As Chance Would Have It

Why Here, Why Now?


Is this the place in which
you planned to be,
or not particularly?
Is that the face
you hoped to see
in the mirror when
you arrived?
You've survived
thus far by means
of grace, you might say,
or we could always
phrase it another way--
chance or will or accident.


To be is to embody
mystery. Would you agree?
These are the places
of your life, it seems,
and these are the faces
of those you'll know
during your time.
It's tempting just
to leave it at that,
so let's, as the sun
sets at a point west
of exactly where you are,
and where are you, exactly?


Copyright Hans Ostrom 2008

Horses in Cinema

Being a citizen of the United States, and of the western United States, and having grown up during an era in which the cinematic Western was quite popular, I watched a lot of Westerns in theaters and on TV. In Sweden, in 1994, I also learned from an Irish scholar (that is, a scholar from Ireland), that many Irish men more or less of our generation were and are awfully fond of Westerns.

The more eccentric the Western, the better, as far as I'm concerned. Therefore, I love the one with Johnny Depp (is it called Dead Man?), directed by Jim Jarmusch and featuring a splendid cast, including Robert Mitchum, who was acting in his last movie. I think Neil Young did the soundtrack.

The plot is witty and surreal, and what poet can resist a Western in which the protagonist is called William Blake? I like the "spaghetti" Westerns very much, partly because of the spare scripts and over-the-top music, but also because of the post-modern combination of Spanish locations, one American star, mostly Italian actors (although Klaus Kinski is in one), and an Italian director. One detail I liked in those movies was the food. It really looked like the kind of slop people had to eat in the West back then.

I'm awfully fond of High Noon, mostly for technical reasons (no fuss, no muss direction), the casting, and the tossing of the badge in the dirt at the end. Arguably, that movie is the grandfather or grandmother of the anti-hero Westerns from later decades, such as the Culpepper Cattle Company and McCabe and Mrs. Miller, although in the latter film, Altman does his dumb thing with dialogue and sound in which people mumble and are not audible on purpose. Just make the damn film.

With the exception of Dead Man and The Unforgiven, I don't like most contemporary Westerns, not Costner's, not the one with Kevin Kline and Danny Glover, not the one with Lou Diamond Philips and the other "rebels" of the moment. There's an abundance of predictability, an excess of costuming and sets, and a ponderousness of direction.

Shane, of course, is supposed to be a great film, and it has its moments, but Alan Ladd isn't believable, in my opinion. They couldn't ever really hide the fact that he was a miniature man who wouldn't last 2 seconds in a bar-fight. In that long fist-fight scene, I think they had to use all sorts of ramps and boxes for him to stand on. I thought Ven Heflin was terrific. Monte Walsh is a pretty darned good Western, with Lee Marvin and Jack Palance.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is good because it has some real political, intellectual, racial, and sexual complexity to it. There's some great lore about Woody Strode and John Wayne on the set of that one, but I'll skip it. John Ford knew how to make movies, but I find most of them kind of boring, except for the use of exteriors, and almost all his movies are unbearably racist.

The greatest comic Western is Blazing Saddles, although Cat Balou is a close second. My favorite musical is a Western: Paint Your Wagon, in which the casting is superbly absurd: neither Marvin nor Eastwood can sing! How lovely. I'm one of the few people, apparently, who liked The Missouri Breaks. I loved Brando's cross-dressing schtick as "the Regulator." The Western Brando directed (I can't think of the name) fell apart, but it also had its moments. Brando didn't know how to direct. He probably wasn't practical enough.

I appreciate what they tried to do with Sharon Stone in that one Western, or maybe I don't; anyway, it was miserable. I can't think of a Western with a genuine female protagonist that really works. There's probably one out there.

On the small screen, I have to go with Deadwood. Before that, I really liked the Virginian--a 90-minute per week series! Seems incredible now. Gunsmoke left me cold.

But anyway, no matter what kind of Western it is, I always watch the horses. They are the movie within the movie. Hence this poem:


Cinematic Horses

In movies with horses, watch the horses,
not the actors. The horses are thinking
all the time. They react to phenomena
while professionally fulfilling the task of giving
a stunt-man a lift or standing still beneath
a vapid star who hates working with animals,
children, and complexity. Horses snort.

They rear their heads, swat at flies with their
tales, sweat. They appear not to understand
the plot. They fear smoke and loud noises,
get wild-eyed with fright for good reason.
Their intuition is as wide as a pasture.

No matter what the movie may be,
the horses tell a horse-story while
the film drains through its reels
into accounting books and profits,
the manure of Hollywood.

Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Anti-American, Un-American, American, Feminist

Congressperson Bachman from Minnesota has raised the specter of certain members of Congress (and of Obama) as being "un-American," or "anti-American," and Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin has claimed that the "folks" in small towns love America, whereas, presumably, the folks in cities don't love America. William Bennett, on his radio show, opined that "liberal feminists"don't like Palin because a) she works b) she's attractive and c) she's happy.

Oh, my, there's so much to sort out here, especially for poets.

As a poet and a literalist, I tend to interpret "un-American" as "not-American." In other words, a Swedish citizen or a Chinese citizen would qualify as un-American. However, I am aware that Senator McCarthy defined "un-American" as Communist. I think that definition (his) is too limiting. I think a capitalist who is a citizen of Great Britain could be un-American.

"Anti-American" is more difficult. An anti-American person might be one who disagrees significantly with something economic, social, political, or aesthetic about the U.S.A., or about the Western Hemisphere, which consists of North and South America, and which, bizarrely, is named after an Italian. If one concedes that both the Constitution and American traditions value dissent and disagreement, might one proceed to argue that "anti-American" is "American"?

Meanwhile, Bennett's sentiments constituted a blast from the past, especially the 1970s past, when those opposed to, unfamiliar with, or frightened by feminism liked to caricature feminists as physically unattractive, unhappy ("bitter" was a code-word back then, as was "angry," as in "she [a feminist] seems so angry"), and not traditionally employed.

My definition of feminism is pretty basic. I define it as a perspective that advocates for and values the equal treatment of women in society, economics, politics, and the arts. Therefore, I don't agree with the premise that feminists would be bothered by how attractive Palin is, assuming she is attractive, and I assume she is, within certain conventional boundaries. I think she is a physically attractive person, but I think most people are physically attractive. I don't think feminists would be opposed to Palin's working, although I am reminded of the old joke about a White feminist and a Black feminist converging at a rally; the White feminist says she is protesting so that she can achieve employment (probably middle-class employment). The Black feminist says, "I've always worked"(at jobs that weren't so great).

I think I'm an American, by virtue of having been born in the United States. I think I am anti-American to the extent I disagree with certain policies put forward by the U.S., and with certain aspects of American culture and American history. I don't think I'm un-American, but that's chiefly because I think that term is a smelly red herring dressed up as an adjective.

I'd just add that feminists, be they White, Black, male, female, or whatever, are (in my experience) in favor of employment, physical attractiveness, and contentment. That Bennett thinks otherwise makes me think he is stuck, psychologically, in a place that's about 40 years old.

If he weren't well paid and well employed by such entities as CNN, I might attempt to generate pity for Bill B. It's as if he missed a lot of history. Rip Van Bennett. I suspect Bennett started out as an academic, didn't really like academic work, teaching, and academic pay, and decided to become a professional conservative media performer--not a bad gig in the Reagan and post-Reagan era.

Now, however, the act, the gig, is wearing a little thin. Memo to Bill: "louder, funnier, and more original"--that's what your act needs. But I'm glad you're employed, attractive (in a full-figured way), and happy. A lot of people I know think you're an asshole and a fraud, but I'm not willing to go quite that far. I think you got stuck in a gig, just like the guy who had the plate-spinning act on The Ed Sullivan Show. To be a member of the Punditocracy is to be a citizen in one of Dante's circles of Hell, and I think Bill B. would understand the reference. To change myths, I think the likes of Bill Bennett and George Will sold their souls to the Conservative PR machine and to popular corporate media. The machine and the media have lived up to their ends of the bargain. Bill and George are well paid and well known. However, the part about the loss of the soul is a problem, maybe.

Skin-Scanning

There is a whole generation of native Californians (and Arizonans, et al.) who grew up not knowing how deadly the damage of sun-exposure could be. I'm in that generation. Our parents told us to slather on stuff like Copper Tone lotion, which was a nice-smelling oil but which block the sun not at all. When we went swimming in alpine lakes--about 6,000 feet above sea level--the sun-burns tended to be worse because there was less air between us and the sun, I guess. However, the worst sunburn I ever received was when I spent all day at Huntington Beach. One result is that I've had to have a melanoma hacked out of my leg. Another is that I must visit a dermatologist frequently. Hence the following poem.









Skin-Scanner



As he scans my skin, the dermatologist
talks politics. One of his eyes enlarges
comically behind a magnifying glass.
"Nobody changes Washington D.C.,"
he says, focusing on a small brown
constellation on my wrist. He deems
it "odd but not dangerous." "The most
anyone can do is play the system," he
continues. My body

grants citizenship to new moles every year.

Some are cherry-red. Most are dark brown.

The dermatologist periodically checks

their passports and papers. He's

the Border Patrol of my epidermis.

"The drug companies," he says,

"are raping the system. I can't believe

what they charge for medicine." I'm

naked now before him. He looks
at the scar from a melanoma-excision.
"Looks fine--keep up the good work,"
he says to my leg, which does not respond.
All my moles applaud the compliment.
I begin to add items of clothing to my
my mole-crowded body. The scanner

writes notes to himself about

the case of my skin. He presses the pen

hard into the surface of the paper.

Hans Ostrom





Copyright 2008

Everything Must Go!

When I was in California briefly to visit a member of the family, I read in a San Diego newspaper that the corporation, Mervyns (no apostrophe, as far as I know), based in Hayward, California, had decided to declare bankruptcy. Mervyns is a lot like J.C. Penny, except with fewer household goods for sale. That's my sense, anyway.

The head of the corporation was quoted as saying (and I paraphrase) that they'd explored the possibility of being purchased by another corporation but that, ultimately, they decided that the best way to pay their creditors was to announce that they were going out of business and then conduct "going-out-of-business" sales (through the end of the year?). This was the first time I had heard a corporate executive articulate a business-practice I had long observed: Stores go out of business (slowly), but first they attempt to ingest one more large meal of cash. They do so by creating a sense of urgency, a kind of store-apocalypse, and consumers get the sense that they will be able to buy things very inexpensively by "taking advantage" of the "wounded" store, which is more likely taking advantage of them by "slashing prices" on things consumers don't really need and still making a nice profit.

Nonetheless, I'm sorry that Mervyns is going out of business. I kind of like stores that are on the lower end, so to speak, of the market, and my eldest aunt worked for Mervyns in Hayward for a long time. She died quite a while ago, but I tend to remain slightly sentimental about these things. I'm also sorry for the people who are working for Mervyns now. May they find good work speedily after Mervyns closes for real.

Anyway, I exhumed a wee poem about "everything must go," the customary tag-line for going-out-of-business-sales.

Close-Out


Hurry—everything must go!
This sale won’t last forever.
We accept all major credit cards
with unconditional love.
We’re closing our minds forever. The
savings are incredible, so don’t believe
them. We’ve forgotten what business
we’re in, so we’re closing our doors.
We know our business concerned
merchandise, which must go, so
hurry to the corner of Want and
Need. We’ve slashed our prices,
which are bleeding. You must
hurry, we must go, and everything
that doesn’t last forever is on sale.


Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Date-Palms

Apparently there are about 10 varieties of date-palms--palms trees that bear the fruit, date, which is alleged to be a highly nutritious food. I had opportunity to stare at a couple date-palms in San Diego recently. It was a privilege.



Date-Palms in San Diego


Calm palms in San Diego look like crooked
columns made of brown-gray stones stacked
slowly over years by Franciscan monks. When
the columns reach a height uncertain, bladed
fronds formally erupt. Golden dates
materialize, suspend themselves like a surreal
swarm of gemstones. A brown-grey bird

stretches upside-down to pick a piece
of date-flesh with its beak. Pacific breezes
push. The tapered columns bend, nod,
never topple. Flexibility of vegetation,
patience of stone: palm.


Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Things Presidents Never Said

Here are some statements U.S. presidents never said, but in some instances I wish they had said them--although in several cases, time-travel would have had to be involved:



"I wish I had a dollar for every dollar on which my portrait appears."



--George Washington



"I agree: on the one-dollar bill, I look more like someone's grandmother than a general."



--George Washington



"The only thing we have to fear isn't just fear. There are Jim Crow Laws, lynching, going to war with Japan, going to war with Germany, unleashing nuclear weaponry, and this list doesn't include stuff in your neighborhood, like a rabid dog or a contagious disease. Nonetheless, let's keep our focus on fear itself."



--F.D.R.



"I got the Doctrine. Marilyn got the looks."



--James Monroe



"I was more honest than Nixon and smarter than Reagan, but that's not saying much, now, is it?"



--Jimmy Carter



"Trick or treat!"



--Dick Nixon



"How did I miss the Harlem Renaissance?"



--Calvin Coolidge



"Yey! You British kids! Get off our lawn!"



James and Dolly Madison



"Napoleon: great general, stupid realtor."



--Thomas Jefferson



"Writing the Declaration of Independence while owning slaves? Yes, I think that probably qualifies as a form of hypocrisy."



--Thomas Jefferson



"I warned you about the military-industrial complex, but did you listen? No!"



--Dwight Eisenhower



"You're depressed? Imagine how I feel!"



--Herbert Hoover



"We didn't bathe every day back then."



--John Adams



"Gorbachov? Hah! Now, Louis B. Mayer--there was a dictator."



--Ronald Reagan



"The day will come when a stuffed animal and a type of lingerie will be named after me."



--Teddy Roosevelt



"Just imagine if I'd lost the election to Bush, and then imagine if he'd been re-elected. Scary thought!"



--Al Gore



"Someone had to be Chester Alan Arthur."



--Chester Alan Arthur

Hey, Poets

Hey, Poets



Hey, poets, how are things? I hope

the writing warbles for you these days,

or blasts like a Boeing turbine, or

whatever you prefer. I pray right words

are paying your screens and pages

visits. Too, I hope other parts

of your lives are operational, a word

I stole from a manual somewhere.




Poetry's a lot but not close to everything.

It's made of words (this just in), which

are almost nothing but also essential.

I can't see you from here, but I imagine

you there making a poem out of words--

as far as I can tell, it's going fine

(and better than mine).



I imagine that poem you're working on

turning out well enough to send a wave

of satisfaction rolling up on the beach

there at the back of your mind. Hey,

poets, worldwide, here's what John Ciardi

used to say on the radio, "Good words to you."



Good days and nights to you, too. Hey,

poets, keep it going--all poetry all the time

on this, the global poetry network.

That's the spirit, poets. Hey.


Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008

Robert Bridges on Nightfall, Etc.

Here is a poem by Robert Bridges I don't remember encountering before. Sometimes when I see a title like "Winter Nightfall" above a poem by a relatively conventional poet, I lower my expectations, as I did this time. I was pleasantly surprised, beginning in line 3, with ". . . nothing tells the place/Of the setting sun." These lines suggested that Bridges was taking a hard look at the scene, a scene in which, presumably because of English mist, fog, clouds, and overall murk, no one can foretell where the sun will set; the murkiness just dims. At any rate, the poem:

Winter Nightfall

by Robert Bridges


THE day begins to droop,—
Its course is done:
But nothing tells the place
Of the setting sun.

The hazy darkness deepens,
And up the lane
You may hear, but cannot see,
The homing wain.

An engine pants and hums
In the farm hard by:
Its lowering smoke is lost
In the lowering sky.

The soaking branches drip,
And all night through
The dropping will not cease
In the avenue.

A tall man there in the house
Must keep his chair:
He knows he will never again
Breathe the spring air:

His heart is worn with work;
He is giddy and sick
If he rise to go as far
As the nearest rick:

He thinks of his morn of life,
His hale, strong years;
And braves as he may the night
Of darkness and tears.


I especially appreciate the subtle combination of a rural and an urban or suburban scene--farm and avenue. For me, the poem also slides easily into its consideration of the old man.

In the neighborhood we lived in previously, a married couple occupied a house across the street, and the woman's father lived with them. He was living with a respiratory disease, and he died not long after we moved there. His son in law told me that the old man believed that as long as he could walk around a bit (including crossing the street to get the mail) and, most importantly, sit in "his" chair, he would be all right; he wouldn't die. One day, of course, he had to be moved from the chair to a bed. I thought of this man when I read Bridges' poem, and of the way almost all of us construct a private calculus, whereby if we do X (keep sitting up in a chair), then Y will continue as it always has.

Bridges now is best know for his friendship with Gerard Manley Hopkins and for his having helped insure that Hopkins' poems got published. In their lifetimes, Bridges was much the better known poet than Hopkins.

Gratitude

Concerning Gratitude


Gratitude--that's a tough one, easy
to fake, or to ruin even when you're
not pretending. It isn't the same
as feeling lucky, and when you
express it, you should feel as if there's
plenty more left in the pond. Wait.
I shouldn't speak for anyone but me.

I feel as if gratitude isn't just
liking what's come my way but
marveling that I came this way
& that there is a way.

I feel as if gratitude isn't
an inventory of tools, jewelry,
machines, money, and enemies.
I don't think it's taking stock,
recording victories, or even,
heaven forbid, counting blessings.
--Nothing against accounting,
but gratitude's not a ledger.

I get this idea of the whole, and,
yes, I know what I just wrote's
as vague as fog. Gratitude
makes me kind of quiet--
and careful, because it's easy
to let slip away, gratitude.
It seems to be a large but delicate
emotion--yes, warm inside,
true enough, but cool to the touch.


Hans Ostrom

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Change

"Change" is in the air, I mean the word, amplified by microphones, broadcast by networks.

Obama and McCain both represent change, according to their campaigns. The credit-crisis is alleged to foretell enormous changes in global economics.

Last week, when the market "crashed"--it didn't really crash; otherwise, it couldn't have glided a bit higher this week--I told a colleague that, if the stock-market gets really awful, all people will have left is change (you know, quarters, pennies). Okay, so it wasn't a very good joke. But I can report that he chuckled.

After either Obama or McCain become president, I wouldn't mind if he sought to rein in the powers of the Executive Branch, not just as expanded by Bush II but by presidents since and including Roosevelt. I'd like the shared-power concept (not really a balance of power) embedded in the Constitution to be effected more greatly. This is a kind of change that would please me. I'd like a lot more, and more transparent, judicial and congressional and private oversight of corporations, banks, and surveillance-organizations, including a review of how civil liberties have, arguably, been eroded.

In that spirit, and without veering into non-clinical paranoia, I did notice that an army brigade had been redeployed from Iraq to the U.S. to join the newly created Northern Command. That is, the 3rd army isn't just coming home from a tour; they're being redeployed to a nation called the U.S. Bush II created this Northern Command. Is he preparing for martial law? Is that an outrageous question? I don't know the answer to either of these questions. That I don't know the answer springs, I hope, from ignorance, and not from concern that is somehow valid. I can live with my ignorance. I'm used to that. I'm much less comfortable with the possibility of martial law, or, less dramatically, with the concept of a Northern Command. Anyway, here's a link to a discussion of that redeplyoment:

http://www.kinism.net/index.php/forums/viewthread/397/

The redeployment bears on the issue of the "posse comitatus" statutes, and that issue goes all the way back to the brokered presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes, who effectively ended Reconstruction. It's a wicked web, pax Robert Burns.

Anyway, all this talk of change, as alteration or as quarters and dimes, led to a poem:


Unsparing Change


Ritual, routine, and regulation distract
us from noticing the universe is never the
same, is reconstructed every second or less.
That King's Boulevard intersects with
Alpine Avenue is a sad wee show of stasis,
reminiscent of the joke Joe told every Friday
at the tavern before he lost his mind and the joke
and the tavern burned down. Every day,

every human's supposed to act like one
not bewildered by constant crashing change.
Sometimes we pull off this performance
of counter-reality to an audience of one or two,
or fifteen or more. Otherwise, nothing much
disguises disintegration, space's silent
screaming alteration, time's vulgar variety
show starring rot, riot, and ruin. This
is not a happy poem, but I'm determined
to be more upbeat, but not beaten up, I
hope, later today, when things will have changed.

Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom

Random Suggestions

I cooked a lot today, making some dinners for the week ahead. With profound apologies to vegetarians and vegans, I must admit that one of the dishes is an old-fashioned beef stew.

I also took a walk (the expression must puzzle those new to English: "take a walk?") on the sharp but sunny slope of West Tacoma.

The combination of cooking and walking seems to have jumbled my mind into coming up with some extremely random suggestions, which should probably be taken with blocks, not grains, of salts.

1. If someone falls out of love with you, assume they've experienced a terrible lapse in judgment. Therefore, as you place a lifelong curse on them, do remember to temper justice with mercy.

2. When you're driving a car, make as few left turns as possible. Very little good comes from left turns in the arena of driving automobiles.

3. If you're reading a poem that seems especially difficult, assume it's easy, accessble, and it will become so. It works every time, or at least every 9 out of 10 times.

4. Don't attempt to smash an oppressive state because oppressive states are usually very good at smashing back. It's like trying to bite an alligator into submission. Instead, think of termites. They get together and eat whole mansions. Bring down an oppressive state in small, relatively unnoticed morsels--relentlessly, peacefully, efficiently.

5. There is no logical reason to believe in God. Or is there? Whether you've sorted this one out or not, do pay attention to an essential insoluble mystery in life.

6. Make it your goal to get through life without blowing up anything or anyone. Live explosion-free, if possible.

7. Witttgenstein was wrong about the cat/language issue. If lion and other cats could speak, we would understand them. They would insist upon it. After all, as little as they speak now, they will us to understand this communication.

8. Money is not the root of all evil. It's the root of some evil, and it's the fruit of other evil. Hatred is the garden-plot of evil. Don't fertilize it, whatever you do.

9. Buy or pick a lot of apples, and make your own applesauce: water, sugar [or sugar substitute], cinnamon, and nutmeg. Bring to a boil and then simmer. (I prefer chunky applesauce). Your life will be much improved by this activity and by the resulting sustenance. --Oh, I assume you know you should wash and peel the apples before cutting them into manageable slices. You knew that.

10. If someone is extremely rude to you, they are most likely fatally flawed and/or overcome with a feeling of power. If possible, let them pass on into the rest of the difficulty they have created for themselves.

11. Assign a number to how important you believe you are. An example is 10. To determine a rating that more closely relates to your real importance, divide by two and subtract one--reducing your importance in this example to 4. Anyway, the lower number is always more accurate than the higher. It's kind of like a law of physics.

12. Choose at least one instance or circumstance of injustice and work to reduce or eliminate it, preferably working with others. Participate in the erosion of injustice.

Like a Simile, As a Sign

Like a Simile, As a Sign


Briefly astonishing, then gone, the semiotician
vanished like a gray fox at dusk. Like
a tectonic plate, the structuralist's bowels
shifted. She quaked. Like the moon,
the tides, the sun, and the seasons,
the rhetorician repeated himself
conventionally. As the banker dismissed
the janitor's dignity with a sneer, so
the academic Marxist derided poetry
as bourgeois scribbling, even if
practiced by a welder. As the feminist
lauded the recovery of a lost novel,
so the waitress frowned to see the size
of the gratuity this scholar left. Like
the universe, there is no thing. There
is no thing like the universe.


Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom