Author Archives: tomstolmar

Post No. 6.2.* Propinquitus Gravitas, Noblesse Oblige, Gesundheit!

I must strike while the irony is hot! Alas, there’s nowhere else to turn, but back to this, my belated, deflated blog post, No. 6.2. In this case, to you, my trusted, faithful readers over these many, many, um, months.

Bernal Hill, 2012, ink & saliva, T.S.

Bernal Hill, 2012, ink & saliva, T.S.

For where else, but the inter-webs to extrapolate my absence from this website, as I found myself employed & embroiled by a local construction outfit. I was officially hired by UpScale Builders, in San Francisco, a new and promising company, only to be, “let go”, as the owner ever-so cautiously put it. In actuality, I was fired for no reason at all, left twisting in the wind with my own family to support. The job-site was broken into, burgled, all the power-tools stolen and I, your faithful soldier of artistic change, veritable soothsayer of wood & words & dovetails, was predestined to take the fall. Even trying to summons the courage to talk about this is not easy, as I find myself, once again on the ground-floor of life, building my way up & out, at least, that is the nonsense we’ve been spoon-fed as hard-working Americans! Phooey!  

So as to speed things up, since I’m a terrible typist―as students in the 1970’s typing was an elective course, for girls & boys who were expected to become secretaries―now I’m trying to use this voice recognition on my Apple iThing, however, it would seem it doesn’t really work or else I’m merely opening the gates of hell, Pandora’s Hideous Box-Set Stream-of-Consciousness!

Seiobo at Ocean Beach, 2013

Seiobo at Ocean Beach, 2013

Perhaps, being “let go” by the UpScale people was the best thing, a real blessing in disguise; though I’m financially panicked, now, at least, I can try to get back to the real work I was meant to do on this earth! Since I have no Sugar Momma and no Sugar Dada, I must further turn to help and assistance from the Inter-Borg Collective. I’m serious, I must subsist in order to painstakingly complete my novel, “Paper Jaguar”. Please, contribute whatever you may, to Tamás Fund for Future Development. It is easy as pi or cake, ah, that is, it will be easy when I figure out how to set up a PayPal thingy and hook it up to an actual, “something”, that I can offer in return for your, ah, generous help. It is a straightforward arrangement, simply a way of supporting the arts and those who are not the elevated, pre-established, pre-approved wealthy members of our otherwise ridiculous, so-called society. Not that I am complaining, mind you, it’s just that anyone, and I mean anyone with any education at all, especially those with no education, in fact everyone can see that we humans still live in a completely barbaric state; Orwellian & Darwinian and even worse, viz-á-viz, the disparity of wealth and available resources planet-wide! It is appalling and we are all in some kind of denial about this. Having a sense of reality and proportion about these things is key, but the key cannot work without the lock it was meant to fit, and that lock is inside us. I will continue as I’m sure, you, yourselves are determined to do and in exchange for your help & support of any kind I offer these, the Pre-Prologue and first chapter, “A Bunch of Pious Piss-Wads” of my novel-in-progress. Stop, I said, typing, did you hear me, Siri, “Stop typing!” Siri explanation point (!) Period! Oh, hell with it! Hello? Anybody in there?

Statistical Poverty, 2013, Stolmar

Statistical Poverty, 2013, Stolmar

It is because of you, my growing readership, your encouraging comments over these many, many, um, months. Yes, there is nothing to do, at 52 years old, it is become quite clear that the capitalist machine eats us alive and has no more use for builders when we are old and past our expiration date. As iMentioned eerily and early in weblog No. 3, I did not want to get into, “Politix” and I’m trying not to! Yet it is difficult, especially for those of us who work not only for a living, but for survival! This is the New Frontier of Civil Rights and so it is here, in the spirit of the “Blogosphere”, this place for which we had such high hopes, once upon a digital wet-dream, I return to speak with you, hereto henceforth, faithful to my art, to myself and to my family above all and the god of creativity and freedom.

As I happened to watch a documentary on PBS, the other day, on the theme of Bhutan, a country I knew nothing about, I learned that the entire country of Bhutan is founded upon the principle of, “Gross National Happiness”. It is a kind of mantra for them, GNH! This is fabulous, I thought, at least somewhere on our planet, they seem to be evolving in concert with the universe… I’m exhausted and believe this precise/ physical work I’ve been doing, as a carpenter for 25 years, rebuilding multimillion dollar Victorian homes here in San Francisco was killing me! I was told by the owner of UpScale Builders, that they were suddenly, downsizing, so I was laid off. Voila! I was hired as an advanced journeyman carpenter and now the journey goes on. Thanks, Bob!

Pedexing: Suspicious Persons Shot On Sight" (Dolores Heights) 2013,

Pedexing: Suspicious Persons Shot On Sight” (Dolores Heights) 2013,

Yes indeed, it’s a tangled inter-web we weave. I almost forgot, my backup is backing up, beep, beep, beep, I need to visit the Apple genius people to tell me how to think, but deep, deep down, they don’t really know how any of this works either, only that it makes an ocean of money, so they keep expanding and upgrading the latest downgrades, at hyper warp-speed! “Well, hard drives are like car tires,” they say, “do you have a tire iron?”

Working people are so happy in America, (aren’t we?) this new computer-reality is proving to be a great boon, especially to the wealthy children of the wealthy, lockstep and free-bird, they’re buying the entire city of San Francisco as a Theme Park/ Play Land for The Google Kids, it is a real feeding frenzy for the rich! “Beep, beep, beep.” New millionaires & corporations are buying up houses & property, left & right, evicting all & everyone in their path. How unenlightened is that for a progressive city like ours? Shameful really, just let the poor people, mostly Mexicans do the hard work―voice record, just record… This seems to be the extent of things before we get this ship of state moving again towards that new horizon!

I suppose it comes to this, Alms Across The Internet, whatever it takes to create a more universal distribution of wealth. Capitalism while the lesser of some other evils is still evil and needs desperately to evolve. So let us each help each other, let us all help all of us; from each according to his ability to each accordingly on his knees! God bless the avant noblesse oblige… Beep, beep, beep… (Done?) > function >function… Let the games begin.

SF Park, 2013, pen & saliva

SF Park, 2013, pen & saliva

Thank you all for tuning-in and baring-with my first attempts to utilize voice recognition… though, I’m not really sure who is recognizing who, if anybody in our so-called, “Intelligence Community” is even remotely enlightened! Spies are one thing, but real intelligence is another creature altogether. Just watch highlights on “The Daily Show with John Stewart” and you’ll know we’re not entirely alone in our collective gag-reflex and proto-telepathic knowingness; a growing necessity for survival! We don’t want Tesla Cars only for the hyper-rich, but increased “Gross National Happiness”! Hallelujah, Voice Recognition for all! 4-3-2-1… Blast off!?!?

 Yes, because I’ve been absent, because of the overwhelming demands upon us all, I humbly proffer in the meantime, these first chapters of my novel, halfway through its genesis, “Paper Jaguar” for your pleasure and providential perusal. Future chapters will be forthcoming at feasible rates, contributions or otherwise… Gracias…

Verbally, acrobatically, lovingly, constructively yours, 

Roger Amsterdam, aka, Tamás Stolmar. 

Publishers are also welcome…

Blog Post No. 4.1

Post No. 4.1.0

emperor of ice

Welcome back to Uncle Tom’s Blog Cabin. Yes, where was eye, in this silly iStream of things… This Post is from the “Lost Hard Drive”, my recently-crashed MacBook! It served me well, iSuppose, but I lost a number of pieces that weren’t backed up, so this is sort of re-imagined, Post No. 4.1.0. I really don’t know how to do this darn Blog-thing, let alone function―expletive repeated―since that dismal day I had to go computerless! And I hardly give a fancy rat’s ass! ibid. see poem below:

 

Rat’s Ass

for Peter Kadyk Overton

Meaning by itself has none.
As surely as I sit myself down to write,
it is done. We were raised to think
aesthetics matter, but they don’t,
capricious only, mere foibles,
seductions of the mind.

Something about this day was crucial
and then not. I tricked myself into being.
Yet, I am comfortable here on this bench,
it is my favorite place to be on a warm
autumn’s day, I feel like a traveler.

Funny though, how there can be so little
to say and even less to do, with so much
expected of us, always active and engaged,
with all due respect, I should like to say,
I don’t give a rat’s ass.

That was, “Rat’s Ass”, circa 1991. Yeah, those were the days, over 20 years later, still struggling on… So it is, with great purpose & fortitude, I send out this next Blog Post from Mission Control, here in San Francisco. I’m not sure exactly with what, “purpose & fortitude”, but that is in the spirit of it, the very nature of the thing-in-itself!

Who Has Time.2.

iBlog-on, slog-on… Yet find myself wandering & wondering why, just why do we have to spend so much time at computers!? (When did our lives get hijacked into the Matrix?) It’s like I died 15 years ago and haven’t done a thing since! Oh well, such is the nature of “progress”. So much for slow, painstaking synthesis of actually “drawing” things as they seem… The Man on his Blue Guitar.

It used to be that Henry Mancini’s Sleepworld or SleepTrain had the edge, selling us nice new fresh mattresses, (songs) reminding us that we spend 1/2 our lives in bed! Some people even sleep there, so I’ve been told. But now the metric wrench has shifted and tossed us all into the Quantum Gearbox of Facebooking. Most of the time people are unwilling to even look each other squarely in the eyes, unless of course, they’ve been pre-screened and properly “liked” on some pseudo-cosmopolitan website. Welcome aboard Virgin Air! Absolutely, “No Liking Allowed”, prior to sign-in and passcode verification!

 

La Jolla Cove 1983

Yet, here I am, pouring out my soul in this ditch-witch blog-portal to know-where!? No what iMean? iSurely don’t. “And stop calling me, Shirley!” We’re still social party animals, after all, and iKnow we haven’t met, formally, but somehow, we need each other. (I used to write letters to my mother, but as she’s long-since gone up, now I’m writing them to you!) We may, in fact, be more a part of one another than we could ever realize. Maybe that is what “religion” is all about in the best sense of the word-world and we have always known this…

Now, I’m just interloping and interpolating and percolating from the last lost Post before the MacBook Air Crash a month ago or so. Somehow, willing or not, we’ve all thrown our hats into this ring-around-the-hard-drive-rat-race, slouching & morphing toward Bethlehem. And the great part is that we are free to do this, but what do we make of it? Pure vanity or hubris? Instant gratifuckation and redemption in pay-pal land? Not likely, it’s more like Egypt, it’s evolutionary. We will all be set “free” by computers & technology even as we are enslaved by them! And, we’re gonna like it! “There’s an app for that!”

Where there’s a will, there’re at least three lawyers & a cockfight! Whoops, how did that get in there? Must’ve slipped in out of some iCloudburst silver linings foul-play-book in the southern hemisphere… under the Northern Lights! How do I know? Welcome to the interwebs.

Don’t forget to check-out & buy something from my, ah, collection; if iEver get that part of my website together… Yes, in this regard, I must ask for help from the world-community, in the most sincere & evolutionary of terms. Ironically, it is, with our funny world, that wee working people, who are supposed to be “honored” for actually “working”, are never really able to retire. After 30 years in the trenches, doing carpentry and a million other jobs… I’m physically unable to hoist myself up sides of buildings, dangling over the prospect of further incapacitations and certain death, for the sake of someone, uhm, up-there… whoever he or she may be, who has all the money. It’s just ridiculous and we know this, so it is in the spirit of all of us, being able to have dreams and actually achieve them… Not only the born-wealthy folks…

END.2

END #1

 

 

 

As I said somewhere before, I’m into content, structure and iambic filibusters! I’m a poet & carpenter and see no cloture in the near infinity! What do we expect, we’re only human or some close approximation thereof. This is why I am, “The Fortunate Son”. I definitely mean the things I’m saying, I just can’t necessarily remember what they were or ever get back, to edit and endorse them…

Well, I’ve got to go, they’re just about to start another war, this could be “The Big One” and I don’t want to miss it! So, here’s another vintage nugget from the 90‘s entitled: “The Damned”. Please read it if you like, on my “Poems” section.

The Damned

The Damned

A quarter-pounder for the Family Guy

I

This was a period (.) of pedantry.
This was a period of flippantry
which came to be remembered lovingly
by the membered and dis-membered alike.
They wore post-it notes and khakis, they
drank Red Dog Piña Coladas of the mind
with their lights on and their game on
and everything was on! They felt at home
because they were, at home!

Evenings, morning and afternoons waxing portentous
for city blocks turned cell blocks, turned to cinders.

Navigators & Escalades & Cherokees & Hummers
John Deere hydraulic hammers hummed, lubed-up
and ready! Locked & loaded, crossing over one after another,
parking and jamming purchasing and partaking of the
first steamy-hot penetrations of the slab, Gaea,
the Mother of All Inner & Outer Everything!

II

They were very fond of saying they
enjoyed the Full Driving Experience!
And what they were told never to forget
they could never quite remember…
so they lived in the past with extended
warranties, and cheap credit filled the lands
w/ hedge funds & tasty cherry-slush!

The lives of the owners were well-insured
and many rules and stipulations were made
for those who were deemed to need them
by those who didn’t. Some were imprisoned
for trying to get a piece and whatever
went around stayed around
just as foul as that!

III

While many were out mining
the stores, a Zone was created
where occasional Stalkers would toss
their towels, ‘trembling in tenderness’.
But most were busy by day & busy by night
telling the whole world how busy they were
selling art for art’s sake up and down
the rivers.

Meanwhile more & more poems
were being created that ended with a question
mark? Always, an upward lilting intonation?
as if? they weren’t really… sure?
Gradually though, form followed no one,
feeding mostly upon function dictated
by the former which followed itself
around, hopelessly.

“Loose Weight and Gain Space!”
went the advertising. “Might Makes Maybe.”
was the basic ideology, deus ex machina
“Clear and Hold”!

IV

Farting in their hot tubs
they were promised heaven
on the installment plan
with no exit strategy.
It all made good sound sense
and sounded good at the time.
It was, as they came to say,
“A savings celebration for everyone
who was anyone! A Pay-&-Save
Revolution!”

Their marbles were laced
with magnificent possibilities
and their bumpers plastered
with a syntax of bathos: “If you
think the system is working,” one sucker
stuck, “just ask someone who isn’t
and still makes more moolah
than you ever will!”

V

Goodness gracious! said Henny-penny, The markets are falling;
I must go & tell the King! Oo! cried, Cocky-locky, Goosey-poosey and
especially Foxy-woxy as they went along, higgledy-piggledy,
The dollar is falling, the dollar is falling down!

And so it went, when
it wasn’t all over the place
it was all over their face,
just as phat & bloody as that!
Because they were pre-approved
and pre-determined
to get their Burger’s Worth!

Finally the mouses took leave
their senses and the screens
all went dim sum!

Lost without their clickers,
they went roaming the floppy
streets and subliminal cul-de-sacs
with unspeakable ennui.

I saw a dove with radioactive
wings and a fish with frog’s legs!
A chicken eating range-fed,
oven-roasted tofu buffalo-chips
and an elephant in a duty-free
china shop buying up ivory stock!
I saw a man eating his own flesh
with rabid dogs, happy as fleas.
Cremation is perfect…

cremation is perfect, said
the poet from behind the counter,
For Thine is the Kingdom and thine
is with, extra cheese, Right?

My bartender came over to
tell me it was last call forever,
he was leaving and never returning,
never returning, because…

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a Whopper.

Blog Post No. 3.1

WAR-MART 

 

What is the Point of Poverty! There are just four pages left in my present little peasant moleskine journal, but have I written or drawn anything worthy of transcription or publication? Dear God, the more I pack into these little journals the less might actually appear—if that is possible—to return what began as a blank page back to its original obverse emptiness!

Three Chimneys         All hail the Blog! Blog must go on! Yes, for this is not my journal anymore, but the third actual blog post to establish Global Link Sausages: You never sausage a place! A concatenation of like-minds resonating in perfect fugal dynamix! O.k., I may be reaching, yes, but that is the point, is it not? I am reaching out! We may be the 99%, but percentages don’t matter anymore because math, as-we-know-it, is over, this is the “AfterMath”.

San Carlos & 20th St.

*(Politix, all-4-1! Once & for all! May I never mention “politix” in this context again!)

Yes, the journals were almost running on “empty” by now, running on fumes, but the blog goes on to infinity, until we have our own “American Spring And All”. It’s not too late, it is merely the end of the beginning!

Spare us all from the depraved polarity of that word, “politix”! We are all so much better than this. We are all together so much more than sum of our parts! In our hearts, like William Guitarlos Williams’, “Spring and All”, it is all that we are and we who know this now, know that the jig is up… This is the purpose of this s-p-a-c-e… This is why I’ve begun this Blog, because we are tired of the nonsense of rhetoric & rivalry & road-rage of the ages… bereft of sages… or at least deaf to their circumambience.

Zsuzsi in Kitchen

I don’t want to get off track, though I’m not sure it is possible or even avoidable, as long as we persevere… We cannot fail to see the forests through the manhole covers and hubcaps of the city. We are here and this is our city too, not just the real estate mongers and voracious bankers and investors. This is The City, this is the Blog and I’m Jack Web. It’s all related, it’s about everything that concerns us and some things which don’t, all of it, like my favorite book of poetry this year, “The Best Of It”, by Kay Ryan. O.k. I think I veered off track, but really, check her out. She’s great!

I am sort of re-creating my journals in this effort to blog, but they’re distilled and broken-down, atomized, amalgamated, incorporated… Write now I am listening to another of my favorites: “Shing Kee” by Carl Stone from his album, “Mom’s”.

Please remain in touch… stay close, as I can only get so much of this out at a time. It feels like giving birth or something, not that eye wood no, knot that I could possibly know…

I’ve posted this now, before Post No. 2, but I don’t think it matters in the stream of things…

Poem #1

The Old Man and
The Seafood Section

Aisle 1. The Old Man is on a seafood diet:
Whatever food he will see he will surely try it.

Aisle 5. In the Skin Care Section.
“Sometimes, you wake up in the mornings
and you feel like wrinkles are just not acceptable.”

Aisle 3. The Linguini Section,
“Mézem,” his Hungarian girlfriend says,
“you need a vife, to sue your socks!”
“Off?” he says.
“Yes,” she says, “I will sue your socks, off.”

Aisle 4. In the Cabbage Patch,
“Four’s company and everyone else in here
is a crowd! No, it’s more like a mob!”

Aisle 8. To the “Lunch Meats Lady”,
“Walking on the beach there was nothing but small
change, nowhere could I find even one
whole sand dollar!”

Aisle 3. Cards, Condolences & Periodicals,
“Look at all these superficial, spoiled Hollywood brats!
I don’t have issues alright, I’ve got subscriptions!”

Aisle 9. In the Beverage Section,
“I water my geraniums so I won’t drink alone.”

Blog Post No.1

Blog Post No. 1.

"Drawing the drawing drawing the hands drawing hands..."

“Drawing the drawing drawing the hands drawing hands…”

I wouldn’t even know where to start! My God, what is the ‘point’ of all this?

I’m 52 years old in two weeks and desperate. I’m a carpenter for 25 years but went to art school! That should sum it all up! So now, with my wife & daughter, I have no visible/ invisible means of support, but for my life’s work in art, making crazy performance poetry in San Francisco and writing these endless journals and drawing my slanted, carpentry-influenced views of the city of San Francisco. One thing which is clear, all-2-clear-here & there: is that I write entirely too much! I mean, just looky-look around at all these journals.
— see inset photos, inserting…

What am I going to do with all these poems & journals & drawings?! I really hope… I pray somehow that I break through with enough success to be free to edit, transcribe even a fraction of this, the better 1/10 of it, this… my life, my wife, my child, my God! That’s where you come in—this is a work-in-progress and there are plenty of things to purchase and ways to help out so we can go on. From the bottom of my heart to top of my aorta, I thank you!

From everyone to everyone according to everyone! I think Marx said that, Groucho Marx! Or was it Lenin. Everyone helps everyone in the New World! This is the ‘point’ of all of my work! Entertainment is part of it, but the real point of it is the freedom of everyone! Civil Rights does not end with elimination of discrimination; Civil Rights begins with Freedom; the freedom of everyone from economic enslavement & tyranny. Did I mention I’m desperate? And certainly, most “average” Americans have likewise been sold down that same “river”.

(What was that line, right about here? Mistah Kurtz?)