A few Notes on Art Bell

It's unfortunate that Art Bell is no longer a host on Coast to Coast AM.  I first started to pick up this radio talk show, revolving primarily around the paranormal,  the occult, ghosts, UFOS, Bigfoot, spirituality, and so on in 1998.  By scanning the Wikipedia article on him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Bell, I was reminded of his meteoric nature, his instability, as opposed to those who are reliable, who do the 90% of life that is showing up, who do what they're supposed to.  I heard his repeated retirements and comebacks, his life changes in real time, or close to real time.  Despite his flakiness, though, and his occasional lack of background in subject matter, he was fantastically eccentric and riveting.  His sarcasm was refreshing;  for example, when someone would call in and say "Are you the screener?" (not realizing the calls routed straight through to Art), he might reply, "If you could speak to Art, what would you say to him?"  or I'm the only one here."  The show had a chaotically unpredictable nature then;  you might hear the sounds of hell, or an abductee claiming he saw Ted Kennedy on a flying saucer (the guest, apparently drunk, was kicked off the show after an hour or so).  A line dedicated to time travelers might open up.  Then there were the shows with the "backmasking" guy, and the ensuing falling-out he had with Art.  Just the image of the host sitting in the midst of the wild empty spaces, broadcasting, was magical in itself.

 

Ah well, maybe he'll return...

If you could speak to Art, what would you say to him?

How to drive fast and not get killed

 

 

 

 

"Anyone who runs, is a VC. Anyone who stands still, is a well-disciplined VC."  -- Full Metal Jacket

 

"Charlie don't surf!"  -- Apocalypse Now

Lander, Wyoming

 

 

The Railway

 

 

The Railway

 



No country -- brick-eyed row, pool with a settled, blue-winged dove, woods and fern.

Laotians work short hoes;  sable-girt scarecrows placed up from the tracks.

A slowing over docked ships.  Midst stacks and ladders move one or two figures.  The bridge of the colony:  Pilot house with white windows, sparrows rising, walks and cables.

Mountain, austere and snow-plated, through cloud bank, over obsidian waters, pyramid and roof-cap, engine spreading into rust and foliage, crowned and embowered avatar.

JF ca. 1989

Arch Rock, Mackinac Island, Mich.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Postcard of Arch Rock on Mackinac Island, Michigan :  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arch_Rock_(Mackinac_Island) sent to Exel LeDuc 106 years ago in Prescott, Oregon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott,_Oregon (see post of 3 January 2013 for another card sent to her).

 

Text:

 

Dear friend I just got (back) from St - Paul the 3rd and got your kind letter and cards.  I am back working out of the (?).  I miss you very much come back soon

 

I think you are a lonesome girl

yours very truly

 

J. (?) 

Strange Eons by Robert Bloch

 

 

Just finished re-reading Strange Eons by Robert Bloch;  a fair amount of my reading of late tends to be reruns.  I can't remember where I bought this copy, but I got it new in 1979, probably at a B. Daltons or Waldenbooks.  This was a time when every mall worth its lack of character held such a chain bookstore.  I'd only read Bloch's Lovecraft Mythos novel once after I acquired it.  Just the faintest adumbration of the book returned as I absorbed it again.

The novel shows signs of having been written hastily, has some sections included for padding and possesses other problems.  There's a terrible deus ex machina- type contrivance, for instance, involving the attempted theft of a map created by Lovecraft, indicating the location of R'lyeh.  Just when the holdup is in progress, an earthquake happens, and a beam falls on and kills the robber.  Note:  the earthquake doesn't happen before or after the thief points his revolver -- it occurs just at the optimal time.  Very convenient. 

Despite the flaws, I discovered the book to be a reasonably good extrapolation of Lovecraft themes and stories, with a style reminiscent of Raymond Chandler more than Lovecraft.  The climax is pretty over the top, and doesn't present a truly cosmic, disinterested feel, as many of HPL's works do.  Before the reader arrives there, however, the three linked chapters ("Now," "Later," and "Soon"), taking place from, presumably, the late 1970s through the early 2000s,  present an original take on Lovecraft's fiction.  Bloch describes the sunny locale of Los Angeles and environs in a way which renders it suprisingly dark and mysteriously Gothic, unpredictably overswept by Pacific fog.  His prognostication of the early 2000s, including video pay phones, is off, but the future is notoriously hard to forecast.  Overall, uneven but worth cracking open.

Cover painting by David Hada.

Maryhill Museum and Columbia River, Washington

 

 

 

 



I can extract some memories of things past concerning trips to Maryhill Museum, Sam Hill's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Hill) bleakly Quixotic manse:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryhill_Museum_of_Art.   I have memory traces of Rodin sculptures, Russian icons, First Nations basketry, and other works. 

Cameron's Bookstore, Portland, Oregon

 

 

 

The (Wayne) Morse:  Democrat for US Senate poster has hung on the wall of Cameron's Bookstore ever since I first began patronising the store in 1979 (and apparently the poster long antedates that first visit).  As flinty as was the original Republicindependicrat himself:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Morse, the poster thwarts the arrow of time, as do the unchanging nature of the pulpy incense of the stacks of Frontier Times and divers other magazines, and the tightly packed catacombs of bookshelves.  I associate Fred, the congenial and distinguished-appearing former owner of the bookstore, with the era of my early expeditions to Cameron's.  When seeing a stack of books I brought forward to the counter once, he referred to a book he read about a bibliophile who neglected all other duties in favor of reading.

In the 1970s and 1980s, and up until 10-15 years ago, downtown Portland was carpeted with bookstores, used and new.  Looking Glass Bookstore, in its original location, with its racks of underground comics and thoughtful selection of books, and used bookstores such as Holland's, the Old Oregon, the Great Northwest, Powell's (still there of course) and others lent a cultured and antiquarian atmosphere to the city core.  Most have since vanished, or exist in some other incarnation at best.

Modern Cabins

 

 

 

In a previous decade, I passed a day in Grand Island, Nebraska, bearing a Hare Krishna magazine I had gotten from some devotees in Boulder.  I'm just sayin'.

HELLO ; Greetings to you.
 With Due Respect And Humility, I was compelled to write you under a humanitarian ground. My name is princess Iseult I am 24yrs old,From Burkina-Faso,I am sngle and the Duagher of to late H.R.H Naiba Zoure Masoki from Burkina-Faso Ouadougou West Africa. I am writing this letter in confidence believing that if it is the wish of God for you to help me and my family, God almighty will bless and reward you abundantly and you would never re-great this.
I am a female student from Burkina Faso University Teachings Hospitals (BUTH) Burkina Faso , Ouagadougou . My father died earlier eight months ago and left I and my junior brother behind. He was a king, which our town citizens titled him over sixteen years ago before his death. I was a princess to him and my mother is not literate enough to know my father's entire wealth.
He left the sum of USD $4.350.000.00US dollars. In a security company, this money was annually paid into my late fathers account from the Gold mining company and Cotton processing Company operating in our locality for the compensation of youth and community development in our jurisdiction.
I don't know somewhere in abroad to invest the money so that my father's kindred will not take over what belongs to my father and our family because I’m a female according to our African tradition.
Now, I urgently need your humble assistance to move this money from the security company to your bank account that is why I felt happy when I saw your contact because o strongly believe that by the grace of God, you will help me invest this money wisely. I am ready to give you 40% from the total amount to you if you can help us in this transaction and another 10% interest of annual after Income to you, for handling this transaction for us, which you will strongly have absolute control over. If you can handle this project sincerely and also willing to assist me in lifting this money to your country, kindly reach me.
Me in lifting this money to your speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds country, kindly reach me. Of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.  Us, which you will strongly have absolute parasitic organism that invades and damages the control over.  If you can handle this central nervous system.  Modern man has lost project sincerely and also willing to assist the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal an help us in this transaction and The word is now a virus. The another 10% interest of annual after income flu virus may have once been a to you, for handling this transaction for healthy lung cell. It is now a please, note that this transaction is 100% risk free and I hope to start the transaction as quick as possible, I will send you my photograph as soon as I hear from you

Yours sincerely,
Princess Iseult

Duplicates can be had at any time

 

 

To Estelle from Paul

The Bristol Cross, Stourhead Gardens

 

Stick this flap to the picture only

 

There is no Frigate like a Sony Betamax

 

 

 

Cover of a National Lampoon anthology (1977).  The seventies were not the sixties, nor were they the eighties.  National Lampoon was a magazine which I collected, read enthusiastically, chuckled at, and which had a distinct effect on me, considering, for instance, difficult-to-classify short fiction in this collection such as Doug Kenney's Trespassers will be violated.

 

There is no Frigate like a Sony Betamax -- this phrase originates in one of National Lampoon's fake letters to the editor, a letter allegedly written by Emily Dickinson.  The irony of this is that the Sony Betamax is now outmoded, and books aren't.

Variations on a theme of a reverie of an afternoon

Disambiguate Portland Hearn

Glaciers and Glacial Lakes

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

This late winter, I read David Alt's Glacial Lake Missoula and its Humongous Floods, which in part inspired the following poem.  I don't know if the word "humongous" screams scientific gravitas, but the book is an enthralling, and well-written, epic of water and ice. See:

http://hugefloods.com/LakeMissoula.html  (The area of Glacier National Park depicted in the postcard was under different influences in the most recent Ice Age than was Glacial Lake Missoula.)

 

The Missoula Floods

I remember the Missoula Floods, Missoula Breaks, scrubbed, upholstered the camper in 1976.  Spherical lobbed the dung potato remonstrance, tire swing varve the sachem, petroglyph smoulders the unwanted archaism.  Lake shore ripples long the Eocene, hippo upholstered the sabre-tooted alchemist Li He the fey diurnal the Paris Commune.  Long Wroclaw the communist, scablands, cinder cone the Mound Gerard De Nerval the sinus of the extinct sloth.  Ice Ages have come and gone, not Pleiades, the what you call it, loyalty oath, cataclysmic events oncet spell checked the  almighty, Zeus the Yog-Sothoth, Zoroaster smelling the void, a really boring book. 

Glacial Lake Colombia, flushing Cuba Roosevelt the socialist, purple-assed Baboon inseminating the deck musical chairs, Titanic, one of us is illumined.  Boat oar withering to piano vine puddle, Clark Fork River, Hamilton unvanquished, magpie smoldering to pinion and hail snow.  Mad Hatter squall Lautorell, Lazy z squamous cipher, artichoke lemon lemur sapiens Jean the martyr.

 

JF

March 9, 2013

 

 

 



 

Luxembourg

 

 

 

 

 

A postcard depicting Luxembourg City. The microstate of Luxembourg is one of the BENELUX countries -- that is, BELGIUM, the NETHERLANDS, and LUXEMBOURG.

 

Dualism

 

 

 

 

 

A cigarette silk, apparently from a series, evoking the waning days of Austria-Hungary;  and two pages from a 1970s stamp book, with postage stamps from Equatorial Guinea and Communist Era Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Mongolia.

Uncle Uniform Victor Charlie

 

 

 

 

 

The individuals in this photographic postcard from the World War I era are either relatives of mine or associates of relatives, or both.

Jose a good looking kid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jose was the gentleman in the U.S. Air Force uniform in the top photo.  The fellow in the January 1956 photo hadn't quite grown into his uniform.

This belongs to Cora White

                                               

   

 

 

 

 

The City of Avalon, Santa Catalina Island, California

 

Islands in general are fascinating as hell, and Santa Catalina, or Catalina Island, is a microcosm rich with story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Catalina_Island,_California.  Apparently "C.R." (?), who sent this postcard, wasn't given to long-winded messages. 

I'm Branching Out My Fishing

 

 

Nelscott, whence this message-less card was sent in 1956, per Wikipedia was an unincorporated area (with a post office of its own) which was joined with other towns to make up Lincoln City (on the Oregon coast) in 1965.

Big One Got Away

 

That's one gigantic fish. The caption, "Big One Got Away" is a trifle problematic, because the creature actually appears to have been caught.  The canoe may be top-heavy however.

Two of a Kind

Twins of Age

 

 

Showa-machi

A piece by me, written in Maebashi, Japan in 1991, which was published (with a few typos) by Myeongsuk Jeong in Sunflower: A Literary Journal for Freewrites, Berkeley, California, 4th Quarter 1993.  A statement inside the publication read that, "Sunflower is a quarterly literary journal for freewrites published in the Bay Area. Our goal is to provide a forum for the exploration and expression of freewriting as defined in Natalie Goldberg's books, WRITING DOWN THE BONES and WILD MIND." Art by Myeongsuk Jeong.

Curiously, the streak at the top of the photograph is not present in the original -- a byproduct of scanning, or a psychic contrail?

Dry Images

 

 

 

I have nothing against Canada, waterways, or trees, but these aren't the most dynamic shots possible.  Ansel Adams, step aside!