting with my cross country drive of my own. I've collected a lot of books on roads. Here's one category of books on the history of roadbuilding and of particular American highways.    1.   First Highways of America: A Pictorial History of American Roads and Highways from 1900-1925 , John Butler (1994). A history of the dirt-rock-to-pavement of America's early roads.  Fantastic black and white pictures of early cars, road construction and landscapes.  Bought new. 2.   Coast to Coast by Automobile: The Pioneering Trips, 1899-1908 , Curt McConnell (2000).   A collection of early automobile adventures across the the U.S.  The appendix includes a great chronology of early automobile trips. Bought new.       3.   U.S. 1: America's Original Main Street , Andrew Malcolm, Photographs by Roger Straus III (1991). Sometimes called America's original Main St...

Every so often you return to a book that influenced you growing up.  Maybe it's a clique but On the Road by Jack Kerouac was one such book for me.  I read it soon after I finished law school and it pushed me to do my own frenzied road trip— and Odyssey representing freedom and the unknown. The book is now sold over 3 million copies since its first printing in 1959. During the pandemic, I've returned to the book, waiting for that moment when we'll have freedom to move again. To get in the car and drive. Here's my short list of On the Road books that includes a couple others who attempted to retrace and re-kindle Kerouac’s spirit. 1. On the Road, Jack Kerouac (Penguin 1986). I can see how much of an impact made on me since it’s heavily annotated with my pencil markings. I suppose the high points and stay with me always are when he describes is the most fun cross country ride of his life on the back of a flatbed truck with a cast of characters from Iowa to Wyomi...

    Do you need a good, clean, unused fragments to complete a poem or maybe as a spare part in case you run into unexpected writing trouble?  Our  inventory has grown and we need to make room for next year's models so  we're holding a clearance sale. We've got fragments for every budget--from a single sentence to a full stanzas, some complete with metaphors. No  reasonable offer refused. Trade-ins considered. Test drive for thirty days  and if not completely satisfied return for a full refund. Check out these models:   *** You keep whispering to me  but you don't say why. ` *** I got paid in diamonds and dynamite. *** Out in the void secure in his ship  sails an off-course astronaut ...when will he know? *** After the last leaves fall unfed ghosts hang one or two from a tree waiting for what the wind brings them. *** She was not measured on the ordinary scale of gods. *** I would like to catwalk among the parapets wea...

Men seek for seclusion in the wilderness, by the seashore, or in the mountains - a dream you have cherished only too fondly yourself.                          --Marcus Aurelius Everyone has their happy place. Mine is "up north" on Michigan's Leelenau Peninsula where I've gone since I was six to meet up with Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and annual friends. Here's my small collection of books on the area.  1. Above the North: Aerial Photography of Northern Michigan, Marge Beaver (2006). Beaver captures a four season, bird's eye view of the Peninsula, Sleeping Bear Dunes, Lake Leelenau and the lakes of of Crystal, Roch, Elk, and Glen. Gift. 2. Leelenau: A Portrait of Place in Photographs & Text, Ken Scott & Jerry Dennis (2000). Extraordinary collection of timeless pictures around Leelenau County.  A gift from my sister July 2003 after our largest family reunion up north.     ...

    In 1988, I drove across country as a last burst of freedom before starting my first full time adult job. My goal for the trip was to find a lost family house that belonged to my great grandparents in Pasadena, California. Lost and abandoned became one of the themes of the trip. Some things lost because decisions were made to destroy them and others simply abandoned. 1. Lost America: From the Mississippi to the Pacific, Constance M. Grieff (1974).  During my cross country drive, I stopped in Albuquerque, NM to look for its train station and the Alvarado Hotel. It was one of the country's greatest railroad stations along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe route from Chicago to Los Angeles.  Built in a "Pueblo" style style, it included landscaped courtyards and shopping arcades. True to the words of Joni Mitchell's song, it was demolished and paved over for a parking lot. I read this much later in Grieff's book. Inherited from my mother.   2. Lost America: From...