The old song was “Sitting Here Drinking” and thinking, of course; thinking and drinking go together; they have to, look how many great works of art have been written by stone drunks; how many of our great plays were written by drunks; how many of our great poems were written by drunks; how many of our great songs were written by drunks. So “Sitting Here Drinking” signifies thinking—pondering through a loosened brain the poetic aspects of your deepest simple emotions—“Like, Jesus Christ, I feel like crying.” Leads right to a swig of whiskey then a song. Or a swig of mescal and then a novel. Or a swig of Chartreuse and then a poem. Or even that gut emotion: “Wow, I feel like a million dollars” leads to drinking and thinking; drunks just before they pass into the state of being pickled can be very funny—in a mischievous child sort of way.
I’m still reading this two-ton (600+ pages) Malcolm Lowry biography, Pursued by Furies, a sad state of one poor sad but interesting slob’s affairs, a drunk through birth—he was born to a very successful Liverpool cotton broker and a whiny helpless sort of mother who looked on her sons as her saviors, provers of her motherly and mortally worth. Malcolm early became like a lost little boy. He early divorced himself from his family though due his lifelong depending on them for income his divorce papers (his books) were never approved and that led him to even more serious drinking, a drinking that let loose the millions of bats in his poor old bellringing belfry. But Under the Volcano is a masterpiece, as drunkenly written and battered a manuscript as its writer, but still a masterpiece when it was at last put into polished print--a beautifully written drunkenly written novel about a beautifully tragic drunken man who so much resembles good old Malc.
And right here by me is a small first edition of Eugene O’Neill’s Days Without End, a book I love handling and reading from since it’s signed in the front by the man himself and that makes it seem to me a more personal connection to O’Neill than if he hadn't'a signed it, though I know he probably only handled it long enough to sign it and then slide it on off into the hands of the admirer who bought it that day and had him sign it (in 1934, in Springfield, Massachusetts, at the International YMCA College, a man whose initials are R.B.R.)—and I look at O'Neill's signature and I wonder was he sober when he signed it?—it is a very sober, clearly readable signature. And it’s a great play about a family named Loving. “Loving: ‘I advise you to make the last part so obviously fictitious that it will kill any suspicion which might be aroused by what has gone before.’ John: ‘How can I end it, then?’ Loving (After a second’s pause—in a voice he tries to make casual but which is indefinably sinister): ‘Why not have the wife die?’” Wonderful stuff like that as this man named John Loving works on the plot of a novel with a man named Loving, whose face O’Neill describes in the introduction of the scene to Act One: “For LOVING’S face is a mask whose features reproduce exactly the features of JOHN’S face—the death mask of a JOHN who has died with a sneer of scornful mockery on his lips. And this mocking scorn is repeated in the expression of the eyes which stare bleakly from behind the mask.” [Act One, Scene Description, p. 16, Days Without End, First Edition, 1934, Random House.]
Man, I love reading that kind of shit. O’Neill’s one of the best at it, too. And this play’s dedicated to Carlotta and I immediately think about the sinister Loving’s suggestion that John “have the wife die” to give a twist to the end of John’s novel. And oh the anguish that enticing beauty Carlotta caused poor Eugene; and how many conversations with himself, I’m sure. I read O’Neill the man I think he was into all his plays anyway, same as I read Malcolm Lowry into all his books, his masterpiece or his other twisted journeys through the opposite of paradise in that ancient boat with Virgil and the excursion through hell that drinking makes you go through to garner its most precious ideas (like perhaps the worst book Malcolm ever wrote, which happens to be my favorite of his, October Ferry to Gabriola—a book full of traveling from one unknown on to another unknown with sober questions vying with drunken answers and dreams—all still lost in between those two unknowns being revealed on that ferry ride.
“Pass that bottle to me.”
Randi RhodesIf I listen to Air America, I listen to Randi Rhodes. Al Franken I don't find funny at all; he reminds me of Garrison Keillor who gives me the willies. I used to like Janine Garafalo because she's a tough babe but Air America fired her; well, they say she quit; OK; I liked Mike Malloy, too, but they fired him, too. That's why I began to doubt Randi Rhodes's authenticity because they didn't fire her. I assumed it was because she had high ratings is all and those other favorites of mine didn't.
One day in the Growler mailbox I got a letter from Randi--I threw it in the garbage as "Spam" and paid it no mind or matter. Then I got another one and I opened it and it was Randi's newsletter and by golly I was impressed. It was a damn thorough newsletter and covered the news pretty square-jawedly and it was framed in links to just all sorts of "more lefty than righty" sites of truth, justice, and the American way.
She turns me off when it comes to cops and soldiers--she kind'a defends cops and she claims she's an ex-soldier so she'll never talk any trash against these volunteer soldiers dying like dogs in Iraq and Afghanistan (I just saw the first figures I've ever seen on the US death toll in Afghanistan to date--it was something like 280--around that figure), plus she highly respects old whacko Murtagh and Wesley Clark, types like that--and she doesn't talk much about impeachment, which seems to me the obvious answer to all our (and the world's) problems--throw the bums out; shackle 'em; send 'em over to Gitmo and let 'em loose on their own; let the people whose lives they have ruined in Gitmo hold them in judgment and sentence. But anyway, back to the ranch, after digging Randi's newsletter, I started listening to her more often, late in the afternoon after I've finished peddling my wares since 6 am and always take a little tiempo siesta. Suddenly one afternoon I swear she was using Daily Growler phrases and thoughts--like calling G.W. Bush, our phony "president," Georgie Porgie one afternoon--I know, I know; or like talking about our involvement in Afghanistan from the Daily Growler point of view that had been expressed just a couple'a posts back, mainly like wondering why we attacked Afghanistan because I couldn't see how they were involved in 9/11 except that they were accused of giving a safe haven to a dude named Osama Bin Laden who we already knew from Slick Willie's administration but who we then found out out of nowhere was responsible for 9/11, though at first Binny Boy denied he was responsible.
Today, however, when I tuned into Randi, she was serious, discussing our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan from the rich man's point of view, actually, the rich oil man's point of view. It was great stuff. I didn't get in in time to get what she was reading from though it was obvious she was reading from some publication--at the end of the broadcast she mentioned Greg Pallast's name so it may have been his latest book--I can't think of the name of it--but it was great stuff, like Mae Brussell's stuff on the Kennedy Assassination being a conspiracy back in the 70s, and it was telling things about our involvement in Afghanistan that I knew but had pushed to the back of my growling mind, and what she was reading had to do with an oil pipeline that was running from the Caspian Sea, oil and gas fields, to the Pakistan seaports--the Taliban being the Afghanistan government in charge of the project at that time. The Taliban gave the pipeline project, construction and management to an Argentine oil company--Bridas, though the American oil big shots Unocal wanted that pipeline for themselves and had as a consultant old crooked-as-a-snake-at-night Henry "Wanted in Europe" Kissingass and, guess who, old Sneakass Karsai, the current puppet head of Afghanistan. The intrigue was right up the Bushes's dark and smelly alley. Yep, the Carlyle Group was involved in this. Several dudes currently serving time in Georgie Porgie's supercrooked administration--they have stolen trillions of dollars from We the People since Georgie Porgie was appointed "president" by the Supreme Court in 2000. And this all leads right into Unka Dick Cheney's old fetid naked lap--ONE FOR OIL and ALL FOR OIL...ALL FOR OIL...and all for Exxon-Mobil (Standard Oil bastard children)...and I'm beginning to boil over with growling, madness, that full moon that sails constantly over my tortured head urging the ululation of extreme frustration. The truth is so evident. Where are the cojones it takes to this drunk and wobbling nation--we're heading straight for the gutter.
Since I don't know the book Randi was reading from, at least here's a Website that will tell you all about our REAL involvement in Afghanistan:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/oil.html
Randi sez she's going to continue reading from this book whatever it is tomorrow (Tuesday) again so give it a listen; it's a startling acquisation that links our own government with 9/11 and the names of dudes, like the current Afghanistan ambassador to Iraq and a man who is currently an advisor on Iraq to Bush Baby--and this big-time crooked player James Baker, the big player in Bush Baby's Iraq Study Group, and this asshole's law firm is a big Texas law firm that represented the Saudi government in the lawsuit against them by the survivors of 9/11, a lawsuit that accused the Saudi government of having funded 9/11, a lawsuit eventually won by Baker and his Texas Playboy lawfirm--who are also cozy with the Carlyle Group, Pappy Bush, Unka Dick, Rummy Rumsfeld--and who also represent Unocal--that name stick in your head as you were reading this?
Pass that bottle to me.
This character in O'Neill's Days Without End named Loving becomes more interesting the deeper I get into Act One, from which I took the first quote a highway of paragraphs back up this post. Further on in the Act, Loving is still plotting this novel that John Loving is writing and to which Loving has just suggested John Loving give the novel its plot by having the main character's wife drop dead giving rise to a need to continue following the husband from that point, how he copes with the death; how he gets on with life or doesn't. John Loving is arguing against the wife's suddenly dying by saying that what if that might actually trigger his own wife suddenly dying--the writer becoming himself in what he's trying to write, his characters appearing real persons in his subconscious as he starts plotting his fictitious revelation. His novel suddenly is a real event and the main character is him and the character's wife is his wife. "What if...?" he keeps mystically pondering. Loving finally can take it no longer and says, "You poor, damned superstitious fool! I tell you again what I have always told you: There is nothing--nothing to hope for, nothing to fear--neither devils nor gods--nothing at all." [Act One, p. 19, Days Without End by Eugene O'Neill--from my autographed first edition--isn't that exciting? I love this Loving character; I love O'Neill; pass that bottle to me.]
NOTHING. It all comes right back to NADA; and like Billy Preston said, "Nothing from nothing leaves nothing...." Though you gotta have somethin' or....
Another day in this growling life of having been again in NOTHINGNESS; subconsciously waiting for a Godot who's a shadow of myself, a being in NOTHINGNESS. I'm not bothered by nothing--"I got plenty of nothing, and nothin's plenty for me...." I'm being in the NOW, which spelled backwards is "WON." I win.
thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler
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