Doodles from 12/24

I just finished the audio version of Steve Martin's newest book, "Born Standing Up."  It's interesting.  Kind of pathetic and depressing.  I think he should stick to making movies and writing plays.  Knowing the story of his life, and having him read it aloud makes me think that all these celebrities are ridiculous, and don't quite fully appreciate how ridiculous they sound. He's actually quite bad at doing himself.  But still he does have integrity, and I don't think he's completely asleep.  The little banjo interludes are good. And yet, I just can't relate to him. He's so goyish; yeah maybe that's it.  But it's all about integrity.  Yeah, integrity.  Fuck.

The Razor's Edge

As I embark on my 42nd trip around this medium-sized, yellow star known affectionately as "Sol," I reflect upon the last 492 months of my life outside the womb. To begin with, without being excessively weak, and hopefully avoiding overly emotional sentimentality, I would like to acknowledge all those people who have had a lasting effect upon my hair. I will get to the rest of my organs some other time, but it seems good begin with the most profound symbol of aging.

Barbers
Over the decades, I have been fortunate to know thickness of hair, lustrous, brown, and even semi-flaxen in hue at times, after vainly rubbing freshly squeezed lemon juice into my scalp, steeping in sweat, enveloped in prickly Negev warmth. When I was small though, dad would pile the trio of Singer boys into his Belvedere wagon and drive the four blocks to Forest avenue for a snip snip at the hands of Joseph Brandman; a latvian Holocaust survivor. Curls of thick Tipparillo smoke lazily crept from his mouth and nose around the bare bulb and grommet chain that swayed above me. My flabby tush overflowed off the top of two old phone books, stacked onto a wooden bench.

Brandman, referred to by surname only, with the "a" pronounced as a schwa ə, was a smiley guy. He had a thin moustache over his lip, and a perfect row of no more than 43 long hairs combed over his shining bald skull. Come to think of it, he looked like Gregory Peck's rendition of Joseph Mengele in "The Boys From Brazil." Brandman's basement was the barber shop. An empty bag of Munchos potato chips lay somewhere on top of a pile of magazines. The bag was always there. My dad would never have bought Munchos - not if a gun were at his head.

Descending the staircase from Brandman's eternally summer kitchen, the smell was a combination of musty wood, cigar smoke, and brill creme. The basement was a sort of interrogation room; a naked, yellow incandescent bulb barely illuminated the work space. A squat table sat against the cinder-block wall, behind the "customer's" seat. That was where Brandman laid out his black box of torture implements: various scissors with the little finger hook for his pinky, different sized combs, and a pin-striped silken wrapping cloth kept everything neat. He swung the tall case up and onto the vinyl covered table, and deftly slid the buttons apart - the burnished brass hasps snapped up and vibrated, sprudududud, like flippers on a pinball machine. As if he was reciting from a script, he would ask "Ya vant a herrkut ?" Or he might quip, "You need a herrkut, you look like a Beatle." There was something comforting about his reference to the British mop tops - a compliment. Like the bag of Munchos - he was hip to a label.

I don't know if Brandman was formally schooled in cosmetology. If he was trained at all, I imagine that at some vague juncture he happened into a vocational landscaping course geared for immigrants, and settled, then and there that methods accorded to bushes and weeds were dually applicable for grooming the children of fellow camp survivors. With slender thinning-shears, he "layered" the sides of my scalp, moving up from my ear toward the top of my head with a predictable rhythm, tzik-tzikah,tzika-tzika-TZIK! tzik-zikah, tzika-tzika-TZIK! He certainly was consistent, but I think he didn't quite know what to do when my hair was particularly thick, because at some point he would grab clumps of hair and go at them, digging in with the scissor, kachika! kachika! kachika! Frankly, I don't think he really knew what he was doing at all because this action just plain hurt. It's not supposed to hurt at the barber.

When I was around fourteen or fifteen I started going to a place called Cutting Corner Hair Designers, at New Scotland and Quail in Albany, New York. They charged eight or nine bucks, but that included a shampoo. Then some buxom babe would cut my hair, her soft bosom occasionally grazed my shoulder. Gives me goose bumps still. Once she said, "ooh, you've got the hair." As if to say, "that's where my hair went," or maybe she just liked running her fingers through my hair. I don't know. My dad was pretty angry when I started going there. It was a statement. On my part, it meant getting my hair cut the way I wanted, by people who listened to what I wanted, without my dad muttering instructions in the barber's ear in Yiddish, nullifying my request to keep a little "over the ear." This was about independence. For my dad, it was "a vaste of money! Vut, Brandman izn't good enuf? You need sumvun to pat yer herr nicely?" Come to think of it, well, yes it was nice for once not to have my head chopped at with a pair of blunt hedge clippers.

What this all boils down to is, well, I don't worry about this anymore. Half the time these days I cut my own hair, because in fact, I don't have hair anymore. Life. Age.

You'd Think I'd Just Woke Up

The genius of those who trade in oil is their realization of oil's two-pronged value. A piece of art, while inspiring, even well-rendered, cannot have more than a speculative value. The price of, say, "The Potato Eaters," by van Gogh is based upon the perceived value of the piece. If a collector is prepared to spend seventy-five million dollars to acquire that painting, then the painting is worth seventy-five million dollars. Tickets to a Hanna Montana concert recently sold for upwards of three hundred dollars. The retail price of those tickets was somewhere between twenty-six and fifty-six dollars. Their worth cannot be calculated in objective terms. Child A is willing to pay one price, while Child B can only afford the retail price. Unless Child B is willing to be first in line when tickets go on sale, Child A is the one going to the concert.

It's also crucial to point out that a Hanna Montana ticket is not a requirement to sustain life, neither can it provide transportation nor home heating. The experience of a Hanna Montana concert isn't something I can place in my gas tank. Yes, it can be taped and broadcast, or sold at Target or on iTunes, and so it has a shelf-life for those who can profit from its commercial potential. However the ticket price, speculated five or more times above its asking price was not based upon a rational assessment of its value. Rather, it was based upon the ephemeral value (if any such exists for this artist) which attendees of her concerts can take away. No fixed price can be placed upon that. Last year, Woman III, a painting by Willem de Kooning was sold by media magnate, David Geffen, for one hundred forty-plus million dollars. I love de Kooning's work - it moves me to tears. But I could cut it up, put it into a blender for 10 minutes, and then pour it into my gas tank, and it wouldn't run my Subaru any better than the tears which I shed over it's beauty.

What is the value of crude oil? I assume it's based upon some complex calculus of factors such as prospecting, the cost to pump it from the ground, transportation, port fees, current supply, and probably over a hundred other things. However, included in that is probably how Hugo Chavez or Ahmadeenejad feel when they wake up tomorrow.

Let's examine what oil is. Here's a short extract from Wikipedia (not my favorite source, but it's not my oracle for a full, comparative abstract on Homer or The Song of Songs, so I'll consider this entry to be more or less accurate - who the f _ _ _ cares, it's my blog!)

Petroleum is used mostly, by volume, for producing fuel oil and gasoline (petrol), both important "primary energy" sources. [2] 84% by volume of the hydrocarbons present in petroleum is converted into energy-rich fuels (petroleum-based fuels), including gasoline, diesel, jet, heating, and other fuel oils, and liquefied petroleum gas. [3]

Due to its high energy density, easy transportability and relative abundance, it has become the world's most important source of energy since the mid-1950s. Petroleum is also the raw material for many chemical products, including pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics; the 16% not used for energy production is converted into these other materials.

Amazing, no? Oil is used to make just about everything, from the clothes on my back to the car I drive, and what fills its tank. Now that's market coverage. What's further amazing is not how pricey gasoline is these days, but the fact that it's still so relatively inexpensive!! Neither the finest washing machine nor the biggest ruby can power my Subaru. If and when a means for producing something that rivals or exceeds oil's astounding spectrum of uses, and ease of procurement, then the nations whose economies rely on oil production will be in trouble. Or, they may cause trouble in order to sustain the value of their commodity for as long as possible.

In the meantime, oil is it. What's more - it has both intrinsic and speculative value. Yes, other resources claim this dual value, but something like a diamond, for example, hasn't nearly the same scope of usage. In fact, right now, the only other thing I can fathom with value that straddles a line between objective and ephemeral, actual and perceived, is human consciousness. Perhaps it is best to reduce this consciousness thing simply, to human life. Human life can't be replaced, well depending on who you ask and for what purpose, but for the moment, if I get flattened by a truck today, nobody can replace the very essence or uniqueness that is me. It appears, due to the agglomeration of experiences, education, artistic talent, charm, humor, and humility that make up what is known as Chaim, some people may be willing to invest a few bucks per year to sustain. *B'ezras Hashem. Inshala. Fingers crossed. ptooee ptooee . . . But in order to get some entity to give up cash, if say, I and that big truck do happen upon one another in some unfortunate turn of fate, that would be known as a lost gamble. Speculation. In other words, I'm nearing forty-one, I have no major health problems (see starred section above) and so it's a good bet for an entity such as State Farm to "sell" me a policy that I probably won't "buy the farm" soon. If I was sick(er) or old(er), it would cost me more, i.e. it's a worse bet for the folks at State Farm if I'm in a wheelchair or have asthma or something.

But oil? Hell, if I were to strike oil in my backyard and prove a consistent flow of twenty five barrels a day for a week, you could safely say I wouldn't need to worry about much in terms of, well much of anything. It would not only be the value of the actual oil I would sell, but my personal value would then be scaled against the average value of such backyard wells in Southern California, the world market prices, and whatever else. Just as a note, I can't legally drill for oil in my yard, 'cause someone else, someone I don't even like, owns the oil and mineral rights to the chunk of terra crust under my house !!! When we were purchasing our house, the seller wouldn't even consider placing the oil and mineral rights on the table, because as she said, "you couldn't afford it." I have no doubt. Oil may not be very nice for the atmosphere, but it makes a hell of an anti-depressant, and one spiffy pair of pants too.

There may be no accounting for taste here, but if it's light and sweet, it'll get you off the doll.

Competing Voices

Go, make a cake
Find
My bed is full of water
The floor has mud
Pebbles, dried like black beans

So pull up her pants.
Laughter
I don’t have sugar and flour
You can’t have

And then, a doctor, a comic chemist
Look up.
Receivers can pick up a new traveler on their way up
Nose down
Not just upon land
Eyes up
Maybe

What if you’re sad?
You want sad?
The funeral is on the radio
What
What
And now, you’re a gardener?
Prove it, with years

Drink all the coffee you want
It’s the wrong funeral.
Deeper, like the tunnel where the princess was flashed to death
I know what you want

Turn over
White bath of sheets
A lover.
Dryness broken, with bile and sweet saloon
Bitter, coffee lips meet
Streaks of black hair, and oil, and lace
Nostrils filled with tears and sexy crows’ feet
Have the cake

I didn’t know you were in my bed
Yes, put plastic under the sheet
Really, I didn’t know.
The flowery blanket
Cut shapes
The beans have grown like supernovae.
Cut shapes!

And then, a mother
Finished
My family in a grotto
Lit with tungsten, and furnished like a summer home on a coniferous island
But still, finished
The floor has mud

A parade descends the stairs
There were stairs.
What if there were stairs?
And my pants keep falling
That’s really dangerous.

You really cannot.
And I’m not sorry
I’m sorry, I’m just not sorry
Have it -
You can turn away, and laugh, and commit crimes, and learn from a limping dwarf
But I’m sorry,
You just can’t.
Sometimes, there’s science and math.