Worlds within worlds and poets under glass

Okay.



Santee Alley and Chinatown



two days rolled into one, with a passing glance at the tar pits.



We started at Santee Alley, which proved to be a great fun maze



like markets in Mexico





merged with a Hollywood





madhouse







a jumbled, swirling



temporary escape



from corporate



America





After the market we went to Chinatown, had lunch at Yang Chow's



and walked around



taking in the sights.



One morning, two worlds
then we went on to LACMA with hopes of also visiting the La Brea excavations going on next door.

Unfortunately, we just didn't have time to visit the tar pits. LACMA is just so huge. By the time we

were done, we were done but I did get a glimpse of the mammoth family at the pond. I've written about them here before. They haunt me. There they are, right on Wilshire Blvd, locked in a life or death drama. I know a guy here in Nevada who grew up in the La Brea area and remembers when giant fossilized skulls still protruded from the tarry sludge, mouths open, tusks thrust skyward, unchanged since the animals sank into the tar thousands of years ago. Now the bones, and so many more, have been excavated and this diorama stands in place as a memorial. The mother's feet are stuck in the gooey tar bottom of the pond and her mate and their baby, wild with fear and grief, watch helplessly from the shore as she tries to free herself. It's heartbreaking. The way the baby is stretching his trunk out to her, I can nearly hear his screams. It's as though the three of them have been struggling for the last 20,000 years to save her from an almost certain death.

We thought we might visit them and the excavation at Pit 91 after LACMA but as it turned out the museum was more than enough. M. Lee and I have been there before but still it was incredible and overwhelming. Along with everything else, the museum is currently showing Southern California Art of the 1960s and 70s and included were excepts from Semina, a "hand-printed, free-form, loose-leaf art and poetry journal privately published and distributed to a handful of friends and sympathizers" by Wallace Berman between 1955 to 1964, considered a "brilliant compendium of the most interesting artists and poets of its time."

The pages are displayed under a glass case. I looked for something from my uncle, not that I expected to find anything. Insanity and alcoholism scrambled him well before death finished the job. But I always check when there's anything about poets from the Beat era. I was just ready to move on and, to be honest, totally self-absorbed. Pointless. Why bother? Blah. Blah. Kathy found him. That's M. Lee's mom. She noticed that there was a poem by John Chance in the collection. She knew him in North Beach in the 50's, heard him read in the bars. Knew him from the scene. Mother of Beat Baby, don't ya know. She's a very cool lady. Bob Kaufman asked her to be godmother to one of his children, back in the day. In fact, it's her treat that we're in LA this week. She'd be in China now but her Chinese friend and traveling companion/interpreter had to opt out due to health reasons so the three of us came here instead. She found him ... Uncle John ... at the tar pit ... under glass.

The Security wouldn't let me photograph his poem. Museum rules. So I copied it and one more near by.

Talking Buddhism With My Lawyer


Every idea we took was carried to a point,
where it disappeared
into the infinity of possibility.

So there we sat.
There was something humorous
About charging out to the edge of the infinite

Only to find ourselves in that moment
Looking blankly across the table at one another
Locked in the same little room.

The ticker-tape clicking ignorant staccato
Outside the glass like a Zen Master.


~ John Chance


Excerpt from Pantopon Rose


Stay away from the Queen's Plaza, son ... Evil spot fuzz haunted by dicks scream for dope fiend lover ... too many lives ... heat flares out from the broom closet high on ammonia ... like burning lions ... fall on poor old lush workers scare her veins right down to the bone her skin pop a week or do that five-twenty-nine kick handed out free and gratis by NYC to jostling junkies ... So Fag, Beagle, Irish, Sailor, beware ...


~ William S. Burroughs

RIP Uncle John.

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