Expired Yugoslavian Passport turned secret diary of poetry & ephemera, shared with a friend never met (like most of you) in Gifu. He’s from BC and met my brother in another life, somehow. Heck of a writer.
Anyhow, we fill up pages as desired and mail back and forth like a secret for everyone to see.
{transcription from an “field notes” notebook while in bed… stashed here so I don’t misplace}
Finding home
No longer daunted
By subterfuge
Payola schemes or even
Assassinations by a religious stooge
Still enamored by overbites
Pretty lies feathered caps
and quicksilver mines
Confused by burning coals
to alchemize
cartoon currencies
in a triangular ruse
I don’t need a course
To tell me to be happy
I already know what wealthy means
Have you a garden, a pen and Wood stove?
The answer to the biggest question is:
“to love, and to be loved”
The pathway to go there is: kindness, tolerance, empathy, intrepidness, weakness is strength
All this is to say:
Cynicism avoided, reality reinvented, consensus subverted, admiration for the usual
Savor the regular days, notice the magnificence in nonchalance & common place.
Get down on your knees!
To look closely
The tactility of grass
The softness of sand
The circles and cycles
The shards of pottery
The ants smaller than the other ants
The lichen, the moss the dirt
The rivulets
The worm holes to everywhere else
Will lead you back to exactly here.
Remixing expired passports from Romania and Albania into “dossiers of mystery and tactical intrigue” complete with endorsements, visas, assignments, sightings, safe houses, maps, aliases, poetry, ephemera, snippets, stamps – both ink and postal – musings, memos, codes, secrets.
Completely usual behavior – carry on with your diligent efforts.
Checkpoints include: Sri Lanka, Nepal, Diego Garcia, Vatican, Athens, Kyoto… etc + green beavers and diligent dogs
Continue reading Forging Passports, so to speak (“life during wartime”)
walked to post office
as rain fell
imagining Van and Vic
in April & May
writing new endings by
crafting beginnings
with new cast of darlings
{mailed 4 packets of printed matter}
2 "forged" passports
4 x postcards with dozens of stamps
1 portrait of young sailor
now a fire
Two observations outside of the doctors office yesterday / yes, can help me to locate myself when my head is spinning after injections
In November 2022 I was very pleased to be a very lousy guest on the very gracious Jason Emde’s podcast (broadcast in Gifu rock city) in which writers share their “early, unripe… etc. etc.” work along with Jason’s curious questions, amusing banter and general graciousness.
Note: i riffed about Jason’s most excellent book in a Beat Sushi video dispatch “Curiously Punctuated” and we enjoy a prolific mostly-postcard-but-sometimes-passport correspondence.
We spoke for something like four hours which is a world record for me of late, yes I was a little spun out and it’s not my finest moment *but* gave me an opportunity to dig deep into the archive to find things from my legit early days. Of course about an hour makes it into the finished program but my goodness, is it a lot of action in an hour. Leaping wildly from topic to form, location to era, anecdote to musing. A bit rant-y sure so hold on to yer cap.
In this case I pulled items from: fourth grade King Tut mimeographed hand out from my (award winning :-)) science fair project at Prince Charles Elementary; newspaper editorials and chapbooks at the Orem (UT) high school; early stories at Utah Valley community college; and, the beginning of the *disgruntled with the literary establishment years* at University of Utah years.
Yes there are many digressions, rapid speaking, a few shots fired, salvos really, a bit of sweetness and a bit of tenderness as I figured out who I thought I might be when I was already completely myself.
Find it all at:
Writers Read Their Early Sh*t S2/E5 – Dave Olson (aka Uncle Weed): priorities & bad decisions
Blurb:
Jason welcomes under-qualified window-washer Dave Olson & his fantastic beard & beautiful hands for a natter about punching or hugging Dostoevsky, see-through loincloths, meeting REM, borrowing mustard from Allen Ginsberg, dodgy Greyhound stations, working out the writing life math, and how cheerleaders are people too.
There’s ropey Egyptian history, a savage polemic, the details of hippy teacher Mr Boris’s new motorized home, a few bits & Brother Bobs of Dave’s early poetry & prose, & Jason getting his Tutankhamun timeline wrong by only 3700 years. An unnerving—if not terrifying—time is guaranteed for all.
Check out Dave’s creative life archive at https://daveostory.com—much to enjoy there. Music by the outrageous DJ Max in Tokyo.
Join the early sh*t chat at https://www.facebook.com/WRTESpodcast & on Instagram @writersreadtheirearlyshit. You can also send an email to WritersReadTheirEarlyShit (at sign) gmail.com. Many thanks, wherever & whoever & however you are, for listening.
Still enamoured by overbites
On your couch learning French
French as slowly as possible
Prevents encouraging habits
and libations
Depths and perceptions
Pacific driftwood heave
Bog lands
Where the houses
will float away
Though welded to the dock
Can’t hear you over the brightness of the lightsMoved it over a peg to the left
It didn’t seem
So symmetrical
Unnerving
The symmetry, you see
Makes me dizzy
& rather unsure on my feet
Bag of Zippers
Essence of Bergamot
Samovar
Lilywhite leaning
Envision a clear path homeward
Considering
Lubrious
Plaintive
Budding
Eagerly
Wafting sage and lavender
Transcendent to Tibet
High valley with a path
Leading towards mtns unknown
Riffs about the glory of journals, diaries, notebooks full of musings and importance of turning off inner-critic and not overthinking while savoring the process of transcription, curation and further creative wonderment from Kura barn in provincial Japan. With evidence with my own process.
Plus sorta re-cap how far I got about Circumnavigation poetry book project, tips and tactics for enjoying and “doing something with” your diaries, scrapbooks and so on, having multiple books on the go (and mixing up with all manner of stuff all at once, notes about semantics of freeverse, lyrics, short stories and prose poems, and probably a riff about remembering to forget, questioning “who are you making this for” and where I place the ghosts.
Finally, I read straight from some barely legible poetry scribbles with meanderings about sensory depravation chambers, menthol smokes with Leonard Cohen, Pan Am flights with Zeus, Buddha, Glen Canyon, and solving algorithms with nuclear fusion.
With special thanks to all who bravely step out with creative endeavors and extra for following along with my projects and what have you.
Namechecks for:
Rogério De Freitas
José Naranja
Jason Emde
Austin Kleon
Gord Downie
Henry David Thoreau
James Joyce
+ Julian, Derek, Diego, JoBot
& others, maybe you
Note: “Personal Archeology – Postcard #88” is available in audio-only via all normal podcast channels.
Ambient video version of a Postcards from Gravelly Beach podcast “Nepal Stupa Choruses” with a cycle of poems written on a lake heading towards a temple and tea in shadow of Annapurna – the audio in the *actual pod* is much better but just happened to film whilst recording and added a few snaps from the journey for amusement and colour, so here we are, in my kura barn studio in provincial Japan, ergo:
“Washing dishes and busted spectacles lead to rowing a lake in Nepal figuring out deity, enlightenment, peace and power with choruses fresh from diaries – plus Royal hospitals, poetic devices and question mark eyebrows. Your turn Buddha, your turn.”
Note: “Nepal Stupa Choruses” is available in audio-only via all normal podcast channels and elsewhere in this library.
Just transcribing poetry notebooks, journals, diaries, and so on on a “typewriter-style” computer input device (a gift from Dome Wonderland) and date-stamping pages when done sometimes, while listening to The Matinée’s new album in kura barn studio in provincial Japan – sometimes squinting, something showing the notebooks (trying to maintain momentum).
Poorly lit, no narration, mediocre posture – working on poetry/musings book: “Circumnavigation, of Sorts” Nov. 2022, Tsuchida, Japan. That’s the full real deal.
Bonus: Circumnavigation, of Sorts “Postcard from Gravelly Beach” pod
Washing dishes and busted spectacles lead to rowing a lake in Nepal figuring out deity, enlightenment, peace and power with choruses fresh from diaries – plus Royal hospitals, poetic devices and question mark eyebrows. Your turn Buddha, your turn.
Don’t climb the mountain: Nepal Stupa Choruses – Postcard #87
(39MB, 21:02, 256kbps mp3, stereo)
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