The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Author: Joe Linker

  • San Francisco 1969 Photo Album

    Does anyone make photo albums anymore? In July of 1969, I flew from Los Angeles to San Francisco, where I spent a few days wandering around town, taking a few photos. Included here are a few black and white photos taken with my Exakta 500 – purchased used at the photo store on Main Street in El Segundo to take surfing photos. It came with a 50 millimeter / 2.8 lens. I didn’t have a light meter and guessed at the settings. I would have been using Kodak 35mm black and white film, not sure what speed.

    On Instagram, and other social media sites, we might view, I don’t know, hundreds of pics an hour? Light literally flashes through the eyes, faster than a camera shutter – where does it go, that light? What do we get from those quick views? What do we remember? There are other sites, some devoted to more serious photography (500px, for example). I follow a few good photographers on Instagram. The ones I’m most interested in these days are the street photographers. Here’s one I follow that does some black and white and I think does good work: David McCarthy. He has a book out, titled “The Portlanders,” which features Portland street scenes taken in black and white.

    My photo album I dug out from a closet this morning I’ve had since 1969. It’s amazing to me it’s survived all these years. Click to view galleries.

    I kept an eye out for Steven McQueen’s Ford Mustang, but I didn’t see it anywhere around.

    I would have taken the photos out of the album, but they’re stuck to the pages now under the plastic sheet covers, which are also stuck. I edited a couple in Google Photos, but that’s much ado for not much more, and anyway I prefer the attempt at getting the originals with my camera as shown here, with no touching up.

  • Schoenberg’s Cartoon Music

    Having installed Idagio, the all classical music app suggested by Alex Ross this week in his review of Apple Music Classical, I then turned to his book “The Rest is Noise” (2007) to search for some 20th Century music to test Idagio’s functions. I alighted on Schoenberg. I like “Twelve-Tone” music because it ignores mood. One of the features of Idagio that’s somewhat annoying is its suggestion that classical music can somehow be explained by moods, evoke mood, or dispel mood. Maybe it can and does, but the Idagio feature labeled “Play My Mood” asks the musician to be a magician. I’m reminded of the first stanza of Wallace Stevens’s “The Man with a Blue Guitar” (1937):

    The man bent over his guitar,
    A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

    They said, “You have a blue guitar,
    You do not play things as they are.”

    The man replied, “Things as they are
    Are changed upon the blue guitar.”

    And they said then, “But play, you must,
    A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

    A tune upon the blue guitar
    Of things exactly as they are.”

    By eliminating the listener’s expectations, Twelve-Tone music replaces mood with something new. It sends the elevator you might be riding through the roof. Somehow, I’m not sure if I found it first in Idagio or “The Rest is Music,” I was suddenly listening to Schoenberg’s “String Trio” op. 45 (1946). Alex Ross gives it this analysis:

    “The score is full of distortion and noise, with the players asked to execute such eerie [pun intended?] effects as sul ponticello (bowing the strings at the bridge) and col legno (bowing or tapping the strings with the wood of the bow). Yet the contrasting lyrical episodes radiate nostalgia for the former tonal world. By his own testimony [was he on trial?], Schoenberg was depicting in musical terms a severe asthma attack he experienced in the summer of 1946, during which his pulse temporarily stopped and he was given an injection to the heart. Some passages represented the injections, he said, others the male nurse who treated him. The composer Allen Shawn, in a book about Schoenberg, notes that the String Trio is a kind of fantastic autobiography, ‘as if in his delirium he had reviewed his life.’ The ending is soft and wistful.”

    324

    One problem with that analysis is that Ross has already mentioned “Scott Bradley’s inventive scores for Tom and Jerry cartoons in the forties, notably Puttin’ on the Dog and The Cat That Hated People” (324). Schoenberg’s attempts to introduce Twelve-Tone music into movies, Ross explains, came to disappointment, but then it was found to work well in cartoons. I then looked for “The Cat That Hated People” in Idagio. Not there. So I tried YouTube, and there it is, a classic from 1948:

    If you listen to only the music, separate the music from the cartoon, you’ll have the necessary introduction to Schoenberg’s “String Trio” of 1946. If you still don’t get it, just remember it has something to do with cats:

    XXV

    He held the world upon his nose
    And this-a-way he gave a fling.

    His robes and symbols, ai-yi-yi –
    And that-a-way he twirled the thing.

    Sombre as fir-trees, liquid cats
    Moved in the grass without a sound.

    They did not know the grass went round.
    The cats had cats and the grass turned gray

    And the world had worlds, ai, this-a-way:
    The grass turned green and the grass turned gray.

    And the nose is eternal, that-a-way.
    Things as they were, things as they are,

    Things as they will be by and by . . .
    A fat thumb beats out ai-yi-yi.

    Wallace Stevens, “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” Stanza XXV of XXXIII

  • Boogie El Porto

    The first boogie boards were kits – a foam blank and a “skin.” You shaped the blank, bringing the nose up a bit, and skinned it with glue, trimming the edges. We boogied El Porto mostly in the afternoons after the wind turned from offshore to onshore blowing out the waves. Better formed morning waves went to surfboards. The boogie boards worked best with a fin. The short duck foot was the best fin, one or two. The fin helped paddle into the wave and angle down the face. The photos here are from early to mid 70’s.

    As the boogie boards gained popularity, they were used all day long. Because they were soft, they were not as dangerous as surfboards. The photo bottom left above was taken during a storm surf episode late 70s, and shows the iconic El Segundo towers in the upper right corner. The lifeguard tower ramp is at 45th, the north end of El Porto. The sand cliff carved out by the storm surf is unusual. The beach usually gradually sloped down to the water.

    We started wearing wetsuits around 1969, but in the afternoons we usually did not. The water wasn’t that cold. We got spoiled by the wetsuits.

    We took photos with my Exakta 500, which I had bought used from a local photo shop. We used slide film which we got developed usually at a local Fotomat drive through. The 50mm lens that came with the camera proved inadequate, so I later bought a 120mm portrait lens which worked pretty well as a telephoto. But we also used Instamatic cameras, also using slide film. The slides here are worn and showing their age. A few I’ve posted before, but continue to scan and update as conversion technology has improved, and the audience here and for old stuff from the old days at El Porto continues to change.

    These are not professional photos, not even good photos, which is why some of them, like the last one above, might approach art. The photographers were surfers who picked up a camera anonymously to save a moment.

  • The Rest is on Repeat

    This week, Alex Ross, the music critic at The New Yorker, posts online a review comparing classical music streaming apps. Apple recently introduced an app titled “Apple Music Classical,” dedicated to the longhair genre. It comes as no surprise that Alex prefers CDs and albums to streaming, for the seemingly more real sound but also the better to hold and get the feel of something in your hands as you listen, and something in depth to read, from liner notes to scholarly musical explanations, and something to sleeve and shelve in a physical collection. And Alex is of course opposed to the inequality of musician remuneration created by the streaming business. I’m not sure the music business historically has ever been all that different from the claims Alex describes plague today’s players. From garage band to the main stage at a national venue is a long and winding road, always has been, a rough go of potholes and sinkholes. Some of his arguments seem unsound. He faults streaming for one for damaging the environment. But what happens to all that plastic CDs are made from once they don’t resale at the garage sale? Talking about the studious background the Apple app provides, he slows to a kind of stooped criticism: “A podcast called ‘The Story of Classical’…is surprisingly square in approach, resembling music-appreciation lectures at an old-fashioned community college.” One wonders how many community college lectures the Harvard educated Alex Ross has ever attended.

    I’d not heard of these classical music apps Ross is comparing. I decided, on his recommendation, to try out Idagio, a classical music dedicated app out of Berlin. It’s great. The app is clean and clear and easy to navigate. And because it’s dedicated to one genre, I immediately felt surrounded by less clutter than my current music subscription app, which is YouTube Music. But could I get guitar, gypsy jazz, Leo Brouwer out of Idagio? Alex Ross’s otherwise excellent book “The Rest is Noise” (2007) is quiet on guitar. Have a look at the Index: a tiny Pete Seeger mention, but no Segovia; Dave Brubeck appearance, but no Julian Bream; Captain Beefheart of all people, but no Leo Brouwer. And of course all the classical music dudes. The noise discussed is primarily 20th Century classical music noise. Admitted to the Royal College of Music in the 1940s, Julian Bream was told not to bring his guitar. So I was surprised to find in Idagio not only Segovia and Bream but also Brouwer as well as Jimi Hendrix – “Little Wing” (1967) performed on violoncello by Peter Hudler (2022). Also I found Django Reinhardt. One cool characteristic of classical music is its profound ability to delightfully surprise the ears and notions, and one surprise is its regular use of the popular, the folk, the natural.

    Speaking of ears, I recently am wearing a new pair of hearing aids. These are stupendous, allowing streaming of sound directly through the aids, sort of like wearing headphones. I can turn this feature on or off with an app. The phone is hands free, the sound in my ears, or in my head, which can feel a little weird until you get used to it, not from the phone speaker. And there are easy to change settings, including one for recorded music, another for musician, and another for live music, as well as noisy environment, and TV streaming directly in the ears via Bluetooth connection – so the others in the room can listen at regular volume. Sound has never sounded so good.

    And speaking of sound and guitar, here’s a link to a short driveway solo jam recorded the other night in the driveway under the maple tree while Susan picked up falling apples and tossed them into a bucket.

  • Old Pic of the Day: Venice Beach Around 1970

    We walked out one morning to find an art installation up from the water, large paper wraps spread across the beach. They looked like sea creatures, dinosaurs, giant lizards of some kind. I asked Susan to stand in front of one to put an idea of their size into the picture. Susan has never liked having her picture taken, and she’s showing that in her pose here. We walked down the Strand for some breakfast, and Susan snapped a picture of Joan and Terri and me. I think we were using slide film in an Instamatic of some kind.

  • Ten Questions to Ask When Reading a Poem

    1. An author brings words to a page, but he’s not necessarily the speaker of the poem, the I of the poem, who the poem is about. The speaker can be a fictional character the author has made up, like the narrator of a novel. And even if the poem is not written in the first person (I, me, we, our), there is still a speaker, a voice talking. The poem may be written in the second person (you, your) – here the speaker is like the writer of a letter. Who is the speaker talking to? Or a poem may be written in the third person: she, her, they. Or no person – the poem appears not to have a speaker. Consider the familiar corner Stop Sign. Who’s the speaker? Who’s the intended audience? White letters on a red background. Why red? Is the Stop Sign a poem? If we don’t ask questions of the obvious, we’ll soon have trouble reading poetry.

    2. A poem, even if published in a so-called reputable and credible publication, is not necessarily a good poem (Joyce Kilmore’s “Trees”, for example, first appeared in Poetry Magazine in 1913). Don’t sweat it. But a poem might be considered good if it achieves its purpose, and maybe it’s the poem’s purpose that seems bad. There are many different kinds of poetry and poets. You don’t owe them anything. Like music, art and architecture, TV shows and movies – there are wheels within wheels that bring them to our attention, and while we might enjoy one type, we might want to avoid others. But your likes and dislikes don’t determine the worth or value of a song, a movie, a house, a photograph, a poem. Don’t ask if the poem is good or bad. Ask if the poem achieves its purpose. What is the poem’s purpose? To make you laugh, cry, shout, run and hide, feel guilty, happy, or sad? To inform or disinform? To instruct or deconstruct? To sing and dance, to perform? To protest? To affirm? To question?

    3. Poets are like the Easter Bunny. They like to color and hide eggs. Reading a poem is like going on an Easter egg hunt. Take a dictionary along to hold the eggs you find. How many eggs are in your basket? But some poets are too good at hiding their eggs, and you don’t find any. Inside each egg is a secret.

    4. What appeals are made to your senses? Do you know what things smell like? Are the rushes of sound given names? Is there something there too fearful to touch? Can you taste the words when you chew them? Can you see what’s being described as if within your very eyes?

    5. Consider the layout of the letters and words. What’s the shape, the blueprint, the design? How many words and how many lines? Count them and write the numbers down. Any repetitions? How many syllables in each line? Are there patterns? Stepping stones? A path? Is this poem a rocky mountain to climb or a grassy hill to slide down? A wave to ride? An updraft to cruise?

    6. Is the poem serious or joking or sarcastic, maudlin or lugubrious, childish or elderly, obscure or everyday, difficult or easy? Is something being taken too seriously? Is no one listening? Is it hokey? Is the poem long, short, fat, skinny, bony, chewy, sinewy?

    7. Where is the speaker? At home, work, asleep? In the country, city, at the ballpark? In a church, a mall, about to jump off a pier? On a bus, in a rush, at home or far far away? In a classroom, at the front behind a podium? Or at a desk somewhere down one of the aisles. Standing in a pulpit? Sitting on a stool at the tavern? At home cooking dinner? Walking in a garden? In a garage, basement, or attic? On a mountain top, in a cave, walking on a beach. Is the time of day morning, noon, or night? The season spring, summer, fall, or winter? Are you still on planet Earth? Is the poem an animal, a plant, a virus? A sun, the moon? Water?

    8. What does reading the poem make you feel like? Informed, betrayed, loved, ignored? Is the speaker rash, anxious, angry, happy, tearful, mournful, gracious, patient, loving, kind, mean? Do her feelings rub off on you? Does she make you feel stupid or smart? Bored? Tired out? Afraid. Brave.

    9. Would you read this poem again? Recommend it to a friend? Tape it to your icebox door? Write it out and carry it around in your wallet or purse? Toss it? Shred it, frame it, post it? Would you memorize this poem? Where did you find this poem? Would you hide this poem in your most secret place? Would you staple this poem to a telephone pole?

    10. Does the poem ask you to do something? Go somewhere? Misbehave or pray? Listen or talk back? Repeat or move on? Sink or swim? Write your own poem? The field is open, never crowded. Whatever else you might do or ask, do not ask what it means.

  • This Bird Has Flown

  • This is a poem

    This is not
    a knotty poem

    not a problem
    to be solved

    not some sort
    of joke jest

    or just a blog
    post looking

    for a pic
    a prom corsage.

    What it is
    can’t be said

    without it
    disappearing

    like an old
    phone book entry

    EAstgate 3128
    for example

    back in the day
    before answering

    machines when
    comments off

    meant leaving
    the phone off

    the hook spoiling
    the party line.

    This is a poem
    you have a message.

  • Field Notes: 7.19.23 to 7.22.23

    Was first use of papyrus leaf to make a list? Or take a note: need more papyrus leaves. Schedule to get in step, behind, ahead, pending completion. Immense relief comes when checking off as done. Is anything ever put away for good? Rotation. Daybook Bore. Nightbook Boogie. “riverrun, past…”

    To store for milk and sundry. Person in crisis sitting on sidewalk out front near bike rack yelling to himself, at some invisible interlocutor. We’ve seen him here before, the same, the deepthroated yelling, the fraughtness, agitation, distress. As we’re leaving, he’s now up and pacing, head down, still talking, loudly, totally absorbed. Back and forth, turning sharply, about face.

    Midweek, 95 degrees. Clear bluesy blousy skies. Long days. Evening playing guitar out in driveway area converted to sitting-out space under Japanese Maple tree planted 30 years ago. Now lovely shade canopy.  But last night upstairs late fan whirring in window begins to pull in some smokiness. Days of daze and haze. 83 degrees in the upstairs rooms at lights out.

    Bedtime reading Elizabeth Taylor’s “A Wreath of Roses” (1949): “From the cottages all along the village came blurred and muted wireless music. Some of the doors stood open to the scented night, revealing little pictures of interiors, fleeting and enchanting, those cottage rooms which Frances loved so dearly, with their ornaments, their coronation-mugs, their tabby cats. Night-scented stocks lined garden-paths, curled shells were arranged on window-sills, and on drawn blinds were printed the shadows of geraniums or a bird-cage shrouded for the night” (62).

    Trip to Ledding Library with Susan and girls. Lovely library. Natural light, high open beam ceilings, glassy views out of water, trees. Purchased Rebecca West biography (Victoria Glendinning, Knopf, 1987, out of print) for $3 at little discards storeroom. I read West’s early, short novel “The Return of the Soldier” (1918) not too long ago – astonished. This bio vintage hardback page quality seems hardware hard to find in new books these days.

    Quiet up and down block. Hear apples dropping soft thud and roll from neighbor’s gargantuan tree partly overhanging patio and grape pergola. Loaves and fishes and apples. Hang blue sunshade under pergola to catch apples, casts sealike glow to patio.

    Another neighbor calls to ask if we heard man screaming down on corner this morning. No. Later rumor suggests sounds heard might have been car with worn belt.

    The way to read Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is syllabically. If you try to gloss over you’ll be swimming against current. Few pages per day recommended dosage, length of afternoon nap, with similar benefits. “Ukalepe. Loathers’ leave. Had Days. Nemo in Patria. The Luncher Out. Skilly and Carubdish. A Wondering Wreck. From the Mermaids’ Tavern. Bullyfamous. Naughtsycalves. Mother of Misery. Walpurgas Nackt” (229).

    Stopped by a favorite thrift store. Price increases. $20 for threadbare basket sitting out on sidewalk. Might have been good for picking up apples. Store crowded. Do most people stop at thrift stores for same reasons? Which is to say, no reason. Irrational. Don’t need anything, certainly not a basket in which to put nothing.

    Brobdingnanigan sinkhole in front of Ascension Church on Belmont yet to be filled. Now part of East Tabor landscape, rerouts now new routes. News reports PBOT blames supply lines. Meantime our suggested nickname change from Portland’s City of Roses to City of Potholes continues to be ignored.

    Recurso. Chores. Make coffee (French Roast). Water outdoor flower pots (red geranium, red yellow orange marigolds, pink violet impatiens, pale and maroon fuschia, pink and pink-white hydrangeas, neon begonia and coleus). Clean indoor cat litter box. Take out garbage, recycling, compost, and glass (a bin for each). Try to keep qwip down so others can steal more sleep. Finally cool come morning. Sounds off. Eat banana with coffee. Fresh water for cat – she waits for me every morning, meows – less I run off? Walkabout with coffee. Check messages. Glance at news, weather, reader. Pray. Dishes. Laundry. Set windows and curtains and fans to ward off global warming effects within house. Life of Riley. Fourth wall in place.

    Friday mornings on schedule yard maintenance team down block disturbs peace with gas powered leaf blower. Aggressive sound, animalistic shaving at awful speed, fan whirring like hurricane wind. Poor leaves, debris shifting one side of street to other. Nature combed. Then again, after it’s all over with, seems quieter than before. Reminded of ancient sage in Greek play saying: “Bite your tongue, get a cinder in your eye; when you feel good you feel nothing.”

    Time Travel. All of me, why not just come home with me! Cant you see how Comely that wood bee? All of us, all the time, on the way, day by day. Traveling space time. Gravitas of re-all. Notta nostalgic book review, but how did it make you feel, reading? No pages to turn, that’s how far we’ve traveled. Travailing. Tri-veiling: Anamesacara; Anacaramesa; Mesaanacara; Mesacaraana; Caraanamesa; Caramesaana. Trinity. Loops, String Theory. Fictioner than strange. “Oh, you don’t know the shape I’m in.” Shapeshifting. Transmogrification. And a Maria all very getty honey.

    From The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday, 15 July, 1660: “To my Lord’s [Mountagu, Earl of Sandwich] dined all alone at the table with him. After dinner he and I alone fell to discourse, and I find him plainly to be a sceptic in all things of religion, and to make no great matter of anything therein, but to be a perfect Stoic.”

    Not too stoic here, neither too libertine nor epicurean. Utilitarian? Friend who’s always asking questions. No idea what becomes of answers. Another never questions anything except to advance his own schadenfreude (harm-joy) attitudes. Reminded of Samuel Beckett’s comment, can’t listen to a conversation for five minutes without noting inherent chaos. To Opine, city in forest.

    End here for time being. Undam tide; free tied. To store yesterday with Zz for Chromebook. Over decade old Old Mac Apple (speaking of apples) stopped updating. This Chromebook cat’s pj’s! Light, nimble, quick. For some time now have been using phone and tablet to type without keyboard, with benefit of slowing down riverrun thoughts into paperlike writing, better for poetic flows, slow like a stream, backwater eddy. Circular billow. Need keyboard though for longer pieces. But who will read? Type like the wind! Original plan for ongoing writing then to post Field Notes once a week, but now realize such a post far too long for the common reader, our wood bee awe di dance, awe dire, awe dear, audire – to hear.

    ~ ~ ~

  • Old Pic of the Day: June 1968, San Francisco Ricshaw

    Chinatown, San Francisco, June 1968. From Kodachome slide with Exakta 500.

  • Field Notes 7.18.23

    At the clinic near the hospital, waiting – waiting is an occupation without a procedure manual; no one questions that, but what will we do while we wait?

    Parked on the top floor of the garage, Level G, round and round up we go, concrete and metal bugs. An ascent. Climb down the concrete stairs, metal railings, the descent. Sounds beckon like a bird’s bark.

    Outside on a bench in the mid-morning sun, crow caw, something stuck in its craw, like crowbar pulling nails, “must be something wrong,” but here there are too many songs.

    Lady on a sidewalk bench at the curb, vaping. No sooner she leaves, replaced by a guy with a real cigarette. The smoke drifts into the patio, as if the car exhaust wasn’t enough.

    Kid screaming. Car horn. Ambulance, siren flaring. No connection, random. Street workers wearing dayglow orange and green togs. Traffic crawling. Automobiles seem so hyperbolic.

    Glimpse of an unintended selfie in window across patio.

    Inside, corner table, view of patio. Street workers swagger in, followed by a woman holding a vase of flowers in one hand and a veniti in the other, stops. I get up and open the door for her, and she comes in singing happy something to one of the street workers. They all ignore me, the door opener. The listener. Lunch hour.

    More street workers. They’re scoring pizza and sandwiches from the clinic automatic deli. Back in the street, they eat at the open tailgate of a pickup truck. Traffic now passing happily.

    Lady wearing a bright red sweatshirt stitched, “Be Kind.”

    Without clarity, noise. Turn hearing aids to zero. Still hear elevator bells. Distant voices, echoes, machine whir.

    The street outside the clinic rich with stately trees, dappled shade silver. Going for a walkabout.

    Back to G, retrieve car, a bit of retail for coffee, bananas, bungee cords for patio sunshade. Retrieve emptied pickup day buckets from street. Hang new sunshade tarp. Lunch on banana, peanuts, can of Perrier water. Blue shadow under grape pergola to catch apples falling from above.

    Side roads south to audiologist. Ears so full of wax could cover a swarm of surfboards. Ear canals viewed on screen. Fantastic Voyage.

    Heat is on. Dodger game from Baltimore. Tuna salad dinner, mango sorbet. Another can of water. Mariners game from Seattle.

    Sit out with guitar. Warm. Late early. Occasional breeze.

    Patrizia Cavalli in mail: “My Poems Won’t Change the World.” Neither will these field notes, but something to help hold it together.