HEALTH CARE AND STILL LAUGHING

It's a good thing I have a sense of humor. After trying to get help for 10 months... in America, I didn't have enough money for private insurance, I finally, after going to emergency twice in Phoenix...moved to California after forclosure and got on MediCal.
Trying to find out what is wrong with me, I got two cat scans after I told them I didn't need another...as they didn't find anything the first time. After two trips to emergency and the hospital, they said it was not a stroke, not my heart, not diabetes, not HIV, not allergies, not my back and not my head. They have billed medicare and medical for close to $30,000 and I finally, finally, finally after almost a year they sent me to physical therapy.
This is my treatment...in therapy (I am quoting for the sheet)
1. Toy objects in Beans (and Rice there) Find them, match them with eyes closed
2. Move coins or pen around with hand.
3. Small squat holding on 15-20 2 times a day. Practice balance, feet shoulder wide apart then closed, count to 30. 2 times a day.

This is a good example of how the hospitals are milking medicare...and mediCal. They might have thought of these small exercise first? It's almost a joke. The MRI which took about 1 1/2 hour, alone, was $23,000. Can this be right? $860.00 of that was Pharmacy. I guess that was the shot..$22,479 was the rest. Are other people's MIRs this high? If a government healthcare system passes, they will have to hire as many watch dogs as they do medical staff to keep it honest...and they should have them for medicare as well. I read a letter saying healthcare in Canada is bad and this person would be happy to buy insurance, but what about the millions of poor people who can't afford to buy insurance. They can't even find a job. I am for socialized medicine. Insurance company can't be trusted either. If anybody did anything for me it was the chiopractor or a massage therpist which should be part of medical plans. The chiopractor showed me a spur on my spin shown by Xray that the nureologist did not even mention..from the MRI. I still have numb hands and feet. My balance is still off. The redness of my finger tips comes from inside. After $30,000, they don't have it right. I know, it's my body.
But, Mother Nature in her infinite wisdom has healed me....somewhat...by time...or I have got used to being numb. I haven't fall down this month, well, only once and it might have help me. It could have thrown my spine back into place. But, I will play with my beans, toys, pens and coins...after all somebody is paying, it's the least I can do. I have already squated my squats ***Shaman or Witch Doctor. anyone?

Poetry

Of Two Minds

It is the strong, working
Physical men I love
The construction workers
The utility workers
The truck drivers
Those men working
In the fields
The cowboys
The lumberjacks
The steel workers
The factory workers
The farmers
Driving bailers and rakes
Or plowing the ground
Yes, even the plumbers
And electricians
I like fishermen and hunters
....But then again
I crave those men
Who write poetry and songs
A man who paints
or sculptures is devine
And I adore all who play
or make music
Guitar players turn me on
Saxophone players I want to kiss
Drummers and their beat I desire
Dancers are most wonderful
I love a man who reads
Torn between mind and muscle
I am hopelessly of two minds
...Linda King 8/06/09


Bird's Eye View

I am circling myself
With fluttering wings
I fly around and around myself
Examining my consciousness
Deciding what thoughts
I want to keep or discard
Which ones I want to
Rearrange or move
What desires I want to explore
From above I can see
The uselessness of
Fear and self doubt
I see I stick pins in own myself
I can see an expanded picture
And can change direction
Change attitudes
Change a life...my own
It has been happening, lately
Just flying high above myself
Yes, now I can see
...Linda King 8/06/09

DREAM REALITY

Seth, from the Jane Roberts channeled Seth books, is the only place I had read that our dream are the true reality and our lifes are drawn out of that conciousness. It only makes sense as that is the part of us that goes on after death. I like his idea and it make sense, so, I will go along with it for now. Everyone in the world, including my sisters, have wanted me to stop talking about my dreams, but they are so real and vivid...I just go right on annoying people with them...dreaming away. I started recording my dreams at 20 and have studied dream, mine and other peoples for almost 50 years. I am no amateur at this I only tell the ones I think are the most important.
I have gone back to movie scripts and movie making in my dreams. I was in a science fiction type movie and ask what it was and they said it was "The Tiregrabber." That is one of John Bennett's books. Another night, I was writing a script and making a movie that was at some old mission and all the women of the town who had nothing to do was helping to bring it back to what it was. They were growing gardens, finding old wall and fountains. It was shot somewhere in Mexico or New Mexico. At the end they men were all sitting around with a band and the women came in singing and then dancing...all wild, like we used to do in Boulder. They band called for more men and it seemed to end in a big finale with everyone dancing and singing...Men and women. This was a real feel good movie.
Last night I was doing my own stunts in a movie. It had something to do with finding out that my sister, Gerry, had actually slept with my old love Bukowski. I knew she was lieing to me about it and I knew it was a movie, so I went out and practiced again and again a stunt were I would be hit by a car and had to tumble over the hood in just the right way not to get hurt. I didn't start dreaming about movie making until I got to San Francisco. Maybe I should be working on movie scripts.
Some people think I should take a drugs to stop my dreams, but I believe that the dream world is passing along important information for the improvement of this world. We can get off track...going the wrong way, etc, but our dreams are constantly drawing us back to what we are meant to do or our true desires. Maybe my biggest desires lines in movies, I am not sure...or maybe some time, some place, I have already made movies. The probablity of what might happen is before me to bring to life.
In another dream I was talked to an old school friend of mine, Dell. He seemed to know everything about me and I asked now he knew and he said, my nephew Dan has set it all up on the internet for him. I was amazed. My sister, Margie, was in this dream and she had planted a orchard of peach tree. Each stick had a peach on top. When I woke, I knew this was a dream to do with Dale Barney because he was the one who planted all the peach pits and they all came up. His orchard had more peaches than anyone could use. This could be the link between the living and the dead. Dale and Dell, who had a near death sickness a year ago, and Margie who is kind of going through the end of Floyd's life. The peaches...the peaches...right how I am not sure. I might just be my symbol for Dale. My dreams gave me the symbol for Leo, a Raccoon. He used to call the mice raccoons. The symbols move the dream process along with greater speed, like a sign language.

Blogs getting Bogged Down

My blogs are not getting written because I can't get to the page where you write. This blog takes me everywhere but where I need to be. If I tell my friends to go to Vooman's Voice they come up empty...blank...nothing. The only way I can get there is because I have Vooman listed as a favorite. I finally get tired of fighting it myself and go watch a movie on T.V. Finally Mr. Blogspot will give me the right page and I don't know why, the next time I try to blog I have to go through the same thing. After about a half an hour, this page I am writinng on came up. I don't like it because it doesn't have spell check or grammer I don't know where to find it. I can't imagine it not having spell check. If I write my blog on the word processor this blog will not take it in this space from edit. Why not? Maybe there is a war between Goggle and Mircosoft or Yahoo. I hate war. By the time I actually get to the page to write the important blog I wanted to blog is old and seems less important. So for now I will only bitch a bit.

I have been to Petaluma to see Max and stayed the night. We went to Santa Rosa Fair that had horse races, but we went to the exibits and only 3 horse races. I am thinking of a fast trip to Phoenix to get a few more things I left in the house, but not sure now.

San Francisco International Poetry Festival

I have just spent the last four days going to the San Francisco International Poetry Festival. Which included the best poets from all over the world...Russia, Israel, Italy, France, The Philippines, Ecuador, Palastine, Wales, Austria, Sweden, Haiti, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Vioetnam, Nigeria, Mexico China, Nicaragua and USA. Jack Hirschman of S.F. put this showing together with S.F. Library and Friends of Poets, and many others. It was a feast of poetry so rich that you were left wondering if you could digest all of those words. I told my sister, I felt like I had not only eaten not just a piece of rich cheesecake, but the whole pie. I didn't hold up to the very end which was a closing party at 7:00 o'clock the last night.
I enjoyed so much the documentry on Jack Hirschman on the first night that, they said, had been six years in the making. It was called THE RED POET. It is a must see when it come out at theatres. This movie made me think there should be millions of men like Jack Hirshman to make a better world. They touched on the many areas of his life and left you wanting more.
The second and third night, at The Palace, each poet, of over 25 poets, read in their own language and the poems were displayed in English on the large screen behind him or her. Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Diane DePrima, current poet laureate of S.F started the reading the first night. There was many different subject, styles and deliveries... from shy, beautiful voices, humorous, antimated, angry, sad, touching, indignant to the final booming deliver of Jack Hirshman. As I said, a feast of poetry.
During the days poets read at libraries in North Beach, Richmond and The Mission and on the forth day they had what they called a Poetry Crawl going from Kerouac Alley, to Cafe Trieste
to Beat Museum changing poets every two hours. I spent most of my time at the Beat Museum where my sculptures of poets, Harold Norse, Lawrence Farlinghette, Jack Micheline and A.D. Winans are displayed. Jerry, the owner introduced me to so many people, that I can't remember all their names and he invited me upstairs to eat with the poets. I am going to add my head of Robinson Jeffers to my heads of poets there. Everyone needs to see Jerry collection of wonderful Beat memorabilia in North Beach.
Someone else will have to tell about the poets closing party. I am sorry I missed it now, but I had to go home, rest and digest.

This is one of the poem Jack read. When I told him how much I like it, he got it right out and gave it to me for my sister, Gerry. Somehow I heard this poem as being against abortion, but it is really about the children in the Middle East. I guess it is because my sister Gerry is always yelling passionately in much the same way about the aborted children. I should have known a man would not go up against pro-choicer like that.
I still love the poem... Very strong. And it could be about an aborted David.

THE CHILDREN

allover will remember
their legs their arms
the amputated spaces
will be nothing branded
into their little souls,
never to forget, Israel,
you shattered their vessels
with your gunfire, shit on
the word, said fuck you
to the fetus in the womb.

You not they pissed on
your own wholly unholy
tetragramaton, its letters
a fraud and a fake
I wish I could feel you
hand grenades in you mug.
I want to stuff dead children
into you eyes, lovers of learning
lies.

May selah be broken
in your mouth, may amen
never find chapter and verse,
may your food turn into
the gangrenous limbs of the
children you've felled
those little trees of sparks.
You've killed David over
and over, you star of death.

O aliyah, how low!

O victory of defeat!

O stones growing in
the clenches of fists
enraged,

against you,
you rattler of bones!
---Jach Hirschman

BEAT MUSEUM FOR HAROLD NORSE

I went to the Beat Museum memorial for Harold Norse on Saturday. A.D. Winans, Neeli Cherkovski, Mel Clay all spoke and gave some interesting memories. Mel Clay had been at the Beat Hotel in Paris. He told stories about that place where Harold also stayed, with Ginsberg and other Beats. An older lesbian women, I did not catch her name got up and told how she saved Harold from a bunch of women once when he got up and read a poem about his sexual encounder with an under age boy. She praised his poetry, but at the same time got across her disapproval. It reminded me somewhat of Michael Jackson and his past history with children.
Jerry, owner of the Beat Museum, had my bust of Harold displayed up front. I wasn't going to read until I saw displayed on the wall a man that reminded me of the Grim Reaper with a poem that Harold's had written over the black cap in white. I decided to read a poem I had just written.

Death Visiting

Our first sight of Death
May only be that ominous black crow
That sits outside our window
Looking in with piercing eyes
It comes again, now in the corner
Just a face or a telling shadow
Somewhere...somehow
Death keeps showing up
Where we walk or have coffee
Death looking at us from
The window of a car
Stopped on the freeway
Slowly you know that Death
Moved into the building
You see him down the hall
On the patio, in the elevator
Soon you are saying hello
Walking the same street
Talking to the same people
One morning you are across
From Death having coffee
And you know, just know
Death will soon be at your door
Sitting in your living room
Looking into your closet
Sizing up your rooms
You sit and talk of dreams
Or others who have passed on
And you are not surprised
When Death takes your hand
Touches your head
Soothes your pain
Death says
He is a friend
And comes only
For those who
Have been calling
Those who need a friend
Death say he heals hurts
And mistakes of the past
That only death can heal
Death tell me he brings change
To a world that has become
A slow and boring crawl
You never imagine
Being a friend of Death
But it's comfortable
It feels right...the way to go
Now your friend comes
Almost every day
You are counting on it
...Your friend to knock
...To be there for you
And you wait
...Every day
Until Death come
...Linda King 7/12/09

I read this poem of Harold's

First Love

I couldn't keep
my eyes off him
Waking and before
sleeping I gazed
at his gray-blue
eyes that stared
with innocence
at me. I felt sad
for his soft heart
and long to warn
him of the loss
of friendship and
love. I couldn't
do it. He wouldn't
understand. The
distance was too
great between us.
He was 21, I was 81.
Of course it
happened not
once or twice
but again and
again. He lost
everything to
invidious friends.
With longing
I stared a my
young photo
with it's gray-blue
eyes, its innocence
buried in a trunk
for 60 years
Now I know
that it isn't love.
It's a blind date
with one's self.
Harold Norse

Collective Dreaming

I just finished a book called HEALING DREAMS by Marc Ian Barasch. Maybe I will stop dreaming so much now I am through with this book. I don't usually like dream books because they have a standard meanings for symbols in you dreams and I feel like each one of us may have different meanings for the same thing. You dream is so individual to you alone, that maybe only you alone can receive the true meaning. Marc studied dreams of many nationalities and came up with the similar dreams with all nationalities. He said many of the Indians have dreams sessions asking for leads and answers from dreams. One Indian girl had dreams of our planet loosing trees and then having no air to breathe. There was a suggestion that we all might try collective dreaming to save our planet....from global warming, over population, etc.
After the last chapter of the book I had a dream I was being healed and it was over a body of water. I think it was angels that had ahold of the sneer red cloth and throwing me up and down catching me. At the same time I was being sprinkled from above. They kept sprinkling and bouncing me. I was at loss to know what this met. Not drinking enough water...need to swim more...need to have more fun? I was happy to have a healing dream at the end of this book. Maybe more meaning will come of it. Maybe we should try to have some collective dreams to help our planet, our country, our government. If anyone wants to send me their dreams I will attempt to keep track of solutions, similarities and help. We should try for collective dreams.

Different night...I dreamed Artichoke. I woke up and thought...choke, choke, choke....something is being choked....what it being choked? Artichoke. Artichoke...Artichoke. Art... Art...that is it. Art is being choked. So easy these dreams. I know. My Art is being Choked. Okay.... I haven't done any good art for months. My poor Art.