After my nocturnal walkies with the Beagle brothers this early morning, I sat before this blank screen and wondered what I should write about.
Yesterday’s big project was the dismantling and removal of the above ground pool that has brought my grans moments of joy over the past few summers while doing its best to make me succumb to physical exertion in its setting up, moving, and cleaning during that same period.
Backbreaking Days – The Wise Novelist
I knew I was doomed the fifthieth time Lisa mentioned as we pulled into our driveway that “we’re going to have to do something with that pool.”
Lisa has mastered the subtlety of Henry II of England when, in 1170, during a stay at his castle in Bures, Normandy, his highness declared “who’ll rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
I knew as certain as those four poor knights that, like with Thomas Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lisa wanted that pool gone.
She’ll never directly order me to do something like that because, like Henry II, she wants to maintain plausible deniability, in case something goes south, and they find my body laying prone and lifeless in the front yard.
Also, when the grans come by for their next visit, Lisa will be able to look them in the eye and declare – “I never told him to take it down.”
But I just could not listen to one more subtle reminder, so yesterday morning I punctured all sides of the pool with large slits, let it drain and then cut the liner loose from the metal skeleton,
then I dismantle those grey metal bones with the efficiency of a Hell’s Kitchen Westy, and – in two separate trips – packed it all into the back of my trusty Toyota (yes, from TCS) and took the pool’s remains to two separate dumps, since the first one only took the metal bones.
In all honesty, I’m glad I could get it done because I was afraid that had I left it sitting there some feral creature would find its way over the side and be trapped and drowned there. The pool cover is some protection but given our NoCo windstorms, it is often blown loose.
And in all fairness, Lisa rewarded my industry with a communal skyclad frolic in Skyclad, where, among other things, I got to soak my aching back.
This morning, after another howling coyote serenade during the Beagle Brothers’ morning constitutional, I came across a reference to the Beat Generation poet, Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem, “Howl.” I learned that it was the anniversary of his first public performance of that poem in 1955 in San Franscisco. I have always been fascinated by the Beats, more for their backstories than their actual literary production, and while I have read Kerouac and Burroughs, and snippets of Ginsberg, I never sat through an entire reading by that very strange man of the poem that put on the literary map.
So, I located a recording of a 1956 reading and gave it a listen.
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What a trip.
It had a comparable Joycean stream of consciousness one experiences when reading Ulysses and Finnigan’s Wake.
And just like Joyce’s works, you can understand how Howl managed to be banned in 1957. I would have loved to be sitting in Chambers when Judge Clayton Horn read through that poem before ultimately ruling that Howl did have redeeming social value and lifted the ban.
I often wonder if I could have been lucky enough to have The Wise Ass banned on an obscenity basis due to its ubiquitous use of the word “fuck,” had it been published back in the fifties.
After all, a banned book is often destined for best seller status.
Why Book Banning Always Spectacularly Backfires
Well, I haven’t given up hope – Free R.A.D.I.C.A.L. is kind of racy.
Book bans continue to rise. What the targeted titles actually say
Fingers crossed.
Well, enough of my mental meanderings.
Here we are, my fine, five readers, with another Hump Day before us.
Hopefully you have gotten the Lion’s share of your work week behind you on Tuesday. Now just tweak and fiddle with what you have in order to bring this week’s project to fruition.
So, finish that cuppa, strap on those skates and attack the hill. Wave at Friday from the peak – it’s just there, over Thursday’s shoulder. Beckoning.
And no matter what else we get up to, let us make today a great one.
