New Grass Song: "Hit her, Miss!"

Sung to the tune of "Buffalo Gals", or not, or anything reminiscent.

Cows got into the gooseberry bush,
Cows got into the gooseberry bush,
Cows got into the gooseberry bush,
Now the beef is bitter.

Took my gal to the darkest wood,
Took my gal to the darkest wood,
Took my gal to the darkest wood,
But the birds were all a-twitter.

Found my roots on a comfrey plant,
Found my roots on a comfrey plant,
Found my roots on a comfrey plant,
Found my poop in the shitter.

Wild Jim drinks when the sky is gray,
Wild Jim drinks when the sky is gray,
Wild Jim drinks when the sky is gray,
And the rain goes patter-pitter.

Buffalo Gal's out naked tonight,
Buffalo Gal's out naked tonight,
Buffalo Gal's out naked tonight,
But I got a hyde that'll fit her.

Found my cat on my aunt's bidet,
Found my cat on my aunt's bidet,
Found my cat on my aunt's bidet,
So I changed her kitty litter.

Ma won't let us ride tonight,
Ma won't let us ride tonight,
Ma won't let us ride tonight,
So we poisoned the baby-sitter.

I won't let her hear this song,
I won't let her hear this song,
I won't let her hear this song,
'Till her lashes go flutter-flitter.

My new ukulele comes tomorrow,
My new ukulele comes tomorrow,
My new ukulele comes tomorrow,
A-flea-dilly dee 'n deet'n ditter.

We'll play this song 'till the cows are freed,
We'll play this song 'till the cows are freed,
We'll play this song 'till the cows are freed,
And the rhymes keep gettin' better.

Lists: Eleven Things to do if you're stranded in Penn Yan, NY, for Eleven Hours after no sleep; Then, Ten Things I Hate About You

1) Drink the weakest cup of "rain forest caramel" coffee you've ever had, while failing to read the Ginsberg poem in your bag
2) Walk up Main Street & pass out from exhaustion on a picnic table in front of a hospital
3) Read the Harper's Index in the cute old small town public library
4) Fall asleep beneath the Harper's Index in the cute old small town public library
5) Eat a fried fish sandwich at the local diner, order a delicious cherry pie, then worry the waitress when you don't finish it.
6) Stumble upon the beautiful Keuka Outlet Trail, walk four miles past two ruins of 19th Century Mills - the first, Milo Mills, has a 30 or 40-ft brick chimney, the second, Seneca Mills, is on a waterfall.
7) Sleep for two hours on a park bench, wake up cold & shivering on the ground.
8) Listen to Episode One of the Anthology of Sacred Music in English on the four mile walk back.
9) Write E-mails & read blogs in the Penn Yan Public Library
10) Make an exquisite tofurkey & German Gouda Sandwich, between two pieces of Wegman's inspired "Marathon Bread", eat this sandwich outside in the rain on a picnic table near the courthouse.
11) Drink a pint of fine Canadian beer at the pub on Main Street while waiting to finally get picked up by the girl who spontaneously stranded you in Penn Yan, NY, for eleven hours.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Date:	Wed, 6 Jun 2007 22:01:57 -0700 (PDT)
From:	"Jenny Ruth Crawford" <___________@yahoo.com>
Subject:	List
To:	"James Welsch" <____@itwaslost.org>

1) I'm drunk
2) I downloaded the Modest Mouse cd. I love it. I'm drunk. Wow. What a [---] cd. Wow.
3) I needed to kick H____ out for a little while. It was goood. He's back. It's goood. I drank most of his beer.
4) I love my students.
5) I hate how big your ego is. Amazing how I love and hate. Love and hate. [---]
6) Shaun Winter
7) Ben Ricker
8) Camp this weekend
9) The first sunny day in a week. Seriously!
10) Life and places to live it

On Sin

I don’t like to write about sin for the same reasons that I generally don’t write about phlogiston; but ideas about sin tend to come to people’s minds as they wander beneath the grey skies of Ithaca. Why is it harder to get your friends to visit you if you chose to attend an ivy league University out here in the country, than if you decide to attend, say, Columbia? Because people think that things are happening in New York City? Do your friends realize that this campus has waterfalls running thru the campus, & that the Moonshadow pub has two-for-one local beers during happy hour?

Many ancient reasons for moral restrictions relate directly to health & sanitation – and if you do something personally filthy, it can contaminate a small tribal community in a variety of ways. In Leviticus, for instance, there is a deep paranoia about cleanliness; & throughout the Old Testament, the divine punishment for deviation often takes the form of plagues. Many people get sick from eating shellfish; & lo, Leviticus bans the consumption of shellfish. It need not be described how in America today, there is an ingrained societal righteousness for rather extreme standards of personal & municipal hygiene.

In this beautiful Oxbridgean reading room in Cornell’s library (I think it’s named after some president named White), I was thinking about the changing morals related to condoms & cattle. I’m sure many “received” commandments about chastity, sexual fidelity, monogamy, & even relations during menstruation, come from ancient practical lessons taught to minimize infections, diseases which can spread chaotically if youthful impulses are satisfied unchecked. Condoms are a recent ingredient to this mix, and America has seen the secular sexual moral code change beyond every church’s jurisdiction. For most of our society, where there's information about condoms, sex before marriage is safe, with minimum threat of infection or premature parenthood. While modern civilization offers greater looming plagues – like AIDS & broken households & car-torn cities – condoms, designed by purely human ingenuity, and a clever tree, have changed everything, especially how people relate their feelings of guilt & sin to sex.

Clergy-types often see condoms as enables: because they are human inventions, and because lust & sensuality damage the immortal soul with deep subtle spiritual ramifications, they free up the fear of uncleanliness or disease & offer a safer exploration of material pleasures. (Of course, it’s often these guilty-complex’d, repress’d homophobic clergy-types who create for themselves these imaginative universes of sin, day-dreaming of it only as “material pleasure”, & end up with fabulous scandals all over the news, like our dear friend Rev. Haggard.)

Saint Augustine wrote that morality fluxuates thru historical circumstance, and the point I wanted to make wasn’t really about condoms, but the opposite. Sins associated with sex have changed because of human technology. I think we should really see things like cows & corn as human inventions as well. We’ve been breeding our agricultural plants & livestock for many thousands of years now, a drastic co-evolution serving our own purposes, they little resemble their natural ancestors, and we’ve entered a kind of new era of danger. In biblical times, pigs may have been dirty enough to warrant a “divine” commandment of warning; but in 19th century England, pork links were possibly safe enough to ignore a three thousand year old law. Now, if we eat bacon, we’re eating a creature which has spent its entire life in a small metal cage which it cannot turn around in, never seeing sunlight, jacked up on antibiotics just to stay alive, & excreting the foulest contaminated shit. I realize I’m getting preachy, but what nourishes us goes beyond the satisfaction of hunger, our food literally creates our bodies & brains; & like sex, the threat of infection is a kind of external indication of greater spiritual plagues. Just a quick sermon, I promise you, and I’ll tell some more jokes on this blog. I just think it’s a risky mistake in America today to think (as many many people do) of cattle as something God created in its present form so to give us burgers, and sex as a temptation God created to test us.

Lift Him Up

Up thru this gorge, stone steps past waterfalls,
Each summer, from the beach up to the tree line,
Three thousand foot ascent, this bicycle –
I only used it for revolutionary calls –
The fall’s like how non-divine angels recline –
Is at my side, now a burden, still a protest;
O tall’s the fir, but deeper the freefalls of the stalactickle,
So is my climb defined by its proceeding rest.

She as my guide has abandoned me to gravity,
Her lust is closer stronger, farther more theoretical;
My feet & hands guided by imagination
Can construct, literally build this fantasy,
My tinker’s brain can destruct this reality,
Can fashion roots of kingdoms more than magical;
A virgin songwriter begins by imitation,
Then returns to his muse this autumn in a pumpkin.

I have forsaken the news, the history of today,
Each stone tablet is a false prophecy of the present!
Was it towards Guillaume Dufay I should direct my focus?
I’ve eaten my map, my compass is wrapped up in my tent,
I’ve started singing limericks about the non-linearness of time,
My way has become – not mud! idiots! – but wet utilizable clay;
I forget again, each road sign I chew like a lotus,
And lay me down, no fuss about the lack of pay –
At this elevation, only marmots can ask me for rent.

I think I’ve achieved something, not a poem about Everest,
Was it only three thousand feet? I convince myself of success,
What little I can do with a rusty bicycle, some reason to act all righteous,
Clean up in my tiny corner my own self-fulfilling mess,
Stay up here not as a mystic or guru, more like a social hermit,
I’ll never tell people why it’s not completely wise to eat pig meat,
I’ll just act according to modern liberal guilt, did I do it alone?
I find love only be keeping my travel plans flexible,
I change a broken civilization only by writing secret sad songs –
I am elected vice-president! I procreate ten thousand firstborn sons!
American Literature has left desolate all sincerity, but it’s thought of some great puns.
One poet is king but I am the silent prophet of the Saracen.
I’ll repeat myself until I am remembered,
I’ll shut this closet door & transcend irony.

E-mails: World's Longest Nipple Hair & Functional Art

Date: Sat, 2 Jun 2007 16:28:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: "James Welsch" <___@itwaslost.org>
Subject: Soufworf People
To: "Liam Joseph Olaf Worland Golden" <____@yahoo.com>, "Virtue" <_____@plantitearth.com>


Elle 'n' A-,

Congrats, man, men, on your new digs. I cain't wait. Is it near a BART? What's the address, I'll google-earth it.

Go well!

I'm in Ithaca for the weekend, at Darren Soufworf People's house. The night before last, at midnight, he took his lover on the back of his motercycle, & they rode to a waterfall & [------]. Soufworf People!

I wrote you into one of my songs, Elle. The lyric: "Elle's doin' the Charleston on a profaned altar..." &c.

I saw a gay German juggler at Ithaca fest, he snuck more butt-fucking jokes into a family show than I thought possible. Then I ate a white-chocolate-dipped frozen banana from a frozen banana stand, that's right. Earlier today, I got an underground tour of the Cornell Nuclear Accelerator. Mild radiation exposure, but I still should be able to procreate.

I hear there'll be Mimosa's Witnesses services at your new digs some Sunday mornings. I approve. I approve. I cain't wait to see your new digs. I love calling it your new digs. Plant some auborgines right away.

Bumper's High!

The Archpope of Transubstantiation

_____________________________________________________________________



Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 09:45:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Liam Joseph Olaf Worland Golden" <____@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Soufworf People
To: "James Welsch" <____@itwaslost.org>


Archbishnop of SOuf worf

NEW DIGS: __ HAROLD AVE> SF CA 94112

Doug Williams' nipple hair on television tonight - FOX NEWS LIVE 11:55 eastern time, just over five inches - the world's longest

don jose is the captain of our new digs - you should see his paintings
i am shitting chlorine free paper and eating it and shitting it into american rivers across the globe

elle

_________________________________________________________________


Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2007 11:19:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: "James Welsch" <_____@itwaslost.org>
Subject: Re: Re: Soufworf People
To: "Liam Joseph Olaf Worland Golden" <_____@yahoo.com>
CC: "Virtue" <_____@plantitearth.com>


Whoa ach hem!

Miss Czaog

I think you can get in serious trouble with the clergy by calling the Archpope the "archbishop." It would be like me calling you a flaming paper bag of shit when you're actually a sack.

I'll try & watch tv tonight, may be possible, still in Ithaca, waiting to go to this arts farm, various commune-beurocratic hurtles to wade thru, mix'd metaphors to ruminate o'er, cud to chew. I always believed in Mr Williams, always rooted for his nipple hair growing power, & now our prayers are complete. I also believe in art. Art & love. Sex & marriage & reproduction & painting & writing & music & dance. The arts farm I'm going to believes in functional art, like glass blowing & wood turning & metal smithery & boat making & did I mention I'm dating a sexy potter? They have lots of music too, & every one knows why & how music is functional, & not just Frank Zappa's children. I believe in art & love & I believe in Doug Williams.

And I believe in you.
It's Monday Night! Do you know where your House Face is?
The A. of T.

NEWS-FREE JUNE!

The last article I read last night before midnight was about Lindsay Lohan’s self abuse thru alcohol. She has threatened many of her projects, & already in her short life has checked into rehab multiple times. The Disney girl is twenty – don’t many young men & women test their extremes around their sophomore year of college – shouldn’t rehab be for older, crazier celebrities? If I was being handed Million Dollar Bonuses from Michael Eisner, I can only think of three big green words: Chartreuse, Chartreuse, Chartreuse.

Tangentially or not, it was a fitting gross overdose of nonsense media before NEWS-FREE JUNE. Why am I performing this withdrawal? I’ll tell you. While I was working at my bookstore, I lost all focus & the ability to read a book. I spent this repartitioned time reading online newspapers (mostly the NY Times & the Economist). Will cold turkey on newspapers let me read books again? There could be other sources which are poisoning my relationship to literature, even simply my selection, but there are other good reasons to give myself a break:

One, the more you read the news, the slower it seems to happen. It occurs to the casual observer that some serious shifts need to happen in politics & culture – & a watched expectorator never expectorates. I’m doing this for the good of the country.

Also, the beginning of summer is a sleepy time for international revolutions. Could the Decembrist Uprising have happened in June? I can’t think of any thing important ever happening in June. Remember June, 2001, even our virgin commander was gardening.

Thirdly, I’ll be in a good place to avoid the cyber papyruses. In preparation to spend some time this month at this arts farm, I was given a yellowed paperback of G.I. Gurdjieff’s Meetings With Remarkable Men, on the cover of which is a still from the classic Peter Brook film. This morning, honoring my seismic shift in reading materials, I laboriously ascended a mountain of learning (meaning, it was 90 degrees & humid as I walked up the hill to Cornell’s library), & read the introduction. I have been following some omens & coincidences recently, but the fact that the bulk of Gurdjieff’s somewhat silly introduction is ‘quoting’ an elder Persian wise man, & most of that wise man’s speech is a rant again Journalism, was almost too perfect.

The Persian tells a series of anecdotes to illustrate why Journalism is bad for the good of society. In the first, an Armenian living in Tehran is inspired by repeated newspaper advertisements to buy certain sausages for dinner, & mortally poisons himself & his entire family. The executor of his will discovers that the shipment of meat was intended to be exported, but when it missed its deadline, some expense was spent to dump it in Tehran, hence the urgent & deceptive ads. Why are things advertised & how does that affect the content of commercial writing? At least today, we don’t have to worry about the safety of our meat. Ha!

The second anecdote seems almost Melvillean. The elder Persian, whilst staying in Baku, believes a newspaper review that a certain actress is worth seeing. He goes to see her perform, & feels betrayed by the review, because she sucks. “But even taking into consideration my personal standpoint, I must confess that in all my life I had never seen anybody to compare with this celebrity for lack of talent & absence of even the most elementary notions of the principles of playing a role.” (That’s the type of subtle wordy humor which reminded me of Melville.) He goes on to explain that a rich man had bribed various insiders to make a celebrity of his girlfriend. (That’s why the image for the blog entry is William Randolph Hearst’s mistress, Marion Davies, not Lindsay Lohan.)

There’s been a lot of squabbling in the papers in recent months about the integrity of journalism, with fascism & punditism on the rise, & where are the forces that brought down Nixon, et cetera, et cetera. But poor journalism’s just a tool, not a purely sophistic force like Gurdjieff’s elder fears, or an agent of righteousness like David Halberstam’s huge mighty heroes. In all of the Persian's anecdotes, there tend to be foolish or malicious forces behind the scenes which influence the truths conveyed to the public. To do a completely NEWS-FREE JUNE, I'd have to further give up all human-meddled writing, including literature, poetry, religious texts, & the fecund blogosphere.