I Get Fun Anonymous Mail: Enjoy

Anonymous said...

Life going down hill? But what of your wife and child? Is their presence not worthy of softeneing this comment a little? What a maroon. If you took half the time you use for writing this drivel (indeed including your "art" writings of the past) you could have a Ph.D. by now. Please have the courage to post this.

Thanks!--a friend from long ago who's trying to help.

1:11 PM


My reply:

This is pretty fascinating. If you are actually a "friend", then sign your name. If not, then yawn. As for courage posting this, here ya go Fagin. And why would I want to have a PHD, like half of my siblings, and dozens of other losers I have known along the way who basically had their intellects turned into self absorbed mini-deities by the academy. And if you think of this all as "drivel" why would you waste any time reading it? A friend from long ago, indeed. Most the people I knew from long ago turned out to be easily distracted by their own lives. That is just okay with me, but why bother now? I confess, you seem to be the maroon here.

I love my wife and child. They are none of your f-ing business ace. As far as this comment needing softening, I leave that open to the peanut gallery. IZZATSO?

In any case, I am doing the best I can. It doesn't include doing the things you think are important. It also doesn't include jesus or richard nixon or the book of mormon. It doesn't include led zeppelin and it doesn't include ashberry's later work. I intend to lead my life, literary and other, exactly the way I think it should be led, and as truthfully as possible. If you think that means writing drivel, that is just fine with me. What are you writing? How's your phd?

Another Rat Escapes the Ship of State

I'm the first to admit it; I must've been wrong. Gonzales actually resigned. Maybe there's a plan to sneak him out of the country. Who knows? There is so much that is terminally rotten in the Bush white house that anything is possible. I think the original plan has gone south though, and they are beginning to understand that they will be giving up power in a year and a half. We will see if the use of propaganda and dirty tricks is effective enough to sneak another Republican in, despite the terrible situation Bush has brought us too.

I am mostly well today. I went to work and that was kind of fun. Kimberly stayed home though. And Piper stayed home. Piper is mainly well, but I am having trouble dragging her back to this daycare. We found out yesterday that they aren't going to re-open the facility over by us. We liked it because it was so small and the group in it was essentially pretty small. I guess the time has come to start looking around for something else.

Meanwhile I get an envelope from my mortgage holders today telling me they've sold the mortgage to somebody else who's raised my payment by $125. Where do they expect me to come up with this? Everybody has raised rates quite a bit in the last year and we are now really starting to fall behind. I am thinking that a night job to go with my dayjob is called for.

I know it was a big mistake not getting my bachelors degree. My life has headed south for years now. All that time I spent on the fringes of organized art was wasted, I admit it. There isn't much I can do about it now.

But my daughter Paige is here and she is a good person. We went to bookstores yesterday and today and spent lots of time there. I mostly watched Piper, but we both love the books. The difference is I can't bring myself to spend a big hunk of money on them like she can. Point of view. I remember my father complaining that everything was too expensive. Well, it depends on your income.

Hopefully things will get better. Gonzales is gone and that is at least a sign of a return to a more normal path. Bush will probably slip in some other criminal to protect himself with a recess appointment, but it is only a matter of time before we start seeing the books about the failure of the Bush presidency. At least we didn't have a draft or he would've killed many thousands more american and citizens of other countries. At least there was no excuse for him to use the nuclear (pardon me, nucular) option.

Well, the ability of the human mind to deceive itself is a remarkable thing.

I question myself every day.

Let the Lady bring me into the light so I may see the truth.

Busted Flat in Baton Rouge

We are pretty much desperately sick with cold/flu, probably from Piper's going back to daycare. Paige seems well and currently is over at the Dan and Tan show, hanging out. We are pretty boring here at 404. But let's hear it for good drugs. Piper is pretty much over it now. And she is in a good mood; Paige is here. She likes her big sister.

Marion was supposed to come see Paige this weekend, but when she went to catch the bus she planned to take it turned out not to run on Saturdays. So that went away. And I had actually started cleaning the house. Well, I promptly quit on that.

I don't know what our plans for tomorrow are. Perhaps Kimberly will get to make the marble cake for Paige's b-day we have been talking abut. I bought some absolutely killer Scharffen Burger cooking chocolate recently. It was half price at a kitchen store, a pound for six bucks.

I finished my third Ross MacDonald novel in the last week, The Instant Enemy. It was great, but I think I don't have anymore. SO I opened up a Chandler, the Big Sleep. Boy, he could write a sentence.

Well, this is no more than noise tonight. I hope you are well, wherever you are. Love & mercy, friends, for all of us tonight. Regards to Brian Wilson.

Paige in Town

It's been a kind of tough week. Piper was very sick yesterday and today she ran quite the fever. She's in a good mood, though. Not least which because her big sister, the inimitable Paige Osburn is here. I picked Paige up in Normal yesterday after she caught the ISU shuttle from Midway. She's here for the next week and a half or so and supposedly her friends are coming to visit.

Today she ran off with Uncle Dan Keding and had some fun running around town. I spent the day cleaning house and holding Piper on my lap. She was pretty feverish, but very sweet all day. We kept her home from school and also yesterday. I took off today, which is unfortunate because I have no sick days, so I don't get paid when I have to stay home. Kimb had a retreat at work, though and had to go in.

Tomorrow I think we shall leave her here with Paige. I dont' know what the weekend might bring. Mostly I am just hoping for a break in the oppressive heat. Meanwhile, hanging out with Paige is always fun. She is a smart cookie and we have a good time. I totally respect her opinions and the way her mind works. Very interesting, this having very smart children.

I did talk to my son the other day and he reports that Morgan, my remarkable granddaughter, has started walking. I bet she is most cute.

Politics
Bush started comparing this war, Iraq, to Vietnam, saying we could've won if only we had stuck it out and ignored the hippies. Anything to avoid being painted the loser president. He did this war on the cheap and now we are going to pay for years to come and he is gonna blame, who? Dennis Kucinech? The Hippies. The Leftists. You know, anybody who isn't perspicacious enough to know that if we just maintain what we are doing for another five or ten or fifteen or twenty years, then eventually it will all work out and he should get credit for it. Or at least partial credit. At leasta sixty five, high F, low D. Come on, Teach. I gotta pass! I gotta play in the big game! Laura won't suck my dick if I don't get a touchdown this term.

Oh well. We are so doomed. If Rudy wins the idea of a democracy really will be over. They are right when they say you need to be vigilant to keep your freedom. Of course the right wing guys who say that mostly mean their freedom to be bigots and to keep any money they can steal from anyone for any reason, while you and I pay to keep a standing army and the old people out of the gutters (social security people). But you know, and I know, that we have to be fucking vigilant because these creeps are very interested in turning this place into a police state, a la big brother. With those folks from the old testament calling for the execution of my gay brothers and sisters, and the same stealing all the money, and power, in the name of their righteous indignation.

The truth is these folks need sexuality to be constrained because they cannot get a hard on unless they think it is a sin. And that is the Truth. It's all about their inability to have a real penis without associating it with some external "bad" desire. You know, it is the same thing that underlies the moslems need to cover their women up, because you know boys can't control themselves, but in reality it is because they are so afraid their woodies will turn to pudding when faced with a real woman. And that is what actually happens. George Bush couldn't handle a woman who required an actual fucking. Laura is just a gently schlepping little weiner of a girl. And even she probably gets more wood than George. What a loser!

May the Lady Arianrhod hear these words and get a chuckle from them, though bitter they may be for me. She knows we will all be who we will be, but I do ask Her for mercy in Her evaluation. I have screwed up plenty this round on the wheel. Take care my dear friends.

By the way, for those of your who do not know, tomorrow is the nineteenth year since Paige was born in Memorial Hospital in Springfield, Illinois in 1988. I thank the Lady for Her generosity in bringing this child into my life. And now she is a remarkable young woman, a person of taste, reason, and charity. Wow.

Post Weekend and Debate Notes

Four more poems, from several different parts of my past, all from the 1980s. Probably the notes are more interesting than the poems. Link.

Meanwhile, we finally went out and bought an electric pump and got the pool we bought inflated and positioned and filled. Then Piper spent a couple of hours in it while I mowed the yard and did some other yardwork and Kimb watched her.

Tonight for dinner Kimberly made a clam chowder with yukon gold potatos, vidalia onions, some chicken stock, canned clams, bacon and the usual herbs. It turned out great and we ate it all. Yum. More soup in the near future.

I saw some of the dem debate this a.m. I know I am seeing things a certain way, but Barack Obama is the only one of those guys who is always saying what I want to hear. Zogby sent me a poll today and it spent some time talking about the local primary. I'm for Obama and I will probably do some work for him come January. Also money. We are poor, but it is something that has to be done. Somebody has to stand up to the oligarchy. I'm not against Hillary Clinton, and tend to think she will win and become president, but I must do what I think is right here. And that something is this man, Barack Obama. We truly need him to make this a different world. It would change everything, everywhere. Just because of who he is and how he can talk to all of us. Not that I see him as a miracle man, just someone new who is sincere and who is careful and who can see more than most of us where we are headed now.

Goodnight, dear friends around this beautiful world the Lady has given us. Let us rejoice now, that we can feel and speak and hear each other, that we can see the Lady's mercy in this world.

Bridge to Terabithia

Almost eleven here on a Saturday night. We had a kind of off and on day today. We ended up buying Piper a wading pool, a large one, and spent the evening working on inflating the damn thing. Later on we watched Bridge to Terabithia, a movie based on a Newbury award novel.

I had never read the book, so the film was for me the first introduction to the story. I was really getting into the piece when they introduced the tragedy that dominates the second half. And this pretty much leveled me. The rest of the movie was quite good, as was the beginning, but I was pretty rocky and emotional through it. So you could say I really enjoyed it, but it had that absolute sense of what is in fact wrong with the phenomenol world to it.

The two principal kid actors in it were both remarkably well cast and good at their job. They had real chemistry. The girl in particular was a shining light, just the sort of person we all would love to know and would cherish simply because of their own personality. That made it all the more emotionally effective.

The fantasy world itself is underplayed, but well-used. I can only assume that is how it is done in the novel itself. I highly recommend this movie. I was a snotty kid when I was 11-12, and obsessed with sex, so I wasn't as crystalline as this boy is, but I related to him quite well.

In other Tim-world commentary, I finished Ross MacDonald's The Chill, and was once again astonished at his ability to plot complex but believable versions of people's lives. MacDonald spent a lot of his career writing this double plot mystery, where some crime or action in the present mirrors something that happened in the relatively near past, usually fifteen or twenty years ago. He did this over and over and most of those books are jolly fun to read. But it does make me wonder what he was trying to figure out in his own life.

And it calls to mind my book, Strange Sins, with its dual heroines, Stasia and Randy, who are the same soul, reborn in different bodies, trying to deal with the same trauma over twenty years. To be honest I have begun to think that there is something in my own past that haunts me and is some sort of a trauma that made me something of the way I am today. My mother was a complicated creature who had some very weird areas and I have come to believe something happened early on. I should probably try and write about this. And in Strange Sins I think I was beginning to allow this to creep into my consciousness.

Bradway, over those many years I watched her write stories, came to develop this dual girl story. And I know it came from a hard to deal with place in herself. The two girls would both be victims of a sexuality they didn't know how to handle. One of them would hate it, despise herself, have trouble dealing with the world, and the other girl would love it, and feel terribly guilty for her feelings. Of course it was all very much more complex than this simple paragraph, but you could see her awareness growing as she wrote this story in different contexts over many years. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised when her past came out and dragged her down the rabbit hole.

Yet I know that going down the rabbit hole ultimately allowed her to go on living and to have a capacity for some joy. Of course it didn't include me. As a matter of fact, I didn't come up in any of her evaluations, except for Paige. That was something, anyway.

For dinner I made some greek style chicken, browned on top of the oven and then baked, with olive oil, oregano, rosemary. Mashed potatos and corn on the cob. Nothing too complex. We got through it all late. We did get to take a nap. So that was something positive.

Well, as Scarlett always says, "Tomorrow is another day." May the Lady Arianrhod hear my song.

Shared Moments

Two poems from 1985 on Homage.

It is at least Friday evening. Spent quite a bit of time today trying to sort out with Paige next week. Currently it looks like she will fly into O'Hare on Wednesday and then take a bus that leaves from O'Hare to Normal and I will drive over there and pick her up at 6:00 PM. I am also told to expect Kiri and Marion to come spend some time with us in this utterly complex period. Which is fine with me. We like Paige's friends and we don't get much opportunity to entertain.

I am reading a Ross MacDonald novel, The Chill, from the late sixties I believe. It is marvelous. I always enjoyed his books because of how well they are plotted. I use to believe I was such a master at plot. And it is true that I could scene out some weird and interesting stories. If I had had better style perhaps there would be some worth to the verbiage. Be that as it may, I still like the storyline best. And I still prefer fiction to everything else, though I have spent most of the last week reading some new cookbooks.

And on my bedside lives Graves' The White Goddess. I suppose Dobson would consider it fiction. But even if the stories that form the basis of all human belief systems are fictitious, or so badly deformed by human ego and need, that they cannot even be seen to tell the actual story (witness the deformity that is the story of Arianrhod in the Mabinogian), still the truth that runs like a current through his words is something I can always come back to and actually feel.

Sort of like the feeling of reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at the very same time twenty million other people were reading it. Have you ever participated in a group event within the hours of a weekend on that scale? I think not. Perhaps it was a little like watching the world cup, but deeper because each of us was doing it separately, inside of ourselves. Yet we were all together, everywhere, with the same concerns, curiousity, and fear. What a remarkable experience. It reminded me of the day Sergeant Peppers came out.

It was forty years ago today/sergeant pepper taught the band to play...

And it was thirty years ago that Elvis disappered down the rathole of drugs. Sad song.

I, on the other hand, am still here, still keeping track, at least in my own mind.

Thanks to the Lady for Her mercy this Friday in August, 2007. May you all be well.

Lost in the Fun House

Put out four rather prosaic pieces from the late 70s on Homage & Apology. Mostly interesting for the historical perspective. Life is hard, isn't it?

Tonight Paige called, asking me to consider picking her up in Galesburg next Wednesday. I had thought that her friend Kiri was supposed to be doing this, but apparently they got their dates mixed up. I remember having serious trouble keeping track of time at th at age. It's a long way to Galesburg, but Paige thought it was only an hour. It is about an hour and a half from Bloomington, so it would have made sense for Kiri to get her, except that Kiri has returned to C-dale and it is five hours from there.

I don't know what we are going to do just yet. I get off of work at 12:30 and pick up Piper. Paige gets in at four. It's 2 1/2 hours. Ack. It's been a hard time. We did get the water heater fixed, though it cost $130, ten more than the most recent repairs from July. But you gotta have hot water, there's no doubt.

Meanwhile I finished the Gibson novel, Spook Country, and was kind of disappointed, though it was remarkably well written. I am not sure he knows where he is headed these days. But, that is somewhat petty of me. I can't write those sentences. I haven't had those concepts living in my head. Still, it seemed to trail off. His previous book, Pattern Recognition, I loved and wept at the end, but my son, Joel, a big fan, didn't like it too much because he said the science was wrong. Well, that will fuck with things, but I didn't know that and I re-read it recently and found it beautiful and sad. Well, I was always a romantic asshole.

We are all in a sort of spent mode here. Post vacation reality. And the world seems just as awful as ever. I think I'll go read an old Ross MacDonald novel. He was the logical heir to Ray Chandler and Dash Hammett, but he wrote himself into a kind of corner, telling the same story over and over again. You could tell he was trying to figure out something from his own life. Isnt' that the real reason you write fiction? I should ask my friend Gary. He always seemed to be having fun. I was always lost in the funhouse. Typical.

I truly hope the Lady looks on me with some mercy. I truly need it today.

Divine Bear Back in Town

We are home again, in Urbana. The scenery is flat and edging towards harvest. The house is in okay shape, but there is always something to fix. The hot water heater is out and won't re-light, so there is no hot water now. We are preparing to spend more money. Isn't that what life is all about? Keeping the machinery running by paying somebody who knows what they are doing some serious cash.

I did go to work this a.m. I got to see my boss's pictures from his trip to Alaska. We were gone pretty much the exact same two weeks. Ironic, isn't it? But nothing too terrible happened while we were gone. Though he did do some website editing from Anchorage.

He had great pics, beautiful. Mountains, lakes, moose, otter. All the finer things. It looked like they had some serious fun. Later he pulled up the three d map on Google and amused himself by going to the places he had gone in real life the previous week. Pretty fun.

Piper has pingponged back and forth moodwise. Today was a mixed bag. But we are home now and she will have to get used to it. She misses her grandparents and all the fun she had with Kimb's marvelous family. Last Sunday we went to a big family do at Uncle Jimmy's (also known as Captain Jimmy's Treehouse of Fun). This lasted hours and featured much swimming in Jim's above ground pool. Piper had a blast.

Before that I think we were at Aunt Wendy's quite a bit. Kimberly renamed Wendy's house Gwendy-Land. Wen's first name is, of course, Gwendolyn. She is, if anything, even more fun than Uncle Jimmy. Needless to say Grandpa is the most fun, as far as the Piper is concerned.

We did get to go over to Randy and Melissa's house and let Piper play with Olivia. Benjamin basically slept through the whole experience. He is a very laid back infant. The best kind, really.

I finally talked to Paige for a significant amount of time Monday afternoon, sitting in the airport in Manchester. It turns out she hopes to spend a couple of weeks with it at the last half of August. Hopefully this works out. We haven't seen her since Eugene, Oregon, in mid-June. Of course, that is what happens with your kids; they develop their own lives and they go live them. It's an okay thing.

Politics
I still believe in my heart that Karl Rove is a traitor to the republic and should swing from a rope. It demonstrates so much about this once proud land that he is allowed to slink away to Texas and be a rich fucking asshole, after all the damage he spread. And he is proud of it, of course. Proud. Proud to cheat and steal and lie and dissemble and make the wrong choices for thousands of young men and women. Everything he touched is tainted and should be burned.

Particularly George W. Bush. If the Republicans hold the presidency then this country is truly over and the end is in sight. I know, I know, it's Tim's dark vision. In reality the world ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. I am so sure.

Also I am almost done reading William Gibson's novel, Spook Country. I went to Amazon and read the reviews today and noticed that all the negative reader reviews are from the wingnuts out there. Very interesting. Gibson calls a spade a spade, in regards to the NSA bugging programs. And they can't stand that. It hurts them to be reminded that doing those things is exactly what Osama bin Laden counted on would happen after the World Trade Center bombings. George Bush has done everything bin Laden wanted. Wny? Because he is a macho, stupid son of a bitch (have you ever really listened to Barbara Bush?), and he was guided by a fat little turd who gets off destroying other people. Frat boys. Who let them run things?

Well, the rich bastards who really control this world. That's who. Sad, tiny penised little men who's existence can only be confirmed by stealing other people's lives, in the form of money. Because that is what acquiring wealth really is: it's taking the hours from other people, forcing them to spend their lives in labor to maintain their selves and families and then turning around and making their lives less valuable and your's ever more and ever more, in terms of them. It's a sickness. A disease. Even Yeshua spoke against this in the recorded statements of the new testament, and even more forcefully in the Qumran materials.

The heart of the matter is that they lie to themselves.

Resist the desire to lie.

May the Lady help me to find my truth and live within it. Today and every day.

Thursday on Vacation

Thursday afternoon in Sunapee. We went to the Lake this morning, Granliden's beach, and tried fishing with Grandpa and boating with Kimb and Grandpa. Nothing went real well, but Piper had some fun. We swam in the Lake for awhile and went for lunch with Bob and Arlene at Pizza Chef, the local pizza place.

Later Kimb and I took Piper to the Granliden Pool, which is very close to our condo. Yesterday was the day long trip to Portsmouth and swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. We had lunch at an irish pub , Molly Malone's that we've been too before. They had Hoegaden on tap there, which made me glad. And I had the seafood chowder, which I am really getting into on this trip.

Portsmouth was quite nice. Kimb worked at a historical site there, Strawbery Banke, in the mid 1990s. We have gone there many times. IT's a tourist trap, but a good one. Then we went to the beach and stayed there for a couple of hours. We got back late and had some food at Aunt Wendy's house, which has been renamed (thanks to Kimberly) as Gwendo-Land (Wendy's name is Gwendolyn).

It has been a very full week, but it is starting to get close to being over. We fly back to Illinois Monday. There are several family events to fill out our weekend. Piper has been like jekyll and hyde this trip. Every other day she seems to be getting out of control. Still, mostly she is a sweet little bunny.

Life is hard, but it is refreshing to sit on the beach and take some sun.

I hope you are all well. May the Lady share with us the music of the universe, in its joy and its mercy.

Second Picture Post.

Pics from New Hampshire

Bob Britton and Olivia Britton at the condo in August, 2007.

Piper at the beach at Granliden, on Lake Sunapee, in August 2007.

Wendy Britton and Piper at the condo at Granliden.

Benjamin Britton, two days old.

Piper looks at Benjamin at Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Vacation has been a bit back and forth. We did drive to Woodstock, Vermont, one of our favorite haunts. And on the way back from there we stopped at the estate of August St. Gaudens, outside of Cornish just east of the Connecticut River, where we were married in late May of 1999. Such a beautiful place. And there are many examples of St. Gauden's work on the grounds. The more I see his art, the more I am moved by it.

We have seen the family quite a bit, and mostly Piper is having a great time, except when she is being denied something. It changes from day to day.

My old friend, Gary Davidson, who I have known for like 35 years now, drove over from Portsmouth on Sunday and we made him dinner: Roast duck the Ina Garten way, and a cream of onion soup that was exquisite. Bread and plenty of wine, for Gary brought the best and we drank a fair amount of it and finished off a bottle of Grey Goose. Showing our age, though, we ended up going to bed at just a little after midnight.

In today's blogger world there was a link to a news story interview of Patty Boyd Harrison Clapton. In it she talks about how George Harrison wrote the song, "Something" for her. Frank Sinatra was quoted as saying it was the most perfect love song ever written. And it was the most successful and covered of George's work. Then she goes on to tell of Eric Clapton having her meet him in a hotel room in London to hear a song, secretly away from George. He played her the studio mix of "Layla", three times. That night they started the affair that ended her marriage to George.

See, that is what Graves would point to and say is true poetry: it is about the White Goddess, as represented by this remarkable woman. He would say that it is a classic story, George as the waning god and Eric as the waxing god, and Patty as the Lady herself, representing the eternity of the species. I buy that, but gosh, think how she must've felt, listening to "Layla" that day. "You've got me on my knees..." I have never personally owned a copy of that lp (Derek and the Dominoes), but I can hear "Layla" in my head and go through the whole song, pretty much note for note. I must point out that I can hear "Something" also (it was on the Beatles' Abbey Road).

What a story.

Thanks to the White Lady, for all that we see and for inspiring this art and perhaps all the art that really matters.

Benjamin Britton

I was awakened this morning at 5:45 by a phonecall from my brother-in-law, Randy. His wife, Melissa, gave birth to the latest Britton, this moring. A boy, named Benjamin. Everybody is doing well and the whole family is pretty excited. This keyboard is not working right, so I'm going to stop on this post. I note to anyone who needs to email me that I really only have access to the account at hotmail: tosburn@msn.com. Plus try this account if you need to communicate with me.

Again, my gratitude to the Lady for Her mercy, and for this child. May we all rejoice in the circle, unbroken again.

From Sunapee, New Hampshire

We spent the afternoon on the beach at Granliden. The water was cold, but very nice. It is in the mid 80s here. The sun was welcome. Piper had a wonderful time. The beach is shallow out quite aways and she can go out fifteen or twenty feet and it only comes up to her chest. She is liking that big time. We think we will try and go swimming every day we are here in Sunapee. It is so beautiful in New Hampshire.

My friend from long ago who is still my friend, Gary D., is coming on Sunday to sup with us and spend the night, talking about the state of things. We look forward to the opportunity to cook fabulous food.

Tonight Randy and the very pregnant and overdue Melissa are coming with the rest of the fam and their two year old Olivia. A good time will be had.

Guess I will go. The political news is sad and pitiful. The bridge collapse in Minnesota is a harbinger of things to come. Times are tough.

May the Lady smile on us with sympathy and mercy. It could happen.