A Wicker Basket
by Robert Creeley
Comes the time when it's later
and onto your table the headwaiter
puts the bill, and very soon after
rings out the sound of lively laughter--
Picking up change, hands like a walrus,
and a face like a barndoor's,
and a head without any apparent size,
nothing but two eyes--
So that's you, man,
or me. I make it as I can,
I pick up, I go
faster than they know--
Out the door, the street like a night,
any night, and no one in sight,
but then, well, there she is,
old friend Liz--
And she opens the door of her cadillac,
I step in back,
and we're gone.
She turns me on--
There are very huge stars, man, in the sky,
and from somewhere very far off someone hands
me a slice of apple pie,
with a gob of white, white ice cream on top of it,
and I eat it--
Slowly. And while certainly
they are laughing at me, and all around me is racket
of these cats not making it, I make it
in my wicker basket.
[ADDENDUM: the following is a moment of woe brought about by a feeling of helplessness in light of all the horrific shit going down in Israel.]
From an iChat with a pal earlier today....
me: I was sitting in a low slung chair at a ranch after being fed a meal of veggie tamales
listening to a Very Big Play being read by its playwright
and it was very moving
And some people were crying
including me
but there we were in the semi-wilderness of Marin county
him: goodness. that's really something.
me: and as s/he was reading
him: yes?
me: all I could do was picture a huge mountain lion running down the big hill and crashing through the window and eating the shit out of this playwright
him: ha!
me: because I realized how useless what we do is
and THAT's why I was crying
him: That's so fucking wonderful—man, that really is.
me: to realize that your life's choices have amounted to an exercise in futility?
him: yes.
ultimately, a lot of things are an exercise in futility—one can even argue that all of them are.
me: true.
him: it's clearer in theater because the stakes have been made lower, as power shifted to TV, film, etc.
But the feeling that nothing can possibly change anything is integral and endemic to the human condition:
otherwise we have megalomania, and all the attendant abuses of power it entails. I think it's a check on ourselves.
Simultaneously it can be problematic—as an artist it's often a helpful tool to feel or know that we matter, and that we are changing things.
me: right... and if I were making a lot of money I'd feel like even more of a sham...
him: In my life it's a constant tension, and it is the navigating of that tension that gives me the familiarity that causes me to laugh.
Also, mountain lions are funny when they eat playwrights.
me: in my fantasy there's no blood.
s/he just gets gobbled.
him: Playwrights don't have blood.
;)
me: No wonder I can't get any vampires to my shows.
If you or someone you love knows the designer of these ads, please have them contact me. I have so many questions...
ONE. An article I wrote for Mr. Too-Hot-For-Snot Szymkowicz.
TWO. A very quick public radio interview I did for a political program on Pacifica the other day... I'm way at the end, at about 46:16. Stupidly, I didn't realize it was a live interview until like five minutes before I went on. Hence the occassional word salad.
What? A steamy overwrought lesbian period melodrama? From Great Britian, you say? Too good to be true. But it IS, my friends.
I bring you... Fingersmith.
Come, let's celebrate this sultry summer Thursday together with some lubricious sapphic angst...
In 1966, gals wore high boots, short skirts, and really big hair. Attractive adults killed time in nightclubs and drank fancy cocktails and watched their friends couple-dance to big band music. Ladies fluttered their kohl-rimmed eyelashes at dudes in turtlenecks, and intrigue was in the air. We know this because TV tells us so.
So how do you suppose the TV people imagined things might change in the future? There are many shows out there that clue us in to the premonitions of the times, but you can always trust the Germans to be most prescient and forward-thinking.
(Thanks again, JZ.)
