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[Cartoon found<\/a> at the site of the Anxiety and Stress Disorders Institute of Maryland.]<\/em><\/p>\n From whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n Bad People<\/strong><\/p>\n A man told me once that all the bad people (Robert Bly, Morning Poems<\/em> [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n …and<\/a>:<\/p>\n We think hitting the ground, knocking over the barrier is a mistake, but the ground we hit, the failure we experience is not a mistake. The world is endlessly mysterious, experience is profound to a degree that will always surprise us. But it is never a mistake. To foster even a meager appreciation of that (and when we’re in the midst of a fall, meager is pretty big) is to begin to practice, to raise the bodhi-mind. It is the decision to stop complaining and to start paying attention. Contained in the fall is exactly what we need to stand. Everything we need is available, but we have to invite it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Bonnie Myotai Treace [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n “People aren’t either wicked or noble,” the hook-handed man said. “They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler), The Grim Grotto<\/em> [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n …and:<\/p>\n Another Plot Clich\u00e9<\/strong><\/p>\n My dear, you are the high-speed car chase, and I, (Rebecca Hoogs [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n Over at the KickStarter “crowdsourced funding platform” site, pretty much any artist, performer, writer, photographer (etc.) can actively pursue the spinning of gold from the straw of their empty pockets. (Block that metaphor!)<\/em><\/span> This week a band called Sons of Bill joined their ranks, proposing to fund production of their third album<\/a> through KickStarter. As you can see, they hit their target — $20,000 — within twenty-four hours, although the donation period stretches all the way to April 1. (As of this moment, they’re at almost $25K.) I don’t know how they plan to spend the extra funds, but typically with KickStarter projects any money beyond the target gets used to polish the resulting work somehow. (It goes to more professional marketing and distribution, say, or to the rental of better production facilities, whatever.) So, we’ll see.<\/p>\n In the meantime, below are Sons of Bill<\/a>, performing an acoustic version of “Santa Ana Winds.”* I’d buy their album just on the strength of this example: this is a written<\/em> song.<\/p>\n
\nWere needed. Maybe not all, but your fingernails
\nYou need; they are really claws, and we know
\nClaws. The sharks — what about them?
\nThey make other fish swim faster. The hard-faced men
\nIn black coats who chase you for hours
\nIn dreams — that’s the only way to get you
\nTo the shore. Sometimes those hard women
\nWho abandon you get you to say, “You.”
\nA lazy part of us is like a tumbleweed.
\nIt doesn’t move on its own. Sometimes it takes
\nA lot of Depression to get tumbleweeds moving.
\nThen they blow across three or four States.
\nThis man told me that things work together.
\nBad handwriting sometimes leads to new ideas;
\nAnd a careless god — who refuses to let people
\nEat from the Tree of Knowledge — can lead
\nTo books, and eventually to us. We write
\nPoems with lies in them, but they help a little.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nI am the sheet of glass being carefully carried
\nacross the street by two employees of Acme Moving
\nwho have not parked on the right side
\nbecause the plot demands that they make
\nthe perilous journey across traffic,
\nand so they are cursing as rehearsed
\nas they angle me into the street, acting as if
\nthey intend to get me to the department store, as if
\nI will ever take my place as the display window, ever clear
\nthe way for a special exhibit at Christmas, or be Windexed
\nonce a day, or even late at night, be pressed against
\nby a couple who can\u2019t make it back to his place,
\nand so they angle me into the street, a bright lure,
\na provocative claim, their teaser, and indeed
\nyou can\u2019t resist my arguments, fatally flawed
\nthough they are, so you come careening to but and butt
\nand rebut, you come careening, you being
\nboth cars, both chaser and chased, both good and bad, both
\ndone up with bullets that haven\u2019t yet done you in.
\nI know I\u2019m done for: there\u2019s only one street
\non this set and you\u2019ve got a stubborn streak a mile long.
\nI can smell the smoke already.
\nNo matter, I\u2019d rather shatter<\/span>
\nthan be looked through all day. So come careening; I know
\nyou\u2019ve other clich\u00e9s to hammer home: women with groceries
\nto send spilling, canals to leap as the bridge is rising.
\nAnd me? I\u2019m so through. I\u2019ve got a thousand places to be.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n