The Saturday Evening Post

"A helicopter 'attacks' Empire State Building" may 2, 2009, photo by tgw

From Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi:
"For hours at a stretch I would lie in the sun doing nothing, thinking of nothing. To keep the mind empty is a feat, a very healthful feat too. To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself. The book-learning gradually dribbles away; problems melt and dissolve; ties are gently severed; thinking, when you deign to indulge in it, becomes very primitive, the body becomes a new and wonderful instrument; you look at plants or stones or fish with different eyes; you wonder what people are struggling to accomplish by their frenzied activities; you know there is a war on but you haven't the faintest idea what it's about or why people should enjoy killing one another.... The absence of newspapers, the absence of news about what men are doing in different parts of the world to make life more livable or unlivable is the greatest single boon. If we could just eliminate newspapers a great advance would be made, I am sure of it. Newspapers engender lies, hatred, greed, envy, suspicion, fear, malice. We don't need the truth as it is dished up to us in the daily papers. We need peace and solitude and idleness. If we could all go on strike and honestly disavow all interest in what our neighbor is doing we might get a new lease on life. We might learn to do without telephones and radios and newspapers, without machines of any kind, without factories, without mills, without mines, without explosives, without battleships, without politicians, without lawyers, without canned goods, without gadgets, without razor blades even or cellophane or cigarettes or money. This is a pipe dream, I know. People only go on strike for better working conditions, better wages, better opportunities to become something other than they are." (written in 1941 in Greece) (page 43 of the New Directions 1958 printing).

"side by side ironies in New York City--a skyliner sails into a low-level neighborhood--coming aground," photo by tgw

Yawning
A return to a reptilian past
When we were egg eaters
Snakes in the grasses
And crocodile tears under glasses
A telescoping of our turtle necks
Out to lounge lizard length

"A new, keen, hi-rise, luxury dwelling for the excessively well-to-do to enjoy life in--replacing the fashion, flower, and fur district, once a neighborhood of ant-like workingclass activity--and not to worry, they'll soon demolish that old piece of shit building disturbing the well-to-do's eastern vista," photo by tgw

"A narrow view of the Hudson River and the brief spanse of New Jersey there beyond its distant shore," photo by tgw

thestaff
for The Daily Growler "Saturday Evening Post" post