A few minutes prior, turning the Start key made the dashboard light up but didn’t turn over the engine.
I am in the parking lot of my workplace. I was eager to get home.
I have logged in the Triple-A and have requested roadside assistance.
Now I wait/And hope for no rain/And for a simple and quick fix.
It is noon.
I have about 14 ounces of water and this phone, which has about 70% charge.
I tried the key again. This time there is clicking similar to a dry-fired gun, about a click per second.
It is twelve oh four.
A text message says a driver is on their way.
It is twelve fifteen.
Clouds are making shadows.
I bought this car last than a month ago. I told everyone trying to sell me a car that I didn’t want anything fancy, just reliable transportation. One phrase I used over and over was “no headaches.”
“Why are you here to have your memory tested?” “I forgot. –Joking!”Beginning of interview phase of neuropsychological testing for patient Gary Bowers, March 10, 2025
we had my pal marty on speakerphone/so he could give input on my cognitive issues
i described blanking out on names and forgetting i had done things
marty confirmed my argumentativeness/but said he’d learned to be more understanding/and i added “we both have”/and we agreed that my directional dyslexia/is nothing new
we bid marty farewell and thanks/i ended the call/ and dr. m commenced the testing
she did stuff like read a list of words/and have me recall as many as i could/in any particular order
then some numbers in strings progressively long
there was one segment involving making a sort of cryptogram transcription/of random-order letters of the alphabet
the worst i did was the test where i was shown an array of six shapes for ten seconds/and asked to draw them from memory
i sucked at that one
then she turned me over to her assistant e/who told me two stories and asked me to retell them/as accurately as i could
had me use blocks to reproduce two-colored designs
read me a list of paired words like “ice°cream” and “wood°fire” and then another list/and asked me which words had been on the first list
there was another list of paired words/and i was asked to describe how they were similar
“habit” and “tradition” were one of the pairs
and there was plenty of other stuff/and somewhere in there i found out/that I don’t know what the hell “pavid” means
the last and most fun thing was simply reading a list of words/that were increasingly unlike the way they were pronounced/and i was proud to give “hyperbole” the four-syllable treatment/and to add some french nasality to “piquant”
but the last word was a mideast (i think) doozy/whose last three letters were i d h/and i am sure i mispronounced it/but equally sure/that none of my fellow glendale high school class of 72 graduated/would get it right either
.
after the testing came feedback from dr. m/that filled me with jazzy joyous comfort
she had looked at me and said vámonos with that tiny jerk of the head that said let’s go/no argument
we went/she was telling me her favorite kinds of latin music/and she told her screen/and it would play
and she would move with the music/with shoulder shimmies and head tossbacks
and old as I am and young as she was i was stirred
she deliberately drove past my street and we drove on
I said to the screen FREDDY FENDER BEFORE THE NEXT TEARDROP FALLS
and freddy’s sweet lamenting voice filled the car/first in english then in spanish
and she was stirred/hearing that old-school song
and we came to my apartment/i patted her shoulder with my hand/but our heads seemed magnetically attracted/and they slightly clunked/with our heads both facing forward
and the truth is, i wanted to embrace her
and the real truth is, i wanted to grab her
and the stone ground truth is, it would have been wrong wrong wrong to grab her
so i didn’t/i got out and let her know without words/looking at her as i got out/that I sincerely enjoyed the ride/the moment
and she dawdled a little/lowering her driver’s side window/and saying inconsequentials/but finally “bye”
and i shook my head walking to my unit/muttering stuff like “jesus!” and “hot stuff”
i dawdle. reading edward bryant’s “war stories” in the last dangerous visions while digesting pizza. on pages 104-5 a woman spy is having a conversation with a shark who has just swallowed her whole and dived into deep water. but it may not be a full-biological shark. my late friend bernard schober would have liked this passage, i think.
i dawdle. there’s music across town, and I am invited, and i have a rented car, but i am digesting both buffalo wings and storyline.
I am mentally ill in much the same way harlan ellison, editor of the last dangerous visions, was. he struggled with bipolarity and clinical depression, but to a much greater degree than i do. the brilliant scenarist j. michael straczynski, executor of the ellison foundation/estate, went into extraordinary detail about ellison’s condition in the introduction to this book, which i have waited for for fifty years because ellison’s condition kept him from finishing the job.
my dining table bears a similarity to straczynski’s description of the manuscript-strewn tables in ellison’s home, which will become a museum called “ellison wonderland.”
my left shoelace is untied. it was untied all my walk to little cæsar’s too. and I had forgotten to put my fitbit in my pocket, so i will not get credit for those 2000 or so steps.
time to tie my shoelace and put the remaining half of the detroit deep dish veggie pizza in the refrigerator and go.
so this is after a bowl of stewed carrots and a cup of coffee and before a shave and shower
that indeterminate time when my drawing and i have a tussle
“redeeming love” is the name of the movie that i watch and then pause to draw more it is about gold-strike times and a dirt farmer and a luscious prostitute he is bound and resolute to marry her she is scarred from abandonment and the ugliness that goes with the life
it’s impossible to say what influence watching the movie has on my drawing except that watching the movie is strangely soothing because despite the tawdriness and pain the title promises glory by the end and i need that hope right now for my drawing (notice the word DEFEAT in lower right) and my day (seems like yesterday i did my laundry and not four days ago and i go out of town tomorrow and haven’t booked a room yet and i want to finish this drawing and another more important drawing and and and and and) and my life
old guy getting older full of stewed carrots coffee and redeeming hope
There’s a sort of warning in the background of this image, a sampleresque homily which has been, to my knowledge, as yet unwritten. It says “Ambiguity S O C K S.” it is sort of self-demonstrating.
I got ambitious, and my have overreached my ability –I KNOW the viewer needs all the help she or he can get, yet there’s a lot of chaos here. The double acrostic poem, “Kitchens Sync,” gives another clue as to why. A lot is thrown in.
kitchens sync
kundalini yoga sends intimation to yr friends take a ride on grammerly challenge all yr fammerly help a sea or gutter urchin end a quest 4 what yr surchin need of job r wife r clinic seeds yr future megacynic
When Kitchens Sync, i.e. become synchronous or achieve synchronicity, the phrase “everything but the kitchen sink” expands to become “everything INCLUDING the sinks of more than one kitchen.” I hope and trust that some enjoyment of this poem/image may be derived by looking for patterns. One example that may be missed if I don’t mention it is that the poem has one instance of the shorthand word “yr” (for “your”) in every other line of the poem. That wasn’t done gratuitously. It’s intended to reinforce the connection between the reader and the poem’s arc. Whether it works or not is a matter of opinion–YOUR opinion.
The center figure seemed to me to look a bit like the late Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson once ran for public office, and used a symbol of his own design for the political party he was trying to get off the ground, of a two-thumbed hand gripping a peyote button. My guy doesn’t have two thumbs on his hand, but including the thumb there are six fingers. I think I owe the whimsy of that to Marc Chagall, who once gave one of his figures a seven-fingered hand. After I post this page I’ll see if Chagall had any other reason for doing that other than the sheer anarchic joy of it. If not, that was plenty–doing a little time in the Anarchic Circle is good for an artist’s refreshment. 🙂
One with Clay, Image and Text 