{"id":260,"date":"2003-01-01T00:00:37","date_gmt":"2003-01-01T00:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/?p=5"},"modified":"2003-01-01T00:00:37","modified_gmt":"2003-01-01T00:00:37","slug":"bennett2-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/2003\/01\/01\/bennett2-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleaning & Cooking Are Traditional Activities by John Bennett"},"content":{"rendered":"

CLEANING & COOKING<\/span>
\n ARE<\/span>
\n TRADITIONAL ACTIVITIES<\/span><\/p>\n

Follow the tiny yellow ball as it bounces across the page of your
\nsing-along life, crossing t’s and dotting i’s. Are we having fun
\nyet? And just like that there’s no more paper and the little dot of
\nyellow hope and beige direction spins into blackness.<\/p>\n

Rage against the dying of the light raged the poet Dylan Thomas, and
\nthen he drank himself to death.<\/p>\n

Mellow yellow said my dear friend Johnny N., or implied it in the
\nfabric of his days, and did the same.<\/p>\n

***
\nHow, you may be thinking, can I call someone I’ve never met dear
\nfriend? And where in God’s name did I come up with Johnny N?<\/p>\n

Johnny N?<\/p>\n

Johnny N. came out of nowhere like a song. And John Nesci was my dear
\nfriend even before he called long-distance years ago and in a grave deep
\nvoice, as if we’d been friends forever, said:<\/p>\n

“This is Nesci here — Feldman sent your book. We have to talk. Were
\nyou in the Nam?”<\/p>\n

***
\nBe LaRoe is hosting the New York City wake, the celebration, a gathering
\nof a tribe.<\/p>\n

“I have to clean the house today,” she wrote me. “But it’s getting
\nhard –I miss my boy. Still, cleaning and cooking are traditional
\nactivities when someone dies …”
\n***
\nThere are X number of dear friends in life, out there waiting on the
\nchance encounter. Some you never meet at all. But when you do,
\nsomething that’s been there all along comes into play.<\/p>\n

It takes death to show us what holds us in its hands.<\/p>\n

–John Bennett<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CLEANING & COOKING ARE TRADITIONAL ACTIVITIES Follow the tiny yellow ball as it bounces across the page of your sing-along life, crossing t’s and dotting i’s. Are we having fun yet? And just like that there’s no more paper and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,19,18],"tags":[123,78,101],"class_list":["post-260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-16","category-john-bennett","category-john-bennett-2003","tag-123","tag-bennett","tag-john"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theliteraryunderground.org\/juicepress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}