Béla Bartók on the calliope

The Christmas card battery has been wobbling out its warped melodies for more than three and a half days now and in that time I have become very fond it it. In fact, today I retrieved it from the trash and it now sits on a small black plate in the garage where it can sing till it dies. As Roy said, it's like "Béla Bartók on a calliope of the macabre, having gone horribly awry." I love that image. Bartók has been one of my favorites since I was a kid. My piano teacher turned me on to him. I was charmed. At that point in my life he was one of the first to open the door to the world and myself that, until then, I was not sure could, should or wanted to share. Later in high school I had a painter friend, Miki Balogh, whose father had studied under Bartók in Hungry and been the head of Cornish in Seattle during its early days. He was dead by the time I met Miki but I was thrilled to be have come so near the masters. She and I instantly became fast friends and spent seemingly endless time obsessing about art, poetry, freedom, sex, drugs and every kind of music and musician. Her mother had a lesbian lover who lived with them in their small home that doubled as a piano studio. That also impressed me. And for a while they had a house guest from Hungry, a wild darkly handsome revolutionary who had escaped from persecution under its fascist government. Miki told me that one afternoon when her mother and friend were gone, she lay in his arms on the couch as he recounted the sufferings of the Hungarian people, kissing every scar on her body, weeping all the while. That really impressed me. So, if a bit of the spirit of Bartók has incarnated in my garage this new year, eeeexceeeelleeeeent!



A BIG STORM is supposed to hit tonight or tomorrow. Weathermen are predicting 5-10 feet of snow in the Sierra. Old timers in the valley have already made a run on the grocery stores and the shelves are eerily bare so we followed their lead and stocked up as well. Tonight the wind is howling around the house and seems intent on knocking over our back fence but so far, no snow. But the birds must know something is up. The last few days, very few have been around, I had to put a "BIRDS WANTED" sign in the window. Other than that, I'm in the midst of reorganizing the north side of my office. I'm sure, in it's pre state, it would have made a Feng Shui expert desperate.