-- Thursday, March 16, 2000 --

2:45 a.m. Some days I don't know what to write, but I tell you this: I always know *where* to write. And in all my born days, I swear I never thought of writing on a plant. That just seems wrong.

The graffiti scratches in the photo (opposite) are unique, of course, to our warm climate. The urge to make one's mark, to change the natural order of things -- that urge is certainly not unique to our particular time or place. A little scrawl to show that an intelligence, such as it is, has passed this way is a most common and persistent urge in our species.

Otherwise, who will remember?

And why is it so important to be remembered? Other people's memory, just like other people's praise and condemnation, is just a series of electrical impulses in the minds of ... other people. Why does it matter what other people think?

Some day science will be able to measure and weigh the gravity of thought. I am sure of it. The heaviness of a solemn glance. The melodic lilt of kindness. Disdain, shame; deep reckoning guilt. Thin-as-air ephemeral feelings ... that bind tightly and cage our spirits most securely.

Is writing on cactus any less odd than writing about it on these tenuous waves of ions? Which set of scrawls will further stand the tests of time?

The cactus with the writing is in front of the very big and elegant beach house owned by either Lieber or Stoller, of Atlantic Record-label fame. You may not know their names, but you most certainly know their words.

Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller wrote the songs that white kids thought black kids were singing, and lines were blurred because eventually everybody was singing and dancing and stomping and forgetting what we came here for.

They wrote songs like (You Ain't Nothin' But A) Hound Dog, (I'm) Searchin', (Why do) Fools Fall in Love, Poison Ivy, Jailhouse Rock, I (Who Have Nothing), On Broadway, and Yakety Yak (Don't Talk Back). Songs in which the words are so deeply carved into the melody, the isolated phrases can't be uttered without the familiar song bumping along behind.

In the mind. In millions and millions of minds. You might remember Elvis for a few more years, and you'll probably never remember Jerry or Mike, but every generation that hears Poison I-veeee-eeee-eeeee-eeee-eeeee, will never forget it.

Late at night, while you're sleeping ... those sneaky words come a creeping, around. Kudzu lyrics, ever green and totally contagious. You can scratch the itch until you bleed, but you'll never get rid of the scar.

Remember, remember. Our names.