the saddest blog that ever was

11.15.2008:

Jamie Ewing is gone. Katie McD's father and brother are gone. Liz's sister is gone. Ryan's mother is gone. Matt and I are gone. Mindy and Jeremy are gone. Sto and Kellie are gone. Josh and Brett are gone. I think the saddest blog that ever was aka http://duudewheresmyblog.blogspot.com should be gone too. Memories are good at certain points in one's life, but at other points one has to focus on love in the time of obama. RIP journal of my saddestnesses. I loved you so much!

Blog // 12:51 PM

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2.16.2008:

The road to greatness is laid with paving stones of pain
round and cobbled and hobbling and paved paved paved
knees knocked and legs bowed and fingers spread to the hilt, of
swords drawn to the quick, faster than sdrows, longer than vowels, quicker than words.
words sharper than knives, slicing through lives lighter than birds
some words nimbler than toes others nibble at most:
like a sigh and asides and besides who breathes least who belies

The lives of the saints, who get short shrift these days.
Lips slip in the tongue’s cheek and all the useless words parlayed,
the lies, they no longer seem so bold.
Such are the destinies of the infirm and the old.
The children, the children wandering these cobblestone streets
who will read to these poor orphans, feed and clothe all the weak?
Weeks pass and no word, no words to hold, us like sobbing infants
waiting for our stories to be told

All my life I’ve stood on concrete
watched the small words gather moss on the stones
guarded their goodness against gods great and small
slew those who tripped up my six-stringed sword
ripped out their cords and had them hung at the door.
Nothing so beautiful as silence, golden evermore.
Slept in the den of lions, and heard them roar.

Tonight I just want to roll up the sleeves,
Cast out the lost lots and lots lost
Say “good-night” to irony
Go home to a bed paved with warm slices of bread
Tea in a cup by a book to be read
But the road to greatness is laid with pain
Paved with the slaves to the word of the day
Who die at the altar and live by the grave.

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On the show in May of 2007:

Felt as if it weighed ten thousand pounds.
How could anything in heaven be so heavy.
The drums. It comes down,
Falls and crushes you:
The lightest wave
Is a roll and tap of the hand.
We are crushed by nothing.

Blog // 3:00 AM

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“Dystopia”

A bare-fist of bones left to welter in dusty Celebrity

Ungulates, of the most commemorative sort,

Perhaps Dismissed due to the nature of science.

Poseur, harbinger of falsehood, truth-slayer: You are not

An Ox, if an ox is to be of an ox, bleeding oxblood, breathing bovine

Authenticity; such Taxonomic fantasies of Linnaeus schoolbooks make

Demotion a seeming inexorable necessity. For our world

Is of the Hybrid, and not of you, of the cars that speed past any breath

Spent on your racing with us, Feral teeth still gleaming from the cold.

Zoological monstrosity of a forgotten era, bygone and be gone!

One thousand eight hundred fourteen pounds of Humpback,

Yet no worthy killer of whales are you, your awkward pendulum of Dewlap

Swaying in our faces, disturbing the Pleasant midday tea of civilization

Where orchestrators of Societal splendors, architects of the masses, prepare their

Mitochondrial takeover with swift and efficient indelicacy. Such a science.

For we are merely Taxidermic nightmares of the most uncouth kind,

Maternal traces remind us of ungulates long mythic past, genetic evidence of a time and

Race of Females, who bore us on backs like oxen laiden with precious stones

Hypothetically speaking, of course. We have left a few remaining clues

Lingering in the dense warm heat of Indochina, watcher over the bones.

Blog // 3:00 AM

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6.02.2007:

Every kindness deserves to be returned

Non-fiction / fiction

She loved him most in the broad twin blades that in its smooth undulating strength felt as if it could power a plane, as if only recently great giant Icarus-ian wings were shorn off and what was left in the streamlined sinews was merely the shadow of flight. She loved him thoroughly – in every conceivable possible human relationship from every angle. She loved him sexually, platonically, fraternally, maternally, paternally, childishly, professionally, pedagogically. She would have loved him if he had not been her lover, would have loved him as a friend, a father, a brother, a mother, a colleague, a child, a student and a teacher. There were so many different ways to love him she lost count of her many selves loving his many various parts. Every kindness he deserved, and returned with the most genuine sincerity as if his life came out of this principle of simple reciprocity. But her own love came this way: awkwardly and in long breathy sentences fluffed with extravagant imagery and metaphors. She was aghast.

So she always had to write in the third person, detach herself somehow from too strong a voice issuing from within. As if this was how non-fiction was turned into fiction. As if this self-detachment was not the most mundane tactical maneuver in a generation with its own stylistic handbook, where irony was so sharply defined as to be neuroses, becoming the very force driving this ‘generation’ itself, onward and upward towards ever more frenzied and dizzying heights of self-referential lambast that was ultimately, of course, a hidden sort of bombast. As if she were a Lydia Davis; as if there was any demographic that would even recognize the reference except for the very English professors grading this very reference, on its meretricious incorporation of the famed Proustian translator into the whole. As if she didn’t go to Berkeley, as if her education was not the most thorough sort. Oh but how, oh how.

How every story she would ever write would proceed like this: interior monologues narrated from the past, weighted down with memory and so incapable of present action. Why time could not forgive her, and would not move on. She thought that happiness dried the tongue as well as the eyes. But really, it was only that happiness was no longer a blunt instrument of her unraveling. She wished she could say this to him, mouth it with her lips even, eschewing her voice, flexing her vocal cords but producing only a hollow sound – an emptiness that was there but gone, comes and goes, an echo.

Blog // 1:56 AM

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5.25.2007:

theres nothing so lonely as being ill on a warm summers night.

Blog // 1:21 AM

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5.22.2007:

i havent written any more posts in 2007. happiness dries the tongue as well as the eyes? matthew marlin. is so different. my happiness. is so different. its shining a creature of softer purr - its blinding brightness diffused, declawed. happiness is no longer a blunt instrument of my unraveling. he gathers my yarns and knits me whole again. who knew that soft happiness would be like this? sometimes i miss you so hard and fierce it is like a diamond piercing me through my throat, a sharp angular geometricity trying to force its way not up, but sheer out my lungs exploding from my mouth on its own cruel forward momentum. yet i insist on trying to swallow, and gulp the fast huge breaths of air that contain the sounds of my hearts beatings, my arms beating furiously like wings, like moths dipping and breaking on the waves in their path to fire. the ocean is matt. he sets me free. still at times when i swim in the dark, it is only the old ghosts i can see.

Blog // 2:23 AM

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1.27.2007:

http://music.calarts.edu/~ebuchla/gowns/

yes.

you've gotta look it in the eyes and say that i dont believe
you've gotta hold it under water so you'll see where it bleeds
you've gotta stare into the mirror until you name this disease
you've gotta know
you gotta write down all your symptoms even though its obscene
you gotta stay there under water till you gave yourself clean
you gotta keep on going till you feel finally free
you've gotta know
you've gotta look it in the eyes and say that i dont believe
you've gotta look about the water till you cant hardly see
you gotta keep on walkin' (goin') you'll forget about me
you've gotta know...

Blog // 6:50 PM

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12.25.2006:

paradigm shift. though i keep mine hidden, still.

Blog // 3:20 PM

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11.06.2006:

a love from september of 2004, written in form:

"Francois-Marie Arouet V. has deflections (which cause us to make light of our misery) in mind when he ends Candide with the advice to cultivate one's garden." we are, the son of an "impecunious merchant."

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i can gouge out my heart but i cannot give up my eyes, i can give up my love but i cannot live and be blind, fumbling in the darkness cursing for sight.

but here, the dimness diminishes from fires inside. our cave we can carry with palms out and tied, light creeping in despite vigilance patrolling the lines.

at the mouth when orpheus turned back the tide, persephone's wrath merely a moment in time, it was i, eurydice who stood there and cried: "to the ends of the earth i follow you, 'till i die, i die."

he, taken away, forgets to wave his lover good-bye.

Blog // 2:11 AM

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8.01.2006:

Gallery of fierces: the Fever, the Fugue, A Letter:

dear dear, last night i dreamt of jellyfish tentacles again, all translucent and gooey-juicy. They burst over the skein of time unfurling as a dream over night, the Fates furiously spinning, the Furies running backwards in time. Then a bowl of oranges, humbleness, litugies on toes as hard as the air in my hollow bones. Aviary felicity: the rapture of the archaeoptryx, the secret inside. The promise held as a ripening in the hand, an avocado, a tomato, the roots of a tree bearing some sort of great knotty, gnarled fruit. Such is the troth of dreams which I believe in. Come, let us eat.

Blog // 3:08 PM

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When we say, qua Wittgenstein, that of all things sacred one must remain silent, what of the sonorous mellefluous tones of love, qualities of sensation merely to be relegated to some tactile longing?
Pure optical fumbling of the eye, limbs stretched akimbo.
Haptic, wordless night swimming, natatorial splendor.
The fraying of nerves, decimated by the short, pulpy chop
of my language. Is this to be stillborn?
I breathe to birth
you, mon petit pont neuf
to the city of stars
bridge of my nostrils to my mouth
opening, to a ______?

Addendum:
Apropos legs-arms akimbo,
poem about oranges
you, quiet patience
for that indiscernible muteness
of large mammals
beleaguered by fates
beseiged by sadness,
a 'fortress of solitude,'
so they, we say.
Silence the prop
Cerebus that guards the gate
amidst all this wordplay.

Blog // 2:56 PM

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Series: The Sea

"Bass"

Striped bass tails,
scales glimmering.
You hung them by the door
that day, perplexed
at the ingenuity of aquatic construction
to be transformed
into the jellied delicacies
of some far off plate.

Such an effusive marvelling
wonder in dovetails fanning out
mimicking the tiny delicate bones
splayed in a caress of jointed architecture
held in your palms
still warm and moist from the heat.
Is it not like us, our orchestrations of love
merely a terrestrial forgery, amphibious plunder?

The effort of hauling in the sea
tires you, salt crusted round fingernails
rimmed in dirt, in oil, the
unctous mucosae of transparent membranes
slipped off their anchoring skin.
Such is the glue of oceans
(coming apart in our hands, our tongues
mouths upon the flesh of the world).

Blog // 2:43 PM

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Series: The Sea

"Mollusk Love"
in a past life,
probably,
we were turtles.
no of course,
building each other
our little shells
calcified versions
of our lonesome
former selevs.

Blog // 2:42 PM

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schizothymia

Moored ship, on what was once the sea
rusticated remnants of past vessels of meaning.
she cries, and the fat tears
like barnacles, like the soft pulpy insides of mussel shells
cling to the bottom of this hollow hull
slopes down the curvatures, old times and spaces recalled.

It is said the world moves in dollops
creamed air, sound draped in layers of wax,
all glacial, inpenetrable muffle: tundra of the soul.
Things trudge side to side in ungainly buckets
drained of line, color, depth. Sheer emotive capacity
stilled; a tap turned off, an engine stalled.

Once a doctor told her to disbelieve
in the laws of celestial motion, planetary veridicality.
She marvelled at the gleaming joy he held
shiny and wet as a newborn, at his discovery:
her schizothymia. "Cezanne had it, El Greco. Da Vince
held no fervid touch, dreaming of vultures flapping at the gates.

These waves were once a liquid paradise;
our love an ocean to spear the heavens, water the years.
schizothymia. Now these things seethe in you
as Casper's frozen sea of ice.
And I, shipwrecked upon an artic shore,
am the captain forsaken in the tide.

Blog // 2:22 PM

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6.06.2006:

i hope one day my insides melt this green and glowy


practicing for the new play on the vietnamese boat people who married the japanese refugees who emigrated to the island of taiwan during wwII...

Blog // 8:02 PM

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5.08.2006:

its for eighteen ayem and ive just listened to green mind for the eleventh time in a row (though i live for that look never tires, cuz i do, i live for it) and i fought with chris again for the thousandth time today. its nice to come back to this empty space and think that no one will ever come visit here anymore, all pertinent visitors long jumped ship. i even went back to sexybird right now, which is also down and out. anything to avoid the uncanny. i dont think i've ever typed his name out loud on this dude-blog here. yet this entire fricking fucking stupid blog was about him, is still about him, about how he makes me sad, makes me ridiculously happy, how we drive each other sheerly insane day in and day out. why? who knows. i blame the tap water in new york city, full of nefarious, insidious, disruptive elemental figures, shadowy on the edges of our tongues, always ready to drop like a fat bomb of water on the most humid day of the year: downpour, splash, we both put off by each over like wet salivating dogs growling for the same ragged piece of ham. bone of who's right and who's wrong. i'm always starting fights, he manipulates situations to make me think i've lost my mind. i've lost my mind. he's threatening to fight. i dont know how to kiss a boy anymore, its like it leaked out of me in dreary bleachy waves and i just smell fart all day long or something. that's probly myself actually. am i really a wreck ol' duude? i look at myself everyday, even two or three times a day. i see a skin that's lost some its luster, and the teeth are more buck than ever, eyes are failing more rapidly than i'd like to admit staring at computer screens ten hours a day. how do people with desk jobs do it? how does chris do it? i see him working so hard day and night, especially night, on that lcd screen and the font is like pinpricks large, little diamonds who only wink at me, i have no idea what they say, how do his eyes not roll themselves inside out and yell mutiny!! this is what it means, what is comes down to: i can't do that. i can never do that, the time in front of a computer burns me down faster and quicker and drier and sharper, into a more bitter crisp than those other stronger-eyed types. i give unless i have something at the end of the day that soothes my eyes. my happiness from giving out used to be his smell, the way i slept so soundly next to him, how sitting in his car or his apartment was similar an experience to sitting in his mind on those days when he let me into his apartment: warm, slightly sticky, a few moments of boredom, infinte moments of gentle charming laughter, strange disquietude that always reminded me of that line in nabakov's where he says: 'you are my tall cool glass of water.' but like arrested development says: 'i am still thirsty.' because i cant look at him and stay inside his apartment forever. i might if i could. but i know that he wouldn't let me. and besides, people aren't supposed to orient their lives around another person, at least not in this most capitalist of all cities in this most capitalist of all countries. and after all, at the end of a day of looking at the computer all day long, the only thing that allows me the possibility of not having to look at a computer all day long is the fact that all this computing comes out of a printer and i turn it into another human being, or i speak it to a bunch of other barely human computer-oppressed beings and an alphabetic letter is logged onto a piece of paper and that paper will determine what and where and how i do the rest of my life trying to avoid having to look at a computer all day long.

Blog // 4:21 AM

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4.11.2006:

Blog // 4:12 PM

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1.17.2006:

Blog // 3:42 PM

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11.27.2005:

True Story: 5-8:40ish a.m. November 24th 2005

"i love you."

"i know."

"what do you mean, how do you know?"

"from the way you've acted. your actions told me. you've been so nice lately. how could you not?"

then i woke up.

and next to me was someone who loved me.

who's to ask if we only have dreams.

Blog // 3:51 AM

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11.02.2005:

"purpose is but the slave to memory"
and our two thus so thoroughly entwined
is the mere prick of fate's incommensurability
at keeping pace with presentness unchained
unrolling ever backwards on a skein of time
in which i was yours and i longed to make you mine.

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An animal 1000 miles long
ontically speaking, does not exist
as elephants lumbering across a distance
in the desert places of the eye's mind
exists for me: countless dreams of infinite subjectivity

My elephant thirsts for scorching sand and wind
and dusty parabolas of time, also
that first dawning under the archway where we kissed
all these empty useless passions
plague like mice the ceaseless stomping feet of mankind

Blog // 3:48 AM

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11.01.2005:

To Millet (and Cathy Lemaire)


This broken dirty husk of a person
Laid before us today.
Heaving dust, emanating from
Bent-up bones.
The gnarled fingers uncurling
Slowly. One by one.
“Here. Drink. Come this way.”
We combed the weeds out of his hair
Tumbling down in unfragrant waves.
Sitting together under a hot disc of sun
How you smoothed his thirsty, furrowed brow.
He said: “There are so few of us left
Still roaming this sodden trampled earth
Skimming the land with slow feet and hand
Gathering the grounds and seeds of our dispersal
Threshing the stalks until they crumbled under the weight
Of our immense desire for wheat, into the dark mud.”
You touched softly all the folds of skin
Bearing the knotty fruits of our labor.
Labor, in the end, defined by a magisterial sort of grace
A race towards the conquest of that endless horizon.

Between exhalations of tensile breath, hovering
I felt equally the heaviness
Of blessedness and dread…

Your hands, they are little gods
Orchestrating equally
O’er the living and the dead.

Blog // 5:20 PM

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10.31.2005:

i am going to make it through this year if it kills me if it kills me 2046 2046!!

this year

I broke free on a saturday morning.
I put the pedal to the floor.
headed north on mills avenue,
and listened to the engine roar.

my broken house behind me and good things ahead,
a girl named Cathy wants a little of my time.
six cylinders underneath the hood crashing and kicking,
ahhh listen to the engine whine.

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.
I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.

I played video games in a drunken haze
I was seventeen years young.
hurt my knuckles punching the machines
the taste of scotch rich on my tongue.

and then Cathy showed up and we hung out.
trading swigs from the bottle all bitter and clean
locking eyes, holding hands,
twin high maintenance machines.

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.
I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.

I drove home in the california dusk.
I could feel the alcohol inside of me.
home.
picture the look on my stepfather's face,
ready for the bad things to come.

I downshifted as I pulled into the driveway.
the motor screaming out stuck in second gear.
the scene ends badly as you might imagine,
in a cavalcade of anger and fear.

there will be feasting and dancing in jerusalem next year.

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.
I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.

okay predilection for j. darnielle lyrics means i should pay $15 for halloween at the knitting factory? does it? or hella? but hella speaks in tones what john could never say with words. which is better? more bad poetry to come, pouring out in terrible terrible waves of aching pain and teenage angst and the dawn is never dusk at in the abandoned castle of my soul et cetera et cetera he he thought i was going to stop now did you...go buy sunset tree, cuz really, its very good.

Blog // 2:32 PM

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9.23.2005:

plato turned to phaedrus and said:
"as wolves love lambs,
so lovers love their loves."

Blog // 4:00 AM

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8.31.2005:

ugh this blog has degenerated to the status of a cheesebong. still waiting to exhale.

Blog // 1:16 PM

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8.24.2005:

wow i really miss the big c right now, lets say c is for chief heh heh. maybe one day far down the line the two of us will be in a band together called BigC LittleC or Cc and when people "c" one of us walking down the street without the other they will be like oh there's big c.

Blog // 5:40 PM

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c a n t s t o p l i s t e n i n g t o readyvillllllllleee. the album sounds amazing, el camino especially. i'm on the highway to gainesville, that's where i'm thinking things through...

Blog // 5:17 AM

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8.15.2005:

ha ha ha steven is the asian napoleon dynamite. i feel horrible despite this hilarity.

Blog // 11:26 PM

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"how do you say good-bye to an answering machine?"


i never knew this is exactly how we always looked inside my head until now

Blog // 7:22 PM

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8.03.2005:

"i could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space"
-hamlet, act II scene II

my nutshell (or walnut shell, to be more precise) looks remarkably like louis bourgeois' femmes-maisons, its circadian rhythms the chant of sexton: i have gone out, a possessed witch, haunting the black air, braver at night...

however, the soul of my infinite space, composed of "not only the well-rounded truth, its unwavering heart"-Parmenides, translator Gadamer (emen aletheies eukukleos atremes etor) belongs still to Friedrich's Artic Shipwreck aka Sea of Ice aka the Wreck of the Hope aka Shipwreck of the Hope in Ice and 1824. Snyder sings the chanteys on my blue-gray sea: "how poetry comes to me"

It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light.

they couldnt understand why it was she wouldnt need people and would need people-less-ness, silence, the unnameable in beckett hence the unsayable. so she gave up trying to speak, to do the work of speaking, par egon logoi. it understandly did not work out well with certain members of the queen's wal(l)-nutshell. but the invitations to the beheading went unheeded and rebellion ensued. the shell was broken and all i have left are bitter-smoked fragments of rind, wafts of old burnt smells drifting through wreckage. adrienne rich said poetry is like diving into the wreck. friedrich anticipates this a century and a half before.

PS: i just listened to the most inchoate, drunk conversation about minor threat in the history of probable and imaginary space-time and its seven extra dimensions. then they proceeded to unknowingly serenade me under my window (homonculus-e in my hidden pitch-colored nook most receptive to pounding with furious vengence upon thee, little keys), sprawled upon the grass of my lawn, perspiring eighty-five degree alcohlic sweat onto the dewy humid mulch. the entire discography was blurrily chopped through, an angular trapeze of voice rather than anything resembling a warble. recognizable hits included "out of step," "salad days" and "i dont wanna hear it." THEN, he went on and on about the metaphysical (well i inserted this connotation in order to elide it within the framework of my studies, plato/derrida, khora) significance of the fact that millions (millions?) of people around the world had the sheep tatoo so those people were just like the blind deaf mute sheepish followers of mass soceity that was the very thing ian railed against, now they were simply blind deaf mute minor threat sheep. it was very reality-bites meets mcsweeneys even with the metaphysicality. (ben stiller inserts heidegger's being and time into almost every one of his so-called dramas, this tome is what ethan hawke is reading in the coffee shop when winona ryder rushes in to tell him something i dont remember what). i really need to leave the walnut-shell and talk to actual people. no i dont. i love tivoli and working ceaselessly. tomorrow when i hike my daily little circumnavigational trample around the hot dry edges of town i will take polaroids of every haunted house and tree, leering back at me.

sudden memory triggered by sein und zeit: we were so poor when we lived in the one-room basement in queens that my mother washed her hair, and my and my sister's hair, with palmolive dishwashing liquid. she had heard or read somewhere that it was an ecumenical device, money-saving and just as effective. i think she failed to dilute the sodium lauryl sulfate that actually is the same exact active ingredient (surfactant cosmetic chemists call it) in dish soap, shampoo, laundry detergent ect and our hairs would rest like straw atop our heads bundles of hay for birds to roost in. no wonder a bird shit on her head. but she refused to wash the shit out of her hair for days until i stopped speaking to her in the third grade. (where was the father? only a patronymic shadow?) which leads us to the confusion of immigrant poverty, the weird digressions from logic engendered by a constant state of deprivation: deprivation of common tongue, language as that first entryway, the primary portal of conceptuality (english being for me only a modality from the fourth grade onwards, and in the sixth i forever stopped dreaming in chinese, a tortuous event). this compounded by an infinitude of difficulties great and small, no change leftover for umbrellas so the plastic key foods bags go over the head as well as being held by the hand anchored precariously with government eggs; then, what is this? an intransigence eminating so fiercly, shining like fire, from a ten year old girl who just refused to wear plastic bags on her head for the walk home, demanding instead to march forth in the downpour. the broken english parlayed along with the folded creased pages of food stamps apparently affront enough for someone whose mother wore pigeon poop like some new form of millinery wet dream. the furor and the repatriation. and now look. traitor. renouncer of all that she had stood for in the third through sixth grades. reading the pre-socratics as if it wasn't the utmost betrayal. complete effacement of the other within her, achieved through no small modicum of philosophic geist and zest (gest?), gusto? relish? no, no, that cannot be the truth, alethia. she still reads the copy of tillie olsen's "i stand here ironing" and oates' "foxfire" as if it were composed from the very corpuscles of her blood, surging up against nutshells of infinite space. it is the vast and open sea i seek, and as always, the mermaids singing each to each. i do not think that they will sing to me.

Blog // 1:53 PM

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7.13.2005:

when's the next tw show she wondered sleepily...ha ha adrian tomine likes hae eun. he signed my book all nice and asian-boy-like shyly. we talked about mod lang records and being old. this was a bit of time ago. more to come soon i promise when i find my computer (hopefully!) but suffice it to say i feel altogether different.

Blog // 8:55 PM

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7.02.2005:

the water in new york city has become undrinkable.

Blog // 4:34 AM

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6.14.2005:

found two mason jars and an entire filing cabinet filled with books from someone named meghan. meghan seemed like an interesting girl, friend material, though the things she threw away were the ones best for keeping, so perhaps not. a pamphlet of the RNC protest routes from last summer, an NYC free events calender that someone else's friend drew the cover for, bikes on punks jumbled and mashed inside a nate powell anthology. score. walkie talkie was a hard read somehow but tiny giants is great. another: penguin classics of classical literary criticism; plato's ion, aristotle's poetics, horace's art of poetry. also: homer's odeyssey, the new translation by robert fitzgerald from the upscale imprint farrar straus giroux. nice book, beautiful unplaceable font with the full greek terms in the index. who is this girl?

she thought vaguely and blandly if her cousin effie was having sex now, the kind of sex she was having. she must be, effie was only four years younger than she was, so twenty-three...alongside that thought swimming in a parallel river slowly drifting downstream the notion of trying to explain thinking about your cousin effie's sex life to white people. she swam with it. the notion of asian-ness and female-ness and sex-things and its explication, in english, already a denomenational concession difficult to fully conceive in. its tricky triangular demarcation enmeshed together and centered fully at...oh such a cliche. she abandoned it. it wasnt true and she couldnt say it. images passed in and in again, never fully going out. courbet's l'origine du monde, especially how Lacan reveled in owning it and even still, displayed it behind velvet drapes, the ceremony itself already another unveiling. then ghada amer's stichings, marina abramovich's burlap peoples both of which she liked, culled from a miscellaneous pile of taschen and phaidon glossies that megan left behind. she mildly considered writing about ghada amer's sewing and maybe tara donovan's coils and fuzzes, looking forward to the expansion in time and space that would allow her to do so. then onto the paul d miller book, aka dj spooky, whose album she once owned but sold, the one before the one with the red and green spaceships or whatever, the one before the video game one, when she thought she was really into ninja tune records stuff (though she still listend to dj shadow at least once a month, which is saying alot). in it dj spooky tells two continuous stories of first a queensryche/iron maiden concert in nyc @ msq and second how he was in tokyo doing a set with dj krush and anticon for the victims of another war. it's worth partially retyping: "america seems to have in abundance, and that other countries are struggling to catch up with - a trend i'd like to call 'demographic nostalgia.' each part of the crowd [at iron maiden/queensryche] reflected their appreciation of the bands they had come to see. they left the garden and moved from the finely tuned precision of rows and seat numbers into clumps and clusters of people held together only by fashion and previous social and geographic allegience like so many particles of gas drawn together by electro-chemical valences and atomic mass. i was in tokyo and doing a show with an old japanese friend of mine, dj krush, and some new folks on the block, anticon, young white kids from Middle America. they were doing a collaboration with krush, a piece called 'song for john walker' - the suburban kid who joined the taliban. needless to say, the backstage vibe was all about dialogue and we were all just kicking it. krush's wife walked in and handed him a samuri sword before his set, and everyone in the room was...umm...kind of silent. in a moment like that , the strangeness (strange-mess) of global culture, hip-hop, and of operating as a dj on a global level crystallized before my eyes. we all sat there and paused for a second. it really felt like a still from a video art installation. krush doesnt speak english, and we have communicated mostly with beats over the years. the show was a benefit for afghani war orphans at tokyo's liquid room in the shinjuku district, and well...you just had to feel the oddity of being in a room with some white americans talking about a lawyer's kid who read malcom x and defected to a terrorist organization and a japanese kid who prayed with his family and was into shinto buddhism chants before he went on stage to do turntable tricks. a scene like that doesn't fit into any normal categorization of hip-hop that normal america wants, and it never will. that's the joy of seeing how this stuff is unfolding in a real way across the globe." ect ect (see pgs 104-5).

she skims over everything, just slurrying the cream off to get to the milk inside, slightly sour. all she can remember about anticon is that some members of anticon are from berkeley, that one of them might have worked at the library, a short little boy with curly hair. she leaps over all the other critical assessments of paul d miller's stories to the one that elides local tribal difference in the face of tyranny of global acculturation. who the hell cares if you listen to dj krush or dj spooky in the crewtonz house of god or in mbabane swaziland where female life expectancy is pegged at 34.07 years of age in 2005. its' all crappy gravy to them. these smallish margins of error are erased completely to some dude who wants to write books proclaiming djs as the engines of postmodernity or whatnot. things he says upsets her so easily at moments indescribable inscrutible in its mysterious machinations it is and becomes completely ridiculous. this is what its all about. the fact that she thinks anticon is from berkeley and thus are not merely white kids from "M"iddle "A"merica which dj spooky presumes to scorn with cultural supremacy and the fact that he cannot recognize this subtle difference between the progressive white hip-hop of the east bay and the not-so-progressive white hip-hop of the not-east bay merely serves to strip him of credibility in her youthful eyes. she is almost glad she sold back the cd. but not really, her mind shrugs, whatever. she was merely illustrating the point to herself that tribal differences (tribal in the sociological term, in the eileen term) are sometimes so quickly effaced as to render them superfluous from day to day operation. so why bother keeping them? why cant two bands from two different houses playing the singular equivalent of journey to someone like her neighbor across the street attending nyu who hath not the connoisseurship of years of iron maiden and motorhead just play? the scene was a snob and she was disgruntled at having been caught up in it. but it was because secretly, she was maybe a snob. all kids are secretly snobs who want to be kids forever, who retain the right and forgo the responsibility to fuck you at any moment. the ones in the noise scene, the ones in the old lady scene, the post-garage revival new hippie-boho scene like adam's, the white girls liberation movement scene, the electro-clashing for democracy scene, the photographers who vie to be in vice magazine aka todd s aka suckapants dot com vs. anterlerdgirl fashion anarchist scene...so she returned with childish glee to the delillo sen had loaned her and was only moderately grossed out by the the machinery of her own self-created generated perpetuated insensitivity. and then she remembered that episode of family guy when peter decides to narrate his own life. the wife punches him in the face and hours later he wakes up in the dark. i hope this happens to her as well.

Blog // 8:20 PM

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5.27.2005:

jason looks like the world's most amazing orangutan in the bottom picture. hate waiting for laundry to dry


here are some more pictures from the show. they are mostly of tw. you are forewarned.

Blog // 5:46 AM

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5.26.2005:

there's this photograph of borges standing in the desert somewhere, taken by his young, exotic companion, holding a donut and a smile. he says: 'this is exactly what i mean' or something like that so i gues that wasnt exactly what he meant but you know what i mean. at least i know what he means. and then, "the bats" movie by jim trainor when our little bat friend 'echoed a dull void that was water. i curled my lips and thought i would burst with happiness.' i also know what that means and how that feels. this is what the 12th annual new york underground film festival said about "the bats." but eileen's friend from cheeseburger's movie was also extremely awesome. awesome like our next haus, named 'project fun,' a tribute to fort awesome. who names their band cheeseburger? the best part of cheeseburger's movie was all of it.

the best part of the weekend was all of it also, like borges' donut, and homer's donuts, and borges' algebra y fuego. it is because he puts those two together, blends donuts and something called a lorenz-principle that i overheard being yelled over and over in a dream on a barstool at seven in the morning that makes me love him so.

i saw nedelle outside my house, the day of the buffalo show, perhaps bursting with happiness. but she did not go see japanther and Aa and tender wizards and necking and snowsuit, and none of them went to see her show (even though jason did go see warbler). but still, everyone seemed to be happy and enjoyed themselves. except for the girl who threw beer at her boyfriends face. her words, loud and alot, were: "you fucked up! you fucked up! yes, you fucked up!" we guesstimated at what terrible calamity could have befallen this girl and her lover. jpnther ian mused: chill the fuck out (wait that wasnt musing). i speculated that perhaps he had impregnated another less fallow female. our friend rafie arrived late b/c he was at the zoning meeting (of all meetings to arrive late from) and heard her scream: "you put your tongue in her!" oh. our goddamn rattlesnake aka jay skin says: "maybe he thought she was an ice cream cone." you have to imagine someone who plays the banjo with someone else who looks like an elf (according to our friend rafie) and has one of those reverse hair patterns on their heads so peculiar to certain types of men: big beard and bald, and then it will be funny, because he is funny and i like jay. i've become kind of obsessed with this story of "putting one's tongue in her" and its seemingly dire consequences. particularly after conversations about how it can migrate. this invisible insidiousness nevertheless did not taint the rest of the afternoon. necking was great even though nick and jason were both way too nervous and they did suffer moderate equipment collapse. i thought nick's incorporation of the fallen cymbal stand quite an ingenious save. (you know, this is how i really talk to myself sometimes, in my head. i use words like 'quiteaningenioussave.' ug). i unfortunately missed snowsuit scrambling around in the mist foraging for food. this was the first time i've actually seen japanther despite i think over twelve attempts at various parties shows ect. maybe that's why i shook and danced so hard, their songs were new to me. tender wizards definitely get better and better each time i see them play. the lead singer's intensity has been noted more than once by an acute observer. and the bassist is a good one. and the guitarist reminds me of hot dogs that i would actually like to eat, with slobby mustard that you dont mind getting on your nose, and a chop of onion or two. it was the perfect break and prelude to the hyper-masculine tribal dawn of mankind drumming circle that necking and Aa bookended. i feel bored by this story now. okay well Aa were much better than when i saw them at toddp's opening loft party and the uncle and mike sweet kvetched all the way home about how they needed pop melody and structure in music. oh but the dog! the dog that sen saw on acid and tried to take into the schoolhouse party where snow ponies were riden and stolen and steven chen left his drunk cellphone in a cabbie who would not let me get off the phone with him at four thirty in the morning biking around scary broadway and flushing looking for a drunk snow pony! that was a great dog! i wish i could take that dog with me for a month at bard. then i would truly stretch the limits of my skin and possibly burst with happiness. doggles aka pupples and oso, together roaming with me, spade and trowel in my hand, digging for fire and spearing for trees.

i love seeing other people bursting with happiness, a night at the chocolate factory turned picnic at the nuclear reactor laboratory. we went to see adam play at the east river bar (see barzine) on monday night and tuesday morning i got home at 8:30 AM because one great man wanted to experience the accomplishment of another great man, a man who had stayed at a bar, in williamsburg mind you, for 48 hours straight. impossible we cooed, and staunchly he resisted all and any efforts at retreat, until finally, torn by care for his fallen soldiers, one a lieutenant captain second-in-command (who had won a medal of bravery just two nights prior in the battle of schoolhouse rock and the ensuing snow pony incident in east bushwick) fallen on a red pleather-vinyl bench, flocked velvet swimming before sleepy eyes; and another, first-in-command, a mercurial russian Hermes much too much to say and much too many consequences to deliver, enboldened by their third consenting comrade, skiply straight and tall, bid their leader homeward bound. after routing the imposters, sweet as they were, our general ("i love this guy because he's so smart he smashes atoms for a living yet all he wants to do is smash his brain cells--from the russian hermes) took us home. for several different non-consecutive moments that night, i thought he would burst from happiness. i suppose those moments occur manytimes without me seeing them, at inoppurtune moments with russians and ponies and hot dogs and other kinds of vast murky floatation devices, things that keep him from drowning. we all need them, we all get tired of swimming alone, the sea gets so thirsty without a drink.

all i can say is yes. despite everything (cometbus omnibus!), despite sobriety, despite insecurity, despite longing for the kiss and the cup, i love hanging out with drunk people, and i hope that i am a great girl (i try to be). this was a great weekend.

ps: this is the two year anniversary of "wow last night was so fucking fun" post. what a befitting tribute. i knew my internet diary slash old 'drunk' log would come to my senile aid. 'wow last night was so fucking fun' was for me, yes one of the funnest nights of my life, when i was TRULY burst asunder avec jouissance. or something. he he. or not quite that fast asunder but whatever i knew from first whiff that it had to happen. that nite sean p k was supposed to go with me to liminal gallery but probably b/c of my recent gentle turn from him, declined at the last minute to go to another, more enticing party (perhaps luis from pansy division was throwing one again like the other ones i went w/ spk to?). that nite zoey walked the runway modeling a beautiful black dress sewn by i forget but whose jacket i still have when i would later stand on milkcrates with zoey modeling for him at spanganga gallery. but by then "wow last night was so fucking fun" had already happened and i could never go back to not having fun. and did deerhoof play? or hella? and me grabbing probably yanking sen's arm excitedly asking does he still have a girlfriend? sen shaking his head with that sen-ish gleam, steam slowly gathering heat waiting for the right pan to boil over and evaporate into, that is the sen-ish gleam: "...noOOo........(ding!!) you should totally try to make out with him!" i think i might have made that last part after noOOo up and other people might tell me i'm just a drunk gambler, whose chips were betting on craps already, just waiting for the fall. but then again i hardly ever listen to what other people say, thats what used to make me such a drunk gambler. i'm gonna go listen to 'these days' and that first nicky darger song now. that scene in royal tenenbaums, that scene when gwen paltrow steps off the bus, that's when owen wilson was bursting most with happiness. that's my favorite scene of the movie.

Blog // 4:34 AM

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5.03.2005:

i am going to live in mr moynahan's house in tivoli over the summer while he leaves bard and goes to montreal to dream of french canadians. i am going to babysit his books on machines and his johnny cash ceedees. his girlfriend and i have the same birthdays. my birthday, the black swan pub, the pogues, lurvly. oh little tivoli, does the hudson encourage many mosquitoes? the first time i was there i thought it was wrong to do it in your ex-professors house in his study on his floor, but now i know that theres nothing wrong with love.

Blog // 2:42 AM

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3.24.2005:

the last time it snowed during spring break i regurgitated backwater gin from the tin tub where it came. the snow was wettish and clung to my hair in damp clots. the gin mixed with the snow into a soupy mess that still pervades, with a bit of intrepid sniffing, the little nooks and crannies of my navy peacoat because of the thoroughly lackadaisical cleansing effected the morning after. words were like math for me, i gargled to the tow-headed fellow beside me as i barfed. "they contain numeric value and--heave... proportion, harmony and ratio. you add them--hurl....pant... together, randomly or not, and there is a sum that can or can not be the sum of its parts..." he paid no heed, aware that i made no sense whatsoever and was in fact absolutely taken with his dark-haired friend and completely self-satisfied in this awareness. "THAT'S POETRY!" (interjected in the background) foreground: we had been discussing the comparative merits of linguistic versus binary modalities as systems for cognitive apperception; that is before the fatal fall into the tin tub. that was barely a true story. it was more like this:: i was so happy playing my civilizing games that i dont remember spring break at all, it was a blurry gin.

Blog // 5:47 AM

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3.20.2005:

i make sure, to look back before i fall
so i can see my wings disintergrating.

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note the obsession with the word smooth. also the word downy and the iconography of 'the fall,' 'the void' or La chute, die Lucke

Blog // 2:54 AM

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3.02.2005:

in his interpretation of aristotle, heidegger insists that the distinction between the allegedly general character of metaphysics and the apparently regional character of physics breaks down, indeed to such an extent that "metaphysics is 'physics' in a quite essential sense, in the knowledge of phusis." on this basis heidegger concludes that aristotelian physics plays a fundamental role in the history of western philosophy, that is, of metaphysics: "the aristotelian physics is the concelaed--and hence never sufficiently thought through--basic book [Grundbuch] of western philosophy." on the other hand, the reduction of the chora that is effected by aristotelian physics offers a basis for putting in question the interpretation of aristotle's thought as belonging to the "era of the completion [Vollendung] of greek philosophy.

conference is friday. i beseech you: help me, o christian god.
i missed my fafsa priority deadline! stupid pin i loathe you.

Blog // 2:04 AM

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2.28.2005:

dear darling ann,
you were a much-beloved sister.
also a wonderful mother.
your boys are beautiful blond tokens of your smile.
i will treasure the tales you told around the kitchen table.
i am grateful to have met you.
paisley and volkert i am so sorry.
i love you both.

Blog // 7:21 PM

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somehow it came to the last day of february, during the period she didnt use conditioner (secretly we think, in hopes that her hair would eventually get so dry and brittle that it would fall off, thereby circumventing the inevitable necessity of a haircut). it was also during this time that she boycotted her walls, having them stare blankly back at her, a white veil over her ceaseless nights. there was one foppish old silk hat sewn together out of stray patches, some purplish, some gray, that hung on a single nail in the drywall. she looked like a lampshade in it and enjoyed looking like a lampshade. hangovers from dreams of asbestos haunted her mornings. she tried, unsuccessfully, to grow a mustache. the conference was only three days away and she had only penetrated the third layer of the infinitely complex etymology of the rebus priniciple on the petrographs found in lascaux france. mostly though, her days were consumed with loveliness and these particles of thought she brought in only to remind herself that life is a drudgery, a battle of her mind over her lack of money. she thought constantly what it would be like to live her life like k. deacon's, and was overwhelmed with the aching need to write letters to everybody informing them of their current status. dear walker: i'm so sorry i never write even though you've given me your address in wyoming, kansas and orinda california. dear katie: please do not feel so sad, you are not alone. dear eileen: i miss you terribly. dear zoe: your messages bring me good cheer in these cold trying times. dear kevin: you are mostly a wonderful boss even though i know you are so annoyed with my recurrent tardiness. dear professor crary: your seminar conducting style is weird and relaxing, i have to do so little thinking it is hard for me to stay awake due to you obtuse and intractable flaky air-headedness. dear columbia art history seminar students: you are overrated. dear berkeley bowl: i still love you the best, croutons forever. signed, my stomach belongs to you and you alone, c. hsiao.

Blog // 12:27 PM

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2.17.2005:

"the man who wants to shoot a cloud down with an arrow will exhaust all his arrows in vain. many sculptors are such strange hunters. what you have to do is fiddle something on a drum or drum something on a fiddle. before long the cloud will descend, roll about on the ground in happiness, and at last complacently turn to stone." i really feel that i was hans-jean arp's stepchild in a past life, no really.

Blog // 7:46 PM

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"Metamorphoses (after Ovid)"

there was a feast laid out like stars
last night, at our feet;
the wondrous joys of cutlery.

O to watch the hair strings quiver
flicker like swords of flame thrown high
o'er the house and hills of brooklyn
trusting you warm palm besides
no use to let the dead dogs lie.

in a past life we were quicker
horses yoked to trouble.
nay, we were merely rivers

chanting still that muddled
spell: O lente lente noctis equis
run slowly slowly, horses of the night
trot lightly round the bend of love that fled
and curves and turns to you and i instead.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"Of bodies chang'd to various forms, I sing."
Even Ovid carnt compare to such a wondrous wizard of a bear.

Blog // 4:17 AM

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2.12.2005:

elegy for a past life: a tatoo across my chest:
"if you are sad, and you like beer,
i am your woman."
you say it isabella.

Blog // 5:12 AM

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1.19.2005:

current music: bastards of young, androgynous-the replacements and all shotwell all the time

Blog // 9:52 PM

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1.12.2005:

"By this art you may contemplate the variation of the 23 letters..."--Mephistopheles, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 2 Section II

there's a fine scum in the air, like soapy residue on the clear glass of our lives. i feel as if i live in a giant warm pulsing compost heap, the steam rising off all the touring bodies as they toss and turn in their paltry attempts at sleep while napalm death covers minor threat in the background. somehow jersey dave's radio got accidentally turned on during the mosh and now it goes on and on in an empty locked room reciting weather conditions for all the continuous counties of the united states at 5 am while i try to drown it out with mirah. there's a slight chance of rain tomorrow in chattanooga tenessee and sleet in bellmont washington. is this what its like? is this what i was afraid of so long ago when it was smarmy and hot outside and now its damp and humid inside. it does seem so long ago; the piles of people egging each other on at three twenty four twenty five twenty going on six twenty now...the faces passing through have changed hands in the shake so many times in the last two weeks that the girls are a blurring bundle of softness and fuzzy down comfort, a place to sink into at the end of the night or the break of day. i am merely grateful that someone else could experience the spectacle, the strange and inalienable beauty that lasts for only a couple of minutes each night each song. i sit back from the others and nod as if i was really listening, instead pulling the events of the last week and a half slowly and languidly over and over in my mind like pulling molasses taffy. i am sweetly afraid but not in a hurry. i think i understand it but i make no presumptions or assumptions; i am stronger than any stray eye candy here or there yet i make no judgement on anyone or myself. i am just kind of negligently happy, as if the soul was on holiday in the deserts of the past but not scared of the clouds (if any) massing on the horizon of the future. jeff from mliw keeps talking while i think about someone else's show, looking at me funnily, perhaps like the guys at the lounge when eileen decided to stay and take on three boys at pool while aimee and i fled the scene. his voice is husky from singing so much and his lids dark. the uncle is drunk and stoned out of his gourd, calling his ex-girlfriend count it four times on tyler's phone, each time leaving a more desperate drunk message. drunk calling, i'll never have to do that again at least. it's already serving me well as i feel my fingers itch and creep towards that sole tyranny of my life, the stupid cell phone that always rings twice. the night nick's father passed away we went out to a bar, or i think i convinced him to go out drinking, and when we came home i refused to go to sleep. it was back in the days when i needed to be "closer to the earth" when i was drunk, face down and palms plastered fingers splayed to the gritty carpet he shared with stevie kelley's sneakered feet. so obstinately, i sat on the couch in the living room at fenwick number four (?) and played cold cold water and mt saint helens over and over again. nick stumbled out once to use the bathroom and blinked at me with a sigh that still makes me laugh inwardly. what the hell did he say? "oh cathy, always listening to mirah." or "oh cathy. still listening to mirah?" because i think he knew, on some silly metaphysical out-there level, he knew that i knew that he was taken, that i clung to her songs and her words because everything of his that i wanted belonged to someone else. but he could still appreciate the fact that i'm the kind of person who thought in terms of the saddest songs and the saddest blogs and coordinated her mind to the pulsings and beatings of my crazy little heart. sometimes these beatings left me black and very blue. but if i didn't try to remember this, who would? and then what would happen to the tiny little strands of my thoughts, they would become the spurious heartstrings of some maiden rendered useless by time. there were many messages blinking on and off on the machine that night, but we never bothered to press the button. in the early dawn there was an incessant ringing in the air, like my favorite story signs and symbols. i cried out and he finally picked up. in my worst nightmares there is always a phone ringing in the background.

"the universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps an infinite, number of hexagonal galleries, with enormous ventilation shafts in the middle, encircled by very low railings. from any hexagon the upper or lower stories are visible, interminably. Infinite i have just written. i have not interpolated this adjective merely from rhetorical habit. it is not illogical, i say, to think that the world is infinite. those who judge it to be limited, postulate that in remote places the corridors and stairs and hexagons could inconceivably cease--a manifest absurdity. those who imagined it to be limitless forget that the possible number of books is limited. i dare insinuate the following solution to this ancient problem: the Library is limitless and periodic. if an eternal voyager were to traverse it in any direction, he would find, after many centuries, that the same volumes are repeated in the same disorder (which, repeated, would constitute an order: Order itself). my solitude rejoices in this elegant hope. Mar del Plata 1941.

borges makes me believe that memories are infinite, that what i felt for you then and what i still feel for you now can become a spiral in the graph, a chamber in the nautilus (our friend the cephalopod mollusk!) that blows through the pipes of pan. this elegant hope rejoices in this inelegant incomprehensibly random mind.

current music: cocteau twins' heaven or las vegas. cherry-coloured funk is such a fucking good song. how could anyone not take off their clothes immediately and not writhe on the floor like lovely slimy snakes making love when listening to the cocteau twins? why aren't i writhing right now? oh but i am, believe me i am. current mood: uh...awake. current secret: did you guys know that i also have a blog that is the funniest blog that ever was? and it is so funny. ha ha. ps: i ate thirteen slices of pizza tonight, and eileen's even had mushrooms on top. pps: i am grateful that sen catches the butcherings i wrough on baudelaire and blanchot like bad curveballs on a bad day with a bad arm at shea stadium. members only man, members only. hot. ppps: i will miss the good songs of the tender wizard when he blitzes through tour and works his magic on those western states. but the singing will save him if nothing else will, its that good.

Blog // 7:04 AM

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1.06.2005:

yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Blog // 7:57 PM

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1.04.2005:

(i was really really happy this day. i was really really in love. my toes really really curled. i blushed and thought of dirty things during these days by the radiator. i still feel the warmth on my face when i read this post). happy new year. resolution number one: keep my ear!!

Blog // 4:23 AM

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1.01.2005:

.

Blog // 3:34 AM

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12.02.2004:

it is so awesome!
Ex Voto Platte by Rosemarie Trockel, cellulose india gum with gum frame book cover print for the Wooster Press limited edition copies of Zizek's Welcome to the Desert of the Real, made in 2000. it is out of print. but i must have it.

current music: the shame of quantum physics, fungion colored flings
hey the fleshies and fed x are playing w/ los rabbis @ spam for new years eve.

Blog // 6:55 PM

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11.24.2004:

i turn over and over in my hand the stone so carelessly tossed off his shoulder and try to measure the arc of time in that little trajectory. i think to myself: i've started a story like this before. how did it end? i don't remember. seneca lifts up the stone, my stone, the stone in my hand, covering the well that held the secret of the world and turns to his sentries to say: "i know not whither i am going, but i am hurried on." we must now add to this goethe's beautiful heartbreaking line in werther: i am only a wanderer through the world, what more are you? perhaps those were the exact words in caspar david friedrich's mind when he painted the wanderer above the mists (caspar david friedrich was an eighteenth-century virgo--oh the horror!). and there was naumachy involved in this tale as well, the desperate sea battles of the Trojan fleet seeking helen and defending hellas...

i think about thanksgiving and the red dress i wore with the black cherry blossoms embossed on top and how incongrous it was next to the pile of tricked-out dreamy eyed sweaty pierced bodies composing themselves with such athletic grace upon chris' unswept floury hardwood floor. i think about christmas and how i hate being alone on christmas, and the sea. the wind making my toes curl and the sand squirrels flirting with us along the banks of the shore. i think about flirting. what is there to think about this? phenomenologically speaking, if i in discourse give off the instigation of such as given a, then it can be deduced that if a equals b and b does not equal c, then a does not equal c. as such, i need work on my truth assumptions and deductive logic altogether, obviously. what to say except that i'm sorry. that i'll never do again what i never did before. that you are not wrong and i am not right but the graces never sang to me the way they sang to you. you, you always heard the mermaids singing, that is why i loved you. each to each.

Blog // 2:31 AM

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11.09.2004:

the next blog i will have will be dudewheresmyblog: the happiest blog that ever was: blog blog blog.

Blog // 7:26 PM

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10.24.2004:

new feminisms: women and photography: uta barth and michal rovner

Blog // 3:49 PM

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10.21.2004:

Cicada Shell

hollow padded empty jar
walnuts resting on the wing
leaves fall down when summer sings
willows felled while Phraedrus dreams

of love outside the city walls
today I left behind the bell
the empty jar drunk of its fill
remants of last year's cicada shells

flutter in shadow of the darkening hills
while Athens burns
a pool of ashes at my feet
i scoop the soil of a thousand souls

run through my fingers riversfull
of half-moons waxing and waning
over the beating of their innumberable wings
and i swim and swim against the tide

before i fall, i hang on to the song of the cicada shell
trapped inside its throg-necked hollow being
the silver waves toss up their cries

Listen. it sings your praises by and by.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Marie Ponsot
New School Writing Program
66 West 12th Street, Room 508
New York, NY 10011

Dear Ms. Ponsot:

I am currently enrolled in my second semester in the Philosophy Department of the Graduate Faculty at New School University and I wish to participate in your Master Poetry Class. Although I have never taken any course in literature, creative writing or English since high school I feel that my outside perspective would provide a fresh voice for your class. See, my brain has dried up to the to size and shape of a dead prune, no longer plump or juicy, no longer a plum. I used to think that my life had the approximate circumference of a walnut shell. But now I realize that history is circular, that we are merely repeating choruses singing ever singing in the litany of a tyrannical choir-master whose only task is to make sure his little inmates never break free of their shells and disrupt the telos of the orchard. god is a landscape architect, and my nails have been carefully manicured to prune all the rose bushes of their thorns. I wanted to write a paper for a class about the idealization of dirt as a category of Heideggarian authenticity in Sophie Lascelles' film Till but the class was dissolved when it was discovered that the teacher suffered from multiple personality disorder. I don't think that is a very significant reason for the cancellation of a class, but the administration of the Graduate Faculty and its shadowy bereaucracy, kafka-like, extends its reasons through unreason. My capacity for philosophic thinking is coming to an impertinent end, a hacking cough that finally spits up the phlegms of yesterday, so I imagine. N- tells me of the uses and abuses of history for life and I listen with the devotion of someone who has eaten their way through the walnut shell with gnashing teeth and torn lip only to find the orchard ordered against me. The peaches are much too bright and the lemons much too many for my taste. Why only three or four birches when they should be gathered aplenty, a band of maidens to ward of the storms? And the willow, well, I cannot even begin to tell you why it cannot weep. I do love the ring formation of the bitter almond bushes in this fruitful choir that is the nebulous design of an obviously sadistic grand wizard. So my only option is to pick up reed and papyrus and right my way out. Please allow me to learn to do so. I hope to hear from you soon.

With Fondest Regards,
Cathy Hsiao.

Blog // 1:47 AM

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10.16.2004:

a list of things i like to list a list of things i like to love a love of lists i like to listen to the sound of rain coming down hard, under the drum of your heart.

Blog // 5:22 PM

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10.07.2004:

sad drunk and falling, sleeping really late...

Blog // 4:28 AM

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10.01.2004:

the new melusina--goethe

i am a wanderer only, a pilgrim, through the world. but what more are you?
june 16, 1771

"Like Yeats, however, I dream of a mythic body,
Feathered and white, a landscape
horizoned and honed as a anchorite.
(Iacopo, hear me out, St. Francis, have you a word for me?)
Umbrian lightfall, lambent and ichorous, mists through my days,
As though a wound, somewhere and luminous,
flickered and went out,

Flickered and went back out--"
-- Charles Wright, Umbrian Dreams

Blog // 5:15 PM

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9.19.2004:

DUMPERLINGS?!?

dumpling man? 212.502.2121
100 st. marks place betw. first ave + ave. A

fried dumpling?
99 allen st. betw. delancey + broome (1) 212.941.9975
106 mosco st. betw. mulberry + mott (2) 212.693.1060

dumpling house? 212.625.8008
118a eldridge st betw. broome + grand

mandoo bar? 212.279.3075
2 w. 32nd st betw. fifth ave + broadway

joe's shanghai? for xiao long bao!!
9 pell st @ bowery 212.233.8888

shanghai cafe? (formerly shanghai gourmet)
100 mott st. betw. hester + canal 212.966.3988

new green bo? 212.625.2359
66 bayard st. bew. elizabeth + mott

fay da bakery? 718.888.9890 FLUSHING!
7 train! 37-11 main st. betw. 37th + 38th ave.

white bear 718.961.2322 7 TRAIN!
135-02 roosevelt ave @ prince st.

the choo-choo train? 718.???.????
175 Jefferson Apt. 2L
dumpling potluck?
thursday sept?
yeah.

Blog // 12:35 PM

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9.06.2004:

"the Enchanted Forest"
installation/set materials:

feathers, synthetic, white.
feathers, real, found.
twine/rope, 100 yards.
velvet cloth, blue and burgandy, 12"x14"
branches, varying shapes, sizes, lengths, all found.
belgian linen canvas, cut into ribbons and scraps.
duck cotton canvas, 4 pieces 10ft x 10ft.
microcrystalline wax, white.
beeswax, honey tan.
eggshells, drained, intact.
twigs, small and clipped.
carving/grafting knife.
hot glue gun.
glue sticks.
staple gun.
tacks.
hot plate.
fondue pot.
glass bowl.
tapestry needle.
tape recorders.
tiny microphones.
camera with automated trigger flash.
extension cords and cables.
polyester stuffing/filling.
portable power drill (jo-ann)
leaves.
owl.
felt.

To Make:
"an evening at the enchanted forest."
feather/branch carving sculptures
feather antler headdresses
feather cloak
feather skirt
twine hanging string sculptures
wax eggs in twig nest

momus & anne laplantine summerisle analog baroque
joanna newsome the milk-eyed mender drag city
clann zu g7 welcoming committee
black heart procession & solbakken in the fishtank 11 konkurrent

Blog // 6:22 AM

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9.01.2004:

ugh poems i write are not so good. except for parhelia. that was ok.

Blog // 2:52 PM

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8.28.2004:

The New York Times: "Marchers Denounce Bush as They Pass G.O.P. Convention Hall"
By CHRISTINE HAUSER, August 29, 2004

On bicycles, on foot, and some with their children in tow, hundreds of thousands of people moved through areas of Manhattan today in rallies or mass demonstrations, carrying messages against war and the Bush administration.

In the largest demonstration ever at a political convention, people swarmed through the midtown area of Manhattan in a march organized by United for Peace and Justice, passing by Madison Square Garden, where this week's Republican National Convention starts on Monday. At the height of the march, it took more than an hour to move one block.

Groups of bicyclists were detained by police officers on scooters in other parts of the city


the news:
so tonight is edlovesdiana's big party at 248 McKibbin. whatever, i'm over it. http://supercollage.com/edlovesdiana/ go to the leftover crack show instead.

== THIS BIKE IS A PIPE BOMB
==== JAPANTHER
====== THE GOOD GOOD
======== Telecommunications
Tuesday August 31 Brooklyn show
502 Warren St btwn Nevins & Bond (Aa house)
F/G to Bergen or A/G to HOYT/SCHERM | **7PM** | Free

Kimya Dawson
Wednesday, Sept. 1 Brooklyn in-store
Sound Fix Records, 110 Bedford Ave. (corner of N. 11th St.) 9pm Free

Ergs, Bent blah blah blah
Friday September 3 Brooklyn show
Fort Awesome 490 Morgan Avenue
it better be free, i'm sure its free, but it better be free.

Lightning Bolt, Liars, Panthers...
Saturday September 4 Brooklyn show
parking lot? 140 Kent Ave. betw Grand and North 1st St.
show starts at 2pm, LB play at 6pm, Free?

Adam Mitchell
Saturday September 4 Brooklyn
housewarming party maybe?
175 Jefferson Street FREE FREE FREE

Blog // 3:25 PM

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8.18.2004:

hey jesse michaels from op ivy/jewdriver was at our house party on friday. and i was walking (more like drunkenly swaying) down the street when some boy hollers "CLOYNE!" so i turn around and i say "CHATEAU!" and then "SPAM!" Miguel was a funny dread-nought surprise. i bumped into thadeus after we saw steven chen at the gallery block party on sunday. he had some piece of vegan roughage clinging moistly to the top of his teeth. i could not not stare at his thus blemished gumline as we jibbered about the free events calendar and his new squat in the south bronx. i hope he will be my friendster anyway. here's the news: HAPPY BIRTHDAY EILEEN WU my trapezoid of love. sorry it was two days late.

Q and not U, the apes
190 Main St. Farmingdale NY $10
what's up with all these LIRR-only getaway shows? i just want to live in a barn in tivoli and drink at the black swan pub kicking my feet to the beat of the pogues at five o'clock in the morning cuz they don't close the bar 'till everyone stops drinking downing 18 shots of whiskey like dylan thomas when he passed out in a coma before being shipped to saint vincents hospital. i do not want to go on the LIRR to see bands.

kylesa (evil metal), deathcycle
wednesday august 18
brooklyn warehouse show
Fort Awesome 409 Morgan FREE

defiance, ohio
thursday august 19
alex's house show
308 5th ave. e. northport, ny FREE
uh that's in long island, but i don't want to pay
eight bucks to see at the knitting factory! we'll see.

the two gallants
friday august 20
brooklyn house party
87 dobbin st. #209 FREE

anarchist world fair
saturday august 21
St. Mark's Church FREEMARKET!
E. 10th & 2nd Av in LES
this will be awesome sandwich slathered w/ some
amazing filling. i will be bartering hand-stitched bags
with little zines inside and 'gently worn' shoes and books.
scroll back to rncnotwelcome.org for lots of good stuff

the good good, sophie nun squad
saturday august 21
abc no rio show
156 rivington $6 3pm

Aa, Tall Boys
saturday august 21
brooklyn warehouse party
Mighty Robot wythe street $5

the two gallants
sunday august 22
brooklyn house party, 10pm
186 franklin & willoughby FREE
(i think this is the fed x party house?)

Blog // 5:40 PM

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8.12.2004:

jewdriver, shemps, two man advantage
Fri Aug 13 Brooklyn @ Northsix $10

rachel jacobs party and a movie
w/ mike sweet's ex-girlfriend cynthia(!)
Fri Aug 13 Brooklyn @ 51 Bartlett FREE!

Down in Flames party
Fri Aug 13 Brooklyn @ yours truly
Crewtonz cell block 1J 248 McKibbin
Southern Hardcore(?) BYOB FREE!

asterisk gallery show/party
~~Japanther
~~~~ da Hawnay Troof (folks from xBxRx & Bratmobile)
~~~~~~ Mob Stereo
~~~~~~~~ Nightmerica
~~~~~~~~~~ USAISAMONSTER
~~~~~~~~~~~~ Athletic Automaton (x ARAB ON RADAR)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mirror Mirror
Fri Aug 13 Brooklyn @ 258 Johnson $6

RNCnotwelcome benefit party
four bands whose names i cannot remember + open bar
Fri Aug 13 Brooklyn @ 255 McKibbin 1G $5

change you want to see gallery block party
so much shit i can't remember...beer, bbq,
fashion show, coney island theme, bands...
Sat Aug 14 Brooklyn @ 84 Havemeyer 12-6pm FREE!

AWF benefit show party
Sat Aug 14 ???

uh and more...i'm being kicked out of the computer lab...

Blog // 7:08 PM

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7.24.2004:

duuude!!! HELLA showz....

(well i wish there were hella shows,
but there be hella shows if you know what i mean...)

USAisaMonster
Friday July 23 NYC @ Sine-E
w/ Kids on TV

Amanda Woodward
Sat July 24 NYC @ ABC No Rio 156 Rivington
HC/Punk Matinee 3pm French hardcore!
yes jesse, i guess angst lives there too.

Man in Gray/Unsacred Hearts party!
Sat July 24 Brooklyn @ 255 McKibbin 1G
Benefit for RNCnotwelcome.org!

federation x party!
Sun July 25 Brooklyn @ house of good names 8 Cook st
w/ flowers in the attic and carrier

nakatomi plaza
Tues July 27 NYC @ Knitting Factory
old office 74 Leonard st $8
(they are our across the hall neighbors,
they throw great parties and they rock)

fleshies party!
Fri July 30 Brooklyn @ office ops roof 57 Thames
w/ the shemps who are lovely and good, 6pm Sharp!

Fuck You Floyd movie premier party!
Fri July 30 Brooklyn @ 85 Ainslie st
Volkert and Paisley leaving nyc sniff sniff sniff

Raised by Wolves/Mother Night
Sat July 31 Rahway @ ????? (just gettin' in the car???)
all the 85% of the Crewtonz will be performing tonite!

books lie party!
Sat July 31 Brooklyn @ Fort Awesome 490 Morgan
w/ witch hunt, nice space down the street from my old apt!

the dead betties
Sat July 31 Brooklyn @ Trash 256 Grand st
w/ the Assault, Benefit for Ladyfest East!

casiotone for the painfully alone party!
Tue Aug 03 Brooklyn @ Aa house 502 Warren St

oxford collapse
Wed Aug 04 Brooklyn @ Tommy's Tavern
w/ casiotone for the painfully alone!

I FARM afternoon party!
Thurs Aug 05 Brooklyn @ 255 mcKibbon #4G 6 pm sharp.

what the kids want afternoon party!
Sat Aug 07 Brooklyn @ 79 meserole
w/ gammits make war 4pm sharp!

nedelle and thom moore
Sat Aug 07 Brooklyn @ Petes Candy Store 10pm

cowboys become folk heroes
Sat Aug 07 NYC @ Knitting Factory
w/ welcome the plague year and the fiction

kill your idols
Sun Aug 08 NYC @ CBGBs
w/ Two Man Advantage, Volkert's favorite
long island hockey hardcore band!

and more so much more coming! August 27th benefit fundraiser @ cell block 1J for edlovesdiana...

Blog // 7:26 AM

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7.20.2004:

alcohol makes everything pop and shimmer with such brilliance, there's a sheen to it like a good tullycraft song that my 'edge kids just don't understand...more on that later....

party last nite! show tomorrow nite! mental, righteous jam, justice and get real are playing after the posi numbers fest. justice all the way from belgian! euro hardcore is weird, it gives me a hernia, in a good way. more later!!! argh!!!

Blog // 7:42 PM

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7.10.2004:

help.

Blog // 6:17 PM

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7.01.2004:

carn't sleep, babble babble boggleboggle

Blog // 6:48 PM

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6.30.2004:

when seneca lifted the great stone and discovered the secret of the world,
he turned to his sentries and said: "I know not whither I am hurried, but I am hurried on."

Blog // 7:16 AM

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6.29.2004:

WHY DIDNT ANYONE TELL ME I'M AN HONORARY MEMBER OF EAX!! I AM SO HONORED!! THANK YOU EAX!! but now i feel deep and great shame at not having made the trip across the country. i did not have proper asian identification to board a plane. also, i thought i was heart-broken, but my heart is now stronger than ever!! it could have been my honorary member initiation ceremony. alas, a wind has shaken my roots, and i must gather the leaves to once again feel the echoes stirring. but also i am not tawainese! no way duude! hunanese reprezent 100 perzent. well, 50 percent. the other 50 is redness. but the redness is from the sadness.

Blog // 2:40 AM

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6.23.2004:

i am OBSESSED with Dian Fossey now. She's fucking crazier than i dunno what, something crazy. this woman was not allowed to sit at the dinner table and eat with her mother and stepfather until she was ten or eleven years old. before that she ate alone in the cellar or something. then she grew up and saved all these gorillas 'in the mist' and was the next jane goodall until she went nuts and kidnapped all these poachers and did crazy things to them. i'm so excited about the movie its next in the netflix lineup. i am going to start something, a band, a cooperative housing unit, an arts collective, a front for selling dope and cocaine, a zine, anything as long as its called 'dian fossey.'

i am also obsessed w/ Action Attack Helicopter. they forbid me access so i want more. they talk about "Wonderful Educated Bears." i need you action attack helicopter! also the 43 second version of some dead kennedys song i accidentally downloaded which cuts off just when i want it too. It Is So Good! and then, i am obsessed with Shigeru Ban, japanese paper architecturalist extraordinaire! psst psst: there will be a flyer soon for "Your Face Here" on sad blog here, and other wonderfully educated places for bears. the fundraiser benefit is slated for mid-july at mishka. pass the word hummingbirds. okay i'm gonna stop sounding like a thirteen year old girl now.

i am so sad i missed the spunk, and will miss the cloyne sham wedding. i went to two ahem 'casting calls' this week. i am now a bumble hair model and will get free haircuts so long as i have hair for them to cut! i am also going to be licking ice cream off a cone for volkert's friend who i saw where giant adult diapers for volkert's own movie. 'nuff said. my skin makes me so sad. i have doctors bill and pharmacist bills and general gauze tape/sterile pad/hydrogen peroxide bills which if things need to be changed twice a day adds up fast! must find sublet. easier to move own self out it appears than to move others out. ho hum.

working notes feel free to critique, because most of all, i have become ultimately, tragically, unbearably obsessed w/ bottlerocket

Bottlerocket: Or, The New Genius

The Wes Anderson of Bottlerocket and Rushmore is the Gabriel Garcia Marquez of film. Stylistically speaking, he approaches the almost annihilating genius of a Jorge Luis Borges in The Royal Tenenbaums, with constant self-referential analogies and internal ‘algebra y fuego,’ as Borges liked to say it. But unlike Borges’ best stories, there is a strange disconcerting sterility that tragically haunts The Royal Tenenbaums, all the fire is gone and the pathos is taken for granted too much. His movies are the magic realisms of the cinematic art. They are not ‘magic realist’ in the expressionist sense, where the settings are highly staged, exoticized and surreal. Instead, the very opposite: it is as if someone, well Wes Anderson, took the storyline of say, “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” and translated it quite literally into a screenplay. Like Marquez, Anderson and Wilson script us into an already unfolding mis-en-scene and proceed to offer us “a tale for children,” as the subtitle to the Marquez story states, rendering the ridiculous and incredulous innocent and mundane in the transformation. This is the quality most admired by Mikhail Bahktin in his Dialogic Imagination when he writes of the emancipatory release unleashed in the carnivalesque and the grotesque. It is obvious, and apt, that Anderson does indeed incorporate a multitude of extra-cinematic traditions within his films, building slowly up from the curtains framing each scene of Rushmore to the actual premise that The Royal Tenenbaums is a novel shot for our eyes and ears, narrated by Alec Baldwin and deftly scored, again, as are all of the movies, for the soundtrack of our lives. Anderson inserts his protagonist into a variety of classic film motifs. For instance, there is the scene in which Anthony takes a swim at the motel right before he lays eyes upon Ines for the first time. This particular shot of man underwater in a swimming pool, completely unscored save for the sound of a solitary man’s breath and the ripple of water around him, has become a hallmark symbol for confusion and epiphany in film, most notably done in The Graduate. Our almost always young hero flounders along in life, diving into one thing after another, searching and finding. It encapsulates in condensed form the filmic equivalent of the German novelistic technique of buildungsroman and all its yearning for the answers to the self.
The equilibrium between the character’s and their constant, ever shifting assessments of each other offer not only poignancy and many fucking hysterically funny moments, but also an entryway into the complexity of modern day magic, of just how fragile it is to preserve a realm where whimsicality does not descend into a blunted unsophisticated and overwhelming madness. Owen Wilson’s character is the perfect crucible from which such magic is forged, and Luke Wilson’s Anthony’s one enduring gift is his ability to perceive this perfection in others (he also sees this in Ines). To borrow a phrase from Danto, it is the transfiguration of the commonplace that makes great art, and in turn, art great, today. The success of the Anderson/Owen Wilson team is completely deserved and a little embarrassing to the auteur-driven film criticism culture industry. But look again at the case of Marquez (as opposed to the more obscurantist Borges), who is one of the best known writers of any language in any country today as well. Populism of a limited circle and a circumscribed class is still populism enough to fill the theaters. The enduring popularity of the Wilson brothers as well as the star-studded ensemble cast for The Royal Tenenbaums attests to this unequivocally.

The same could be said of Bertolt Brecht’s poetry almost a hundred years ago. Brecht was the originator of the Adbusters-style re-appropriation. He took parody to its most extreme, farcical limits and somehow ended up endowing the form with utmost profundity. The poem Legende vom Toten Soldat, or Legend of the Dead Soldier, in which he reworked a native German folk ballad from the 18th century (from the Clement Greenberg translation) goes something like this:
And as the war in its fifth spring gave no prospect of peace, the soldier came to the logical conclusion and died a hero’s death.
The war was not quite over yet, it caused the Kaiser pain to have his soldier die it seemed ahead of time…
And they immediately took the soldier along, the night was blue and fine. You could see, if you wore no helmet, the stars at home.
They poured a fiery schnaps into the rotten body and hung two nurses on his arm and his half-naked wife.
And because the soldier stinks of decay, a parson limps to the fore who swings a censer over him so that he can stink no more.
In front the music with ching da-da-da plays a merry march. And the soldier, as he’s been trained to do, flings his legs from his arse…

TRANSITION--!

Yet the flaws of Bottlerocket are many and easily enumerated. For instance, the trad and retrad role of unhappy man rescued while rescuing confused inarticulate woman has been done often enough, just see Woody Allen and his Soon-Yee, the mute witness to his neurotic self-engrossed comedy.

duude!! i've gotta drink less coffee. these quinlone pills are like the medication you take to prevent malaria and like those they make you feel like you're on acid when you should be sleeping.......

Blog // 4:15 AM

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6.16.2004:

(after Eamon Grennan's Desire)

the cat, well
the cat will just persist:
oddly, doggedly;
continue against the curious
absence of inevitability.
It licks languidly the same bowl
as if tomorrow
it might not be replaced. Or,
more frighteningly,
as if it would be
forever replenished.
life providing continous rounds
of provocation
to fulfill her ravenous jowls.

as if yesterday by the water bowl
i had not fallen down
limbs crooked and cradling
crying out________.
overtuning it in my haste
to salt it with my tears.

the cat is a generous thing.

but i am merely a trifle,
and there are no islands where i go
where every man is an empty house
waiting to be filled.

Blog // 12:37 AM

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6.13.2004:

sweet chariots.

Blog // 3:51 AM

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6.11.2004:

drink stories and fight songs, fight stories and drink songs

Blog // 4:33 PM

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6.02.2004:

he was what you would call giddy-with-excitement when the pappardelle unfurled out of the machine ribbon by ribbon from the cool, smoothly floured sheets he spent all afternoon rolling under a pin. they were so fragrant and delicious, prepared simply with creme fraiche, a dousing of extra virgin olive oil, a few grinds on the peppermill, oh and maybe pecorino if we'd felt like it. and the salads with their oblong chunks of ham and tuna, shiny greek olives tossed in whole, and the best: sliced quarters of eggs bouncing up and down trying to keep the crumbly yolk inside. he preferred it golden yellow-runny and gooey, i did not, liking the dull ochre of cookedness instead. those feasts were laid out with as much precision as a military parade, and as much masculine pride, under the barrel-vaulted arches of those churches first built when dry masonry was finally being replaced by the compressive strength of the voussoir system. i don't know why i ever decided to choose mies van der rohe and the farnsworth house over the temple of aphaia at aegina, or traded the monotype and kettle stitch knot for agnes martin. but i love agnes martin. i guess that's enough.

when the boy punched the safety pin through (my) his (favorite) earlobe i thought the roof was going to cave it with all the tension being held under our breaths waiting to be released. i knew how he felt, having safety pinned my finger to my hand before in an attempt to circumnavigate the tricky terrain between the soft vulnerable skin of the palm and the calloused uncaring tip of my index. my grasp has gotten looser since then, but i can still curl my fists and pack a hell of a punch.

Blog // 1:21 AM

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5.12.2004:

bodega ice cream band

Blog // 10:08 PM

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5.11.2004:

where secrets are kept: in betwwen the couch cushions.

Blog // 3:58 PM

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5.03.2004:

if i thought more about these posts, or poems, or prose, or people, or places or parties or pleas or please or mousepeep,
then i would think more.

Blog // 5:56 PM

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Parhelia (for R. D.)

so i heard.
you shot down all ten of those suns burning to the ground leaving streaming
fiery bits and pieces.
the collective townspeople grumbling under their breaths
moaning and heaving at the dust,
the coldness; it is so cold.

i first taught you how to string a bow:
"here, like this, into the recurve notch across the lower and upper limb
and wind through the tip, always grip firmly what you can't see..."
now the baker leaves his yeasty dough on my doorstep, unleavened
next to the butcher's spiteful eye of cow pooling blood gathering its tendons and strings about itself
for a halo.

parhelia.
i warned you about the appearance of false suns,
false light finally spotted off the coast of Frascati, Rome: 20, March 1629.
you never mentioned archery nudity vortices wooden arrows my lost bowstringer
stolen
because the universe is a plenum and i can stand to be empty.

you who were always there
now marks-smith of the gods, arch-slinger of the divine, deist clock-watcher extraordinaire
most replete satisfaction of a tale well-told
shot my suns
to fill the void [that you did not believe in]
left by my former occupancy. atomism has its consequences.

Blog // 4:48 PM

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4.27.2004:

oh my god theres a movie called "the saddest music in the world" about a great depression beer baroness played by isabella rosselini who has a contest for the saddest music in the world!!! i must see this movie. this movie must see me. the saddest blog that ever blogged the earth and the saddest music in the world must meet. what is the saddest music in the world? let's have contest...

Blog // 2:59 PM

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4.21.2004:

ladies and tofu in a culturally sensitive setting.

Blog // 3:21 PM

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4.14.2004:

helmut took to the bottle rather late in his career. it was the fault of a new apartment; the new city did it; don't lets forget those three new foreign and hapless roommates and the other boy their friend who kept coming over and who smelled just like a cat and had green cat eyes and funny fur like a cats but somehow would never let himself be petted and remained immobile, petulantly curled on the couch shedding hair: they did nothing but encourage him to waste his genius. it was ballantine at first, where under a gummy layer of plastic (so as to protect the beer from the poisonous ink you know) the bottlecaps' insides were emblazoned with entertaining word puzzles that actually took more than a few seconds to solve. but really, these did not interest him. soon it mattered none whether it was ballantine or budweiser or brooklyn lager.

to give helmut credit, he only stuck to beer. yet beer presented its own special and particular problems. the accoutrements of beer were irresistible to helmut, and helmut was gaining lots of weight, gettin' heavy. the doctor put him on a diet and told him he had a bad case of gingivitis. he was not getting any exercise. his best friend had left him for sunny san diego after they had lived together in a spacious warehouse with a guinea pig in east oakland. helmut didn't even get to keep the pig. perhaps helmut was getting depressed. he entertained vague fantasies of getting high, all the time. maybe that's what new york did to everyone in the first four months. the rain, the slosh, the sloth. he was getting stupider! the magic was lost, the charm gone, all pretense of intellectualism evaporated with each night's forty and each episode of the o.c.

helmut even started developing an intense burning crush on the cat-boy who came over all the time. he made him laugh and he made it okay that helmut's other roommates picked their noses right in front of him without even bothering to hide it and tried to spy on him while he was taking a poo. was helmut gay? frightening thoughts plagued him ceaselessly. his roommates called him fat, pointed out that his crap smelled more than anyone else's, was larger than all theirs...Him: Helmut! who were they?! the chinese one who was blind as a bat claimed to see lumps on his neck which she said were tumors. then she giggled about it like the word tumor was so funny. and she walked around everywhere under a children's umbrella colored hot pink and shaped like a rabbit with protruding nylon "ears." She was almost thirty! there was no doubt in Helmut's mind that he was being persecuted mercilessly.

but there was cat-boy. cat-boy was allright. he paid for most of the beer and brought over these tiny square white castle brand sandwiches with only a thin slice of meat, a thin slice of pickle and a squirt of ketchup. helmut loved those. also, cat-boy was the only one who mentioned Helmut by name when he left messages on other people's phones. usually this was when cat-boy was drunk, and when they were drunk together, Helmut felt alive, like he could follow the trail of beers and chase broken bottlecaps to the ends of the earth. instead, all day he sat in front of the window staring out the screen dampened by constant rain, wishing for some binoculars. WHEN WAS IT GOING TO END??!!??!!

to be continued...ana, the new temptress, moves in and restores helmut's masculine virility with an endless supply of drugs and mysterious playthings...

Blog // 6:26 PM

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4.05.2004:

"below, like a constellation whose configured stars only hazard to describe the figure imposed upon them by the tyranny of ancient imagination, where Argo in the southern sky is seen only with an inner eye of memory not one's own..." -- gaddis

i send another letter traveling across Arnold's darkling plain of sea where ignorant armies clash by night and the souls of dead Huguenots find their plight echoed in naught save Protestant genealogy...

dear tilly: language as, language is, the body of thought-in-flesh. it is not an envelope of thought, it is never being thought's sealed geometric container in which thought travels from one isolated heart to head to hand to an other through pure objectless air as in a vacuum. breton says in World: "And the carpet dies like waves." what the hell kind of welt is that? i think you know. It is a world composed of whores and turtles and wild blueberries, a hybrid world of whortles and wildberries and gasoline-electric cars and robots and the women who fuel them. a world we tread upon softly and at night, before the palm of morning hits us and we are blinded by our own jealousy of each other's sight. love(,) the one who leaves you.

Blog // 3:51 PM

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3.15.2004:

zapatero won in spain! they react to al-queda with "socialism" (yes we all know its not really socialism but whatever its better than the party populares). we will probably keep g.w. jesse tell me again why europeans are better. and you can be long-winded.

Blog // 8:20 PM

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3.12.2004:

the fog crept by just like carl said it would, on its little feet.

Blog // 2:29 PM

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2.26.2004:

what is a hammer?

an arc to cleave?

wood upholding rusted metal
ore ever falling to dust?

vergessen Sie chinoise.

I search for the anvil, and with
it I break thee.


Holderlin sings of the trees of the woods:
"And to each other they remain unknown,
So long as they stand, the neighboring
trunks."
--The Thinker As Poet.

Blog // 3:09 PM

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2.22.2004:

i hope nobody made out with anybody else last nite. i hope paul's an anal virgin. i hope everyone kept their fingers clasped firmly and chastely at their sides and their tongues fully in their cheeks and their shoes on. i hope noone's sleeping in unmade beds that aren't their own and there was no belle & sebastian or billy bragg lulling more than one person to sleep at any one time. i hope i hope i hope.

Blog // 11:11 AM

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2.14.2004:

the secret's out. its all over. c'est finit.

Blog // 7:23 PM

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2.02.2004:

Blog // 8:05 PM

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1.27.2004:

Blog // 10:53 PM

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1.25.2004:

reasons to stay...this is the OG pantyraid! just look into those pairs of drunken eyes. i want to stay for your gilman show with pansy division and subincision nick! well maybe i will.


reasons to go...

geez i did such a bad job cropping on the scanner! sorry guys.

Blog // 11:48 PM

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