Up and Up and Up

Up and Up and Up,
the three of them sang,
it was all the same to them
welcome or not

he told them to leave
and so they left!

someone else told
them to return
and they did!

up and up and up
they walked,
back to where
they started out.

a fine time
either way.

Memorial

Beat, oh hammered and beat like brass like brass cymbals, those big ones, I saw a movie about Charlie Parker, Bird, they used big brass cymbals making their big brass sound for some symbolic artistic meaning, about how he was treated, beat like brass like heavy cymbals, hammered into the mortal form, why not?

Towered over with skyscrapers and cloud formations in the blue, rattling in subways through dark tunnels and on broken sidewalks in big crowds, ascending in high speed elevators to luxury carpets of the workplace and to Duke's deli on 51st Street with big steam tables and giant salmons both hot and cold, beat by the metropolitan hammers of modernity with new TV screens in the high speed elevators seducing the attention with stock market reports and showing eastern standard time, hammered and beat like brass cymbals clashing metal sounds of neverending mortality.

Unadorned

not polished stone
with bright reflections

but rough and ragged rock
of its own nature,

unadorned by intent,
rich in dominion

it does not
catch the eye
in magpie tinsel

of more than that
I cannot say

(Inspired by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's video teaching, http://www.shambhala.org/teachings/category.php?media=video "The Ice Cubes of Bodhi")

Seasonal Ribaldry.

Wrote a tune the other night. Work hard, play hard, all that. Here's a gabcast version (reminder: turn down sound to avoid distortion caused by phone recording - and yes, again, no music, just me, sigh - choose "episode 6").

Gabcast! Auld Manhattoe #6



The Lyrics:
15 Men in 30 Days, by Nightprowlkitty


she was a terrible woman
the way she loved her men
she treated them like candy
oh yes, she did, and then

she'd toss the box aside
and catch another ride
and when I asked her
to explain,
she sang me this refrain

I want 15 men in 30 days
girl, you're asking me why?
cause I can get 'em
and I can love 'em
till the day I die.

I want 15 men in 30 days
And I'm not playin' you wise
cause I want 'em
and I can find 'em
like a crackerjack surprise!

She was a terrible woman
the way she loved her men
but when I listened to her story
I remembered way back when

I'd toss the box aside
and catch another ride
and when they asked me
to explain,
I'd sing the same refrain.
(back to chorus, etc.)


Is it ribaldry or ribaldery? And how does one pronounce ribald? rih'-bald? "rye'-bald"? Don't hear folks say that word very often.

'Course I am but a mere amateur in this field. Here is a maestro!


Bull Moose Jackson "Big Ten Inch Record"

Rachel

The story so incidental to Akiba's that I had to look up her name, it was Rachel.

He began his studies late in life and he married her, her family had money and her father disapproved of slacker husband starting school at 40.

She saw something she dug in him. So she married him and suffered poverty as he wandered looking for teachers as was the way in those times.

She did stuff, who knows what she did, the story doesn't say much, I don't even remember if they had children. She had to make ends meet, I guess. I wonder if she had a reputation, here was the daughter of a wealthy man, probably had some sophistication, she did dig Akiba before he was even noticeable to be dug, she must have had a sharp eye for the wise guy. Though in the story it is a disapproving neighbor ridiculing her for her husband's 12 year abdication of tilling his turf.

And so he comes back to her after long times of study, and passing by the window before entering the door ("Honey! I'm home!"), he hears her respond to the mean neighbor (and what kind of neighborhood was it, I wonder, and did Rachel do anything, make anything, to make her place look or be different than the others?).

"Well if I had my way, he'd study for another 12 years!" Rachel's pride and woe and rue and glooms all poured into passionate renunciations and declarations and such, her annoyance at folks not digging what was so front and center to her, all that.

And Akiba hears it and goes back to study for another 12 years.

The story is sparse. Because in the end when he has won all the glory, wisdom prizes and entourages, and she reunites with him, he makes her contribution clear, two souls like two eyes seeing same vision, moving toward it on separate and solitary paths.

What happened to Rachel, I don't know, Akiba met a martyr's end, it was wild and savage times with occupations and empires and rebellions.

New Rich Text

Turned the wheel
and whirled
into the karmic dance

having chosen this,
evoking the common spell
with my own pledge.

Still, I shall dance
with whoever asks,

Still, I am bound.

Now I add
this new picked
flower
to the
mad bouquet

And, decadent,
enjoy its
perfume.

Auld Manhattoe's December Jump and Jive

Wealthy in the good life,
like owning palaces
in every beautiful
spot on earth,
Mad overflowing abundant
jewels and diamonds
overflowing golden chest
kind of riches,

While at the same time.
the wolf is at the door.

It's all love and the mad life
Dakini dance.