my yin v. Amanda Palmer

one of these women is my yin:

the other, my pretend girlfriend from October 2004 - June 2008:

and these past weeks, while writing a research paper on Amanda Palmer, i learned that she and my yin share the same birthday:

tomorrow.

this idea started looping around in my head as i went deeper into my project, and i began thinking about how much time i was spending with Amanda late at night, how much time was spent looking at pictures of her, how much time was spent reading her words, how much time was spent writing about what she means... eventually my mind turned to the fight between my yin and Igor Stravinsky.

i started wondering what would happen if my yin and Palmer were to meet, and i remembered the time Jonathan "The Herring Wonder" Ames fought David "Impact Addict" Leslie in the Box Opera:

Ames and Leslie square off in 1999

i had driven non-stop from Lawrence, Kansas, to Manhattan trying to catch the fight, but by the time i arrived i was too tired and sleep-deprived to stay awake past 125th Street, much less all the way downtown. but this is beside the point.

the point is that i remember Ames writing about the upcoming bout in the New York Press, attempting to assess his chances:

"Leslie is white, 42, stands 5-feet 10-inches and weighs 178 pounds. I’m white, 35, 5-11 and weigh 152. He has a lot more fight experience, but he’s a bit slow and has been known to wear himself out as a passionate denizen of the New York’s nightlife. I on the other hand have not smoked crack cocaine since 1994, but I do bleed easily from the nose. I’m not sure who has the advantage based on the above facts."

inspired by Ames' example, here is an approximate breakdown of the difference between my yin and Ms. Palmer:

Palmer is white, 34, reasonably famous, and has no eyebrows. my yin is tan, 33, reasonably anonymous, and has eyebrows – although I do not know how this affects her chances. both practice yoga, but my yin never does so while drinking beer, which has to give her an edge over Palmer. also, to my knowledge, my yin has never smoked crack cocaine (undoubtedly a plus) and goes to bed earlier than Palmer, who is well-known to suffer simultaneously from jet lag and mania.

Amanda Palmer in vrksasana

my yin in adho mukha svanasana

not all the cards are stacked in my yin's favor, however, because unlike Ames (who ate herring in order to gain a psychological and aromatic advantage), i refuse to kiss her if she chooses to eat gifilte fish as part of her training regimen. furthermore, if Ames' experience is any indicator, my yin's Jew(ish)ness may be a disadvantage, because he was pummeled by the goyim Leslie over the course of three rounds, like some twisted inversion of David and Goliath.

these things will probably never come to pass.

probably, i will eventually stop procrastinating (like now) and return to my paper. probably, i will turn it in on Tuesday and not give it another thought unless i attempt to publish it. probably, i will forget all about these things until the next time i go see Palmer perform. but on that day...

v.

she better be ready to rumble.

sleep deprivation v. writer's block

yesterday i woke up from a dream at 4:37am about swimming in a gray murky lake and being made fun of by a swimming instructor for not being able to swim. but this is beside the point.

the point is that i didn't fall asleep again until after 3:30 last night, and today feels like some odd combination of the last day of school (which it is) and the last day of summer (which it isn't). part of me wants to sleep, part of me wants coffee, and part of me is already half-dreaming of what will happen tonight after i visit a mental hospital and imaginary set of conjoined twins:

Evelyn Evelyn

more on this later, but for the time being suffice to say that yesterday i felt like i was coming down with writer's block and it didn't feel good and every word i wrote seemed to lead me in the wrong direction and i decided to get rid of all my punctuation and it wasn't until after i had locked myself in an empty classroom that i realized that the wrong direction was really the right direction in the wrong order.

i proceeded to reorganize my thoughts and took the following note:

thoughts are memories in the present tense.

i do not know if this is foolish or wise or both and in the end it does not matter because we are all going to die anyway and who can ever really know about what comes next?

lyres and prophets)

or

(liars and profits?

"Do you see what I did there?" (20 April 2007)

OR

"3 year old annotation and commentary on plagiarism and allusion"

would you like me to write like Kerouac? poetry-stained prose that just goes and goes and goes like a benny addict for page after page after paragraph after page until all the words run together, and the lines are full, and the margins have burst, black beauties of bop unbroken by periods or stops–

i could type for miles with ankles tied to table legs with wire.

would you recognize the plagiarism or call it an homage? an homage to the image i see see of a sad drunk delirious and trembling at the edge of the sea sea in the town of Saint Francis Assisi:

≠

(how am I doing? ¿asi asi?)

could you see the words i speak and hear how hard i’m trying to prove my cleverity? provoke a sense of hilarity by evoking a sense of lack of sincerity. that’s why i rhyme. for god’s sake even his name rhymed: Jack Kerouac. and the sounds of the surname.

Ker-ou-ac. Care-o-ac.

so sophisticated, so

"French no less,"

the depth of the tragedy documented with the levity and absurdity of onomatopoeia.

Ker! Ou! Ak!

can i read this the way i hear it in my head? i can’t read so much as write, you know the type – a lifetime accumulating fancy words to use in context to make you think those words are what i mean to say.

even now i’m reading Bataille.

i’m reading Bataille because it sounds good to say, "i’m reading Bataille." i learned of Bataille from a girl i wanted to make out with and when she said Bataille i KNEW she must be smart and funny and clever and good in bed and all the things i hope the next cute girl thinks about me when i say “Bataille.”

i’m a simple man, what can I say?

"what else is there but sex and nice conversation?"

"i plaigerised the last line."

i plaigerised that line.

i misspelled “plagiarized.” twice. i’m a parrot:

i even parrot “i’m a parrot.”

i am a simple, simple man. i like catchy songs cloaked in dissonance and nice hips draped in punk rock aesthetics stale since the year i was born. i like fancy books with simple sentences and simple books with fancy sentences. i like pretty pictures stitched together in non-linear form. i like narrative pictures exploded into disconnected perspectives. the prettiest girl i know is the prettiest girl i know because she wraps her smile in a bore.

and thus i complicate my life in an attempt to seem complex, but i am a simple man. stripped of my pretense, i might read more like Hemingway:

i like songs, hips, books, pictures, and girls who smile.

(a final plagiarism)

"Yes, isn’t it pretty to think so."

ghosts (the Dancer, the Russian, the One that got away)

trying to write her was like Manhattan
busy, bothered,

jerking subway

starts on the A train local
as you cross that invisible line
and leave 116th street station.
saying goodbye to:

the Poet.

and

the Junkie.

and

the Drunkard.

headed uptown
to sweaty August nights,
181st and Fort Washington
with the Dominicans dancing
in the shadow of the George Washington
and the salsa drifting up from the streets
and everything i own in a duffel bag.

i was trying to write her like Manhattan,
but she's more like Paris—
lazy, jet-lagged mornings,
sleeping in with the shutters closed
and a strong dollar buying pan au chocolat and wine,
taking trains from the hills of Montmartre
to Le Select and Champs-Élysées.

chasing:

the Spaniard.

and

the Writer.

and

the shadow of the Guillotine.

but this isn't about

her,

the one i should write like Paris.

or her,

the one i wrote like Manhattan.

or her,

the one i loved in New York and lost in Meudon.

Alain Renais, mon amour

H er memor y
i n lieu o f
r epetitio n
o ne day i n
s eptembe r
h er drisht i
i re/membe r
mon
amour.

12 months ago

What lupine
machinations
operate
(un/seen)
giving us
safe
clean
well-lit
places in the night?

inspired by Deborah Stratman's
In Order Not To Be Here

13 months ago

i wrote a short poem after
a ((n) brief encounter
with a dead Spaniard:

I wish to learn more of Lorca

his generation and murder

that namelsss grave in Granada.

[image missing]

i wonder what has changed.

10 things that happened over the weekend

1. Saw one
peacock 2. Canoed
past an alligator. 3. Completed
one book proposal. 4. Enjoyed one party
shut down by police. 5. Attended one modern
dance performance. 6. Witnessed yin caught off-guard by

an orgasm.

7. Learned that "it takes a team to make a family." 8.
Watched a drunken gourmet chef urinate in a
garden. 9. Gave two dollars in change to a
parking lot bodhisattva. 10. Listened
to a defense attorney rant
about "the Christian
Taliban."

Technicolor noir (un collage)

part I

in an attempt to ameliorate my finite, yet vast cinematic ignorance, i've taken up the habit of convincing, cajoling, and occasionally bamboozling my yin into watching films every night the past two weeks. but this is beside the point.

the point is that, owing to a serendipity of online streaming technology and librarial availability, we were able to stage a grudge match between Howard Hawks' noir classic The Big Sleep and Jean Luc Godard's approximate nouvelle vague re-rendering Made in U.S.A.

Humphrey Bogart, uncharacteristically lispy

Anna Karina, characteristically wispy

part II

example, in the style of Howard Hawks

the former is dominated by Bogart, of course, and its narrative is permeated not just by the tension, but also by the legend and lure of his relationship with co-star Lauren Bacall. Godard's film, on the other hand, revisions Philip Marlowe as Paula Nelson, a private detective investigating a murdered lover, divorcing the director, and interrogating semiotics. the films are separated by twenty years, one ocean, and the advent of Technicolor.

both are devastatingly intoxicating.

example, dans la style (mais pas le français)
de Jean Luc Godard

le premier:

est imprégné par:

Godard révisions:

comme:

avec:

enqûete sur:

en instance de divorce:

interrogeant:

vingt ans, un océan, et l'avènement
de Technicolor séparent les films.
les deux sont dévastateurs enivrante.

Whitman sleeps tonight (redux and context)

Jache once spent an afternoon trying to convince me that Walt Whitman was my "150 year old queer Brooklyn angel."

Walt Whitman, dead Brooklynite and poet

his explanation included an annotated portion of "Song of Myself", interspersed with snippets of our conversations over the previous two years (his and mine, not mine and Walt's). the nominal purpose of this encounter was to help "manifest our manifesto", an undertaking which, lamentably, has yet to come to fruition.

but this is beside the point:

Jache, living Floridian and poet

the point is that Jache is incommunicado at present, and i'm thinking of him. i wrote this a year ago today, to my best friend, my grandfather, and my 150 year old queer Brooklyn angel.

me and my grandfather, living and wordless poet

There is no sleep so sublime
as Whitman under a tree
in Brooklyn. I dream
of my grandfather

fresh cut grass
two cycle engine oil
and Childhood

nostalgia

spent on the front porch
chewing sprigs of birch
pine needles in the fall.
The redolence of spring

mingling autumnal decay

the smell of impotence
the taste eternal.

counting sheep (transcription and analysis of a dream)

6:05am

dream of Killer of Sheep:


i live in one of the broken down lots in a ramshackle abandoned place that was once a squat. [my yin] is with me - too white faces in a sea of Black poverty. transients come and go. we've been tricked, lured into living here, brought under false pretenses. the place is so dilapidated that even the homeless are shocked that we live there, much less that we pay to live there. it won't stay warm and we bring in heater after heater. we're trying to solve a murder, trying to get out of this New Jersey cum Watts dystopia. this is - without doubt - one of the strngest dreams i've ever had in my life.

10:33pm

last night we screened Killer of Sheep, and although i saw it three years ago, last night something was different.

(was it really that long ago?
was it really that recent?)

reading Fanon, undoubtedly, helped set the stage;
what once seemed so disjoin

ted

and

b
o
r
i
n
g

now looks like nothing less than a masterpiece, illustrating how the intersection of class and race scars the psyches of the men and women who serve as crosswalks and stopping guards.

Sukhothai dog

part 1

this rambling satori-eyed bodhisattva:

photograph by Deb Huber

was caught on film, presumably in Oakland, by a big-eyed hobo photographer.

part 2

i met Deb(bie) just over two years on a Saturday night at the same restaurant, on the same crab-infested couch, where i once drank quinine and ate brownies with my sister in the rain. a high school friend of Saylor's, she was on her way to New Orleans with little more than a camera and rucksack. her ultimate destination was San Francisco, and although i did not know it then, she was a harbinger of departures to come:

my sister - 30 May 2008
Mardou - 13 June 2008
La Cienega - 12 October 2008
Saylor - 20 November 2008
Tarah - 22 November 2008

part 3

it's a rainy morning in south Florida, and i have spent my entire weekend reading the words of famous dead Frenchmen and obscure living Americans. summer is around the corner. i feel anticipation in my fingers and restlessness in my heart. i turned on the computer expecting to say nothing. instead:

a shining dog.

a faded picture.

a woman i barely know.

i find myself

remembering

the things that came

and left

before.

A Serious Man

a couple of nights ago, my yin and i watched the latest offering from the Coen brothers:

Joel and Ethan Coen, no relation to my yin

A Serious Man opens inside the ear canal of a teenage boy, and presents a mundanely bizarre (as opposed to bizarrely mundane) take on 1960s suburban America as seen through the eyes of a Jewish physics professor awaiting tenure. it is a world populated solely by stereotypes: his domineering Jewish wife, her Jewish psychoanalyst lover, and the (presumably) uncircumcised goyim next door. things do not go well, but this is beside the point.

the point is that the story ends ambiguously, with a tornado bearing down on the man's (post-bar mitzvah) son and a telephone call from his doctor. on a superficial level, the events leading up to this moment imply that these coming calamities are some manner of divine retribution. this notion is undercut, however, by the fact that misfortune has permeated the film from its beginning, forcing the spectator to consider that bad things happen not because of an angry G-d, but simply because they do.

it's not the size of the equation, it's how you use it

the subtle implication is that, whatever omnipresence g-d may possess, it is not matched by his potency. instead, Hashem seems to have little more than the power to leave vague messages on the backside of gentile teeth:

another reason to avoid the dentist

transcription of dream after reading Ginseberg's Indian Journals

4-9-2010

6:36am

dream of a game show, where contestants must endure being killed time and again. each round is a new death, a new torture, a new unspeakable demise. i am on this show.

some scenes:

1) threats of sodomy from a hulking host;

2) a giant pond, relatively safe, where the horrors of Vietnam play out on the shores and one must stay in the water;

3) a madman who has us line up in a row (there are dozens of us) so he can drill into our temples and fill our skulls with peroxide;

4) a round where each of us must pour a bottle of water into a vat where a fellow contestant sits. each bottle is another step towards his demise, and i pour mine without hesitation. once full, the host - there is a different host for each round - screws on a lid. i wait, watching with the others, hoping the person is dead;

5) final scene is only me and a host. he puts a drill to the center of my forehead and i lean into it, hoping to end it sooner. the drill merely glances of the skin, however.

between each death, the rounds begin as some sort of mystery or maze, and in these moments there is hope. the main horror is not the dying, but the fear of dying, which never recedes after dozens of rounds.

why i love teaching

Part 1: the set-up

earlier this week a student in my film appreciation section stayed after class to ask me some questions. he's a bright student, thoughtful, and one of the only individuals bold enough to take on a political topic in his first paper. i was expecting either:

1) a music-related question (the topic of the week)

or

2) clarification on my diatribe concerning the intersection of ethnicity, gender, and doppelgängers in High Noon:

Helen Ramirez and Amy Fowler Kane

thankfully it was neither of these things.

the young man is a member of one of the fraternities on campus, and next week they are performing in a campus step competition called Stomping on the Moon. he gave me a brief plot synopsis:

"we're going to be the first seven Black astronauts on the moon - because no Black man has ever walked on the moon - but on the way there, we get sucked into a black hole and end up on the Planet of the Apes... we're not sure what happens next."

at this point, discussion and brainstorming ensue. i tell my student that, as an undergraduate, i had worked as a lighting designer for some step shows in Chapel Hill. this being the case, i had some familiarity with the form and tone.

"who's your sister sorority?" i ask.

"Alpha Kappa Alpha."

"Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated?"

"yep."

"they're the pink and green, right?"

"uh-huh."

"the ones that go, 'wheeeeee!!!!!'"

"you bet."

"i'll send you an email."

Part 2: the (unedited) email

M______,

On the drive home it occurred to me that maybe, arriving on the Planet of the Apes, the astronauts could run into Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. She is some sort of dimensional space/time traveler now, and has magic sparkly pink shoes (of course). She offers to send the guys home with three clicks of her heels.

The astronauts say "Where's home?"

She responds, "Kansas."

The astronauts look at each other and then say,
"Kansas!?! Forget about it!"

She asks, "Well... where do you want to go?"

They answer "the moon."

She says, "Well, why didn't you say so in the first place...

I'll show you how."

Dorothy then breaks into some elaborate step sequence demonstrating that to get to the moon, you have to really have skills (as opposed to the three lame clicks that end you up in lame Kansas). The boys join in, and then - presto! You become the first seven Black Men on the moon.

Hope this helps, as ever,

J_____