Getting the Swing of It

Hypotheses: Nothing is what it seems. Everything is other than it seems. Something is a surprise, waiting to perform chiropractic on a mood or condition. Something is a disaster, waiting to distribute overdrawn notices on one's reality account. Disaster protection is available at 17.5 percent interest. Events are pinatas hanging from convenient trees, daring us to swing at them with ambition or irritation or celebratory enthusiasm. The LAPD has made pinatas of many individuals who were actually celebrating but were seen by the LAPD as activists.

The study of Beckett begins to pay off richly when one entertains the subtext of nothing being what it seems. Failure for Beckett was the opportunity to try again. I don't know that he thought at all about the implications of success and so I can only hypothesize that success fin writing or him wasn't what it seemed, or perhaps worse, success in writing meant he did not have to revisit a particular place again because he couldn't

The danger of nothing being what it seems is the potential for a constant feeling of betrayal. Betrayal means one's trust is undercut (once again) which means one begins to resent being so vulnerable, which means one resolves not to trust anything, which strikes me as an invitation not to trust myself (any of them) which reminds me of earlier times when I claimed to do just that, which is to say I agreed not to trust myself. This meant a time of not knowing if I were hungry or horny or inspired or sleepy or if I understood Chaucer. There are some risks worth taking. One risk not worth taking is the conviction that I do not and cannot understand Chaucer.

That's okay because risk is not what it seems either. Risk seems so fraught with dangerous consequences that it can be interpreted as a reason to do nothing except maybe grouse and take pot shots at persons and institutions, leaving one vulnerable to all the consequences of not doing anything, a course of action that is more dangerous than it seems.

If something is what it seems, there is no surprise, not much chance of other. Does the risk of something being what it seems outweigh the risk of nothing being what it seems?

One of the few constants here is love, which is never what it seems, is filled with risks, surprises, consequences, vulnerability. Love is like Excalibur, the sword thrust deep into the stone, waiting for someone--Arthur--to pull it forth. Grab it by the hilt and yank in a quick, steady movement. That's love, not Excalibur; that was already yanked.

Look for pinatas.

Swing.

Swing again, only this time, swing better.

Horse Latitude

1. A happy combination of a watering trough for horses at Parma Park and a chance remark by LK provide--provoke--the trifecta, the combination that will be perfect for this week's book review, which falls on the Golden Oldies side of the coin, which means a dip back into the past. Thus Faulkner's Spotted Horses, Steinbeck's The Red Pony, and Chapter XXIV of Roughing It by SLC, the iconic tale of the Genuine Mexican Plug Horse. Although I have in the past engaged in research related to the relative speeds of various horses over various lengths, I am not a horse person. These three tales, two pure inventions and one Twain reportage, could change my mind.

2. Another happy chance sent me down the lower part of Milpas Street, whereupon I passed the store that displayed the pinatas I was so pleased to see yesterday. Around the block and into a freshly vacated space to see that apparently the display is changed every day. Hot dog! Or should I say, Hot horse? Today's display, as you will note, includes a horse

3. Lovely discovery: Pure-bred Australian Cattle Dogs have a white blotch somewhere on their forehead. Said blotch is called a Morgan, supposedly after one of the pioneer breeders of the ACD. How do I know this is not an urban myth? I asked the man--an ACD owner--who imparted this information. Because, he said, my brother breeds ACDs and all forty-five of his current crop have Morgans; it is a sign of ACD authenticity.

Sally, he noted, is enough--half--ACD to have a Morgan, a sign that the ACD genes are dominant in her.

4. Haruki Murikami, an excellent novelist (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, etc) claims he learned everything he needed to know about writing from listening to music, and most of that is jazz.

5. A hungry customer approached the hot dog stand at the Yoga Center in downtown Santa Barbara. "What'll it be?" the attendant asked.

"Make me one with everything," the customer replied.

The attendant shook his head. "Can't do that," he said. "You already are."

Post Hoc

Without knowing why, I like these images enough to post them. This was discovered in a grassy sward in Stevens Park, just beyond the Museum of Natural History, a notional, upscale neighborhood on the east side of Santa Barbara. The second image, the hanging pinatas, caught my eye on the volatile, rapidly emerging Milpas Street segment of Santa Barbara, by all accounts a working class neighborhood with a number of restaurants, including the estimable Altamirano, barber shops and hair salons in the front rooms of residences, the inexplicably popular Super Rica Tacqueria, several sporting goods shops with prom inent displays of soccer equipment, and two groceries, the largest of which, Scolari's, is close to the variety store where the hanging pinatas are displayed thusly. Unfortunately, there is also an emporium where one might secure quick cash 'till payday, at exorbitant interest rates, a KFC, a Jack-in-the Box, and a Goodyear tire and auto of the sort that gives auto repair emporia a dubious name. Nevertheless. It is Milpas Street, resisting change like a states' rights conservative in election year. There are pinatas and Mexican beer, and if you ask politely at the panederia in the small strip mall at De la Guerra, they will sell you some of the damndest wonderful tamales para llevar, which you could then transport with such Pacifico or Carta Blanca to a nearby park and watch life turn into a party. Yes, I know; there are such streets everywhere, even in Solvang. The ethnicity changes, the cooking tastes and smells transmogrify, but the vibe remains constant. You simply have to know where to look.

I was going to stop with that last paragraph, but as I was spell-checking, it came to me that I liked this image, too, and so I decided what the hell, why not? And so here it is: