The years have punched us, around a bit, but we learned to duck.
Together, “we fly like mandarin geese.” We dip. We dive. We fly past obstacles to Paris, France… Miami! Rome. New York. No problem. Hong Kong. Here we GO! Effortlessly, we transform from cocooned, invisible beings, into GRAND winged creatures. Image: WE wear ankle length, bat capes and fuzzy ears. Cute, huh?
Now, BACK OFF!!! WE are serious, deadly. Dangerous, ARTISTS! Visionaries… Seers.
Social critics?
WE STING! We spear chuck. We have outbursts. We are… INVISIBLE!!! Or not… we deflate, rapidly, like rubber sex dolls to be used as needed, and then put away for another day… no hard feelings.
Tears, drip down my face, from laughing at you, laughing at me in this ridiculous outfit, onstage. The audience, eats up our raw chemistry. We soar, creating jacked up rock-jazz-poetry, fresh with your hard chops and silver AXE and me, long legs akimbo, exploring the range of experimental accordion tactics, in a micro-mini. How refreshing! Talent springs forth. Together, we rock out. Your friendship empowers me. You get me out of the house, out of my books, and into the world. I appreciate that. Thank you. When we JAM, the sound is so good not only because you know music but because I didn’t until I bumped into my sixth grade music award… oh yeah, I’m a player, too… and I’m willing to make some righteous noise, just listen.
ROAR!
Now imagine: a zipping hornet of international black and pink polkadot WASPS! Unlike bees, WE stay ALIVE, after we sting. Honey, we don’t fight CANCER. Instead, we DANCE! Tango? Anyone? Buzzing. Social Butterflies. Diving into the pleasure of being here in ernest. Double dipping. Tax paying. Party Animals!
(Imagine it. Mix all the metaphors, in your head. Make a cocktail of images. Bees. Flowers. Birds. Painted rock stars in platform shoes performing before an eager and excited audience. Throw some gold in there, why don’t you? Diamonds, check! Feathers. Add, graceful dancers in tuxedos, sequins, (fake) furs. LIGHTS!!! Glamour. check. Frau Kolb. Check!)
Everyday, irrespective of what goes, “wrong,” or isn’t perfect in our lives, we have the option of seeing the GOOD that IS and digesting the FACT of our good fortune. We each have gifts. Perhaps you are a writer or seriously good looking. Perhaps you are a spirited salsa dancer. It doesn’t matter if you are short. IF you can salsa Hotties wearing elastic band dresses will follow you out on the dance floor. YOU know it… You have seen it. Remember Salsa Johnny? Shortest guy in Salsa-Land. The ladies don’t care. They just shimmy up and wiggle to his smooth moves. He leaves with the girl that twirls and looks BOMB in glittering spandex.
If you are the biggest NERD, well… everybody knows that the Nerds of the Eighties are the Tech Wizards of Today. Rich as Gates… We all have a purpose. Yet, it is easy to forget that everyone is special and worthy of love; so much is annoyingly WRONG, according to NEWS and Media. We are ALL OVERWEIGHT! People KILL people for no good reason. We are all VIOLENT, angry. History proves that humans are completely capable of hating themselves, and their brothers and sisters. The news confirms our worst fears and collective memories of HORROR. The flexing of power, which renders some into killers, soldiers, and officers… others into robots that follow orders to torture and maim or worse, design methods of “extracting information,” which are inhumane. Lest we forget, the fact that killing is central to the diets of billions, including myself, who cannot conceive a life in which not a single pig is grown for Sunday Bacon. Yet, do I want pigs to die senseless cruel deaths? No.
Do I wish for humans to hurt each other? Do I wish to harm? No. No. No. My mission is to remind you: BE GOOD. Write. Start your own blog. Above all, enjoy your life and respect the lives of others, no matter how tempting it is to think of some people as “Pigs.” It is wrong to demote humans into species traditionally farmed or hunted, hated… “rats,” the Nazi called the people they decided were not their brothers, sisters, and friends. Suddenly, the Jewish people, so civilized and entrenched in their German lives, were worse than enemies, they were pests. How we can transform into predators and others into prey is a mystery, if one forgets that not too long ago…
Die Entwicklung der Menschheit
Einst haben die Kerls auf den Bäumen gehockt,
behaart und mit böser Visage.
Dann hat man sie aus dem Urwald gelockt
und die Welt asphaltiert und aufgestockt,
bis zur dreißigsten Etage.
Da saßen sie nun, den Flöhen entflohn,
in zentralgeheizten Räumen.
Da sitzen sie nun am Telefon.
Und es herrscht noch genau derselbe Ton
wie seinerzeit auf den Bäumen.
Sie hören weit. Sie sehen fern.
Sie sind mit dem Weltall in Fühlung.
Sie putzen die Zähne. Sie atmen modern.
Die Erde ist ein gebildeter Stern
mit sehr viel Wasserspülung.
Sie schießen die Briefschaften durch ein Rohr.
Sie jagen und züchten Mikroben.
Sie versehn die Natur mit allem Komfort.
Sie fliegen steil in den Himmel empor
und bleiben zwei Wochen oben.
Was ihre Verdauung übrigläßt,
das verarbeiten sie zu Watte.
Sie spalten Atome. Sie heilen Inzest.
Und sie stellen durch Stiluntersuchungen fest,
daß Cäsar Plattfüße hatte.
So haben sie mit dem Kopf und dem Mund
Den Fortschritt der Menschheit geschaffen.
Doch davon mal abgesehen und
bei Lichte betrachtet sind sie im Grund
noch immer die alten Affen.
Erich Kästner
In other words, no matter how SPIRITUAL and LOFTY we like to think we are… we are merely, the same old apes that slipped down from the trees a second ago. We are working on becoming BETTER.
I work to remind myself that It is mostly on television, in movies, or in novels, that people shot people. I’ve never really had much attraction to guns and can’t image why one would ever want to shot anything, except of course for target practice or in the case of, “a brace of pheasant,” being secured for Christmas
dinner. Yet, some decide to go into “Law Enforcement,” which means they are paid by taxes “protect and serve.” We appreciate their valor. I couldn’t do it. Imagine going out and responding to the calls of the insane and abandoned, hurt and abused. You’d have to be very brave. It must be very scary!
The thought of serving the public as a police officer is overwhelming to me, but I appreciate that IF there is an emergency, we have the option of dailing 911. We are glad to have specially trained support, a social recourse, on call. That police officers work for our benefit is part of the story. That some have loss sight of the value of each human life or see some citizens as instant targets for investigation, intimidation, and worse is NO NEWS. (Yet, we can not come to accept evil. We must continue to demand reforms, amends, and justice for all those caught in the net of evil that is prejudiced or violent Law Enforcement. We must or we are part of the problem.)
In books, noir detective novels, sexy smoky films with women in clingy gowns and men in linen suits, that show up, armed, dangerous KILLING is COOL. Imagine the moment when the fedora wearing man felt, “a calling to work with guns,” on the streets, sorting out the cigarettes and the fabricated misery from the true distress call of the frail, the battered, helping heiresses sort out their complicated family history and teaching these wayward girls how to slip in and out of a martini before the gangsters arrive and…. It would take almost superhuman power to face the world with a gun, badge, and number. Image, your first murder case… I mean in novels, murder is the novelty, the spark which propels the action of the narrative forward. Undoubtedly, there is a THRILL of reading of the dark passages where assassins lurk, waiting until apprehended by cleverer detectives… Yet, in real Life, murder is no laughing matter, no passing fancy, no story backdrop.
Fortunately, I did not become a police officer. I am not sure I would have ever qualified. I am fit but in a funky spirited art waif, way. As it is, I live a much safer life, than I image is that of either criminals or law enforcement. Really, I spend most of my time and energy, hiding out, in study, and cultivating peace. I invest my time in observing and encouraging goodness, prosperity, and harmony. People call to ask for advice because they know I’m pretty good at navigating through this sea of possibility we call, “LIFE.” Yet, I’m not one to shy away from discord in music or my private life…. In other words, HERE hiding in the comfort of my womblike abode, I am brave, I am willing. I protest by forwarding some news stories and commenting, however obliquely, on current events. I feel outrage mingled with great joy at being here in this world, now. Sure, I’ve had moments of intense confusion, RAGE beyond control, induced by… you don’t care to know… yet, I’m mostly about peace and cultivating global acceptance and mutual understanding. REMEMBER: FRAU KOLB is not Perfect. I know… I know… you don’t believe me. Unless, of course, you have read this blog for long enough to know that I am indeed, far from perfect… perhaps… I am like YOU, divinely flawed!
One thing I know: we are but shades of each other, each a little more, a little less and identical, the same. We try as we might to differentiate but we must all eat, shit, and die. Therefore, we are left with this instant in which to decide for what we stand. Or are we with the BIG BAD WOLF howling and gorging himself on fear? Do we binge on BAD NEWS? Do we cultivate DRAMA in our lives? How, precisely, are we investing our days, spending our lives? Are we designing with our actions a Romantic Comedy or a Horror Flick? Let’s forget about pointing fingers. Let’s LOOK at our own actions in the mirror and forget about a perfect people, perfect race, perfect blog. FUCK perfection. Let’s LOVE what is. Let’s love each other, flawed, ugly. Fat. Poor. White. Trash. Priceless princess. Devoted servant. Teacher. Scholar. Voluntary Sex Slave. Let’s collectively forgive our employers, parents, neighbors, therapists, siblings, and friends for all the harm they have caused us and let’s LET GO of the anger, pain, entitlement that allows us to make victims of ourselves and others on a global scale and let’s KEEP DANCING!
(You can tell that I just finished reading a fabulous work of fiction by Los Angeles resident, author, Lisa See, “China Dolls.” This book was a light, fun, sexy romp into the dark crevices of HORROR which history, World War II era, Asian American DRAMA, a classic love story following the tried and true boy meets girls… has sex with both, marries the nice respectable lovable predictable SHOW girl…YET enchanting pattern… I loved it, because sometimes we all need a little stability in a story line to keep us turning pages.)
Lately, I’ve been tortured that my writing is not to par. How dare I keep writing this awful blog? I mean, my best friends tell me how horrible the BAD grammar in the earlier stages (remember when I went through that ass for as, phase, when I couldn’t resist playing with my butt and my buts in public…) listen, forgive me… I was just getting words OUT. OUT. OUT. Some people may be able to wait, I can’t or couldn’t. I had to get the words OUT. I’ve been writing in diaries, journals, most of my life. I read and read and read some more… I’ve so many books, ideas, and art images in my head. I’m bursting.
The BLOG, this blog, is an extension of three strong urges. One: have FUN! Two: Get WORDS OUT! Three: connect with my kind, my friends, my people.
YOU that read my words, regularly, observe that I’ve distinguished myself as someone that has a message. Moreover, let’s not forget that I am a Columbia University graduate… I know grammar rules… let’s not forget that it is easy to criticize and much more of a challenge to build an audience, a rapport with the public. For those of you that know me well, it will come as no surprise, that I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I’ve approached it in a myriad of ways. Yet it is here, on-line that I’ve found my voice, my outlet. (I’ve started novels and nearly three hundred pages of drivel to prove it. I painted, participate in art events, and I draw daily… yet, there is a part of me that knows I don’t have the stamina to become a full time fine art painter. It seems, to me that a person would have to be made of nails to want to do that. You have to be very tough, maybe as tough as a cop… maybe not.) Anyway, I’m an artist, for sure… I write. I dance. My dance is impromptu, a jazz I fashion from the shock others experience when they witness me shake it. Now, the fact remains. I write. I write right here. Now. I publish. Miraculously, you read my words. Thank you.
More amazing: you are not alone in reading ALL THESE WORDS. You have waded through this long text. You have clicked and dug around and spent… hours of your life here, reading. Lots of readers frequent this site. Maybe they LIKE BAD GRAMMAR. I mean… there is so much good grammar out there… so many people writing scholarly reviews on Yelp…. yet SOME of YOU are even generous and supportive enough to DONATE to the Talkinggrid, which really means the world to me, to us. Now:
Let’s be grateful IF we have fingers, with which to type of LIFE as a JOY, a pleasure to be shared! Let’s remember that not everybody is so lucky as to be able to see, touch, smell, type, read, write, and/or tell the difference between right and wrong. Nope. You can, sometimes. So can I, until I can’t, but I don’t let myself forget my good fortune in being able to address these issues and share with you my perspective, my joy, my gratitude.
At the end of the day, it is my experience that goodness rules. Most people want to be and are mostly good. Sure we cheat, lie, and fail to live up to our ideals, but we have ideals and we will continue to improve. We may lose sight of this fact that most humans simply want to live, love, and grow old, when we watch children arm themselves and attack with weapons meant for military combat on our multiple screens and many NEWS (Horror) sources. We may eat meat, but we aren’t here to steal the life of another over political cartoons and we aren’t planning on wearing a cartoon hero suit and gunning down movie goers or drawing ourselves up to be warriors in video games, avenging High School Slights, paternal permissiveness, by gunning down our neighbor children. Daily, all over the world, humans exchange so many little supportive gestures, courtesies, which are the food that nourishes our collective spirit and allows us to continue despite the exceptional misery and astounding crimes that we know to be part of this endless narrative of sorrow and suffering, celebration and birth, called, “Life.”
Here we are! Dip. Rumba! Soft shoe. Flip! Dancing? Finding romance in the eyes of the partner we picked long ago, in our reproductive prime… finding the strength in ourselves to leave the abusive parent, the over taxing best friend (like the protagonist, Grace, in Lisa See’s stunning little novel of Asian American Show Girls shaking their cans into the retirement home lounge show circuit). On must learn to let GO, swing it, shake it UP, roll around like a clown and find BALANCE in the midst of the madness by being honest about one’s true and unique position as a STAR in the introverted and meandering, luxurious, and unpredictable, fun and carefree world of Frau Kolb & Talkinggrid.
