The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard: Library of America Special Edition

by Ron Padgett

  “One lady was picking up a newspaper when the quake started. She was looking across the street and she could see a big sheet of water coming over a house and then go back again. That was water from the swimming pool.”

  “Well here we are in the country. It really is beautiful here, no noise or congestion, just beautiful trees, flowers, and the river. T.V. reception is lousy, but the cable is supposed to be in soon.”

  “I became almost totally disillusioned with books and travel brochures when I found snow covering the Mojave desert!”

  “About forty years ago, the former Secretary of the Treasury, Mrs. Florence Knapp, baked a cake for me.”

  “California—hot and burning—forest and brush fires—added to the uncomfortable smog condition. Temperatures were over a hundred. People were fighting with garden hoses to save their homes. Others watching theirs burn, too helpless to fight back. These sights were definitely not beautiful.”

  “I dress in bright colored clothes so people in cars can see me quickly. I feel I am safer this way.”

  “We became acquainted with a Canadian couple in the seat ahead of us. She was pale and sweet, he was dignified and austere. They played cards for hours on end to while away the time.”

  “Into the far celestial, an eagle was soaring against the azure blue sky. The majestic pines were whispering an echoing symphony, and dropping pine cones down on us.”

  “Do any of you ladies have any smashing ideas for using driftwood?”

  “Am hoping to eventually write a few hundred pages of fiction concerning military wives.”

  “My wildest dreams would be to move to a warmer climate.”

  “We have a black cocker-poo, which is a cocker and poodle mixed. She, Midnight, shares our attentions with Prince, a white, seven toed, one green eye and one blue eyed cat.”

  “A minute is cruel.”

  “I promise myself to be too large for worry.”

  “Shoes—yes, shoes. Pretty ones to go with pretty headgear. Not for the feet of the mad hatter of Ohio Mills who lives on Route Six. No siree—the shoes are on her head! Not only are they on a hat, but they are positioned upside down. She exclaims, ‘Anyone can place them right side up!’

  “Snowtime is a happy time for children and a hat scavenger. Especially when she is staring dreamily over the onions in the display case—concocting another brainstorm. With an armload of onion skins in a grocery box now she’s contentedly humming the outdated tune—I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch, and all I do is cry all day.”

  “I’m sort of a would-be cowgirl without a horse.”

  “I got bit by the needlework bug in Tokyo.”

  “If you happen to have a dead tree, turn a blue glass bottle down over each limb. The results are rather eye catching.”

  “A friend had a pile of bricks they didn’t want so naturally we took them.”

  “I wonder if the drive and ambition which is synonymous with mankind is channeled correctly.”

  “Making the right decision sometimes takes so long that by the time I’ve reached it, times have changed, and, it’s wrong.”

  “I was cooking up a pan of sausages in the caravan when suddenly we were surrounded by three huge tour buses.”

  “How can I remain unhappy with a smile splashed across my face?”

  “When you are the hammer, strike.”

  “I probably have more irons in the fire than my fire will heat, but that’s what keeps us going, isn’t it?”

  “I am a barbed wire collector. My wife, Cora, collects postage stamps. I started collecting postage stamps but couldn’t get interested too much so I took up collecting barbed wire.”

  “I have a recipe I think is unusual called radio pudding.”

  “For a good dark tan, burn oleo, rub on skin, go out in sun, then when you come in the house, rub a wet tea bag over your skin.”

  “When my mother was living, we spent holidays and vacations on the Pacific coast beaches to rest, but our constant combing for driftwood, agates, and shells kept us frazzled most of the time.”

  “Annagene Schmitt’s career began in 1961 with six aprons blowing in the breeze in front of her Ridge Road home.”

  “I think, in writing, one must feel it inside to do the best.”

  “I wish I had a home on the ocean, where I could watch the ocean wash the beach.”

  “I figure the world will give me just about what I deserve.”

  “Beautiful big sailboats go by our front window every day heading for all parts of the world.”

  “Each of our lives is like a book, and as in memory, we turn the pages.”

  “Our Pepi is registered with the American Kennel Club under the name of Prince Pepper, but to us he is just ‘Little Buddy.’”

  “Wild fruit has become a scarce item most places where modern building programs have taken over.”

  “I like to keep my hands busy. I dabble in watercolors and water soluble pencils. Get some striking effects.”

  “Can you picture a flustered husband climbing gingerly down from the roof of the house on a rickety ladder, with a glass ‘vase’ clutched in both hands while a frantic wife below wrings her hands and moans, ‘Be careful! Ca-a-areful! Don’t drop my priceless antique!’”

  “To the lady who thinks it’s illegal to sell white chocolate: California does not violate any laws.”

  “The writer’s life is lonely and depressing at times. The rejections are many and the road is long. If you want it, go after it. Those who must write, do.”

  “I love to embroider, but that’s about as far as I go.”

  “I don’t dare be idle. I might get in an argument with myself.”

  “My husband is a descendant of the Bismark family in Germany. They left Bismark in Germany on the sailing ship ‘Bismark’ and settled in New Zealand at a place called Bismark.”

  “My aim is to someday be notified that I am a grand prize winner of a nationwide contest.”

  “I would just love to have an African violet, but I’m afraid it would die on me.”

  “When we get up in the morning we have two choices: to be optimistic and cheerful or to be pessimistic and gloomy.”

  “Howling February winds blew around our house on the bank of the Rock River when I planted my first packet of giant single gloxinia seeds.”

  “One of my rocks is shaped like a pork chop. No kidding!”

  “Years ago a plane landed near McChard Field in Tacoma, Washington, selling rides to folks. Since I never had a plane ride, I was begged to go up. As we rode towards the field, we saw my mother. How she begged to go with me and my son. You see, I told her we were going shopping as she was 79 years old and we thought she was too old to have a plane ride. However, we couldn’t persuade her not to go.

  “We flew up and around 200 feet, among the pine trees, and heard a big noise, and down we came. The wing flew off, landed across my mother and killed her.

  “Me? Well, I was in a badly mashed shape. I landed in the black oil and sure was a black old lady. What a mess!

  “The worst part was, the man had no plane insurance!”

  “I don’t let myself get down in spirit. If I did, I’d be down all the time.”

  “One evening each year I burn dinner.”

  “Any self-respecting bedroom dresser would have dropped through the proverbial knot-hole in the floor if they did not repose thereon.”

  “My hobby is pine cones.”

  “A word in anger is better left unsaid because the person whom you may vent your anger upon may be innocent and may be proud and depressed at the time and this will kick him down further.”

  “Three years ago a special ambition was realized by Edith Marie. She got a job!”

  “Spring is when the pregnant earth erupts into greenery.”

  “Others have already written what I would like to write.”

  “There are inscriptions carved on a huge rock here. Strange carvings and childlike pictures. They call it ‘Newspaper Ro
ck.’ An ancient people left a message—begging to be remembered—but no one can decipher it—so it is part of the mystery of this ghostly forest.”

  “The lady told of taking a picture of a small antique shop—then later looking, and it had moved quite a distance from the spot.”

  “They had good screens on the windows that would turn most of the grandparents of the mosquito into clouds but the smaller ones would crawl through any screen and stay up all night singing ‘cousing cousin’ till they put you to sleep.”

  “New Orleans is just 3 feet above sea level so all folks who die there are put away in tombs. The cemeteries are just filled with these tombs.”

  “Everything that has ever existed has been reproduced in miniature by someone, at sometime.”

  “They preferred buried bottles to blowing balloons.”

  “While eating brunch (I call it that because it’s a combination of lunch and breakfast) we noticed two red canoes pushed over the ice around the bend, to open water, and saw the men climb in and paddle away.”

  “Serafettin Uzuner has also been to Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. He found most of the residents of those countries quite poor and lazy. Another one of his trips took him to Kuwait, where he found the climate unbearable. He has also been 30 miles across the Soviet border but claims there was not much to see.”

  “It isn’t what happens to us, it’s how we adjust to it.”

  “Each year, as I walk home from the last house, I catch myself smiling.”

  “It was a bright October morning, I being a grandmother nearing my 70th birthday, lagged about drawing my window draperies. As when did, a flash of yellow reflected upon my window. I moved closer as to what I saw, a big yellow school bus.”

  “Last night my son and I attended a fine doctor’s talk on drug abuse. We listened with great interest.”

  “Perhaps we should return to the hair-receiver and then orbit the historical merry-go-round from nowhere to nowhere.”

  “I shall go through this world but once.”

  “Don’t take my word for it—ask any seal hunter.”

  The Friendly Way (Continued)

  “It all started one afternoon when I was looking around for something unusual to wear on my head.”

  “Evidently the use of seashells is as varied as you care to make it.”

  “Now we are in autumn, and the leaves are falling. We would be glad to have spring instead, with its brighter days, of course, but the choice is not ours.”

  “In the Renauds’ living-room, with its bright red and green floral patterns on white wrought iron furniture, which overlooks the Grand River, she has a sign hanging on the wall reading ‘Think Christmas’”

  “I work on the theory that if you have materials, you may as well use them.”

  “It’s like I tell those who are afraid to try papier-mâché—if you make a mistake, so what?”

  “My husband works in a glass bottle factory. He makes mostly beer bottles. It seems there’s a great demand for them.”

  “I always enjoy sticking little notes into cards, even if I don’t know the person.”

  “Right now I have over fifty letters from would-be Turkish pen pals. However, they are written in Turkish, and so it is impossible for me to answer them.”

  “Altho Dee arranges flowers mostly for shows and weddings, she plans to get into funerals soon.”

  “I really don’t know what people do without cats.”

  “I hope that ladies take advantage of library facilities.”

  “A new wave of chain letters is apparently moving across the country.”

  “Once in a while the mood strikes, and I sew up every piece of material in the house.”

  “With the cooler weather approaching, I find I care less for the iced drinks of summer.”

  “I’m the mother of five and the wife of a man who claims he’s always out of socks and can never find his crescent wrench. His socks are always in the dresser drawer, but I hid his wrench: a plumber suggested I should.”

  “We aren’t worried about tornadoes, blizzards, hurricanes, or tidal waves, but we do have rattlesnakes, scorpions, and sonic booms from the planes at Edwards Air Force Base that shake the fillings out of your teeth—so I guess we all have something to be thankful for, one way or the other.”

  “With a little ‘vision’ you too can convert T.V. dinner trays into clever boutique organizers.”

  “Making exotic mini-pedestals for miniature Christmas symbols is so fascinating there is no way to stop.”

  “With an abundance of willows in this area my thoughts have centered on baskets.”

  “I remember the Indians would sometimes come in our home to get warm and then go on their way. One day Grandma had some loaves of bread on the oven door to raise, a big Indian walked in and stuck his finger in each loaf!”

  “Perhaps I should explain that Mike got the urge to dance a few years ago and has been going strong ever since.”

  “Needlework, like life, is just a matter of going in and out with a strand of wool.”

  “Occasionally a beer bottle is tossed into my yard, and some of them are beautiful!”

  If I Was God

  If I was God

  up there in heaven

  looking down at us

  I think

  I’d find it hard to believe

  that I’d actually done it.

  Ponder This

  How far down

  in the hole

  must we go

  before we lose the light?

  Actually

  not far at all;

  we can lose the light

  just by closing our eyes.

  Grandmother

  Once when grandmother was sick in bed, and I was all alone with her, she had to go to the bathroom. So I picked up her 80-pound body and started to carry her. But when I got into the hall, I dropped her. I just stood there and laughed and laughed. And grandmother cried and cried. There was always something very special between us.

  Night

  Day, you have gone

  and done it again.

  Neck

  When I asked Dr. Brown the other day if he had any idea why I often have a sore neck he said that every time he’s seen me my head has been tilted slightly to one side. Which causes—“undue stress on neck” —I believe is how he put it.

  Ron Padgett said the other night that he’s noticed that when I start stuttering I tilt my head to one side and then I stop stuttering.

  Complaining of a sore neck one morning not long ago J. J. Mitchell said he wasn’t surprised I had a sore neck, “The way you sleep.”

  One thing I’ve noticed is that I tilt my head a lot in bars.

  If tilting my head “means” anything, I don’t think it means anything very important.

  Just another self-conscious mannerism to confront people with.

  Well, sometimes I do feel awfully naked.

  30 One-Liners

  WINTER

  More time is spent at the window.

  SUMMER

  You go along from day to day with summer all around you.

  STORES

  Stores tell all about people who live in the area.

  WRITING

  Others have already written what I would like to write.

  TODAY

  Today the sky is so blue it burns.

  IN THE COUNTRY

  In the country one can almost hear the silence.

  THE FOUR SEASONS

  The four seasons of the year permit us to enjoy things.

  RECIPE

  Smear each side of a pork chop with mustard and dredge in flour.

  BOOK WORM

  Have always had nose stuck in book from little on.

  THAT FEELING

  What defines that feeling one has when gazing at a rock?

  COSTA RICA

  It was in Costa Rica I saw my first coffee plantation.

  HAPPINESS

  Happiness is nothing more than a state of min
d.

  MONEY

  Money will buy a fine dog.

  OUR GOVERNMENT

  A new program is being introduced by our government.

  EDWARD

  On the whole he is a beautiful human being.

  LAKE

  A lake attracts a man and wife and members of a family.

  THE SKY

  We see so many different things when we look at the sky.

  A SEXY THOUGHT

  Male early in the day.

  POTATOES

  One can only go so far without potatoes in the kitchen.

  MOTHER

  A mother is something we have all had.

  MODERN TIMES

  Every four minutes a car comes off the assembly line they say.

  THE OCEAN

  Foamy waves wash to shore “treasures” as a sacrifice to damp sand.

  TODAY

  High density housing is going on all around us.

  REAL LIFE

  I could have screamed the day John proposed winterizing the cottage and living there permanently.

  ALASKA

  I am a very cold person here.

  THE YEAR OF THE WHITE MAN

  The year of the white man was a year of many beads.

  LOYALTY

  Loyalty, I feel, is a very big word.

  SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

  Perhaps in our mad scramble to keep our heads above water we miss the point.

  HUMAN NATURE

  Why must we be so intent on destroying everything we touch?

  COMPANY

  Winifred was a little relieved when they were gone.

  SMOKE MORE

  The only thing that is wrong with people is that they don’t smoke enough. I smoke four packs a day and am proud of it. Why not? We all know that we are not going to die of cancer tomorrow, or the next day, and/or the next day as a matter of fact—so what is all the worry about?

  I’ve been smoking four packs a day ever since I was fourteen years old and am proud of it. And even if I did get cancer it wouldn’t really matter. If you are going to do something you may as well do it right.

  Another thing I can’t stand are people who smoke menthol cigarettes. I don’t know exactly why but there is something wrong about it.