BROTHER SEBASTIAN,
MY HEART HAS
MY HEART HAS
SOME BREAKAGE
Cleaning tables at a 12th Street Spanish restaurant is
really no fun at all. Fingers to the bone, like the raw meat
that even a cat ignores - all torn and rotten like stubble.
A counter top with the cash register at the end and a spike
where you stick the finished receipts. Everyone checks their
bills twice. Waitress Issabela (her spelling there) is a crook,
known to be a crook, caught in the act of being a crook and,
most substantially, was born a crook. No fun at all, I moan.
-
This was my vocational training after flunking out of PS19.
Rather I quit as quickly as I could. They were killing my kind
in Vietnam, so I ran off to Toronto and stayed. It wasn't so
bad - by the 70's it even had a grand rebirth of sorts, and
got hip. John and Yoko hung around, man was that cool.
Art in the morning hours, drugs and booze at night, and
reading by a lantern for the length of afternoons.
-
Now, here I am, years later, still doing time though this time
in a cat-less loft with paintings and lumber everywhere and
black coffee where the sense of a meal should be. I never eat.
I hate it. I hate the chewing and the people watching me and the
smells and the textures and all that - no one really needs to
eat, it's all an ingrained and social habit. To be nice, people fart
around eating their 'three squares' a day as if it mattered; always
chomping something. The fat movie kid with the ten ton popcorn
bucket. Every couple of days, for me, is okay, and I'm most
comfortable that way. Why tax the system?
-
It's a nominal endeavor anyway; staying alive is the easy part.
What's really tough is 'what are you going to do with all that time?'
Try doing something when you have no mind : I don't mean a
film or some TV crap. I mean a real-deal creative flap. Like
making something from nothing and staying there. What I heard
the guy say on the catwalk above me : 'You can roast
beef, but you can't pea soup.' Huh?
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