interminable May

this has been the longest May on record, stretching far beyond the deceitful thirty-one days implied by the calendar. it has been punctuated by celebration and disagreement, argument and fallout, birthday and wake, reggae and silence.

films have come, films have gone; yesterday i watched a three year old have her cake and eat it too:

but this is beside the point.

the point is that my yin and i leave for North Carolina in a little more than two weeks, and i am beyond ready for our departure. we have been readying ourselves over the weekend, connecting with our friends and loved ones before we leave for the summer:

going to the gallery on Friday night

hosting a pool party on Saturday evening

attending fore-mentioned birthday on Sunday afternoon

and yet, in spite of all this, there has been some strange backwards pull, almost as if the chaos at the start of the month has refused to let go entirely of the its stranglehold on May. i hear its echoes in phone conversations, and smell its presence in the lingering aroma of bacon. i taste in my morning coffee – after the black, before the bitter – and see its shadow in the reflections of mirrors:

i anticipate tomorrow, the first, with the temerity of Blake's tiger...

and wait.

balloons, memory and lining

"I will have spent my life trying to understand the function of
remembering, which is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather
its lining."

- Chris Marker, Sans soleil

a thought experiment

imagine a balloon called memory, and each molecule of air inside the balloon as a specific recollection. imagine our lungs as our bodies, and the breath inside the lungs as the very substance of our lives:

image from Flaming Lips concert

as we exhale, the balloon grows larger and larger, filling up with all the details of experience. some memories are full, giant balloons that tower over us and block out any hope of seeing what lies directly in front of us:

some memories are empty, flaccid balloons that lie limp and meaningless, so thin that it's as if the moments they recall never really happened at all:

everything we think we remember is merely the lining of the things we have forgotten:

image from Sans soleil

i have spent some time with this statement, and it seems to me that the balloon is an artifice, an arbitrary limit imposed by the mind in an attempt to confine experience. no matter how large the balloon grows, no matter how many accurate details we pack inside, it is always overwhelmed by all the things we do not remember:

one man's personal blimp, note the countryside and empty sky

sometimes, our memories trap us:

sometimes, our memories devour us:

the memory of Paul von Hindenburg

sometimes, our memories remind us of things that never were:

image from Le ballon rouge

to be continued...

poem inspired by guitar and acrylics

i

saw
you on
the first day
after the nowhere
rains of late September:
morning magnolia blossomed
air like candy, infinite departures
in the night – the drooping willowed
frowns of Savannah and the expressionless
gaze of Atlanta
after the
fire.

music by Richard King

images by David Banegas

trees, Katrina and Spike Lee

last night my yin and i continued watching Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke, which is quite excellent. i remember Katrina clearly, in spite of my overwhelming drowsiness, and seeing these images again helped me to get back in touch with the anger, outrage, and bewilderment i felt in the late summer of 2005:

but this is beside the point.

the point is that person after person spoke of their sense of loss, their sense of connection to New Orleans that had been severed forever. they spoke of their ancestors and of the streets and neighborhoods of Orleans Parish as a living, breathing entity. for them the city was part of who they were, and now – dispersed across the nation to places lake Baton Rouge, Houston, and Utah – they felt its throbbing presence like an amputee feels his missing limb.

my yin said she thought it was strange, how much they identified with the place. something about this statement didn't feel right, and at the moment i could only articulate that it was "a different culture." overnight, however, amidst a seemingly endless cycle of waking, pursuit and nightmare, something clicked for me, and this morning i found myself writing:

the sense of being One with a place, of it defining you, of it being you, is a much older way of experiencing our humanness. people have lived this way for most of our existence, and our current facile mobility, historically a very recent phenomenon, has helped to engender a sense of not belonging to any particular place. the lack of roots, the lack of place, can be seen – and is perhaps better seen – as a symptom of modernity and its concomitant fracturing of familial and territorial ties.

i told my yin that it isn't so strange to me because of my own upbringing as a member of a dying folk culture, as a witness (and sometimes accomplice) to its murder. i thought of my own family and how even after various dispersions, they have all recongregated within thirty miles of one another. my mother, my father, my aunts, my brother, my grandparents, my cousins – they are all there.

(i am here, and
this place is not
without sadness)

i thought of a tree. a tree has roots, planted in a specific place, and if it moves, then the soil and roots must travel with it, or else it will die. in this process of moving, the tree inevitably experiences trauma; but, if the soil is good, if the tree is cared for in its new home, then it will grow strong again and survive.

this did not happen in New Orleans.

(occasionally a seed
is dispersed by wind
or passing fancy but
by and large, trees
stay in the forest)

picture of a tree, roots unseen

the other option, the one many of us live in, is that the tree turned into a board. a board's beauty lies in the certainty and elegance of right angles; and, even in its rigidity, the board can be turned into many beautiful forms.

but
the board
is always dead,
no matter what house
it finds itself constructing
|_____________________|
|_____________________|
|_____________________|
|_____________________|
|_____________________|
|_____________________|

survival v. anniversaries

yesterday i managed to survive:

1 giant burrito
2 big box retailers
3 hours of wedding plans

but this is beside the point.

the point is that i met my sister three years ago yesterday, on a dark and rainy Friday night, in the courtyard of a coffee shop populated by thieves and charlatans. why my sister was there i may never know, and my own reasons for being there are even murkier, but i suppose it doesn't matter. if i've learned anything in this current lifetime, it's that the chain of cause and effect is sturdy but uncertain, and that karmas have their own way of linking one person to the next.

the link connecting me to my sister was Saylor, and as he presented me to her, i wondered how many cigarettes one woman could smoke during the length of an introduction. my sister has a prodigious capacity for nicotine, caffeine, and (probably) Ovaltine, but what really caught my attention was the way she spoke:

half-goof

half-laugh

all genius.

she said things like

"the salted weight of the day"

and,

after a brief flirtation with incest,

we quickly settled into a routine of pizza, sand, and crises. we saw Cat Power, we danced in Miami, we alternately lamented and celebrated the ambiguous genetics of metaphysical siblingry.

we ate brownies, we drank tonic water, we stared at half empty (always half empty) glasses of wine on fence posts as the summer rains fell in late September. she introduced me to an auto-nomen with a mild case of synesthesia, and told me about the heartbreak of her DJ-ed lovers.

we did all of these things; we did none of these things.

she left two years ago, this Sunday, on Train 52 from somewhere in central Florida, and this morning was the first time i ever realized that we only knew each other a year. it seemed so much more than that, and i wonder:

why do we insist on this arbitrary measures of meaning? why all these anniversaries and remembrances and fracturing of our lives into months and weeks and years and minutes of the day? why this particular persistence of memory rather than another?

Diamond Sutra confusion

"Subhuti, what do you think?
Does a Bodhisattva set any Buddha-land in array?

No, World-honoured One, he does not.

Why?

Because to set a Buddha-land in array is not to set it in array,
and therefore it is known as setting it array..."

thus far, the above exchange is my favorite portion in D. T. Suzuki's translation of the Diamond Sutra, and it perfectly represents why Eastern masters should be required to provide annotation and commentary for Western novices. but this is beside the point.

the point is that my yin's car went half-kaput yesterday and much of our day was spent running around town trying to find a mechanic. fortunately, we got a reliable lead from a three-quarters mad Greek who told us about guy on the north end of town, one-third redneck and wholly obsessed with fractions. he told us that some tasks took three-tenths of an hour, some took four, and that he would have to hook up the electrodes and call us in the morning. as it turns out, this is also beside the point.

the point is that on the way home i imagined myself friends with the Greek, sitting on his front porch, drinking grappa, and calling one another "you old bastard" until it was time for us to take dinner. somewhere between apéritif and digestif would come stories of the old country, and the ghost of Hemingway would try to interrupt, incessantly adding his two cents about Spain and trout and bullfighting. the Greek would then give me a brisk slap across the face, tell me to quit romanticizing the past so much and finish my drink.

[can rant ever be koan?]

can past be shown

can passed be shone

can rhyme be gnome

can rime be known

can clever be smart
can mind be heart

can couplet be cutlet

or only a Miss Steak

too points two ponder:

won) why do so many things look different but sound the same?
to) why do we privilege sight over sound when assigning meaning?

un/mistaken child

last night, among other things, i finished watching a documentary called Unmistaken Child:

which tells the story of a monk whose master dies, leaving him charged with the responsibility of finding the reincarnation of his teacher. it's an interesting, albeit somewhat flat, film that gives tantalizing glimpses into psychology, sociology and culture of Tibetan Buddhism without ever really delving into them:

what role, for example, does poverty play in the minds of the family who send their four year old to live with the lamas in a monastery? how do the rituals of Mahayana intersect with the bureaucratic functions of the state? how are these matters complicated by the administration of a government in exile?

the film never goes into these things, choosing instead to skirt around the edges in a quasi-Orientalist posture that relies as much upon the Himalayas and burgundy robes as it does addressing the fundamental questions of day to day existence. it made me think back some months ago, when i was granted:

"an audience with His Holiness the Dalai Lama"

at the end of this event, the Dalai Lama answered questions that had been submitted by the audience. his replies were more thoughtful than many of the queries, and i was left to ponder what i would ask him if i had the chance:

how much of who we are is determined how others treat us?

this question surfaced again last night, as i watched the small child (rechristened Tenzin Phuntsok Rinpoche by His Holiness Himself) laying silk sashes across the necks of devotees. it was clear that the child was already learning what was expected of him, how to act, how to behave like a reincarnated master. but what about the other scenes – crying when his parents leave him, begging for them not to shave his head – when he seems less like a lama and more like a scared little boy who has no idea why this is happening to him?

these are the questions i wonder about and, if being a Buddha is as simple as being treated like a Buddha, then imagine a world where each of us spent less time striving to be something or someone, and more time treating others like the people we wish we were...

9 at 12th and sixth

last night my yin and i went to:

which was held at an abandoned furniture store in Little Havana:

it was your typical guerilla art galley, complete with vacant storefronts, adolescents guzzling cans of beer from paper bags, and a barbershop that reminded me of the one i went to as a child:

but this is beside the point.

the point is that couple of our friends organized the event and we were excited to catch up on our respective comings and goings. i've been busy with School, my yin busy with Season, and they only got back from Colombia a couple of weeks.

in addition to putting on the show, their work was also on display:

his

hers

over the course of the evening, we discussed John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Wong Kar-wai, and i tried to explain the above artwork to a very short elderly woman, who had absolutely no fluency in SMS text messaging:

the night ended in North Miami over a large sacramental pizza half-covered in fungi, and when we got home, this is what my yin had to say about the experience:

Grizzly Man

i learned about Grizzly Man from my brother who, in his characteristically trenchant wit, described it as being "about some jackass who thinks he can be at one with the bears and then gets eaten by one."

this statement, although accurate, does go far enough.

Timothy Treadwell was a failed actor, a former alcoholic, a college dropout, and an excellent swimmer. he and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were devoured in 2003 by a bear in Alaska, but the film only approaches these things as a pretext, as a means to interrogating the nature of boundaries between man and nature, person and persona, and – most fundamentally – between man and technology.

there is an especially poignant scene when filmmaker Werner Herzog listens to the recording that captured the death of Treadwell and Huguenard. the lens cap of Treadwell's camera was on, and so all that exists is this strange, non-pictorial representation of his final moments. Herzog listens to the tape and narrates what he hears, while the woman in possession of the tape (an ex-girlfriend of Treadwell) watches on. an unknown third person operates Herzog's camera, initially focusing on Herzog but then shifting to the ex-girlfriend. it was here that the film truly grabbed my attention:

1) the camera captured the sounds of two people dying, but not the image. what is the gap between what the camera hears and what it didn't see?

2) Herzog relates these sounds to the spectator, saying that Treadwell cries out "run away! run away!" but this does not answer the question of whom he was speaking to – Huguenard or the bear. what is the gap between what Herzog hears and says?

3) the woman watching Herzog has never listened to the tape but keeps it in her possession, a morbid hybrid of totem and relic. what is the gap between the object and her thoughts regarding the object?

4) the audience watching all this unfold is locked into the perspective of the camera, adding yet another layer of mediation and distortion. what is the gap between the spectator and the cameraman?

giving rise to:

where does the meaning lie?
who is meant to see these images?
who is meant to hear these sounds?
how many boundaries are beingcrossed?
how aware are we of these transgressions?

Hustle, Flow, and the Chungking Express

yesterday was a miserable overcast Wednesday, replete with trips to big box stores and a impotent restlessness that could only be described as maddening if it had carried some sort of profundity within it. this was not the case, however, and i found myself piddling through the day, trying to get things done, trying to read, trying to write, trying to get beyond whatever self-erected roadblock had appeared overnight. but this is beside the point.

the point is that i never did. i got nothing done, i overcome no roadblocks, and i spent two (failed) hours trying to write a paragraph that didn't want to come. i read:

two measly chapters in Heartbreak Tango

twenty incomprehensible pages of quantum physics

and nothing about Zen Buddhism.

i meditated twice and experienced no satori, drank coffee and felt no caffeination, ate ice cream and enjoyed no gluttony.

(this is a rambling attempt to recreate a day that wasn't,
written by a person who wasn't there.)

i finally opened my copy of Immemory and found this quote by Boris Souvarine inside:

"History is something that never happened,
recounted by someone who wasn't there."

(i knew, as soon as i read it,
that i would make it my own.)

eventually night fell, and i tried to watch this film:

Hustle & Flow

but found it to be a preposterous inversion of the "hooker with a heart of gold" scenario. this convention is itself tired, and refiguring it into a "pimp with a heart of gold" story is simply ridiculous. my yin and i stopped thirty minutes in, and put in this film:

Chungking Express

which was infinitely more rewarding. my predilection for Wong Kar-wai is well-documented, and this film evidenced an immaturity that can only be described as charming – a word i never though i would use in described Wong's work. the same familiar themes of memory, time, and timing were all there, but Chungking Express also has a playfulness about it, an endearing naivete that overshadows the loss and heartache that come to define his later films.

[lapse]

i woke this morning with Faye Wong still ringing in my ears:

entropy, the Gita and milkbones

apparently this week is the week that my friends have decided to start falling apart en masse. the various maladies run the gamut from heartbroken-ness to accidental and self-inflicted hospitalizations, and it seems much of my time since Friday afternoon has been spent as something of a lay crisis counselor. but this is beside the point.

the point is that it feels good to lend whatever assistance i might be providing, and i was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about how every good act is its own reward, that it makes no difference whether one sees results today, or next month, or twenty lifetimes from now.

it took me a long time to really understand this (i'm understanding it still), and some of my favorite parts of the Bhagavad Gita are the ones that talk about the nature of karma. our "bad" acts yield "bad" results, and our "good" acts yield "good" results, but the highest aim is to renounce the results altogether, to know that we are not the one doing the deed but merely a vessel. Krishna tells Arjuna that even the lesser gods are bound by their karmas, and it only humans who have the ability to truly be free.

i think of this often, especially when it feels like i'm doing something "good" for somebody. i remind myself that, so long as i believe i am the one doing it, the best of all possible outcomes is another round of birth, another round of death, another round of collapsing the divine into small words i think i understand...

oh yes, one more thing:

redux: memory/repetition/inversion (1 year plus 1 day)

(memory)

Sitting in the same room, a
voice appeared; eighteen
months of the blue light and
broken strings, a symphony
weeps below, the serpent sleeps.

(repetition)

are you still there Jack?

are you still there Charles?

I talked to her today;

she said she still loves you.

(inversion)

ennui

this

brings

bring

hunger

you

brings

brings

ennui

inresponse, notintent (2 years minus 2 days)

A Portrait

reading cummings and coming

and going from table to table

legs clenched
thighs tight

lip bleeding from the biting.
two shifts long words gone

from booth to table to stall

frantic dripping trips
spent touching

grasping for the head spin trembles.
wet-kneed workday fantasies of poetry

masturbating to the classics

not even missing her periods.


this man does not approve

html trbl

this week i began building my first website since 1996, which has proven to be a most engrossing task. thankfully i have been blessed with many, many hours of kiddie dance rehearsal to throw myself back into the .html world of web design. but this is beside the point.

the point is that, other than my disappointment with iWeb's blog template, the process has been relatively painless. it has also allowed me to note some key differences between:

1) the me i thought i was fourteen years ago; and



2) the me i think i am today

back then i was playing in a fledgling band, hoarding Converse One Stars, and deluded by visions of grandeur; now i write in a fledgling form, hoard Converse One Stars, and still suffer from delusions.

some things never change.

(untrue)

the difference is that grandeur has been replaced by delusions less obvious, and today i tell myself subtler lies like:

this is my body.
these are my thoughts.
i am a student. i am a teacher.

these things are untrue as well, but i have to keep reminding myself, and the most pernicious fallacy is the nagging persistent belief that i am an individual locked into my own insurmountable subjectivity

– the breath in my lungs, the sight in my eyes, the sound in my ears –

all of the seductive beauty that goes along with being human. it reminds me of a dinner conversation i had in January, but this is also beside the point.

the point is that i hope to have the site up and going within the next couple of weeks, check back here for details...

Baltimore, barbecue, and the Wire

i talked to my sister yesterday for the first time in ages, and she told me about the barbecue misfortunes of working for one of Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's underlings in the Baltimore mayor's office. it was a dastardly tale, full of intrigue, treachery and missed opportunities, and in spite of the poor cell reception, (or perhaps because), i couldn't help but think of The Wire, which is

easily the greatest television show ever produced about Baltimore.

i don't remember how i learned about The Wire, but it must have been in relation to The Sopranos, which i discovered by chance in crappy video store in New Jersey during the coldest winter i have ever known.

but this is beside the point.

the point is that one of the wonderful things about not owning a television set is that i'm always at least two years behind the curve when it comes to hot new television shows. all the anticipation and worry and wanting and waiting and wondering what will happen next is eliminated, replaced instead by the hedonism and gluttony of marathon sessions in front of my computer screen, eating metaphorical (and sometimes literal) blocks of cheese in my underwear. there are few pleasures that can compare to the willful disregard for mental health in favor of post-dated televised consumption.

[lapse]

one of those, however, is the liberal application of hyperbole on a Wednesday morning.

on Delray Beach, Hinjews and colons

last night i went to my yin's hatha class in a small studio off Swinton Avenue, which serves as the imaginary north/south line of gentrification in the small town just south of our apartment;
we saw signs of this as we drove around looking for a parking spot:

one (1) large shady character chastising a smaller shady character in front of an empty parking garage; eight (8) boarded up windows on the east side of the local museum; and two (2) gutted houses just waiting to be "revitalized":

Delray Beach is a strange town, populated almost entirely by transplants and marked by the distinct, implicit recognition that no one here is from here; over the years, various tribes and nomads have staked their claims:

the Haitian community takes refuge in the southwest quadrant, giving a two block berth to the wandering Jews from Boca, who populate Atlantic Avenue at twilight in an unending parade of cocktails and plastic surgery;

the Boston snowbirds arrive in November, leaving the letter "r" in Massachusetts and congregating in great flocks with the real estate vultures of New York and Long Island, an uneasy alliance forged in attempt to maintain territory against the onslaught of Ed Hardy clones and the Jersey Shore;

the Quebecers lay siege to the beach, warding off the New English with a blinding display of alabaster legs and an indecipherable patois that makes Creole sound like le français standard;

interspersed amongst and betwixt these tribes are unintentional bodhisattvas recovering from all manners of self-inflicted malaise, ranging from 12 Step to 2 Step to Hinjew:

but this is beside the point.

the point is that it was the second yoga class i've been to since Friday, and i don't even remember how long it's been since i had enough free time to spend two afternoons doing nothing more than:

breathe release repeat

summer has officially arrived, and yesterday i felt that first twinge of idleness, an uncertain unnameable restlessness that took hold sometime mid-morning. reintegrating is always a bit of a challenge, especially after eight months of pleasurable agitating thoughtforms.

it isn't the something; it isn't the nothing; it's the moving from one to the other that constitutes the practice of yoga:

(at least

for me

today

until

the next

thoughts

come

and

push away

this

now

and

replace

the next)

how important is form to meaning?

non-sequiturs (redux 10 May 2008)

dancing the left ear disco in line at the bank

with a banana in my back pocket
and a sock full of quarters.

writing heart-felt poetry
on the back of my hand
with a blue felt pen
and practicing
aparigraha.

muggy
Friday nights
googling Sanskrit
and staring at the girl
with the black skirt
sans stockings
gray shoes
red laces
texting
sidewalks
from San Francisco.



the shattered concrete dream of the American West

still smoldering
from the opium dens

and quaking from the memory of Mardou.

Kerouac's Mardou, Ailene Lee

my Mardou, texting pictures from San Francisco

*illustration by Saylor