new year's resolution

it's been a busy December, and i only just realized that tomorrow i will wake to a new decade. this is as arbitrary as it is irrelevant, but it gave me a moment to pause and recall the stream of consciousness that was my life on the night of December 31, 1999:

prophecy
tonight a book will end
pages yet to be written
empty lines crying to be filled
inked scarred marked barred
from realizing what they might mean
left blank at author's request
a superstitious fool
-ish to believe in romance
brave enough to-
finish a sentence without words
barreling forward with such force
one step left
leaving the pages be
enjoy their innocence
their ignorance of a world that knows
slashes and lines and an occasional curve
but never the beauty of the written word
unwritten unformed
unbound by the confines of pen
of ink of a writer's treacherous hand
betraying the feeling to thought
and thought to word
and word to ink
and ink to paper
paper to pad
pad to bag
until it's
reduced
to
-
no words
no worse

two days later i left for Paris, and two weeks after that i returned to Manhattan. by the end of the month, i had fallen asleep on a flight to Gainesville and dreamed about the saddest girl in the world...

but that point is yet to come.

dancer in the dark

over the holidays, my yin and i watched Dancer in the Dark while staying at her mother's house. for me, it was a night of vicarious nostalgia - sleeping in her old room, watching movies on a VCR, and eating cheese pizza from the neighborhood parlor of her childhood.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that i watched van Trier's Dogville a number of years ago, during a hazy return to my own (approximate) hometown. i remember being disturbed even through the anesthesia, and i wondered if Björk's star persona would overpower the film -

thankfully this was not the case.

in fact her presence only augmented the films affect, contributing an extratextual surreality to the already absurd juxtaposition of musical numbers with morose narrative tone. topping it off was the use of hand-held digital cameras, which washed out the whole film to create a powerfully bleak visual aesthetic.

i felt as if the monotony and sunlessness of Selma's impending blindness were my own, and the lack of color left tears in my yin's eyes as she spoke:

"it makes me cry every time i see it... i forget."

children's songs for adults

it all started a little more than a month ago, when my yin purchased tickets for us to see Phish in Miami. i have already ruminated on my complicated relationship with the band, and last night only served to confirm much of what i have long suspected...

we arrived after 5pm, parked, and made our way to "the lot," which i can only describe as a mix between a swap meet, tailgate, and open air drug market. there are bean burritos and "goo balls," cheap pizza and undecipherable meats on sticks. there are innumerable sketchy characters pacing about, many looking for their sister "Molly," and my favorite is a guy mumbling under his breath as he traverses the crowds. i listen closely, but even after he passes a second time, i'm unable to tell if he's selling "doses" or "dosas."

(mmmm... dosas)

there is an RV with a sign that reads "Please Come In" and we decide to take them up on it. a short girl wearing a doo-rag and a half-baked, made-up name tells us 18 people live in this automotive monstrosity. she is very polite, and i ask her about the commune to which she belongs. he answer is interesting, but cryptic, and i leave with the understanding that her community is somewhere between neo-hippie bohemian and Jews for Jesus Freaktopia.

eventually, after a bean burrito, we make our way inside the arena to our very good seats in the fourth row. i have not been in an arena since the dismal days of 2001, when i left a bad situation in North Carolina for a worse situation in New Jersey, but this is beside the point.

[shift tense]

the point is that my yin spies La Cienega, who jumps across the seats and kisses us both, tasting of liquor and reeking of patchouli. i have not seen her in more than a year, and other than sporadic missed phone calls, we have had no communication since she left for the West. it is a surreal moment, and there is some odd karmic bond connecting the three of us.

once upon a time, La Cienega was my yin's cheerleading coach, and i remember a night in 2007 when i still fawned over her, enlisted my yin's help in trying to persuade her that the gap between our ages was not to vast. the four of us - La Cienega, my yin, my yin's future ex, and myself - had gone to a kirtan that night, and returned to a small condo just off the ocean still vibrating. we drank tea and shared stories, and in many ways that magical night seems a lifetime ago.

(yet)

last night the three of us stood there in the 4th row embracing once more, and my yin told La Cienega how we had spoken of her earlier in "the lot" - somehow we knew we would see her.

La Cienega just smiled her indescribable smile, batted her bottomless eyes, and told us that she felt blessed to know we were together. she retreated once more into the crowd, and the lights dimmed to start the show...

Broken Embraces

last year Jache and i spent Christmas together pretending to be Jewish, eating Chinese food and watching an especially bad Tom Cruise film. (apparently) the experiment tapped into a far stronger mojo than we had anticipated, because two nights ago i found myself at the movies with both he and my yin - this time watching an especially good Almodóvar film - in the shadow of a chuppah.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that my last encounter with the man from La Mancha (not to be confused with the other man from La Mancha) found me retching and left me poetic, and i walked into the theater at 9:40pm with high expectations - i was not disappointed.

[lapse 2:15:00]

Jache asked me what i thought of the film's motifs and meanings, and i heard myself regurgitating just as i did fifteen months ago about Volver. this time, however, my viewpoint was skewed neither by nausea not endorphins. i told him

(approximately):

the film was textured darkness, wonderful and nearly noir, full of drugs and sex and film and film and film. it wass like watching a sculpture built by a blind clocksmith, and it brought up for me the problematic nature of reliance upon artifacts for the reinforcement of memory. how much of what we remember is based on nothing more than photographs and journals?

and

if one were to lose his sight (as does the film's protagonist), she would be left only with memory, a memory falling forever further from the experience of living.

as the shutters close, what remains?

obsevation(of)reflection(on)the(shortest day of the)year

two days ago my yin and i observed the solstice, and this year's ritual was surrounded by substantially less drama than that of last December. our ceremony included frankincense and mantra, prayer and a makeshift cup of holy water, and afterward we traveled west to a belated Chanukah dinner. latkes and drunkenness ensued, and i left some what drained.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that this year is the first time i celebrated with another person, and it was amazing to sit in front of our altar, rearranging its constituent parts into something that held meaning for both of us. it's simpler now, less messy, less rigidly symmetrical, and i like to believe that the constellation which emerged somehow foretells the year that lie ahead.

time will tell.

be careful what you ask for... (happy solstice)

the past couple of years, i've been celebrating the winter solstice. the days leading up to it are a time of reflection, and being a former pack rat (a hoarder my brother would say), i make it a point to get rid of things that are no longer serving me. i see it as a cleansing ritual in preparation for the blessings that lie ahead in the coming year. this is not beside the point.

last night i finished work around 2am, after helping demolish a makeshift ice rink in the theater where i work. it was an all-around impressive display of smashing, shoveling, and dumping, and by the time i left i was looking forward to a hot shower to wash away the lingering traces of glycol.

i walked up the staircase of the parking garage, unlocked my car, and opened the door to find things oddly askew. it wasn't anything specific, and i momentarily dismissed my feeling as fatigue. opening the console, however, i found my sense of unease rewarded.

my iPod and tape adapter were missing, and after double-checking my backpack, i looked once more at the interior of my vehicle - the glove box was open, small bits of paper were spread about, and the compact discs i keep in the door packet were gone. i thought back to the second half of the second show, and the car alarm we heard in the background over our headsets. it sounded familiar, like an eight year old echo from New Jersey.

once upon a time, i was more naughty than nice, and i remember working an interminable run of the Nutcracker for a ballet company based in New Brunswick. the details are not important, but last night i had a flash of that dreary November. it was the coldest winter i ever saw, with overcast days giving way to rain and the aftershock of towers falling.

(i paid no heed, too busy watching the sugar plum fairy to be distracted.)

this morning i took stock of what was missing: two iPods, one blank composition pad, one broken discman, an unknown quantity of scratched cds, and two "green" shopping bags - neither of which were green. left in the car, inexplicably, were a two week-old pair of Ray-Bans as well as the ignition key.

i wondered briefly if the the thief had overlooked it or simply chosen not to steal the vehicle. it doesn't really matter, but something inside tells me it was more likely the latter. even in my naughtiness, i maintained that fundamental sense of compassion that makes us all human, and i know that the thief was merely trying to keep warm in his own freezing Floridian winter. the lesson for me is twofold:

1) karma, although not instant, is gonna get you.

2) happy solstice, be careful what you ask for.

we [clarification]

i watched Rent (the movie version) last night and either:

the bohemian romance of New York is a clever fiction,
a lie we

[Generation X]

tell ourselves in an attempt to grapple with the fact
that we

[Americans]

live in a nation where the indomitable efficiency of
interstates and television has obliterated the
peculiarities of geographic separation. we

[artists]

loathe to believe this, and write musicals and songs
and books

[and blogs]

pretending it isn't so. we

[would-be critics]

watch with a mix of terror, excitement, and
trepidation as a quilt emerges from our collective
musings - a quilt pieced together from pop culture
references, allusion, consumption, cleverity,
pathological irony, and non-historicized personal
experience. we

[the tragic curious]

are left to wonder if it was ever so, or
if it was only a dream we

[the unreformed romantics]

invented in an attempt to keep from
shivering in the night;

the pastiche quilt of post-modernity makes for a poor bedfellow.

OR

i

[the author]

wrote the above in an attempt to distance myself from
the sadness i

[the human]

felt.

sunless

[a reaction, delayed, two months and counting]

i finally watched Sans soleil. less clear than La jetée, but equally amazing, centered in Japan and Africa; a narrator reading letters about time and memory juxtaposed with views and images of ceremony and everyday life...

strange digressions into Vertigo and the making of the film itself. the interplay of the two and the bizarre look at early 1980’s Tokyo – which looks like 2009 Any City, USA – displaced the whole film within time itself, and i felt like i was watching a past window on the future. maybe not the one i'm living in, but a window nonetheless...

by its end, the film left me disembodied. i could not truly feel my hands and yet saw them in lap. i could not connect the image to sight or differentiate between dream and waking. ultimately i missed the final frames and heard only an echo of the voice over. i started to rewind, but instead chose to acknowledge the slippage in time and not wrangle it back in to some familiar continuity...

i went to bed and dreamed and dreamed and dreamed…

family dinner

we pulled up to my brother's house with the clouds filling the valleys and mountains peaking out like small islands in a vast sea of mist and fog. the wind had died down from two days before and the temperature crept into the mid-thirties. my brother and his girlfriend met us outside and the four of us loaded into his car.

my grandmother's home is full of people upon arrival, and we gather in the kitchen just as we did when i was young. there are three grandsons, two daughters, two (future?) daughter-in-laws, one matriarch and my grandfather.

not in the room are one grandson, one daughter, her husband, and seven (past) son-in-laws. these demographics are importantly only in that they speak of what once was, and they echoed the previous day's premonition of new beginnings and nostalgia.

the scene around the table is eerily Hallmark-like. there is a sense of togetherness, a sense of relation, a sense of comfort that goes beyond familial familiarity. i could name the pieces, but not the magical way in which they all fit together.

it is as if all the cosmos conspired, and allowed the grooved dysfunction of habit and personality to recede for the afternoon, giving us a glimpse at what has always been just below the surface.

Asheville is (kinda) like...

we arrive to the odd excitement of a small city tucked away in the mountains - the same mild anticipation that one might feel in Charleston or Manchester or any other micropolis whose charm is measured in coffee cups rather than saucers. there is a Broadway and a parking spot and a lawyer living in a loft across from a gay bar. he greets us with stereotypical clever bitchiness and Ray-Bans.

we go inside and introductions are made. he is just waking from the night before and has a photograph of a half-naked woman staring at the Roman Colosseum on his wall. everything this whole day transpires under overcast skies, and it makes it difficult to tell the time other than some vague notion of lateness. it is a strange mishmash of nostalgia and new beginnings, growing clearer the next day around kitchen tables and half-finished living rooms.

(this is the point.)

the first time i remember going to Asheville was with with my great grandfather, and we visited the Biltmore estate. i recall little other than the bowling alley and him slipping me some wine on the sly.

(this is beside the point).

the point is that i visited Asheville twice as an adult. the first time was in college when i was in a band. we drove four hours (one way) from Chapel Hill to play at a (now defunct) club. as chance would have it, our host gave my yin and i a walking tour of downtown, and i found myself in front of those same large windows once more. a decade had passed, 31 Patton was gone, but the music played on.

the next time was perhaps five years ago, when i was living a past li(f)e and trying to find some kind of ex(c)it(ment). a childhood friend drove [us] down the mountain and i'm uncertain what [we] even did there. i have flashes of a movie theater and music playing in a courtyard, but there is no source material regarding the experience.

(this is inside the point)

today downtown Asheville is all local, all the time, and our journey led us to the skeletal remains of Woolworth's - now reduced to a lunch counter. in the basement hung a piece of artwork that captured all the things i do and do not remember about the Ashevilles i've known:

"The palest ink is better than the best memory."

two dreams, unrelated, ?

did i bite off more than i can chew?

can i do this?

did i do something wrong?

is this tree i'm barking up not my own?

... all these things percolate overnight and i dream of my computer filled with water; a heavy dew has fallen in the student union where i left it overnight. Dr. ______ is somewhere in the dreamscape, but i do not know where. i pour the water out, hoping it will turn back on, waiting for it to dry.

it all seems so logical and frightening

and segues into a dream of the theater. ropes run through head blocks and come undone from arbors. the curtain hovers overhead as try to retie the knot...

theory v. praxis

in spite of this afternoon's escapades, i still believe in the conceptual viability of tamari/mirin pumpkin seeds. unfortunately, the stickily sweet glob drying in the kitchen tells a different story, and - besides their distressing, distinctive lack of tamari-ness - my cooking them stove top also led to the inclusion of olive oil, which i now realize was applied in excess. rather than viewing it as a failed experiment, however, i prefer to think of it as an illustration of the gap between theory and praxis. but this is beside the point.

the point is that my yin and i leave for North Carolina in a few days, and last night we entered into a conversation regarding Cao Guimarães' maddening masterpiece nanofania. we encountered the piece at the midpoint of our Art Basel excursion, and if not for my attempt to (self-)medicate a wicked headache with Coca-Cola, we may have passed it by without giving it the time and attention it deserved.

fortunately, the botanical garden (and its outbuilding) next to the convention center had been overrun (like the rest of Miami) by the Swiss art behemoth, and one room - empty and dark - made it the perfect choice for my convalescing. inside,

(i listened:)

to most composition systems,

(languages, codes, etc.),

there is an internal logic,
cohesion and coherence.
the piece

(a filmic score)

breaks those ties.
for example,
the image of a bubble bursting

()

has no relation to the sound

(volume, pitch, etc.)

of a toy piano -
other than that determined by the composer.
furthermore,
a different note on that same piano

(found noise, etc.)

need not relate to the first sound.
the composition is thus freed from the bounds

(and limitations)

of its notation system.

apparently,

this time last year i was
procrastinating
and writing
things
like:

Memories
(Dia de playa)

I saw a glimpse of heaven
up the skirt of a second story balcony,

but it was only a memory:

a Polaroid couple at the shore, the hand
of a photographer left alone.

Romance dies; art
inevitably follows.

We stood in front of a mirror pocked and punctured,
watching our reflection deteriorate and
give way to what lie ahead.

We took a picture, like
the old man fifty years before, so
we would have something to hold onto.

[lapse]

I didn't cry until the next
morning, when I began
putting it down on
paper, and began
letting go; the
art we were
becoming
the art
this
is.

Dia de playa, a photograph by Patricio Reig

oops(?) i did it again

somehow, midnight is nigh; i have written myself halfway into a story whose exposition, exegesis, and elocution have grown increasingly murky. i find myself looking for climaxes under rocks, and chipping away at pebbles of sand with icicles.

in how many languages might one prevaricate?

(un, deux, trois...)

yesterday there was a pornographic platypus in Miami, and i found myself sore-footed and transit-less, trying to survey acres of art between bouts of rain and headache. there was a malice in the clouds, and we waited for the weather to break in the shadow of a run-down Days Inn while passers-by shucked and jived in innumerable languages. between the German and French and Spanish and Portuguese, one could hear the building moan as the winds came ashore, whispering of 1972 and the days before high-rise cocaine couture invaded South Beach...

words are nothing

more than tangents

splayed into oblivion.

NO LOITERING

the start of the week, i found myself in a conversation about gentrification, and one of the side effects was an interrogation of loitering. i thought about stoops and sidewalks and the laundromat across the street from my apartment. i considered the underlying logic of a law designed to prevent people from congregating without purpose.

who defines purpose?

as far i can reckon, the "NO LOITERING" sign takes - as a starting point - that the natural state for a person is to be either:

1) in one's own box
2) in someone else's box
3) in transit between boxes

it sounds strange stated this way, but it also appears necessary. loitering as criminal endeavor can only seem commonsensical to a society that embraces (implicitly) the notion of an underlying deviancy to open spaces and social gatherings motivated by purposes other than commerce.

that being said, we could learn a lot from Peter:

in the thrall of Walter Benjamin

earlier today i finished an epic examination of Heath Ledger and The Dark Knight, running the gamut from Jack to Kahlil and back again to the feet of the maestro. it was like staring at a mirror hung askew;

i felt the weight of my gaze turned back upon me.

i typed, shivering, the final sentence:

"... and as the spectacle of Ledger's passing continues to fade, what emerges is the image of Janus - one face gazing backwards, tracing a boundary between Ledger and ourselves; and the other looking forward, seeking absolution in his lingering presence."

where this leads i do not know, but i managed (for the first time) to string together a single, coherent, compelling line of thought over the course of six thousand words. no fancy tricks, no repetition, no escapes into formalism. one of my goals, of course, is to see it published, but my truest impulse was simply say what i meant, to say simply that which is not.

Spike Lee, gentrification, and the importance of words

two students stayed after their final exam yesterday, and a colleague and i spent 45 minutes talking to them about Spike Lee, gentrification, and the importance of writing down the words you encounter but do not know.

Part 1: Spike Lee

i remember seeing Do the Right Thing when i was about 13 or so. i knew it was good, but it didn't feel good, and i didn't understand the ending. or why i felt like the good guy and the bad guy. or even which one was which.

i didn't have the words for it at the time, but the film captured the emotional complexity of race in America unlike anything i had ever seen or heard. it couldn't be taught, it couldn't be spoken - it could only be felt in the moments when the pizza parlor burned and heard on the sidewalk on the morning after...


Part 2: gentrification

i moved to Washington Heights in August 1999, and i jokingly referred to myself (even back then) as poised on the spear tip of gentrification. the 90's were a good decade for my vocabulary, and i moved to Manhattan with a pocket full of fifty cent words to describe the way i felt. i pointed my entire purpose and being at ridding myself of the parts of me that were not my own, and page after page filled in composition pads as i took the long A Train ride from 181st to Columbus Circle...


Part 3: the importance of words

eventually i learned that i would never rid myself of the parts of me that were not my own because there is nothing that is not my own. i learned that all those fifty cent words were bankrupt, that they could never confine or describe the extent of my being.

all the racism, all the sexism, all the consumption - i claim them all. i accept the inevitability of our divinity and marvel at the extent of our hubris. i still write down the words i encounter, but do not know...

the home stretch

by all empirical measures, i am presently in the home stretch of the semester, and as my research paper nears completion to the sound of Rachmaninov playing his second piano concerto, my yin is in the bedroom watching The Simpsons. the past week has seen long days, short sleeps, and copious hours spent in front of computer monitors.

at night i get a strange tingling energy throughout my body, whose cause or demise i've yet to discover. i started a book by Donald Barthelme and wonder what effect it will have on my non-sequiturs. i read Carrol on the beach and imagined thieves in the sand. Jache may or may not be doing better. i wait for the tingling energy to leave or subside. i wait, i wait, i type, i type...

[his] mother's Buddha

"In fáma the subject is often massively projected upon
and adulated at the same time."
- Clarissa Pinkola Estés

yesterday i spent the morning working on a term paper, and in the course of my research i (re)stumbled upon the above quote. its theoretical efficacy is substantial, but as fate would have it, i had an opportunity to examine its praxis later that night:

my yin and i left our apartment at noon and headed west. her best friend lives in a community not unlike Agrestic, and we arrived to find a long table and two dozen place settings, complete with a four-top kids table in the corner. it reminded me of my own childhood, when the various sisters and husbands and cousins and children would gather at my grandmother's house for gigantic meals and subdued squabbling. we ate innumerable hams and turkeys, topped off by a truly frightening, possibly gelatin desert known only as "green stuff."

(digression)

for my part, i would tear yeast rolls into tiny pieces and drench them in homemade gravy until they congealed into a sumptuous half-starch/half-grease mixture. the consistency was somewhere between a thick stew and plaster of Paris, and the entire family was always amazed by my capacity for bread. in subsequent years this capacity has diminished somewhat, although my affection still remains. but this is beside the point.

the point is that we left my yin's best friend's house before the feasting began and headed back to the ocean. after a disappointing Thanksgiving meal (and a sublime, rehabilitating encounter with the yin-in-law's pumpkin loaf), we found ourselves in a penthouse apartment overlooking the ocean, two towns south and eight stories up:

[change tense]

it is a beautiful home, full of people, full of chatzkis, full of interrupted conversations and half-introductions. it is a mad scene that i might enjoy drunken or stoned, but i abscond to the balcony and look out at the surf. it's high tide and the lady of the house tells me that on a clear day you can see the chop where the Atlantic kisses the Gulf of Mexico. it is bizarre only in its utter lack of bizarreness, and i eat chocolate ice cream mixed with leftover cheesecake.

(explanation)

there is a (belated) birthday party in progress, and someone hands me some sort of festive cardboard headgear. i can't tell if it is a princess crown or bunny ears, but being an intrepid sort, i decide to put it on anyway. in the worst case scenario, i'll look infantile, but on the off-chance that it's actually bunny ears, someone might feed me carrots, which i find quite delicious.

a giant cake in sits in the living room, a small piñata hangs in the foyer, and the birthday girl's older sister pulls its strings until candy rains down onto the floor. i tell the father of the child that piñata technology has changed since i was a her age. he smiles and then his daughter makes the rounds, handing each of us a Hershey's Kiss. i get a white chocolate and thank her. the child's name is the same as my yin's best friend's daughter, and this makes it easy to remember.

[resume tense]

the drive back was filled with conversation, and a pervasive intoxication filled the vehicle, affecting even the sober occupants in the back seat. i wondered about la fáma and the candy wrapper in my pocket. i wondered about loneliness, anonymity, and freedom...

(begin poesy)

i wondered about
a green glass Buddha
that sparkled on a Thursday
night in November.

biscuits, Leo Frank, and Thanksgiving

this morning i took a half-Canadian madman (and his spouse) to the airport at 4:30am. my yin decided to join me, and on the way back i was overcome by a powerful hunger for biscuits. i began musing on Church's and Bojangles' and all the wonderful unnamed, independent purveyors of chicken and biscuits scattered around the South. there is a simple perfection to the biscuit, and pre-dawn consumption has been proven (in my mind) to increased feelings of well-being and yummy-ness. the only side effect appears to be an over-reliance on hyphens.

(five and counting)

none of this helped at 5am in South Florida, however, and my yin attempted to quell my desire by stating the potential for biscuits later in the day. we're making the rounds to three different homes today, ranging from the hinterlands of west of Jog Road to the posh of A1A and Highland Beach, but i suspect there will be nary a biscuit in sight. the climate south of Alachua County is inhospitable to all things Southern, and an unspoken, odious attitude drapes over the beaches and canals...

(but now)

my mind turns to the ghost of Leo Frank. i believe he must be watching over us, attempting to set right history and carve out a little piece of heaven for those of us who (pleasantly) suffer from carbophilia. i think of the bagel and the biscuit, of yin and yang,
of Shiva and Brahma;

we have a lot to be thankful for.

first thoughts on Wong Kar Wai's seventh film

thirteen months have passed since i watched 2046, and today we screened Wong Kar Wai's exquisite, approximate prequel In the Mood For Love. much as last September, the experience has left me muddled and quaking, and i find myself unable to shackle the image with the words at my command. a demonstration:

leitmotifs in celebration of Sino-cinema

dreaming of hallways in rack focus
i gazed through

(the blinds of memory, half-drawn)

a patchwork predicated on

the
present's
projection
of the presence
of past

predilection and perception.

beginning

pulling time into focus

(slippage)

(dilation)

pulling time into focus

end

repetition and mirrors,
hallways and telephones,
the rehearsed departure of
wedding bands and restraint,

(not my own)

curtains and mirrors,
light bulbs and longing,
the textured punctuality of
clocks casting shadows down the hall.

walking in the park at night

it's been more than two months since Jim Carroll died, and over the weekend i read The Basketball Diaries for the first time. the journals are remarkable, especially for a 12-15 year old, and i spent some time on the beach remembering my teenage confusion surrounding Leonardo DiCaprio:

"Leo" (actually a Scorpio) is a little more than two years my elder, better looking, and substantially wealthier. the same was true in 1995 when the film version of The Basketball Diaries was released, and his casting left me utterly baffled. the crux of my dilemma revolved around trying to comprehend how a skinny white boy could possibly be a blue chip basketball recruit. eventually i learned that these diaries were written in the early Sixties by an eighth grader, and with it came the implicit realization of the perils of projected my own historical moment onto the art and lives of others. case in point:

Jim Carroll played basketball in a Manhattan without a World Trade Center, a world with two Germanies and two Vietnams, an America wrestling with the delusion of "separate but equal," a New York with Rockefeller Laws as well as a Rockefeller Center, and a Times Square closer to Burroughs' than Disney. i could have told you all of these things when i was 18, but i knew none of them. they were only facts, hollowed of the truth by my immaturity and hubris.

(but last night)

i walked through the park after dark, hallowed by the truth of contemplation and experience. i walked through the park, thinking about the immensity of life and the passing of poets. i walked:

thinking of Jache, thinking of adolescence, thinking of the romantic lies we tell ourselves when we are young and inexperienced.

i thought of how often the abyss is mistaken for the void and how one can ever know the difference without looking. i thought of a misspent youth spent searching for a bottom that isn't there and the wellspring of possibility that dwells within our lack of sophistication. i thought of the beauty and danger living inside our naiveté.

a voice in the dark interrupted my reverie:

(hey man, you straight?)

i walked in the park after dark, thinking of one Germany, one Vietnam, and a Manhattan without a World Trade Center. i thought of wrestling with the ghosts of our delusions. i smiled to myself:

you can still smell the Jim Carroll on me.

"Little kids shooting marbles
where branches break out into the sun
into graceful shafts of light...
I just want to be pure."

(August 1, 1949 - September 11, 2009)

never say "never" on a Saturday morning

Saturday morning, 9:59 am

my yin opened her computer, navigated to the website of a monopoly ticket broker, and waited for 10 o'clock to arrive.

September, 1995

i spent much of my adolescence holding an attitude towards hippies that vacillated between discriminatory and persecutory. a band from Vermont bore the brunt of my ire, and in a comical twist of fate, the first (quasi) adult relationship i had was with a woman who adored them. i wasted no time in attempting to dissuade her, with a strategy consisting primarily of prolonged, repetitive exposure to the Ramones. we soon reached a détente, which lasted the entirety of our courtship.

Friday night, time unknown

a (small) portion of my response - "sure, i'll go" - was based on the (false) certainty that no one ever really gets tickets to see this band from Vermont. their fan base is rabid, irrational, unkempt, unshowered, uncouth, incorrigible, insistent, and inexplicably legion. furthermore, their pervasive Luddism holds a perpetual blindspot: the uncanny ability to gobble up hordes of tickets and watch the same band perform night after night after night after night...

Saturday morning, 10:01 am

two floor tickets, first section, fourth row.

Friday night weirdness

last night my yin and i decided that Thai dining was a moral imperative, and before the night was through:

1) exhibitionist teenagers having sex on a beach chair
2) a man necklaced with his pet possum
3) a lesson in etymology from Adam Sandler's mother-in-law

(but this is beside the point)

the point is that we sat at the edge of the surf, listening to the wisdom of waves mingle with the awkward moans of adolescent lovemaking. it was a strange medley, and the flash of a camera behind us guided the conversation towards photography. as it happens, my yin is an accomplished photographer, and i am something of a photographic primitive.

i suppose the roots of my uneasiness stretch back to childhood, when my mother had my brother and i pretend to reopen holiday gifts in her quest to obtain the perfect picture. it was an absurd, tiresome chore, and by the time i reached adulthood i refused to take pictures of virtually anything. my obstinance left large portions of my teens and twenties undocumented, and this fact has done nothing to hinder my obsessive fascination with nostalgias and memory.

(but we spoke of none these things last night)

last night we spoke of image and objectification, of action and passivity, of gaze and possession, of definition and the object of beauty. i told her (and Laura Mulvey would agree) that in some subtle way the photographer takes possession of the photographed, and turns an aspect of his/her/its being into artifact and commodity.

(that being said)

i do not believe tribal peoples were ignorant or backwards 150 years ago, and the fact that we accept the photograph as harmless does not mean it is so.

free chairs, Twilight and dusk on a cloudless Thursday

i walked across campus at dusk carrying two chairs, one of which was broken, and thinking about vampire movies. this week our class screened Twilight, and the film left me simultaneously bored, repulsed, and reluctantly curious about what comes next for Bella and Edward. we discussed the film in a windowless room on a cloudless Thursday afternoon, and in spite of our unanimous disapproval, the class couldn't stop talking about it.

(my mind turned to Julia Kristeva)

i considered her consideration of the abject, and our fascination with the things that repulse us. Kristeva says we are forever tied to the things we push away, that they define us by telling us what we are not. they are the boundaries within us, the things that allow us to name the difference between "me" and "not me."

(exit Kristeva stage left)

and if what is "not me" is "not you," then perhaps we can be naked enough to let go of our artifice. perhaps we can realize that there is nothing that is "not me." perhaps we can realize that there is nothing that is "not you." perhaps we can sit quietly. perhaps we can embrace the full extent of our being and stop the insipid insistent severing of body and mind.

(and what of the spirit?)

the spirit knows the body and the mind. it knows the playful futility of the boundaries between. it knows the abject. it knows the beauty of a collapsing sun. it knows our nightmares and holds the sleeping hand of Oppenheimer. it knows this fiction "i" call "me" is not my own.

(i dream of Ginsberg's footnoted obscenity:)

"The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy!"

(how does Kristeva answer:)

the boundlessness of our existence? the unspeakable immensity of our being? the fragility of desire? the vulnerability of embodiment? the burden of the mind? the impermanence of self? the contemplation of equanimity and the realization that everything is holy?

(i dream of Moloch.)

i dream of a mirror
in a windowless room
on a cloudless Thursday afternoon.

(what did we push away?)

Wednesday discussion of rites of passage and post-industrial society

today after class one of my students asked me if i thought my tattoos would impede my storming of la tour ivoire, and his query elicited a response that somehow segued between the Crusades, rosaries, Vedant philosophy, piercing, and post-industrial capitalism.

i told him that the prevalence of tattoo and piercing culture spoke to something missing in our society, that we had vocational training in lieu of rites of passage, and that perhaps in all the televisions and iPods and blogs and laptops we've lost something along the way.

(Kerouac whispers:

"The Dharma can't be lost,
nothing can be lost on a well-worn path")

midway into my answer, he informed me that his favorite number was 57, and although it's not a prime number, i strongly approve of his irrational affection for a rational number.

(please excuse all further number theory puns)

the conversation was less fractured than this account, and yet i cannot help but feel they are nonetheless of the same essence.

perhaps:

1) the fracture is a matter of form rather than content
2) the loom of insomnia casts its shadow across the night
3) the burden of diachronicity falters as the solstice approaches.

[insert sleep here]

delayed reactions on a Tuesday in November

...and later i thought:

one can only speak of the mind and the manifestations of the mind because there is nothing to be said about that which lies beyond. there is only nothing, only empty, only voidness - and every word spoken about that space is untrue. one can only hope to name all the false things, and feel the emptiness that remains.

(then why speak at all?)

we speak because we must. we speak because we are left with the unfathomable task of our own existence and compelled to tell our selves into being. we speak because we perish in silence, and the difference between (and within) the best and worst of us is impossible to tell. we speak because, even in the futility of the return, we cannot help but litter crumbs.

"Humans consist of a unity of selves...

a union where two roads meet."

- Linda Hogan

dreaming of Rumi on a cloudy Monday afternoon

to describe this love

is nothing more
than naming

the things
it is not.

untitled homage to Sunday matinées

i watched clocks

unwind

on a Sunday afternoon

- three o'clock -

years

running in circles
and connecting dots
that were never

there, even then, there

are

only so many -

things words can say.

there are

only so many

days we name:

how many sevens does it take?
how many sevens does it take?

innumerable.

choking.

punchlines.

dots v. lines

... . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... . . . . . . . t. . . . . . . ....... . . . . . . .... ... . . . . . . . . . . . . h. . . . ............... . . . . . . . . e. . . . . . . . . . . . . r. . . . . . . . . . . . . e. . . . . . . ........ . ... . . . . . . . . . a. . . . . . . ...... ..... . . . . . r. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . e. . . . . . . ........ . . . . . a. . . . . . . . . . . . . l. . . . . . . . . . . . . w. . . . . . . . . . . . . a. . . . . . . . . . . . . y. . . . . . ............. . . . . . . s. . . . . . .... . . . . . . f. . . . . . . . . . . . . e. . . . . . . . . . . . . w. . . . .......... . . . . . ........ ... ...... . . . . . . . e. . . . . . . . . . . . . r. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . d . . . . . . . . . . o. . . . . . ......... . . . . . . t. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . s. . . . . . . . . . . . . t. . . . . . . . . . . . . h. . . . . . . . . . . . . a. . . . . . . . . . . . . n. . . . . . ........................ . . . . . . l.. . . . . . . . . . . . . i. . . . . . . . . . . . . n. . . . . . . . . . . . . e. . . . . . . . . . . . . s. . . . . . . . . . . . . c. . . . . . . . . . . . . o. . . . .. . . . . . .. . . . . . . .................. . . . . . . . n. . . . . . . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . n. . . . . . . . . . . . . e. . . . . . . . . . c. . . . . . . ..... . . . . . t. . . . . . ............. . . . . . . i. . . . . . . . . . . . . n. . . . . . . . . . . . . g. . . . . . . . . . . . . t. . ................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . h . . . . . ............ . . . . . e. . . . . . . . . . . . ................ ... .. m.

triskaidekadelphia

the last Friday the 13th, i dreamt of Hitler and Jean Genet, and the one before was marred by the release of some (presumably) lame remake, but today passed relatively quietly. i'm struggling to keep the words moving, but at this point i'm unable to differentiate between the type and the tripe.

my underlying assumption is that i can address the various inevitable deficiencies at a later date and earlier hour, but i can't seem to shake the feeling that i might be doing little more than writing a more sophisticated, long-winded version of one of my student's essays. i've been plowing through them all week, making my neck wonky and earning the ire of my chiropractor. but this is beside the point.

the point is that it is late, i am tired, and the words are waiting...

choosing the right word

most of the world is celebrating Armistice Day today, and i've held an odd numerological romance for the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month since childhood. i don't remember how i encountered this bit of information as a tyke, but i can only assume it had something to do with my love of Trivial Pursuit. but this is beside the point.

the point is that in the United States we stopped celebrated Armistice Day in 1954, less than a month before the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy. the man's name came to be synonymous with demagoguery, but he was also a prodigious drunkard, and it seems appropriate that the inaugural celebration of Veterans Day occurred while he was still looking for communists and "pixies" underneath the skirt of Army head counsel Joseph N. Welch.

the right word is sometimes hard to find (just ask Flaubert), and this morning i was in the shower thinking about Armistice v. Veterans Day. it occurred to me that the former focuses on the end of conflict, the resumption of peace, a tombstone for "the war to end all wars."

(this was one of the casualties of Eisenhower's America)

the latter valorizes the people who fight war, the instruments by which violence is articulated on a global scale, and this implicit militarization of language (de)forms the structure of society by imprinting and encoding itself into our holidays and common speech. it seems the ultimate result can be only a glorification of war itself, which begs the question:

where is our Armistice Day?

"toasties," pumpkin soup and reincarnation

i've been keeping a cold at bay these past few days, and last night my yin fixed me a grilled cheese sandwich with pumpkin soup and a healthy side of kale, broccoli, ginger and squash. it was yummy and delicious, but this is beside the point.

the point is that we ended up having an amazing conversation about reincarnation and human nature, Bhutan and global warming, Claude Levi-Strauss and post-structuralist thought, Foucault and sex as a discursive instrument of power. (like you do).

we ended up talking about the Self, and how the expansive sense of self can be framed as either:

1) growth

or

2)

... d....................

.i...

..... s .................

........................ s

... i ...........

p ............

............ a ....

..................................... t ..........

.................. i

..................... o .......

n.

my own experience (in the most sublime meditative spaces) is of the latter, and it seems to me that the notion of an evolutionary Self is merely a projection of the ego. it is predicated on some (false) sense of incompleteness or inadequacy, and the illusion of growth ultimately serves to maintain individuality - and separation - by obscuring the egoistic, insistent desire for discrete form.

if one is all and all is one, there can be no growth - only realization.

(the pumpkin soup grew cold)

Fort Hood, Malcolm X and chickens

i drove home listening to a public radio program about the incident at Fort Hood, and it occurred to me how weird it would be if ROTC was renamed the Future Veterans of America. but this is beside the point.

the point is that my anticipation for Armistice Day has hijacked my psyche, and as the interview progressed, i couldn't help but hear Malcolm X somewhere in the back of my head, talking about chickens and roosts in December.

apparently, Hasan was not only a disinterested psychiatrist, but he also kept shoddy patient records. furthermore, they said, he was prone to ill-timed outbursts of religiosity and long-winded interpretations of The Holy Qur'an regarding throats, infidels, and the pouring of boiling oil. as one might presume, these orations did not set well with his colleagues.

what i didn't hear: (a systemic analysis of the event and its context)

according to the reporters, Hasan was either:

A) a nut job
B) a religious nut job
C) a religious nut job terrorist

there was one question, however, that belied the purported portrait:

the host asked about the effect of the incident on the surrounding town of Killeen, Texas. the reporter answered that Killeen was "a military town" and his tone implied that, as such, Killeen was accustomed to a certain level of violence. the interview proceeded without further commentary about Killeen's relationship to violence.

a brief thought experiment:

1) draw a circle called "Hasan"
2) draw a larger, concentric circle called "Fort Hood"
3) draw a larger, concentric circle called "Killeen"
4) draw a larger, concentric circle called "Texas"
5) draw a larger, concentric circle called "America"

sometimes it's difficult to tell which way the circles are going.

kale: cabbage without a cause

somehow my yin just convinced me to try my first neti pot, and although i have not become the dribbling snotty mess i feared, i am also not a particularly pleasant portrait at present. for one thing, i'm using too much alliteration, getting to stuck on the "p" and the "t" and the "r" and all those rascally letters clumped together two-thirds of the way through the alphabet. but this is beside the point.

the point is that i'm teetering on some farkakte illness, and most of my day has been spent consulting various witch doctors, (of the lay variety nonetheless). besides the neti, i've also endured some terrible echinacea tincture, which was dripped directly down my gullet by a half-Canadian madwoman. on the up-side, the next would-be treatment is homemade kale chips topped with a healthy helping of indolence...

Thelma, Louise and me

i watched Thelma & Louise two nights ago and felt a mix of joy and embarrassment with the arrival of the tears. my discomfiture wasn't due to the crying per se, but rather some (false) notion that my familiarity with the medium should render me invulnerable to the Romanticism and blatant sentimentality of the final scene -

but it didn't.

(herein lies the joy.)

the object of my gaze has shifted.

i used to focus on that final still:

the Thunderbird held midair by a snapshot,
the women cradled for an eternity over the canyon
in the moment before they die.

but this time:

the moments before they fall,
they sit in the car, knowing it is over.
it is not the kiss, it is not the "keep going."

the moment of revelation,

one moment is all there is.

that's what she said

this week my favorite professor described the origins of Halloween as a pagan holiday, situated at the end of the harvest season. for those who celebrated, it was a form of ancestor worship - a recognition that the death part of the life cycle was upon them. they believed that the boundary between the realm of the living and the dead was especially thin during this time, allowing passage between realms.

i realized yesterday that much of this week has been just that for me. i've been moving from one task to another, unable to shake the feeling of being displaced in time. past lives have surfaced of their own volition; recollections of the fictions i've called myself, memories unburdened by nostalgia.

i've smelled the late September air of Chapel Hill in 1997, i've felt the January dread of New Brunswick in 2002, i've heard the October sunshine of Lake Lure in 2006. this morning i even felt the November mania of Manhattan, when i had just returned from Kansas City.

i was on my way to Paris, standing blindfolded on the edge of the millennial abyss, wearing a Cheshire smile and oblivious to the portent descending all around me.

i've somehow channeled those people these past days, and last night i went to visit Jache at his new apartment and tell him these things. we stood in the parking lot at midnight and he spoke of circles. i didn't realize it until this morning, but this strange feeling has been just that. i've been sleeping less and dreaming more these past weeks, and i cannot name the reason for the change. but i've been here before.

we cannot help but live with the selves we were, and i do not know if the realms have gotten closer or if the boundary has merely grown porous. i suppose it does not matter. either way, i have lived my whole life straddling worlds, and i used to wish i could simply fall on one side or the other. (a black bird once said nevermore). i've been unknowingly exploring the difference between channeling these ancestors and being possessed by them... perhaps i'm becoming accustomed to the liminal.

this year's costume

these past days i've been unknowingly running an experiment - preparing for Halloween - and it just dawned upon me that this year i'm going as a caricature of myself at age 21. my costume includes:

worry
regret
fantasy
solitude
nostalgia
diet soda
hyperbole
maudlinism
absenteeism
copious breads
lack of motivation
excessive ambition
increased dreaming
diminished appetite
the watching of clocks
anticipation of nightfall
dependence on technology
excessive use of future tense
rapid onset of loss of interest
keeping the the curtains drawn
preoccupation with dead writers

rumination on memory and voice

i heard a friend of mine on the radio today. we hadn't spoken in very long time, but i've held on fondly the memory of our friendship for more than a decade. she was interviewed on WABE in Atlanta about her work on NPR's Story Corps, and i listened online between classes.

she didn't sound the way i remembered, and i listened as if she was a stranger. the voice was different though i couldn't name how or why. my first inclination was to say it was like listening to the past, but it was not that. it was more like listening to the difference between the past and my memory of the way things were. i felt haunted and lost and doubtful of my mind. how far do we color outside the lines when we remember the people we knew?

class came and went, but the feeling would not leave me. i drove home and shared these things with the one i know i know the best. she is in New York and i hate phones. i worried about the fidelity of our reception. i heard the echo of knowing the limits of knowing.

what was it i heard in her voice? was my memory flawed or had it changed? did i hear age? did i hear wisdom? or was it the tyranny of geography in a country where people can't hold still? i have lived in six states in the past ten years, and at first each one felt like it might be forever... but eventually every one feels like the next.

was it all a dream, or did Brooklyn get the best of her Spartanburg?
i once walked Peachtree at midnight and sold coffee to call girls. will she find Atlanta more hospitable than i? i slept on the floor of the 17th floor and kept photo developer in the refrigerator. i married a girl from Florida on a Monday afternoon in Chattanooga. i slept during the day and did not own a camera.

perhaps it was only my hearing, but was it then or is it now? did i not listen to her in Durham? did we not compare Carolinas and speak of feminisms in the dark? this was no idle nostalgia. i sat in the floor under the hateful fluorescence of my office, listening to a woman i used to know. she answered questions i did not ask and told me things i needed to hear. it was not the words, it was the voice.

the voice was without context, the words were without content - there was nothing to tie me to the self i was. it was only her voice,
it was only sound. it was not the indulgence of nostalgia,

it was not the indulgence of nostalgia.

Listening to NPR in Atlanta (for Plumbs and peaches)

I listened to the voice of a woman
I knew nearly fifteen years ago, when
we teetered on the edge of adulthood.

I heard things that were, things that
were not, things that might have been.

I heard the girl next door
humming arias in the dark.

I heard Durham in August and
the diminishing of colloquialism
of South Carolina after the Return.

It was not like listening to the past.

Or living in Atlanta,
Manhattan and Denver.

"the incident"

"the incident" occurred last night at approximately 7:19pm, when i attempted to patch a hole in my closet using an (non-)aerosol caulk-like substance. its expansive properties proved to be prodigious, and surplus goo came foaming out of the hole and dripped down the wall. without thinking, i quickly wiped away the mess, only to discover that it was sticky.

very sticky.

being a supergenius, i acted without thinking and ran to the faucet, rubbing my hands together until the goo was spread over every inch of flesh. and then, for the first time, it occurred to me that perhaps i should read the directions. moments later i stood in my hallway scanning the small print on the side of the can. applicable words included:

"extremely sticky."

nearly twenty-four hours have passed since then, and the list of (would-be) solvents include: soap, water, scrub brush, finger nails, olive oil, acetone, pumice, WD-40, Goof-Off, and lacquer thinner. thus far, none off the concoctions have worked - although the lacquer thinner did provide slight intoxication, a lingering headache, and an intense burning sensation on the tops of my hands.

as a result i've walked around all day, half-maddened by the dried film of caulk covering my skin. i scratch, i wash, i pick, i shuffle around examining my hands and talking to myself like some absurd mix between a person with OCD and a methamphetamine addict.

(in need of constant adult supervision)

playing hooky

my yin is spending the rest of the week in New York, and i took her to the airport this morning, burdened by some strange nausea and the lingering weariness of waking before 5am. i do not know why i slept so poorly, and i suppose - ultimately - it is beside the point.

the point is that i undertook a calamitous journey to Whole Foods after i dropped her at the airport, and since returning home, i've been listening to Leonard Cohen, baking cranberry almond granola, and writing long sentences with lots of commas. i do not know if laze or malaise is to blame, but the thought of going to school is too burdensome to bear. i've decided to forgo the journey south and procrastinate in the dawn-curtain privacy of my own home...

you missed something

blink
(don't blink) ... blink (don't)
don't ... blink ... blink ... blink ... don't
don't ... (blink) ... ..... ... ....... ... ..... ... (blink) ... don't
don't ... blink ... blink ... blink ... don't
(don't) blink ... (don't blink)
blink

you might miss something

blink ...
(don't blink)
... blink (don't)
don't (...) blink ...
blink ... blink ... don't
don't... don't ... (blink) ...
... don't ... (blink) ... don't ...
... (blink) ... don't ... don't
don't ... blink ... blink
... blink (...) don't
(don't) blink ...
(don't blink)
... blink

la nuit dernière

my yin and i spent last night carousing two counties in pursuit of art, sustenance and libation, and our search led us to a gallery opening across from the city bus terminal, where a sad white girl with her head in her palms under a lonely halide light attached to the station wall. i imagined what troubles brought her there and heard the sound of the train in the distance, while three black men sat under a tree in a vacant lot across from the station, sharing their impoverished camaraderie and sipping from brown bags. the crescent moon shone, silent, through the cloudy gauze of regret.

(i talked of Memphis and the bus station terminals i saw in the summer of 1994).

our goal hovered within reach as we watched a woman pour five buckets of water into a container built for only four. there were rumors that it was supposed to burst, a shattering testimonial to impermanence, but instead the pot sprung a leak and dribbled water onto the white rectangle constructed around the exhibit. i left, wondering what art - if any - had been lost.

we stopped at a 7-11, and inside there was a half-crazy woman buying $5 worth of lottery tickets. the clerk knew her name and flirted some, but the woman ignored his advances in favor of the scratching penny promise of easy money. the slurpy machine was spilling over onto the floor and a man stepped up to the counter and bought a $6.08 pack of Newports. he was on his way to the club, and i stepped in line behind him. i paid $1.38 for my (diet) soda, and on the way out i passed a tall red hair with boots, making a quick stop before going to dance for the man with the Newports.

we arrived to find the Avenue packed with men who smelled like women, women who looked like mannequins, and mannequins with sculpted breast impacts in the store window. there were three drag queens dancing on the sidewalk and i ate red snapper on a bench, feeling half-spacey. i saw a guy i used to know walk past with two other men, (all steroid and cologne), but it was the skinny red headed boy from New Jersey that walks in the center, a half step ahead of the others. i hardly recognized him and felt like Jack Kerouac in Denver, totally and completely lost in the great expanse of time. i plagiarized him the morning after.

this is the Plastic Peacock Parade of the first Friday night of Season.

while the thoughts raged

i listened to a heavy-set guy playing a ukulele on a concrete table, serenading two women playing a game of catch. my mind was full of theses and potential theses and portential theses, and all i really wanted to do was drink my coffee and clear my head before class began.

little did i know, yesterday's musical mid-afternoon foray proved to be just what i needed. it seems the man was some sort of modern day troubadour, halfway between Bob Dylan and Adam Sandler. it appeared to be an original composition with the following splendid refrain:

"hush girl... just shut your lips...

do the Helen Keller... and talk with your hips..."

this, from the same university campus that boats a Dunkin Donuts on the ground floor of the library...

dots>connections

at present, i'm in a small rectangular room with three computers, one iced tea, one bottle of water, fluorescent lights, and lots of books. i hear chatter in the hallway outside and feel an odd, lurking dread in my stomach. the past weeks have been hectic, and it seems (momentarily) i see more dots than connections.

but this is beside the point.

the point is i'm getting together with Jache tonight, and i packed my bag with various totems and implements of witch-doctory before leaving my apartment. between now and our rendezvous on the beach, i plan to sit in a larger rectangular room and talk about Marilyn Monroe's vagina.

listening to January 2000 on a Wednesday afternoon in October

i remember Gainesville
watching my/self pass
invisible
and
undeniable as the wind.

all binge, no purge

my (someday) erstwhile neighbors have been yammering outside my window for over an hour, and their persistent insipid speculation regarding the status of the elevator is beginning to vex me. but this is beside the point.

the point is that i've been on the precipice of illness all week, and i hold my diet partly responsible. for reasons unknown, frighteningly large numbers of dead fish have been making their way into my stomach, and at this rate there will not be a salmon left upstream in all of the Pacific Northwest by year's end. i've been rationalizing by playing up the fuerte and omega-3's, but in reality the binge has gone too far...

whittling

it's after midnight, i'm hungry, and i have whittled down my (academic) workload to one half midterm, two articles, and unknown quantities of l'imparfait over the next 72 hours. i like to imagine myself falling asleep easily tonight, but the fear of not sleeping is on me and i've been listening to a child crying in the distance for nearly a half hour. but this is beside the point.

the point is that this week is the bulge and i've been trekking to the kitchen every ten minutes to scavenge assorted morsels. the trick is to eat just enough to stay awake without getting bloated, to maintain the appropriate level, and type, of agitation...

the temperature is 58°

last night the weather broke and we opened the windows, remembering the reason we live in South Florida...

summers are strange and amnesic here, and they wipe clear one's memory of winter, obliterating tactile recall and leaving you with nothing more than a lumpy, uncertain faith that mild weather will return. when that first cool night of autumn arrives, it is a vision of the Madonna...

i wonder if the tall, wobbling prostitute in the crosswalk last night was a harbinger. perhaps she was Mary herself...

hamburger, witch doctors, procrastination

at present there is some procrastination, but no hamburgers (yet), and i've been to see witch doctors three times in the past 36 hours. but this is beside the point.

the point is that i have three(ish) small papers to write, and i've rearranged my monitor so that it sets at approximately eye level (on recommendation of fore-mentioned witch doctors). this new configuration is certainly easier on my neck and appears to have the pleasant side effect of improved typing. unfortunately, there appears to be no correlation between typing and writing ability...

today's ingedients:

i dreamed last night in hubbub, of Mardou poisoning the talent pool in San Francisco and Amanda Palmer on television, proclaiming her new album the Epic record of the year. there is an older woman two blocks east carrying a ripped picture of me in her bag and a swimming pool, but no nudity is involved. there is a red-headed girl i knew in high school and my fourth grade girlfriend, the one i didn't call all summer.

dreams populated from the spinning wheel of time.

i spoke today to one former student and one crying student. i ate a lox sandwich on matzah while reading The Joys of Yiddish. i went to work and did nothing. there was granola baking and diet soda in the cup. my sister found her asan and Jache called to tell me his woes.
i told him crazy people do crazy things. profundity abounded.

let us celebrate this bleeding absurdity of life.

Stravinsky v. my yin

my yin came home tonight and caught me grading midterms, hair a mess, listening to Stravinsky's L'ouiseau de feu. she said it felt like walking into some strange movie, with me cast in the part of madman. she said,

"can you turn that off?"

(this is beside the point).

the point is that we ended up on the couch talking about annoyance, distraction, and diversion. the gist of the conversation is irrelevant,

(saying this is either very foolish or very clever),

but what emerged was something beautiful and profound. it seems the righteous, riotous Russian's score skulked past my yin's defenses because i heard myself saying

(to the effect of):

there is no union of two. there is only harmony. i have pondered the enormousness of equanimity. i do not confuse its size for enormity. the illusion of two experiencing a

(single)

one is a preposterous egoistic sham. listen to music. listen to your voice. there is no enlightenment. there is only the stuttering perfection of a thousand signifiers falling short of language, a semiotic garden in the pause before the Fall.

(left. left. left, right, left.)

a marching army singing cadence is union. i believe in the possibility of enlightenment, a choir singing Handel on l'île de la Cité.

short poem for Chris Marker

i watched Sans Soleil;

it left me:

in a pleasant meditative stupor.

images of Tokyo.
images of Africa.
images of a volcano

devouring Norwegian slumbers.

it left me
remembering

a memory of an adolescence

that never happened on
a continent i've never seen.

it left me
remembering

an adolescence of memory

i've never seen on
a continent that never happened.

it left me
remembering

a continent of adolescents

anon i've never seen
a memory that never happened.

i watched Sans Soleil;

it did not leave me.

dreaming as Bill Burroughs in mid-October

6:15 am

dream of a quasi-institutional setting like a probation office or methadone clinic. going in every day, knowing that one of the other clients is an employee or plant. one is an old-time regular. he knows the score - the heartbreak, the disillusionment, the futility. he's called in to impress these things on some youngblood.

no one knows, except for the old-timer, that i no longer belong here. he and i share an unspoken bond. it is too late for him, but i have been spared his fate; i'm marking time until the karmic clock finishes winding down and i can move on to the next stage of my life.

i am there watching it all, present yet not really part of it, neither doing injury nor causing harm... but i do not know that i'm helping to prevent what is beginning to transpire.

in memory of childhood friendships

I feel

the

Madness

and

Nostalgia

takes hold

masquerades

as

Memories

fond of

the

me

I

might have been.

"let me count the ways..." (before noon)

1. waking me with "cockadoodledoo."

2. calling 911 on/for degenerate neighbors.

3. disseminating granola-related libel.

4. etc.

gluttony v. dearth

depending on

orientation of

left eyeball

to

right ear,

i see

(either)

a glUt of things to do,

or

a deaRth of motivation.

it would be convenient

(for me)

and

advantageous

(for all)

if i could

keep

orientation of

(the)

left eyeball to

right ear

level.

stemming the rose

this weekend, when we've not been buying 20lbs of basmati rice, or 12lbs of short grain brown rice, my yin and i have been having a (mini)BGLT film festival in our living room.

Friday night we screened Transamerica, and although it left me feeling happy for the mother and her journey, i was unable to overlook my dis-ease regarding the treatment and plight of her son. the film's closing ten minutes were insufficient in my estimation, and the uplifting superficiality of the final scene between them seemed to gloss over the damage and trauma that the boy endured as a result of his mother's search for completion. her path to wholeness cannot substitute for his, and i felt an upsurge of doubt and discontent, wondering about the damage we cause in attempt to know our selves, how even the most benevolent of intents can be skewed and perverted by our inability to see into the hidden places of our being.

next up...

Saturday night we watched Brokeback Mountain, and i was pleasantly surprised. i avoided the film for years, initially from a complicated, self-imposed cinematic exile, and then from fear of disappointment, but Ang Lee's landscapes were stunning. moreover, the shot of Heath Ledger walking away in the side view mirror was equal parts poignant, breathtaking and sad. the exploration of masculine intimacy and its mediation through sex and violence was superb, and the film seemed to serve as a fulcrum balancing denial, self-loathing, and desire. it painted a touching portrait of interminable longing and indomitable love without veering into sentimentality, and the sincerity of the film made it possible to forgive its obvious, preposterously metaphorical final shot.

about last night

he's crying

parking lot

on the sidewalk between

in a

parking lot

twelve medication

illness

[her]

chemo

drama

side effects

his father's money

and

the new girlfriend

left inside.

something fishy

i'm listening to Thriller, it's the first day of October, and overnight the temperature dropped below 80 degrees for the first time in months. it feels like fall is finally here, and when i'm not busy putzing around with consonance, i'm trying to practice my Yiddish. but this is beside the point.

the point is that i ate lox on Monday and loved it. as much as i would like to say it was merely a sacramental indulgence, the truth is that i may have to renounce my vegetarianism for pescetarianism, which brings with it a level of pretension approximately 23% greater than my current status.

the one things will do for smoked salmon...

6am, 30 September 2007

my sister and i went dancing in Miami, and when the lights came on at 5am, everyone in the club grew uglier. we could see who was on what for how long and how strong, and my sister and i became suddenly better looking. we drove to South Beach to celebrate with pancakes in an unpleasantly cold café.

at the booth behind us sat two large men, and it was impossible to discern whether they were siblings or lovers. one berated the other as his hamburger grew cold, and eventually his performance caused the whole row of tables to shake:

(my sister turns around)

"watch it buddy."

(the man jumps up)

"what the f_ck? what the f_ck?"

(my sister is from Baltimore)

"you're bangin' the table."

(bulging waistband implies gun)

"what the f_ck?"

(my sister is from Baltimore)

"[silence]"

(three men at corner booth stand up)

"is there a problem here?"

(man turns to face three men)

"what the f_uck?"

(three men step forward)

"is there a problem here?"

(lover/brother stands)

"what the f_uck?"

(three men in unison)

"we from New York."

(man steps forward)

"what the f_ck we care 'bout New York? "

(lover/brother steps forward)

"we from Camden."

[lapse]

we asked for our tab and left for home, while (unknown) rappers exchanged numbers in the corner booth of the café.