POST FATA RESURGO

I.
Don't try to be an honest man

but to be good. 

II.

Don't try to be an honest man

but to be fair. 

III.

If you are good & fair

everyone will know that

you are an honest man.

City Lights

The City Lights

has always been for me

a sanctuary of wood flesh & paper

in my peregrinations seeking redemption

starting from the collapse of Tenderloin

& arriving in North Beach

Saints Peter & Paul Church

& if Ferlinghetti died

I remember that time

we talked looking down the street

on the Kerouac alley.

Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler

Bob Dylan,
QUOTE
when blackness was a virtue
no road full of mud
no toil & blood

In here
even if ALL
bayou region thick existence
always thinking here
the rolling thunderee

No look at the past
no look at what matter
people I met knew loved
always writing ‘bout here
standing abruptness of the missie

Ever since I came in here
20 yrs ago
a flesh-eating wondering child
end of the researching
a thing never done before.

America as We knew It

I do not know
if I had already sent you
This is the Other America
the One I know
the One That I saw
Nola's one
San Fran's one
This is what
in which I believe
This is me

An American Laic Cathedral

After twenty minutes from Downtown Amarillo, Texas, driving thru I-40 West for over 10 miles, you reach the exit between 60 and 62, you slide into a side road called Frontage I-40, and not before a U-turn, you stop your car in front of a gate similar to a turnstile. In 1973 a man named Stanley Marsh, defined in most press accounts "eccentric billionaire”, called San Francisco Collective Ant Farm and with three of its leading members - Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels, decided to buy ten Cadillac produced from 1948 to 1963 and to stick them with their metallic nose deep into the ground. The Cadillacs are aligned and arranged according to the precise angle of the Pyramid of Cheops, Giza, Egypt. The cars lie idle about fifty meters from the entry, and the short path to them, surrounded by low crops, serves as a meditative approach to the installation place. Once you are in front, once that you put yourself in the right distance, you have the complete picture and you can contemplate this authentic American Laic Cathedral. In the United States there are at least a couple of other places like that, places that have this unique, unrepeatable specificity (Heidelberg Project, Detroit and Outdoor Desert Art Museum, Joshua Tree), but the Cadillac Ranch for its historical, geographical and social context, can push the boundaries - even it’s passed more than four decades, the site is no longer the original one, the relic-cars changed several times painting and shade - the boundaries of what was called American Dream and what I would like to call today, American Way of Life, or American Way of Thinking. The fact that they arranged the cars in the same angle of the Pyramid of Giza was not arbitrary: if the pyramids were colossal monuments, erected-tombs for eternals god-men, with the aim to last for thousands of years, the Ranch is the abstract result of the dominant civilization in the world during the last century, and particularly in the Western World Century. It’s no coincidence that such open-air art installations like the two examples of Detroit and Joshua Tree (and the Street Art with its graffiti in New York and Los Angeles etc.?), are present on US soil and not in Europe or maybe even elsewhere. Cadillac Ranch goes further. Its metaphysical coincides with Houston Rothko Chapel’s, a nonconfessional chapel open to all religions till to the prayers of those who are devoid of any religious sense. Simplistically, someone might even say it is a non-place. I think it's just the opposite, even something more than the opposite. With these ten Cadillac buried into the ground for a third of their bodies, you're in front of an ecstatic representation of American Life. Its founding and essential characteristics, its crucial elements: the land of opportunity with the extension, the power and the cruelty of the territories on which you can trace an imaginary border, push it further and further toward an horizon that you will never see, that does not end and therefore does not exist, that can’t have a fixed point of destination but only of transition; the constant and uncontrollable propagation, affirmation and permeation of capitalism with its distractions, disparities, contradictions that fall in inequality and injustice; the freedom of expression, the propensity to discussion and the belief that a more open and free system for the individual will always be better than another in which there are severe limitations in the field of rights and economic opportunities; the idea, true or not, that it is a Nation (and a People - We the People) Under God; finally, the state of criticism, the talent and the inclination for a deep self-criticism as a mean of regeneration and rebirth of the society itself. Cadillac Ranch, 1974. Amarillo, Texas, USA.

Here In Dallas, July 8

'nother day

staying away, distant

protests on the streets

neighbours

your brother

your sister

people killed in neighborhoods

none of this affects us

courage

same ol’ hotel room

she is locked in the bathroom/two hours

she mourns his father

shee cries because shee cannot do anything else

& it has always been the most comfortable thing

men who win

those who lose

tragic events in our bones

what does it matter

I only ask for a rye

but there is no rye

form of compassion

here in dallas, texas, today, live.

Bill Evans

He had just won the academy award

for the best supporting actor

things end so soon

things end like that

people in the early hours of the day

he took the car, chet baker

everything was so easy

down from the hills

the green

people

what can be said

after success

a persistent success

for a whole lifetime

while the others

are watching you

windows

hiding places that they create

bill evans