The Many Faces of Poetry

Posted: April 8, 2022 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry, Writing to be Read | 13 Comments

Poetry Of The Gnu Age

After reaching enlightenment,

Milarepa’s first three steps

burned footprints

into the rocks of his shelter

so that today

pilgrims bow to these relics as holy icons.

The yogi’s steps were fired in the kiln

of his deep understanding. A thousand

years have passed and his footprints remain

sunk into the bare granite.

Piano Lessons

I have ten fingers.

The piano has…really…

twelve notes plus octaves therefrom.

I tell my fingers

each day

“land somewhere new. Somewhere

you’ve never been. If it sounds good

then lead me forward. IF it does not.

We go again.

Ten fingers. Twelve notes and octaves.

Fingers: spread yourselves newly. Knuckle middle finger

rise a bit. Good.

Now…listen. OK?

send five left fingers to the lowest octave

teach them where they belong

repeat the patterns repeat the patterns

bring the fingers back up

then throw them like dice

at the keyboard let them fly

repeat the patterns again

repeat the patterns: over time

my fingers know things, acquire sense and pitch

before my ears know

before my brain knows

my fingers know.

And, strange as it may sound, always listen to your fingers.

Let us say, hypothetically, that I go to sleep

in just a t shirt. I have two pillows under my head

and a pillow between my knees. As I get ready for bed

I sweep my blankets back and I sit on my pillows, not quite knowing

that I have just stuck my ass in my face. The knee

pillow, especially, is a real ass-face pillow but not

exclusively. No. My other pillows double duty as

butt blankies. I don’t know when or if

I put my ass in my face. No one does.

It is a concern, that’s all. A sanitary consideration.

Truth is you walk around with your ass every day,

it’s on your body

and it hasn’t given you Salmonella or ebola

yet. It’s not going to whether you sit half naked

or not. Everyone is full of shit. We know that.

When some men play around in government,

they shit like water buffalos. Who knew?

They’re all full of shit.

And they sit on their pillows a lot.

Another thing I can stop worrying about.

Ukraine

It is one thing to think

“aw fuck, not again.”

Then it’s another thing to do

nothing, from a sense of overwhelm

at the misery of the world. Many of these miseries

were created by human beings. They are capable of un-creating them but that would take a lot of work. Humans have

a streak of lazy when it comes to inquiry about themselves.

One can say “My bad”

as if that dismisses responsibility. I’ve been bad

but it’s over. That is not enough. You can’t say “My good”

but you’ve got to do “my good”,

you must keep making beautiful things in the face of ignorance.

Help other people with small daily tasks.

Use everything you’ve got

because in the face of this calamity,

it’s not going to be enough.

It’s just a motive to keep working so that,

some day,

it will be enough.

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Arthur Rosch is a novelist, musician, photographer and poet. His works are funny, memorable and often compelling. One reviewer said “He’s wicked and feisty, but when he gets you by the guts, he never lets go.” Listeners to his music have compared him to Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, Randy Newman or Mose Allison. These comparisons are flattering but deceptive. Rosch is a stylist, a complete original. His material ranges from sly wit to gripping political commentary.

Arthur was born in the heart of Illinois and grew up in the western suburbs of St. Louis. In his teens he discovered his creative potential while hoping to please a girl. Though she left the scene, Arthur’s creativity stayed behind. In his early twenties he moved to San Francisco and took part in the thriving arts scene. His first literary sale was to Playboy Magazine. The piece went on to receive Playboy’s “Best Story of the Year” award. Arthur also has writing credits in Exquisite Corpse, Shutterbug, eDigital, and Cat Fancy Magazine. He has written five novels, a memoir and a large collection of poetry. His autobiographical novel, Confessions Of An Honest Man won the Honorable Mention award from Writer’s Digest in 2016.

More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

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Mind Fields – Why Do We Pick On Ourselves?

Posted: April 1, 2022 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Mind Fields, Opinion | Tags: Arthur Rosch, marketing, Mind Fields, Social Commentary, The Human Condition, Writing to be Read | 3 Comments

Why Do We Always Pick On Ourselves

from Mind Fields at writingtoberead.com

Americans pick on themselves. We do it constantly, relentlessly, awake, asleep, we pick on ourselves about everything. It’s as if a perfectionist mother–in-law sits inside our heads on a platform at the very center of our thoughts and points here and there, hectoring us with criticisms.

“You know you could lose a few pounds,” she will say. She points with a drooping finger. “You’re getting heavy.” Her eyes narrow and she leans forward. “What’s wrong with your face? Is that a zit? How could you have a zit at your age? Your pores are kind of large, too. Speaking of age, wow, It really shows you’re getting over the hill.! I see wrinkles at the sides of your mouth and eyes. And that big one in the middle of your forehead, wow.”

Her elbow rests in her left hand while she taps her cheek with the right index finger. “Who could love a mess like you? Who buys your clothes, a retarded pygmy? My god, where did you get those awful shoes?”

Her inspection continues with a glare all up and down the length of me. “Who does your hair”, she rasps, “a baboon? Get another stylist before it’s too late. The damage that’s being done, what a shame, a real shonda. Your hair is thinning out too, a little bit day by day. You’re getting a pot belly! Ever think of wearing something, a brace, maybe?” She sits in a rocker and lights a cigarette. “I have a skin cream that I can recommend. You’re at that age where it loses its elasticity.”

I’m quivering with shock now but determined to let her have her say. “Your teeth are a little funny. Has anyone ever suggested cosmetic dentistry?”

Pick pick pick, pick pick pick. Am I wrong? Have I overstated the case?
She never stops, this critical demon of the shadows. She is a product of decades of indoctrination. I only say “She” because I had a terrible mother. I’m still pissed off about that.

“I should remind you” she says inside my head, “to get your cholesterol checked. It can happen; any second it can happen, bam! and you keep over.You’re dead! Then what happens to your family? Do you have a good lawyer? My brother in law knows one. And his cousin’s a doctor! Have you checked your prostate lately? I hear there’s a new medication for that. There’s a pill for everything these days, just watch sixty minutes. I mean the commercials, not the show. There’s a pill that’ll help you stop smoking if you survive the side effects. I love the medications where one of the side effects is ‘diminished semen’. What does that mean? What kind of pill can have ‘diminished semen’ as a side effect? Isn’t that the scariest thing a man can hear, short of ‘penis may wither and fall off?’ Loss of semen really means having crappy sex, doesn’t it? So why don’t they say, ‘may have brief weak orgasms’?”

This yapping harridan, this carping abusive inner voice, how did it get inside our heads? Let’s make it simple. First there’s television. There are a lot of good things about television, it’s not the monolithic purveyor of propaganda it might be in some other countries. Still, it hauls a freight train of psychological toxins every second of every day, no matter if the sound is on, whether or not you’ve blocked the commercials. It doesn’t matter. The marketers behind television are so sophisticated that we don’t have to turn on the device to be contaminated. In our society, television has become a self-referential culture, the subject of billions of conversations. It has moved into our thoughts and taken residence, permanently.
After TV there’s movies, the internet, magazines, newspapers, radio, you can’t escape marketing anywhere, not even in an airport restroom.

We barely live real lives any more. We talk about fictional characters whose lives are infinitely more exciting than ours and whose dangers are far beyond anything we would ever permit ourselves to face.

It would be interesting to snatch someone from the past and have this person witness our marketing techniques. Show a Viagra or Cialis commercial. What if we brought someone from the Victorian era, from around 1895, and showed commercials for keeping your thing hard? Every ten minutes another commercial showing a man of about fifty with a woman of about thirty eight, snuggling together, holding hands, watching the sun set. We would have to explain the nature of this product to the viewer. Without the warning “see a doctor if erection lasts more then four hours” there is nothing to indicate what this product does, what’s it’s for. When we explain it to our time traveler, what will this person think about our culture? How embarrassed would he or she be, how shocked at the impropriety?

Well, sure, they were prudes. Their repression caused them vast inner conflicts, but I would speculate it added an extra thrilling dimension to sex. It seems that when we started discussing our president’s blow jobs on the public airwaves, some line was crossed, some basic decency and sense of proportion was jettisoned off the side of our big ocean liner of a culture. Sex also got a little bit more ordinary, a bit more like costume jewelry.

I digress, I was talking about how we pick on ourselves. It’s stupidly obvious. It’s about getting us to spend money. The entire purpose of marketing is to manipulate our desires. The basic technique is to infect us with feelings of inadequacy. Then we are bombarded with glittering images of things we’re led to believe will make us feel better. If we feel bad enough we’ll go out and buy some ridiculous cream, or pill, or car, or hair weave, or something that makes no sense at all, we’ll just go buy anything, walk into Walmart with our credit cards and shop, as an anesthetic. We’ll be perfect consumers, depressed, dazed automatons piling up debt. Glassy eyed, we walk the aisles of the stores, pace the infinite mallways without destination until we find ourselves back home with bags full of junk. How did all this crap appear in our houses? I don’t remember buying an eighty eight inch Super High Definition TV set with a quadruple-woofer ten speaker sound system with Dolby nine point two noise reduction software.

We’ve been had. We’re nuts. We pick on ourselves because all our role models are distortions that are dissonant with real life. We don’t see authentic people in the movies or on TV. We see heroes who can kill a dozen trained hyenas by throwing wooden chopsticks from fifty feet. We are not encouraged to admire people who aren’t particularly beautiful, rich or talented. We aren’t given strength of character as a yardstick of true heroism. It isn’t enough to be an ordinary person anymore, we have to be some carefully crafted mannequin, with no missing teeth, no bad habits. We’re going to live to a hundred and fifty in perfect health, glowing and radiant, with a beautiful partner by our side. There won’t be any old age, slow decay, debility, nothing like that because the inner witch-voice won’t allow us to relax and be human, be ordinary and obey the laws of nature even when they take our youth and beauty.

Isn’t that the primary mechanism of marketing? To raise dissatisfaction to a level where we’ll do anything to “better” ourselves in the form of consuming whatever’s consumable to get a buzz for a few minutes or hours?

Pick pick pick, we’ve learned to pick on ourselves without mercy. Go ahead, take a look at yourself in the mirror! Do you like what you see? Have you been taught to accept yourself with all your flawed genes and pathological behaviors?

Can you accept and love yourself as the unique creation that you are?
Of course not. There’s no money in love.

Not yet.

More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

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Mind Fields – My award winning story

Posted: March 18, 2022 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Fiction, Mind Fields, satire, Science Fantasy, Stories | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Award Winning Story, Mind Fields, Sex and the Triple Znar-Foot, Short Fction, Short Story, Writing to be Read | 14 Comments

Sex and the Triple Znar-Foot

Winner of Playboy Magazine’s Best Story of The Year

Sitting indolently in his gravity couch, Nerl Forfeech was lasciviously eyeing this month’s Plaything centerfold. Two of his tongues hung out from his upper crease as the shiny cellulose pages fell all the way to the floor. Such a lavish display was essential on the planet Znar-foot, a world where six genders struggle to reach alliances and make trysts. The photo that Nerl studied included all the erotic subtypes, built up into naked pyramids of hair, tumescences and orifices.

In this issue, as always, a gorgeous nude six sprawled in the typically suggestive pile, gravity being so low on Znar-foot that any other arrangement would have resulted in the lovers floating away. Their faces were lit with the ecstasy of romantic communion, their organs photographed to be all but fully visible. Nerl, idly fondling one of his protuberances, sighed as he viewed the tinted nipples, the arousing half-glimpses of fur-covered apertures.

Then, suddenly, the door-iris swooshed open and Cloong walked in. Nerl, hastily stuffing the segments back into the magazine, almost fell from the couch as he attempted to hide the issue under some cushions.

Cloong giggled at her embarassed partial lover. “Oh, go ahead,“ she piped, “You can unfold the layout again. I don’t care. They ARE rather lovely… but so impossible, don’t you think?”

Nerl threw down the magazine in disgust. “I wish you weren’t so right. I’ve had only two sixes in my entire life, and both of them got weird right away… right after….”

His voice trailed off at the memory of it. The ecstasy! And then, inevitably, confusion.

Cloong took Nerl by the trunk nooks, and they clung together in mutual frustration. Cloong was Nerl’s Two. And together they had a tentative Three with Albolon Farfing, who, unfortunately, was doing a loose sort of thing with a Two, Three and Four down in the Freesex District, the swinger’s playground in the city of Fichi Forfoot. Albolon had a tendency to be unreliable and he slipped in and out of identities like six-sided dice. He was a Her Two, but no… she is a her3Him… or sometimes a 4femmhe. Albolon was sketchy but still they loved him, if a bit reservedly, in return.

“What do you want to do tonight?” Cloong asked, licking Nerl’s eyeknobs playfully. To Nerl it only made the craving for someone to be inserting into his side slits more powerful. Cloong was only a quasi-femguy, good for sucking and the like… but he shouldn’t be too unfair to her. After all, he was only a quasi-himgalhim, and had limited abilities, as well. Like it or not, it was the way nature made them. With dozens of erogenous zones, the Znar-feet needed flesh on all sides, working in combination to produce the orgasmic culmination of multiple personalities. You could get off with Three; Four and Five were even better. But being a Six was the ultimate, and pitifully elusive, Total Turn-on.

“What can we do?” Nerl echoed distractedly. “Is there anything we can actually do to remedy this feeling?”

“Sure,” Cloong cheerfully volunteered. “We can go pick up Albolon and cruise a Triples Bar. You never know what might happen.”

“Not again,” Nerl groaned. “I can’t take it, the futile games, the flash and glitter. I’m a simple person. All I need is a good, simple five-to-one relationship. That’s not so much to ask.”

“Come on, “ urged Cloong, lifting her appendages in his trunk nooks. The effect was sufficiently erotic. “You’ll never meet anybody if you don’t show your faces. What can you lose? Would you rather stay home all night and masturbate in the washing machine?”

“Okay okay,” Nerl gave in. “Let me get my threads on. I’ll wear my jewel-studded trunk shapers and my simulated-tumescence trouser pads.”

“That’s the way!” Cried Cloong, getting up off Nerl’s abdominal folds. “Dress up sexy!”

Later the three of them strode snout in snout down the flamboyant promenades of Flesh-Bargain City, the accepted cruising ground for Znar-Foot’s frustrated sexuals.

Cloong was bouyed up between her partial lovers, dressed in a revealing mini-suit that left quite a few of her tubes exposed. The night was torpid, just right for the ongoing voyeurism of Gendervender Plaza. (Sometimes known as Six Sex Street.) Of course Albolon and Nerl were elegant beyond compare in their striped priapic enhancers. As they progressed down the brightly lit avenue, they caught the envious stares of lonely Ones or Twos, and occasionally the pitying glances of bustling Fours and Fives. But there were no Sixes. The Sixes would undoubtedly be at someone’s apartment, in bed. Or else arguing.

Cloong, Nerl and Albolon stopped to peer into various clubs and bars, to see which ones were running Threes that night. The formats always changed, rotating a nightclub’s patronage through the various combinations, Two-Fours, Five-Ones, Singles Night, and so forth. Of course, no one EVER went to a Single Night. Too humiliating.

As they walked, peering through the transparent view bubbles of the different clubs, they were accosted by street hustlers making suggestive offers: “Say honeys,”a gaudily dressed Non-specific eyed them speculatively. “I got just the Three for you, never been Sixed before, any of them. Got a taste for some fresh action?” Or another: “Need a massage, sports? Got a lovely pair, just juicin’ to get their trunks on you.”

Ignoring the lascivious stares and remarks, Cloong, Nerl and Albolon arrived at their favorite place, The Sexagram Club, and saw that it was running Triples that night. The house band, The Numbers Racket, could be heard raucously blaring, and their pulses raced with anticipation at the wild action within. The Numbers Racket, a successful Four offstage, never failed to turn on the audiences with their erotogymnastics and jerk’n’jell music. Cloong, Nerl and Albolon showed their IDs and entered the crowded room that smelled of trunk-pit persp and stimu-mist.

“Hey babies,” a Triple, rocking past in an orbiting dance, called out. “Hey hey, let’s get it on.”

Cloong pulled back. “How unsubtle. Come on, boys, this is no place to meet nice people. Let’s get out of here.”

But Nerl and Albolon had already spotted some promising looking action. “No, let’s stay, Cloong. It was your idea in the first place. If we don’t like it after a while, we can go someplace else.” They pulled her farther into the seething mass, where dancing bodies yanked and plopped spasmodically, simulating sex.

Onstage, The Numbers Racket had sprawled atop one another in an explicit orogenital configuration, while, up front, dancing Threes screamed their shock and delight.

Against the walls of the room, stimu-mist vendors lined up next to sensory-enhancement dealers, exchanging money balls for popular brands of dope. The rest of the room was all dance floor, with sufficient space in which to flirt, writhe and show off simul-sex aptitude.

Cloong and her hims moved onto the dance floor, their eyes constantly shifting across the room, taking in the more attractive groups, canceling out the ones who held no appeal. Since their tastes were relatively alike, they intuitively crossed through the various combinations until they were close to another sexy Three who seemed alone.

Perfect! A Three with two fems. Cloong lowered her tubes a trifle suggestively at the him of the group. Meanwhile, Nerl had shown a definite tumescence at the she-she-it in the flaming orange trunk gripper. They danced up closer, coyly initiatiing eyes contact. Albolon, however, didn’t move correspondingly. He was too busy eyeing a fem in a different Three altogether.

Cloong jerked at him and he staggered forward. “Idiot,” she hissed, but the cute Three had caught the little interchange and had indifferently moved away through the crowd.

Nerl reprimanded Albolon. “You blew it for us, man. Didn’t you see those gorgeous fems? Himwit! We would have been perfect. I just know it.”

Albolon cursed. “Ah, the one in the dotted tube-throttler was a pig. I almost scored another Three for us all by myself until you pulled at me so obviously.”

Cloong waved her eyeknobs impatiently. “Look over there. Do you think we can all agree on one Three to come on to? How about that short-tall-tall number in the corner?”

Al and Nerl furtively checked it out. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Again, they spasmed across the dance floor, dodging single and double Triples to get near the attractive Three that Cloong had pointed out. This one was a good dancer, doing all the most fashionable orifice-openers among several maneuvering Threes. They were dressed in one of the latest cozy-suits, a gauzy garment that joined the three bodies in a spacious but intimate arrangement. There was an obvious zipper where another Three suit could easily be hooked in.

“We don’t have one of those suits,” Nerl commented negatively. “This Three’s too uptown for us. And look at the competition. I hate standing in line.”

“Don’t be a onesyhead,” said Albolon, who lusted after high class liaisons. “We’re artists. Rich Threes need us.”

“Now that I think about it,” said Cloong abjectly, “rich people have no sensitivity. Maybe we should go check out that long-haired Three over there in the middle.”

By the time they were in close, Albolon was dragging the others. The music lulled for a moment. Agressively, he leered at the Three and said, “Hey, babies, didn’t we meet at a sensory-awareness clinic in Big Stir?”

The chic threesome laughed disdainfully and, without even answering, lost itself in the crowd.

Nerl and Cloong clung to each other in utter embarassment.

“Albolon,” she said sadly, “if we don’t get our relationship together, pretty soon we’ll be a Two.”

Albolon farted from his side vents in frustration.

“Would that be so bad? I’ve heard you two talking together, I know what you think. You think I care about that Trip up in Snort Beach, the one you guys can’t stand.”

He was beating his trunks up and down laboredly. Cloong stroked the pits with tender solicitation.

“No, no,” they said, “we’re not jealous of them, Albolon. It’s just that sometimes your crude come-on ruins our chances.”

Albolon backed away petulantly. “You’re just possessive, that’s what. Just because I have my style and like to check out things on my own.”

He turned, broke away from them, while they stood there, stunned. All around, Threes were watching them and giggling.

“And you know,” Albolon said stingingly, “I do get off on my other Trip. At least my Snort Beach floozy gives me plenty of space. Not only that, but they give better trunk, too.”

“Albolon, you’re crazy,” protested Cloong.

“You see,” he said, his eye nooks wide, “that’s what you really think of me when I’m being honest. Well, goodbye.”
He pivoted and was lost in the whirling bodies. Cloong and Nerl tried to catch him, but the door of the club hissed shut and Albolon was gone.

Shocked, under the mortifying gaze of twittering Threes, they left the club. Outside, the street was empty of Albolon. With tears rolling down their face-folds, they made their way across the livid avenue, but the lights and gaiety had lost their charm.

“Let’s go home, Nerl,” Cloong said mournfully. “This is no way to find your nice, simple five to one relationship.”

Nerl stood stubbornly in one spot. “Go home? You must be kidding! We just lost our Three. I don’t want to go home alone tonight. I’m just not ready for it.”

“You’re NOT alone,” said Cloong, a trifle peeved.

“You know what I mean,” said Nerl, regretting his spite.

“I guess I do,” she said, fatalistically.

Nerl gazed up into the dimly visible heavens, reddish in the glow of the street lights. All his anguish at the way they had been constructed poured out of his heart and flailed weakly against the indifference of the cosmos.

“There are are some worlds out there,” he said distantly, “where I’ll bet they have only three genders, or maybe even just two. Different arrangements entirely.”
Cloong laughed and took his center trunk with her snout. “Come on, Nerl. That’s absurd. Think how dull life would be. It would all be too simple.”

He shook his shaggy mane, as if to dispel the far-flung fantasy. Taking his girlfriend by one of her more exposed tubes, he led her down the hysterical walkways in search of a Four-Two club.

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More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

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Mind Fields – Healed By A Cat: An Autistic Man Meets A New Friend

Posted: March 4, 2022 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Mind Fields | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Autism, Cats, Commentary, Mind Fields, Writing to be Read | 2 Comments

One day we found out that an autistic man was going to move in next door. At the time we lived in an RV park in a 38 foot motor coach. “Next door” meant that we shared a small yard with our neighbor.

I was concerned. How autistic is he? I wondered. Autism can be a vague diagnosis. It has stretched beyond its original meaning of a soul completely lost to human interaction. The park’s manager described the man as “a little autistic”. That could mean almost anything.

As Henry was helped to park in his site, he took a look at me and The Fox. He said one word, “Whew”, and then vanished into his RV.

“Whew.” Where did he live before he came here? His former neighbors, we later learned, were motorcycle people and meth freaks. Whew, indeed.

Henry divulged little about himself. He said he liked cats. That was fortunate, because we have two indoor cats and two outdoor cats, plus a wide variety of feral visitors and neighborhood pets. There’s something about this space that draws cats. It might be the plum trees and their abundant population of wrens and robins.

There are people who claim their pets have super powers. I regarded such people as harmless nuts. Lately my thinking has changed. Our cat Obsidian is a big brown tabby with green eyes. I’ve seen him tame people in that Little Prince way, literally capture their unruly spirits and put them back in a more harmonious order. That’s Obsidian’s super power, the power to restore tranquility.

He’s getting old, and so are we. He doesn’t jump the fence and climb around with the younger cats any more. He has more important work to do.

Our new neighbor Henry is middle-aged. He is a fearful, cranky and withdrawn man, but he’s an ideal neighbor. We barely know he’s here. He can be easily upset by minor disturbances. He is so averse to noise that he can be pushed into a ferocious sulk by the mere revving of a motorcycle.

He has been adopted by our two outdoor cats, wise old Obsidian and his sidekick, the comical black and white Cookie. These cats have given structure to Henry’s otherwise bleak world. By loving Henry they have tricked him into loving. I looked out the window one day to see the elusive and feral Cookie sitting calmly on Henry’s lap. I had never seen her behave this way. It was strangely impressive. Henry is a cat savant, he has some magical affinity that he didn’t know he possessed until he moved close to Obsidian and Cookie.

I hope that you, my readers, understand how easily a friendly animal can become a tyrant who turns your life upside down. Henry is such an innocent that he immediately began flirting with disaster. We had to set him straight without setting him off. If he let Obsidian into his home even once, he would become nothing but a door man, opening and closing all day, all night, at the cat’s demand. I caught him just on the verge of doing this very thing and rushed to halt the action.

“Don’t let him in, Henry! Close your door, quick!” He was frightened and cut Obsidian off just as he was about to slip between his feet.

I explained what had almost happened. I spoke towards Henry’s averted eyes and raised defensive shoulders. I spoke to him as I would speak to any intelligent adult. In Henry’s heart, the need to trust someone was rising like a powerful burst of magma from a volcano deep beneath the sea. His need to share the cats’ companionship was forcing him to emerge from his shell and talk to us. The cats pushed Henry past his fears.

In the next few weeks we learned more about Henry. It wasn’t easy but we supported his struggle to communicate. Then something unexpected happened. Henry and Obsidian fell in love. I’m not being flippant. It’s just that simple. When Henry left to visit his mother, Obisidian sat on his front step, waiting for his return. He would emit an occasional sob. There’s no mistaking Obsidian’s sob. He has an amazing gamut of vocalizations, including a perfectly robin-like cheep that must have been useful during his hunting years.

I can’t put it any other way. They were in love with a pure emotional connection. Perhaps Henry’s autism short-circuited his intellectual activity and left his feelings to flourish without interference from the busy mind. I watched this fountain of feeling take shape between Henry and the cats.

Henry leaves the campground for treatment four days a week. When he first went away, Obsidian was inconsolable. He went into a paroxysm of grief. He stared into space for long periods. He moped and cried. But Obsidian gradually learned that Henry ALWAYS comes home. Thus our cat friend’s tranquility was restored. He knows Henry will be back and that’s enough to comfort him. It took him a few weeks to get this; I watched him unwind and relax. I watched his attention return to his world: the falling leaves and the showoff Cookie with her bounding up and down fences and trees. Obsidian resumed his lordship of his domain. The lost baby possum was under his protection. The upstart kitten Stinker was not welcome and he meant business, even if he had to hire Cookie to teach Stinker a lesson.

Now Henry has left for two weeks. He has gone to Connecticut to visit his sister. “Three thousand miles!” cried Henry in terror before he was picked up by his ride. The enormity of this journey was paralyzing. I shared with Henry my own fears about travel: the feeling that I’ll never get home; I’ll be trapped in some alien environment without the solace of my place and my people. Henry and I aren’t so different. This bit of one on one engagement gave Henry something to take with him on this unprecedented trip. He had shared an emotional link with another human being. And he had given his heart to a big brown cat with green eyes.

How different is Henry’s world today? That’s not for me to say, but I suspect that it’s just different enough… enough to make a difference.

The Many Faces of Poetry: My Credo

Posted: February 25, 2022 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry | Tags: Arthur Rosch, The Many Faces of Poetry, Writing to be Read | 4 Comments

My Credo

Art Rosch

There is no truth but your own experience.

There is no method other than what you have, by trial and error,

found best enables you to survive.

There is no psychological health, because we are always deluded.

There is no physical health because we are always dying.

There is no teacher other than personal experience;

all other teachers are more like friends from whom one gleans

important information.

The quality of information one possesses translates to the quality of the life one lives.

Bad parents transmit bad information. This information has far reaching negative consequences, and one must struggle all one’s life to minimize the harm wrought by these consequences.

Consciousness is an experiment with different forms of information,

sifting through those that denigrate the self, selecting those

that optimize the self.

With the above in mind, it behooves one to act with the best judgment possible

under the circumstances, always bearing in mind that one’s compulsions, i.e.

the results of bad information, are always undermining good judgment.

It is useless to create inner tension between some mythical ideal of health

and what one actually is. Being what one is always takes precedence over

myths and ideals of competence, good judgment, wholeness, wellness

and enlightenment. Enlightenment (or the total apprehension of Truth) is possible at any moment, but the more

it becomes a goal, the more elusive it will be to attain.

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More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

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Mind Fields – Cannabis Can And Sometimes It Can’t

Posted: February 4, 2022 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Mind Fields, Opinion | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Cannabis, Commentary, Mind Fields, Social Commentary, Writing to be Read | Leave a comment

I started smoking marijuana at fifteen. At that time, marijuana was simply Pot. Weed. It was Reefer, Dope, Ganja. Sometimes it was just Shit. It was so hard to obtain that we went to dangerous housing projects like Jefferson Barracks or East St. Louis.. These are rough ghetto neighborhoods. Here’s the classic scenario: drive to East St. Louis, to a certain intersection. A man will be there at nine p.m. taking orders. Give the man your money. Pull around the corner and wait in the car. Half hour goes by and everyone who passes gives you the skank eye. Wait in the car. Another twenty minutes pass. Shit, did the fucker burn us and bail? There’s more skank eye from the locals. A nondescript Ford rounds the corner, driven by a white man in a fedora. “Get down, that’s a narc!” We hunch down over the drive shaft. The man could be anybody. Probably not an officer of the law. We laugh nervously: maybe he’s scoring weed, too. Haha.

I’m about to call it a night, write it off to misery when the connection shows up, rapping quietly on the steamed-up window. He’s palming a baggie. Whew, Groovy. Thanks, man. There are more side-eye looks than a herd of horses as the connection sneaks off.

Now it’s called Cannabis. From old habit when I talk to myself I call it Weed. But…hey… It’s the majestic Cannabis. It’s not a weed. I won’t call it that any more.

I could write about cannabis all day. One thing that stuns me (aside from the THC) is the post-legalization culture that has arisen in a few short years. The explosion of new ways to consume cannabis is one aspect of this cultural eruption. Would you have dreamed, twenty years ago, that you would go to the “pot store” to get your cannabis? THAT IS CORRECT! I go to the POT STORE! WARNING: it can get expensive. Some of the marketing is clever and ‘scammy’. The research for this article has cost me a couple hundred bucks. Pot is getting the late-capitalist treatment and is being commodified in ways inventive beyond the craziest dreams of any baby boomer. There are vape pens full of THC. There are Resins, waxes, elixirs, inhalers, collectors, nectar tubes, dab nails, glass in a thousand exotic shapes: this stuff Is appearing at breakneck speed, overwhelming in its complexity if not hilarity.

Oh…cannabis…wonderful cannabis, the jazz musician’s vitamin. I have smoked in many cars of vintage breed. They were not, at the time, vintage. Back in the day we called our vehicles “shorts” i.e. Where’s your short, man? I parked it around the corner: Continentals. Thunderbirds. Gran Prix, Impalas. Our shorts loom large in our fantasies of past reefer madness because they were often the only places we could smoke pot. My dopey memories of the 60s occur in some car or other, some parking lot or street in some disreputable part of town.

I never thought I would be able to light up on the street in broad daylight. Now we have cannabis named for every kind of wacky idea that marketers can devise. Here are a few brand names: OG Skunk Cult, Canna Candy, Fumero, Caldera, Purple Phase, Errl’s Oil. Here’s one: Guava Fig X Face Mintz Extract.

In 1965 ten bucks got me a matchbox of Mexican grass. The name brands were Michoacan and Panama Red. There were Thai Sticks. Sometimes I could get hash from Nepal. An ounce of grass was called a “lid”. Three and a half lids are an eight ball. Back in the matchbox days it was either a nickel bag or dime bag. This is sixties stuff, I’m jamming with Jimi, not Fats Waller.

Legal weed is a fucking explosion! The pot store looks like a bank! Maybe it was a bank before it became the Pot Store. Yeah, that’s it. The packaging for the inventory is on display in cases against two walls while the cashiers occupy windows at waist-high counters around the other two walls. The merchandise is offered in all its colorful boxes, jars, droppers, cartridges and spliffs. Twenty-five-year-old cannabis experts talk to customers about the products. This strain of cannabis, the cashier explains, has such and such a percentage of THC ratio to CBD. This one has 88.5% THCV. This one’s good for pain, this one’s good for sleep, this one won’t increase your appetite, this one will. We get new terpenes every six months.

Now we have designer dope for the elite. Ninety bucks for a one gram jar about the size of a quarter. Shee-it! Weed should not be expensive! Never never. Stop it!

I get my dope from a dude named Steve who lives in an RV at the corner of Colegio and Runyon. It comes in baggies. No boxes no jars. Ten bucks for a big bag of buds. That’s more than a lid.

That’s Old School.

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More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

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Mind Fields – The Ideas of A Morning

Posted: January 28, 2022 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Mind Fields, Opinion, Reflections, Uncategorized | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Life Reflections, Mind Fields, Writing to be Read | 1 Comment

I value originality. It requires a level of commitment and a sense of one’s self as being unique and talented. At some base level NO ONE is truly original but in the world of human expression, of artistic and technical feats that are part of our culture, there are individuals who stand out as being special. They have hewn materials out of the core of their selves, and the results are striking and unprecedented. It is the unprecedented nature of the creations that forms the matrix of originality.

The Primacy Of Memory

There is a moment in life as one grows older that the memory recreates all the life’s experiences as if for the first time. Re-living my life from the sheltered glade of memory has been a rich meditation. What did I do and why did I do it? Observing behavior that was inexplicable at the time but contemplation later reveals why something happened. At no time have I lost a firm conviction that higher powers are always at play in the Self and that these powers design with great wisdom all that shall befall the sole witness to this life and that is one’s Self. The events in a life are far from pointless: they are signboards on a journey of profound discovery. Having a deep faith in that idea has enabled me to survive otherwise insane events that boiled up from within myself. When the psyche accepts full responsibility for the unfolding life it gains a power that shows itself in acts of compassion. Some of the work of compassion is restraint from judging people and events without consulting the context in which their behavior forms. Sometimes it is needful to discern and this discernment is a form of placing a context over the specific acts and ideas that carry the consequences of thinking. ALL thinking is consequential. Thinking is the most important thing one does and the skill brought to thinking shows development of the soul’s concept of itself. If you are going to think, it is wise to learn HOW to think and WHAT to think about.

Watching The Domino

We ordered a pizza for delivery. In twenty years, we’ve never ordered food to be delivered so this was a special birthday gift. What set this apart was the experience of tracking the delivery driver’s trajectory as he wound his way through the complicated streets of our neighborhood. We sat watching the phone in fascination as the vehicle’s icon reflected the driver’s turns and twists as he negotiated the neighborhood looking for the right place. This went on for ten minutes and we became like cheerleaders hoping for our team to score. We were thrilled when he came onto our driveway and broke out in cheers as this ordinary experience of modern tech showed us that it worked and that it was, indeed, completely ridiculous.

Mind Fields – People Are Crazy

Posted: January 7, 2022 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Mind Fields, Opinion | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Mind Fields, Social Commentary, Writing to be Read | 3 Comments

People are crazy. Many people who are crazy don’t know they’re crazy. They think that they are right, and that their form of crazy should be everyone’s crazy.

That’s crazy. Right? NO! We’re all wrong, most of the time! It would be nice if people could admit this fact. If we examine the history of human beings it looks like a traffic jam of midget cars where everyone jumps from the cars as if they got caught stealing them. They shout “That’s not my car! I’ve never seen that car before.”

This is not my planet! I’ve never seen this planet before! The very nature of life on this world is that humans get the wrong ideas about things that should be easy to understand. Those who don’t recognize their instability are dangerous. People who don’t recognize their craziness have few brakes. At some time or place such people can do terrible harm. They harm people who are crazy in a different way. We can inquire about Germany in the 30s and 40s. In today’s world Germany is known as a refuge for the dispossessed, a humanitarian engine of liberal democracy. Eighty years ago Germany was in the throes of a mass psychosis that turned the state into a killing machine.

This form of psychosis is always available to cultures. It’s there, waiting for the right conditions. It will burst forth and flourish for a while as it does its murderous business. Then it vanishes, only to revive in another time and place. Cultural psychosis is part of the human condition; it’s an undercurrent that feeds on poverty and distress. It thrives on income inequality, builds on the resentment of disenfranchised classes.

We’re ripe for another one. God forbid, as my grandma used to say. God forbid we should replay genocidal brutality like Nazi Germany, or Cambodia, Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia. The United States with its native Americans, The Turks against the Greeks. God forbid. I pray that I’m wrong but I feel that looming presence, that evil spirit that is like a parasite fattening on its millions of aggrieved Americans who have not a single clue that they are insane. They have nothing to complain about. They are housed and fed, they have health plans, the very poorest of them are better off than anyone was a hundred years ago. You can’t convince them that they’ve got a good deal going. They’re certain that they’re being screwed. We sit atop a festering insanity that has been in America since before its founding, when vast crimes by white Europeans were enacted on the whole population of the western hemisphere.

God forbid. It’s a comfort to think that things have changed, that maybe a threshold has been crossed by human nature itself, that we’ve learned from our past sins, that we have EVOLVED. Isn’t that possible?

I don’t know. I won’t pronounce this salvation as a done deal. Something IS different. Our children are different; they do things that were impossible. They move their bodies in new ways, they think in new ways. I don’t regard myself as a cynic but I am jaded. I’ve seen too much horror.

It isn’t one thing or another. We’re neither saved nor doomed. We are continuing the story of life on earth. The planet keeps turning and it will turn for another several billion years. The drama of human life unfolds in its many chapters. Yes, we are crazy. History is a book of insanity, a review of the irrational.
Good judgment and reason break out in little pockets. They seldom last long.

The United States Of America is ripe for deep horrible craziness. I tremble for my children.

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More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

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Mind Fields – Overdose!

Posted: December 17, 2021 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Mind Fields, Opinion | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Drug Use, Mind Fields, THC, Writing to be Read | Leave a comment

I didn’t think one could overdose on cannabis.

I was wrong. You can. I did.

I use tincture that I buy from a local grower. It wasn’t the tincture’s fault. I made a mistake. The bottle comes with an eye dropper for dosage measurements and this particular bottle was so low on tincture that I couldn’t fill an eyedropper. So I simply up-ended the thing and poured it down my gullet. That’s not even a dose’s worth, I thought, and proceeded to add another half dropper from a new bottle.

Uh oh.

I’ve been a hard core doper for much of my life and cannabis didn’t scare me one little bit. The most egregious overdose I ever had was with pharmaceutical Ketamine. Oh lord, that was dangerous. I made a perilous mistake and measured out a decimal point one too many after reading the Physician’s Desk Manual. I guess I wasn’t tracking too well even before taking the drug. That decimal point represented a ten times overdose.

After taking that stuff, I became completely dissociated. I was alone in the house. I sat in front of a candle, too terrified to move, while the candle burned down from its top to a mere stub. It was dark when I took the ketamine. It was light by the time I recovered enough to take stock and shake myself out of the trance.

That was my most profound and wretched experience in a lifetime of drug abuse. Until yesterday. I didn’t have enough awe for the cannabis tincture. I should have known better.

I proceeded with my normal day of chores and piano practice until I was pretty bone tired. I retreated to the bedroom, where I joined my wife for some late afternoon TV watching.

I began to roll around inside my body. That was very strange. I felt VERY STRANGE and somewhat close to a state of panic. My cognitive ability retreated to a little corner of mind. About ten percent of me was still present. In that corner I recognized that I had taken too much THC tincture. I could use that ten percent to get out my tool box for the treatment of anxiety. Deep breathing. Yoga. Everything. The alternative was simply panic.

My wife recognized that I was in an odd state. She is forbearing and reluctant to interfere in my escapades. I had to slide the words out of my mouth. “I am feeling very dissociated.”

I was confused. Where am I? I had to ask of myself. What is that? I was referring not so much to the TV but the programming that was on it. I recognized one of our favorite shows, a veterinary adventure, but I couldn’t connect with the content. I wanted to. It seemed petty and ridiculous in light of my emergency. I tried to explain it to Fox.

“Too much THC”. I struggled to form the words. Fox got the message.

“Can I help?” I didn’t know what to tell her. The idea of food crossed my mind. It might dilute further enhancement. It might bring me down. I wanted to come down. “Can you…banana dr…drink?”

“Don’t move from there,” she cautioned wisely. I didn’t move. I felt the urge to get up, but I listened to what my astute partner said.

It’s easy to say, “I was sooo fucked up!” What does that mean? There are a billion versions of “fucked up” and some of them are not great. I was so fucked up that my very consciousness was tied in a knot. I didn’t know where “here” was. I didn’t know whether or not I was “here”.

For further reference, it’s a good idea to know that you are “here”. Not knowing is a weak place, it’s ghostly and things can knock you over. I don’t want to ever get knocked over by anything.

I am HERE.