As Above, So Below

“Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit”

2011-11-13T11:53:00.003-05:00

I watch documentaries. They tell me things like,

“The Universe is 17 billion years old.”

They make vague analogies and models

to support these claims, and fit it all into

an hour format for PBS or whomever.

A cabal of astrophysicists meet in secret

and decide, in presumptive but elaborate and

esoteric equations how it all works so that

that they can publish these findings.

And who will know the difference?

Ex nihilo nihil fit. One of my favorite expressions.

It means, in Latin, “From nothing nothing comes.”

Something cannot come from Nothing. Well, for me

it's a problem. It is the nagging question which pervades

my days and nights. It prompts the question I can not answer.

What is the Universe in?

I'm not disciplined to study thoroughly what may,

without guarantee, lead me to answers or more questions.

I'm also heartbroken. I thought about seeking solace in a wat,

but let's be real. I'm an iconoclastic bastard, not a monk.

Life, with a divine entity or without, breaks my heart.

The selfishness, cruelty, inconsideration of my modern

fellows breaks my heart. I dream of an island, and a muse,

a beautiful girl who wants to have my children and I

do things like fish and hunt wild boars. It's an empty dream.

Gauguin went to Tahiti to paint. Now there are seven billion

people living on this planet. So few places to hide. Call me

a coward, but that is exactly what I want to do: hide. When

the doctors tell me I'm mentally ill, I have to ask, “Isn't that

very much appropriate?” Death would be better than the lives of 95%.

Funafuti 8°31'S 179°13'E … unlikely

Nanumea 05°41'S 176°09'E … unlikely

Nui 07°13'29"S 177°09'37"E... unlikely

Nukufetau 08°00'S 178°22'E … unlikely

Nukulaelae 09°22'52"S 179°51'08"E … unlikely

Vaitupu 07°28'S 178°41'E … unlikely

They found what they believe to be some of Gauguin's teeth

in Tahiti. Like the life preserved as it was stopped by Pompeii in '79.

I can't know if Gauguin was happy, no matter how young

and how preserved the girls were from the institutions of shame.

But he did it. He said it, which often is a curse, and then did it.

My escape from this particular suburb of Dis will have to be different.

I will have to steal away into the night, with a backpack full of socks,

underwear, and some cash. I will require the same faith

that I seem to have lost along the way. I will have to let the judgments

of others slip off me the way rain does down and umbrella, or a raincoat.

So, while I draw up prototypes for tinfoil-lined umbrellas,

(so as to keep them from their mind reading / controlling rays)

in doing so, I keep my head full of broken heart above the water,

the waves which will drown me, I bend time. No, I don't bend it, I bide it.

If I could bend time, I'd be up to much more scintillating endeavors.

It will be me in this 17 billion year old Universe, for a fleeting millionth of a second

seeking that relief, that transcendental drunk from a wine fomented from grapes

grown on the vines of absurdity. In Judaism, there is a tenet that we (humans)

will never know god's face. Einstein, with his shock of hair, antennae for the cosmos,

said prophetically, “I want to know god's thoughts. The rest are details.”

The Devil in me. The Daniel Webster I aspire to be. These are at odds.

17 billion years ago, let's just say they're right. The “Big Bang” happened.

Great. So, please tell me, what was there before that big bang.

And if you say something like it was super-dense compaction blah blah blah, please

tell me it was a super-dense compaction of WHAT? And what before that!?

The stars whisper secrets. They have for longer than we were around to see them.

They whisper about dreams, and wishes, and to astronomers, they whisper about time,

but they mock me in symbol. Their very presence says “We see you, hahaha!”

Like peepholes for the superspatial beings. I know that creatures such as us,

who can't see, for the most part, our hand in front of our faces, can't answer these questions.

However, the questions remain. So, if I go to the Large Hadron Collider, and,

with some silver tongue explain my broken heart,

manage to get them to explain the whole thing to me, I can leave mended.

Perhaps I can get a job at the post office and a mortgage.

Love is in the Large Hadron Collider, baby. But only for a millionth of a second. Then it's gone.

par Giosue ben Dawell

Written on Demand

2011-11-01T10:08:00.002-04:00

This is what scares me. The silence of night

it feels like shelter, but it's temporary

and that is never forgone. There is no sanctuary.

There is no lover. There is no family.

There is no cabin or penthouse or basement apartment.

I'm also as lost as any Priest or Rabbi or Seargant at Arms, any Worshipful Master

that I might have met.

There is nothing I believe in that

is worth dying for, and nothing I feel

worth living for.

This scares me.

The bridge outside the window tells me the day and time like

a 720000 ton clock, the machinery of society.

When the traffic starts again,

it will be followed by the sun and a day,

where the world expects me to participate.

How?

How the fuck do people care about any of it?

What's missing in me? What is the antidote?

I consider this: I am similar to other primates.

I have a vestigial tail, opposable thumbs, similar sensory organs.

Indeed, most of me is shared with my brethren

in any shrewdness of apes.

I'm weaker, but my brain is larger.

What good is it doing me?

If I am the 18,000,000^th cousin 10^23^rd removed

from any given cartload of monkeys,

and so, in effect, an animal, which is, to be fair,

more honest and obvious to me

than the rest of human-ness,

where am I left on this gyration

of elements, iron and oxygen, rust and salt, ice and water,

this spinning mass with a gravity that

holds me prisoner?

The mind has captured the heart.

And it imprisons.

To escape!

Like Hermes and Nikes and angels and demons, monkeys with ~wings~,

but still they must move bones to flap them.

The bat flies like I walk;

The bat is also a brother, but it too hides in the night.

So, I sit.

I know to keep shit separate from sleep.

I know simple things,

which will remind you

if you forget them,

like tying my shoes.

When I see they're untied,

or I trip.

I could build, but to what end?

You see, this candle, the sun, which I hide from,

that truly I know with my big monkey brain that I need to live,

for any life to live, will expire.

If, if what I know to be true is true, that is.

If I go any further trying to explain it to myself

I will fall into a solipsistic black hole.

So I sit. I try to deal with simple things. Somehow still I fail.

I can't fight gravity. I can't build anything that will outlast the wind.

I can't carve my being into any stone, any amount of Mt. Rushmore

that will outstand Gamma Ray Bursts and post-stellar nebulousness.

The atoms stuck between my teeth,

in my earwax

are as subject to the vicissitudes of time

as any that made up the first ape-coprography,

the latest columbite-tantalite contraption,

the great texts of the great libraries and great mens' brains.

It's all the same.

In an absolute scale of time,

if such a thing can be considered,

as opposed to a relative one,

none of this for-the-birds bullshit adds up

to anything but the sum of parts.

Maybe, in that absolute scale I am really in that solipsistic hole

but hear me!

If the diaphanous veneer of this aether is weathered over enough time,

matter following that law about entropy will, eventually,

after all the atoms' antics are played out,

present a nice, even, shitty sleep.

Won't it?

Never restful, never fitful.

Never rejuvenating, never haunted by nightmares.

Never anything at all, really. And that is the state that I am in.

Maybe I'm wrong.

I'd say I need sleep,

but I've already tried sleeping.

Maybe the Universe is a fantastic banger of a machine,

and all my whining and wailing

could and should be silent wonder.

This is not how it feels, though.

Humbly.

Two Pairs Fallen

2011-10-13T12:23:00.000-04:00

Raffiniert ist der Herrgott, aber boshaft?

2011-09-18T11:58:00.000-04:00

Every moon that rose, at least, the ones

I remember, made Lūnae, Veneris, what

named day of the week, so much less important

than the weather, sex, and dreams of tongues. And so

how do I know the words “lucciola” and “folletto”?

It all ended something along lines like these:

John was a perversion of his own ethics. The

most disturbing part was how well he knew but

Rebecca knew I had passed it on to Erik

so when she hit me she need no remorse feel

and Melanie and Basha made rites of the

nights we spent hiding from gravity's invasions

while Emily never gave up her day job

when I would appear, on bisat Sulaiman,

it would mean that I would need to be more of

human than ghost. Aradia translated (again)

between Providence and New York assured through

voices of Ionna, Elisabeth, and others

that what Great Mechanick there is, showing its

faces in improbable odds that I, right

then, was meant to be so fucking lucky

that I would grab a shoeshine on my way in

wearing really awesome suits and ties. So

when I won, Emily. But after that, Yana

the Russian, became the middlegirl of the

connection. She walked me down that primrose path

but when I saw the River of Styx, alarmed

I flew from the vice of the NYPD

to the Pacific. Keri and Ava cast

the spells conjured somniculum. Gain enough

to jump the Atlantic. Transcontinental

the runway stopped. I needed, really really

needed my passport. This sounds false but it's true

it was in the basement of C.I.A. How

much was that Great Architect willing to grant

favor me? That much more. In Paris I stopped

laid on a cemetery wall, laughed silver

like a child hopped up on goofballs and smiled through

red strained lips and teeth. The joke was soon over

So I found Gogol and offered him a deal

No derelict can refuse. He set me up

At Château Rouge, taught me the french I needed

– the most important words, “Cherche des Skenan”–

while mischievious magrebs purveyed goods and

I had not-quite sex with another, future

State Department courtesan. Elizabeth

outclassed me, but there was a long recording

and then! Gemma brought it all to presque-vu

when she asked me the question my life was, had

been. Before, Chealsea (Drugstore) and I spent nights

At the Chelsea Hotel. Breathing for her on

more than one occasion. Towers, their doormen

Never understood preferences for taxis

over nine-one-one. Elisabeth at least

came-to by the time I got her out of the

restaurant. So Gemma in the squat party

Châteaudun, Gemma, asking me if I knew

any way out of the fucking nightmare and

could I take her, Gemma who I would love and

“No, I am lost,” but I said, “I know a place

(Raffiniert ist der Herrgott, aber boshaft?)

Gemma, Brixton.” Portuguese junkie “tea-leaves”

like Manuelo and Toza who lived that day

and at three, darkness. Piss, the safest water

from cock to hand then injected in the blood

is, however disgusting, why I don't have

Hep C, HIV... Der Hergott saw me take

Gemma, and I, make wedding vows in Vegas

(Elvis long dead, was present for the rite). Mom

– honest, I wasn't hatched from an egg – said that

she couldn't come because it undermined her

against sister's catholic wedding service and

ten years had now passed. Some have been omitted

if not one of them more or less innocent

than another. I failed Gemma. Not for want

of will, or fear, or some lack of character

like. I was only given a score and ten

So I appealed to der Hergott-psychopomp-

top of my skull. This time I was transported

to the first panel of Tuin der Lusten

where my imminent death was given reprieve

in water and sun and all things that are good

for the soul. Boschaft ist der nicht. I would live

another day. Nothing more. Gemma phoned me

as I rode on a bus. I wasn't going to meet

her in Belgium and she wasn't coming to me in

Florida. That was over. I cried for two

stops. To be fair I shouldn't even be alive now.

Unused

2011-09-15T05:18:00.001-04:00

She Called the Hospital

If I were a better liar,

a better chess player...

If I had the type of mind

that sees social strategy

I never, even being so

very young, would have

walked into her office

and told her the truth.

They were the philanthropists.

They were brilliant.

They were lovers of men.

But me? My truth wasn't OK.

When asked whether it was

a matter of pounds or dollars

I should have said dollars.

Less exotic, more common.

It cost me the sort of chance,

the once in a lifetime

opportunity, that I carry guilt

for having already had too many.

Maybe it's not guilt.

Perhaps that's shame.

Either way, the redux is:

I'm a horrible liar.

She told me stories

of hearing Jerry Springer

in the background blaring.

In those days you could smoke.

That I didn't have a room

That they wouldn't give her

any information about me

gave rise to suspicion.

I called my bank and...

the machine voice told me

in so many words that

I had several thousand.

I left. I still could have lied.

From the Dark Annals of My Dreams

2011-09-15T03:51:00.000-04:00

It was a suburban neighborhood. I was exiting one or another house, and as I did so, she walked to make her entrance. I was unsure if she was going to feign an unawareness of my presence. At first it seemed that way. It was then impossible. But I was distracted, which I counted as some advantage, some protection. When I confronted her to greet her not knowing how I should do that, I saw her eyes see mine.

I can fly in my dreams. It's a regular thing.

I had that business that distracted me, but I flew up and out and around a tree. When I came back, like some boomerang, she was walking away. I threw a tantrum where I ripped the trees apart like a scythe, cutting swaths of them with my anger as I spun.

When I woke up, I meant to remember it.

Capitulation

2011-09-14T15:07:00.000-04:00

The Mission (like the Dream, not a neighborhood or design style)

2011-09-01T11:22:00.000-04:00

Fowls

2011-09-01T11:19:00.000-04:00

Chimney Sweep Song

2011-08-19T03:03:00.001-04:00

Chim Chimney

Chim Chiminy, Chim Chiminy, Chim Chim Cheree

A sweep is as lucky, as lucky can be

Chim Chiminy, Chim Chiminy, Chim Chim Cheroo

Good luck will rub off when I shakes 'ands with you

Or blow me a kiss--and that's lucky, too!

Now as the ladder of life 'as been strung

You might think a sweep's on the bottommost rung

Though I spend me time in the ashes and smoke

In this whole wide world there's no 'appier bloke

I choose me bristles with pride, yes I do

A broom for the shaft and a brush for the flue

Though I'm covered in soot, from me head to me toes

A sweep knows he's welcome wherever he goes

Up where the smoke is all billered and curled

'Tween pavement and sky is the chimney-sweep world

Where there's 'ardly no day, nor 'ardly no night

There's things 'alf in shadow, and 'alfway in light

On the rooftops of London--Coo! What a sight.

Chim Chiminy, Chim Chiminy, Chim Chim Cheree

When you're with a sweep you're in glad company

Nowhere is there a more 'appier crew

Then them wot sings Chim Chim Cheree, Chim Cheroo

Chim Chiminy Chim Chim, Cheree Chim Cheroo

09/04/01

2011-08-19T02:48:00.000-04:00

Right before my world changed: 09/04/01

Thank God that August is over. It's been a wicked month. I must
rebuild the temple, must wash the dishes, must clean my room. Samuel had arrived.
He met me at work and then I left. He helped me move twice. We tried to
insult each other in the most disturbing vile way possible for the course
of his entire visit. He helped me move twice. I thought that he was a
very conservative and intellectual, logic-oriented uptight Swede who would
be very cautious about everything. The maniac, of course, is only half
that. At one point during his visit, he was riding on top of the
advertisement on a yellow cab going over the Brooklyn Bridge at about
40-50 miles per hour or so. He looked insane. I think he was. Later he
ended up running from police (although it is still undecided if he
were actually being chased) and cutting his hands all up climbing over
fences in the area of the Brooklyn Navy Yard (east/north of there??).

Eventually he found himself in a dumpster, confused as to how he had
arrived there. Perhaps it was because of the "police" or perhaps it was
tied in somehow with the fact that he now had no money. After wandering
around, realizing that he had no possible way of finding my new space and
didn't even know the address, he ended up with a cabbie who dropped him
off at the station and gave him 1.50 for the train.

Eventually he made his way to a friend's and then called me the next
morning. Lately my friends have been able to give me very dangerous and
insane stories about the course of events (or lack of a 'course') during
nights of remarkable excess.

My new place is across the street from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Three
blocks away is a Talmudic School. In the morning I see so many Orthodox
or Hasidic Jews. It seems like they all have a special way of walking or
maybe it's because of the similar attire that it appears that way to me.
What's more, my neighborhood is highly unresidential.. i.e. no stores or
homes. Maybe on Washington there are some homes, but everything is mostly
warehouses and factories and in-dustrial. Then there is the other side of
my street, which is the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

I'm so very tired. I have no bed. I don't want to build a loft
because I'm afraid that I'll fall out of it in my sleep and the floor is
concrete with a rug on top of it. At first I was concerned because my
room had no window, but I sort of like the inability to know what time it
is unless you look at the clock.

I'm being lulled right now by hold music. It's making me want to close
my eyes. Must...not... be... reprogrammed.... to .... buy ...
everything... from ... them...

Winter 2000

2011-08-19T02:02:00.000-04:00

01/08/01
When I was younger I had this habit that my friend Jason pointed outwas a good one. As I went to sleep at night I played chronologically through the course ofthe day'sevents in great detail. What would happen is that I would sort of re-liveall of the day'shighs and lows, sometimes being very critical of myself.. others proud. Everyone sort of goes over things that they have done of course, wishingthat they had saidsomething different, more perfect or something. The strange thing aboutwhat I used to dois that I would go through and try to remember as much detail and do it inorder. I don'tdo this anymore, but I think that it's a good way to fall asleep. Byremembering the daysinteractions, events, etc. right before sleep you also etch them furtherinto memory I think,since people are supposed to be able to memorize things more easily orpermanently or somethingin the brain state right before sleep. I think that I may have been a bitwiser when I had beendoing this.
I mention this because I'd like to dump out the events of the pastweeks in great detail, butI've lost a lot. There are things that I experienced or thought that Iwanted to save, and wascertain that I'd remember them when I got to a computer but was verywrong. Writing with pen andpaper is sort of annoying for me. It seems like maybe a better way towrite, and probably is themost convenient way to record dreams, little lyrical thoughts or somethingon the train, in(just out of) the shower, etc.
In Paris, Boxer John decided to head to the Netherlands, and I went toLe Mazel. I took a trainto Montelimar, where I arrived at around 10 at night and there were nomore buses to Les Vans. Istayed at some dingy hotel, where I watched some strange French moviecalled The Mystery at ScotlandYard or something on the little TV in the room that you had to push thevolume buttons severaltimes rather than the power button to turn on. I paid extra for theremote, but it didn't work, andI didn't care enough to go back downstairs and sound annoying. The nextmorning I got the bus to LesVans and was now within 7 km of the very small villa of Le Mazel.
It was sort of afternoon, and the town is very small. I saw a few barsand the post office andlittle stores that were all closed. One place was sort of open, called LeHomard Americain. The 'Americain' suggested maybe they would maybe speak a little English. They did, but just that. The Homard Americain is a movie, they say. Anyway, I ask the bartender ifhe knows where Le Mazelis. Nope. I show him the map that Ryan had drawn for me. Nope. He shows it to the coroner courier/ambulance driver/taxi of thearea. This guy is eatingsome sausage, and has a gander. There is really no reason for him to helpme, but he offers a rideanyway. I had been trying to reach someone named Heidi, who lives nearbyto arrange for a ride upthe mountains to the villa. She wasn't answering. I accept the ride, andorder a beer, but he saysthat we have to go now and someone translated that he had to go playFather Christmas in like 30 min. I drank the beer very quickly and hopped in the ambulance/taxi with anununiformed Santa.
When I get to Le Mazel, the sky is blue and the rocks (slate?) arethis strange light grey. It'samazing, the ride is amazing. No one is there, except for 4 Frenchconstruction workers that knewnothing of me coming and had very little to do with the house. We hadfunny little conversations inpoor spanish/english/french/pantimime. They laughed that I was in LeMazel. Therewas no public phone around,and I had no key. I had this bag of potato chips. They pointed to thenext villa, which wasn't morethan a kilometer through the woods, but it was like around mountains anddown a valley and there'strees and stuff. I found a path and started dropping potato chips as Iwent along, a little trickpicked up from Hansel and Gretal.
This well marked and old stone paved trail led me in no time to Banne. There I found a pay phone,situated under the ruins of an old castle and some houses. Not like a bigcastle up on a hill, butkind of like right there. No one was around, really, and when cars drovepast the people seemed tolook at me. I guess that's not abnormal. No answer from Heidi, so I wentback to Le Mazel and foundan unlocked door to Ryan's studio. I climbed up some really scary oldmetal ladder and then was ona second level. I tried a window that had curtains, assuming that thatwould be lived-in, but itwas locked. I popped up from this balcony when I heard Heidi callingHelllooooo. She asked if Iwas Joshua and blah blah blah. She was very cool. She let me in, showedme around, and then we wenton some errands. Went to the garage to get a chainsaw fixed, but whilethey were working on that, weran over to a nursery to get a little tannenbaum (she's German) and thento the farmer-woman's houseto get the dinde (turkey). Heidi was telling me how she had met theturkey and he was a good one. Itwas like some arranged marriage, her and the turkey.
I stayed in Le Mazel for Christmas and read some Italo Calvino. Heidi's family and some of their friends came to stay too. Theywere very nice and I ate Christmas dinner with them. There were youngkids that liked when read Pippi Longstocking aloudin German, even though I didn't really understand what I was reading. There were some teenaged kids too, named Milan andMascha. I got along with the family and they kids would translate toEnglish for me if something seemed particularlyinteresting. There was one Jackass though named Tomas. I like him, but Ihave to say that he's a Jackass. Heidi'smom was probably 60 or something and was riding around inside the house onone of those scooters like a kid. She was alsovery nice and smiles and all that. She spoke English.
I rode Ryan's bike down the mountain and to Les Vans. It's only 7km orso, and only one turn. There arecurvy mountain roads with cliffs and no railings and barely enough roomfor two little cars to slide by. I prettymuch held the brake the whole way down. I bought something down in town,got a little money and rode the bike back up. I wasn't sure that I was going to be able to make it all the way, sincemost of it was fairly steep and I've been smoking. I did though, and on the way, I stopped at some land that Ryan wants tobuy. It too is amazing, with terraced vines andbeautiful ruins. I would like to make some money and buy some land there. The land seems very clean and sane and divine.
Thehouse used to belong to a Swedish actress named Mai Zetterling, andsome of her things are still there. She has anice library, which was really cool to hang out in.
After a week in France, I went to Barcelona to meet Boxer John again. Unfortunately, I hadn't been able tocommunicate with him and he had left Barcelona hours before I got there. I had fallen asleep on a train and ended up inIrun. When I arrived in Barcelona, I couldn't find any open hostels,since there was some strange holiday called New Year'sor something and I didn't have a reservation anywhere. I found a quietseemingly untraveled street with some little artgalleries on it and slept for a while in the threshold of a loading dock. So far, that has been the only time I really,really needed a sleeping bag. I did need it then though. I woke up a fewtimes during the night when I heard footsteps,but for the most part I slept fairly well. After checking my mail, Ilearned that Boxer John would be in Ciudad Real and Iagreed to meet him the next day. We met and nothing was happening inCiudad Real. We went to Algeceiras and spent the nightin a pretty clean double room for not much money.
It was Dec 31st there and we were in a Chinese Restaurant (the onlything we could find that was open, the town was dead) atMidnight. They gave us grapes. We didn't really eat them, but we drankwine. Sleep and then the ferry to Tangier. TheMediterranean was very blue. We got our sea-faring adventure on. Therock of Gibraltar isn't that exciting looking, butafter having a pretty annoying conversation with a British trucker on theferry, I'm convinced that there are all sorts ofneat intelligence/information gathering operations on/in Gibraltar. Or anEvil Lair or something.
I had read all sorts of stories of hustlers in the guidebooks andwhatever, and had expected to be hostile in getting throughthe port. I think I was overdoing it though, since the first few things Isaid when I got off was 'Go Away.. No Than..Go Away.' This pissed one guy off; next time I just won't say anything. Afterfinally getting past all the people looking to make abuck, we were walking down some street with our backpacks on when aMoroccan who was very suspiciously wearing a Canadian pin. He had recognized us by John's blonde-dyed hair, which his 'brother' orfriend had described to him over the phone from Algeceiras. His friend had given us the name of a hostel in Tangier in the hostel inAlgeceiras. We accepted, but weren't necessarily makingsome commitment. In any event, he wrote it down in Arabic, which was kindof annoying since of course we can't read Arabic.
We decide to follow this guy to the hotel across the street which hesays is his, and then he tells us some exorbitant rate. He's probably trying to make some commission from us or some bullshit. Now I understand that you have to make a buck somehow,and maybe there aren't exactly a lot of jobs in Tangier, but it stillfucking annoys me since he's not saying that he's tryingto make a buck. Who knows, he very well may have worked there, but hisbrother said that he owned it. We ask him his name andafter a brief hesitation he gives us 'Mohammed'... yeah, no shit. Anyway,so we tell him we don't want to pay whatever price thatwas and he decides to show us this other hostel that he owns... no hisfather owns... you see.. he's very powerful in Tangier,blah blah blah. The whole while giving us this load of bullshit andtrying to become our guide. He shows us this sad roomin some hotel after speaking again in Arabic to the people that workthere. He tells us to leave our luggage there, which arebackpacks, and we're like, no we'll just carry them. Then we say thatwe've got to go to an ATM, which was true... we had nomoney, but we wanted to discuss shit in private. Igpay Atinlay isn't abad idea, but it's not very effective when Johntranslates out loud to figure out what you said, and it's not veryconvenient for a lot of information.
We explain to Mohammed that we'll be back and that we'll find the ATM,etc. and that we don't need a guide, thank you, and he gets allpissed off because he probably spent a decent part of the day looking forus. His brother probably told him we were coming onthe earlier ferry, but we waited a while and so probably did he. Meanwhile, this guy with one eye and pocks and stuff all overhis face is loitering around with too much interest. So Mohammed gets allpissed, starts calling us Jewish, and threatening tofuck us up. In retrospect, he's sort of comical. The one-eye guy tellsJohn he has to give the guy something. John doesn't.I try to tell Mohammed that we're sorry, we appreciate his concern for ourwell being, but he must have been confused about usneeding a guide. I put my hand in my pocket and One-Eye comes over, "whatyou have in you pocket..a knife? i have a knife; youwant a present in you face? you see blood on you face!" I actually didhave a knife in my pocket, but that was coincidence,and I would have been probably too concerned about police and all thatshit to use it. These guys so far hadn't touched us, but nowOne-eye is following us and telling John to give him Pesetas. John pullsout a 100 peseta coin, which I don't think you caneven change, and is worth very little and he decides he wants paper. That's simply out of the question, and the guy is makingthese demands with his hand in his pocket, and probably no knife. So hewalks back up the hill or something and then startscoming back down with some lighter or some bullshit in his hand. We kindof cross the street fast and these Moroccans in a cafeare laughing at the whole situation.
We go to the Port again, and hide in this cafe. Drink some water,smoke a cigarette, etc. Then we decide to go to the HotelMauritania, because Lonely Planet says it's nice and they have bidets inthe rooms. We take a taxi there, which is cheap andcheck in without further incident. Tangier is the most amazing place I'vebeen, excluding that Mohammed character and ol' One-Eye, but even theywere sort of amazing.
Mint Tea, The Hand of Fatima, Dream of a Thief, The Call to Prayer,Where Can We Get Toilet Paper, "My Friend" (aka Mon Ami,Mi Amigo, etc.), 1 Dirham for 1 Marlboro, and Flies on Cakes. The flyprobably costs extra.
01/15/01
I'm waking up very early and going to sleep at Midnight. I'm happy tobe back in the US, Philadelphia. I miss New York. Philadelphia has itsbenefits, though and for the first time I've considered what it would belike to live here. We'll see.
I feel different now. Like the world has gotten a lot smaller or Ihave gotten bigger. I am 5'9", I really am.
I bet on Dingley Dell against All Muggleton with John. It appears thatDingley Dell lost 0-54, and I owe John the equivalent of 10 USD or so. Ithink John had the game fixed.
01/18/01
Boxer John has been abducted. I think that he's fine and that he'llreappear any day now. Zoe makes me happy. I crave skateboarding. I amsetting up some art modeling to make some money immediately. Reality ismostly back, and New York City is better than it has been for a while.
I'd like to collect superstitions. Please email them to me if you knowof any, even the most common American ones.
01/20/01
Oil Joints.
01/22/01
Life isn't that hard sometimes, even when it is. One stressful daywhen I was maybe 14 or 15 it occurred to me that no matter how painful orunpleasant a situation becomes, you probably aren't going to die. Well,you may die, but then the situation won't matter that much anyway. Thatput things into a more acceptable perspective. I am healthy and eventhough things are a little bit tricky right now, I am fairly content.
01/24/01
Sometimes you have to keep the plans loose as a goose. That time isnow. I'm beginning to wonder what the immediate future has in store forme. I don't know, I don't know.
I was modeling today and was doing the same pose three times for 20minutes. I would breathe very deeply and slowly and get very relaxed andin the blink of an eye the 20 minutes would be up. I almost didn'twant to get up it was so comfortable, but that would have been weird and Ididn't want to set any new precedent for keeping a pose for longer than 20minutes. I can't wait to have some sort of sanctuary. Some sane place.
One morning I woke up to the very familiar smell and sound of bacon andeggs cooking up. That Stssshsshshshshshs when the bacon hits the hot panwas usually loud enough to wake me up, even though I was sleepingupstairs. I was young though and usually woke up very early anyway, so Iprobably was barely asleep at that point in the morning.
I went downstairs and Polly was there, not at all surprised that I wasawake now like she knew that her cooking breakfast woke me up. I had caught all these crayfish, maybe 10 or so little ones andput them in a jar. The evening before I had set them on the windowsill andthey seemed content and everything. In the morning there were nolonger 10 little ones, but one very large one! I didn't say anything atfirst, since this was a very strange situation. I thought and thoughtabout it for a while, and definitely remembered 10 little ones. It wasonly yesterday. I still didn't say anything, but I thought that Polly orDave must have had something to do with this. Then again, animals did doweird things, and there was the Voltron effect.
01/31/01
New York is stretching back out. I'm back in its veins, coursingaround like some kind of blood-squid. The lair I work in has no naturallight and lots of construction. Please donate tapestries. People arereally silly. It's amazing how much power you have when you just don'tcare. It's amazing how much the common little shit that works whereveryou work will try to dump his problems on you, elevate his esteem at yourcost, exploit your fears or feelings of guilt. When you just don't care(read "give a shit") all of that dissipates. You're free to do what yoneed and want to do as you see fit. If you make someone unhappy, theytell you about it and you try to make them feel better, assuming that youshould.
My search for a place to live is moving along, but the main issue isgetting the ducats in the account. People really make a lot of sacrificesto live in this city. I personally tend to think that it's worth it, butit still strikes me as extreme what people will pay, share, and deal withcommuting/traveling as far as living space. I hear that this isn't evenas bad as other places in the U.S.
I had a strange dream that I was running while standing on my hands, sorunning on my hands down the halls of my rarely attended high school. This kid kicked me in my chest, which was near the ground since Iwas upside down. I started kicking his ass, and then his friend was thereand then they were sort of crying a little bit and mad at me. I explainedthat they were really tough and everything and that they could have beatenme up, they just didn't work together. Then I went on running down thehalls on my hands.
I came to some councelor that I had had during high school who Ireally didn't like and to this day would have to bite my tongue if I everran into her. I didn't bite my tongue in this dream and ripped her apart. She countered by presenting an issue of the magazine "W" that I was on thecover of, in a picture where I was very obviously intoxicated. I couldn'tfigure out where the picture came from but it seemed like somewhere I hadbeen in Europe. I was sort of embarrassed although in real life I'd beextremely surprised and probably equally excited that my picture was onthe cover of "W". I don't remember what happened after that.
I have some ideas.
02/04/01
A dirty, subterranean night last night. Freezing cold. Popping out ofthe ground on a manhattan sidewalk holding your fingers to your lips tostartled passersby is incredible.
Excerpt about brazen summer attempt at riding a bike South. 151 ofmany? My eyes sting for some reason. Probably the dirt.
Dreams about a short flight, B. John in a jelaba confused by theMilitary Police for a 'monk or a scribe'. I fell asleep by the warm lightof a 6 hour tape full of The Simpsons.
Word from India, China, and other parts, but nothing definite. Beenthinking about the supposed 2nd Ave subway tunnel sections. I am lookingfor an apt, after all.
02/06/01
I may have an amazing apartment that I can move into on February 15th. That is making my day go down pretty well. Sat through a really longmeeting this morning, and although that basically means that I have lesstime to do the things that I already had to do, I enjoyed it.
I really love Jamaican beef patties. I want to have a party and I wantto have those things.
02/08/01
Nope, I don't have an amazing apt that I can move into on the 15th. Back to the drawing board. www.billburg.comand www.aprilslist.com.Working is insane. I smell red leather gloves, with padding inside.
02/08/01
Nope, I don't have an amazing apt that I can move into on the 15th. Back to the drawing board. www.billburg.comand www.aprilslist.com.Working is insane. I smell red leather gloves, with padding inside.
02/09/01
I've got heaps of work but that's alright. I'm really glad that Ididn't end up in that particular place in Williamsburg that was sortof more expensive than it was worth to me, even though it was very verynice. I don't really care about Williamsburg because I don't reallyknow about it and I don't trust popular opinion anyway. Last night Iwas back up in Spanish Harlem for the first time in a long time and Ireally really like it up there. Even though Pleasant Ave. is far fromthe 116th 6 stop, I still think that I would live there.
02/13/01
I really need a sanctuary. Work is insane. The rate at which peoplecan come up with problems is amazing. There are only like 30 of thelittle buggers here, but they generate and endless supply of problems.
Apartment hunting in NYC is getting old. Hopefully I'll at leastfind a sublet that I can afford sometime in the very near future. I'mstaying with a friend in Astoria in an apt. called Cairo due to it'sextremely sunny, dry, and hot climate. You have to leave the windowsopen all the way even though it's February.
On Sunday night I went to the store to buy juice and whatever andsaw this really tasty looking chocolate ice cream bar.. At the sametime I realized that I needed to buy a toothbrush. I only had enoughmoney for one of the two items though. I debated and decided on thedove bar.
Let's go back a little bit. I think that it was my birthday, ormaybe my sister's. I was probably around 11 or so. My friend wasexpected to be arriving any minute, so I went to the end of the streetto see him arrive. I was waiting for a really long time, and I had thisskateboard, so I was sort of playing around on it. I wasn't reallyable to ride too quickly, so I would kneel or whatever and push myself.Well, my friend arrived and was driving down the street with his mom. Naturally, I decided to race the car. All was going well, even thoughit looked like they were going to beat me. All was going well, thatwas, until I hit some crack in the sidewalk and launched forward andlanded on my face, breaking my front tooth in half. It hurt, and Isoiled myself at the same time to add that extra embarrassment.
My grandmother, Mammaw, took me to the dentist and I got all fixed up.My new fake tooth was really big though and didn't look right next toall my other teeth. Eventually I grew into the tooth, but for a longtime it was too big.
The other night, as soon as I walked out of the store with the stupidice cream bar and bit into it, my cap chipped off. Now I have to paystupid amounts of money to get it fixed and whatever. I went immediatelyacross the street to buy the toothbrush to avoid incurring any more ironicdental problems.
02/19/01
Dying well. I'm all busted up. Boxer John is in theAnglo-Babbling-Junion figuring out how to network apples. Rumor has itthat I've been mocked! Imagine!
I need air.
02/20/01
So strange. I'm happy about a few trivial compliments here and there. That's not the strange part. The strange part is that I woke up beforedawn and found myself sitting upright on my sleeping bag Indian-style. It would seem that I spent some time sleeping in that position.
02/21/01
Something that really frustrates me about the web are reallyinterestingly titled sites or links with perfectly relevant seeminginformation that ends up being entirely useless. I hope that no one everends up at this site while looking for something else. People will go sofar as to even title their full url directories to seem like you're goingto be presented with the EXACT information that you're looking for as soonas you go ahead and click.
I stole MDomino's vegetable burrito while he was on the phone. I'llbuy him another one. That's ok, right? He wasn't happy about it.
Cynerton is a looney place. There are some amazing people, but thereare also some really ridiculous ones with almost nothing to offer that Iconsider to be that valuable. Perhaps there are even a few that have moreof a detrimental influence than positive. Without even knowing, I'm sure.
People are so greedy. It's sick to see it come out in a place that issupposed to be battling back some of the eventualities of individual orco-operative greediness. I really think that many more people than wecommonly think are genuinely crazy. Myself included.
02/24/01
Last night a very strange saline evening. At some art opening on 22ndbetween 10th and 11th and talking to a dear friend who subjects herself toall sorts of maternal concerns for her friends and lovers. As I'm tryingto point out a funny characteristic of a mutual friend, I see a manwalking by in my peripheral vision who looks familiar and as it clicks Iutter, "Ohhh my gaaawd..." only to have John Waters mock me with a morenasaly voice. Normally I wouldn't even recognize a famous person, but hereally is a bizarre one. I also wouldn't normally say something like, "Ohmy god." even if I did recognize them. Funny.
For the first time in my life I ingested too much salt. As I wastrying to go to sleep, very concerned about what my body was doing, Irealized how dangerous good old salt is. Many things are unsorted, but Ihave faith.
02/25/01
My right index finger is funked up. I jammed it at a funny party lastnight while trying to jump over some jingle jangle jarred up fireflies. And it hurts. Now to hack out some living arrangement until I can getinto my Crown Heights station.
03/01/01
I am wearing the same clothes as yesterday and avoiding running intopeople that saw me yesterday. I think that I should use my lunch hour togo to H&M and buy some new digs. I can get to 51st and 5th quicklyenough. I've added some pictures and hope to be adding more soon. Itdawned on me that it's pretty vain to have this gallery of yourself, soI'm going to start including other things.
Lately I've been considering taking up some things that I have beenreally critical of or something. I requested some course catalogues froma few schools and think that I need to start taking photos.
It's funny how things turn out and sometimes it's extra funny. Soon I'll move into my sublet and then hopefully Fernando Fernandez and Ican work something out for a studio or one bedroom for me on 116th. Jerome would be an excellent neighborhood as well. Jerome, for those ofyou that weren't there for me to believe the Boxer when he told me thatthat is what the neighborhood's actual name is, is an area in Harlem atthe bottom of Marcus Garvey park (I think). I seem to recall it being on120th or something, so if those two things are not compatible, then pickone, it's not a real name for a neighborhood.
03/02/01
Trying to get this stupid yellowdog linux distro to do an ftp or http install off some wacky server which onlyworks half the time and not all the way. Looks like I'll have to actually wait for the CD to get here. Thatreally annoys me. Z is coming to meet me and will probably go bust over to Queens. I could very well end up inPhiladelphia before the night is over, for there is a party in that city to which I have been invited. There isalso a J Tigabinowitz who I would like to chill with.
Watching old people fumble with technology can sometimes be pretty amusing. I have a hard time not smirkingsometimes. In one of those office resigning parties someone noticed this about me today. I feel for the oldpeople, I really do. There are those that I give credit to though, those that will go ahead and figure things out.
Not that it is particularly interesting but I did some springime shell cleaning yesterday and my account feels alot more accommodating. I moved things where they maybe should be filed and exported my old mail to big text filesfor storage and certain misplacement or deletion.
This very journal sits precariously on a free server in Texas that could be taken down at any moment withoutnotice. They could pull the plug and anything I don't have backed up locally somewhere is gone, gone, gone. I'vehad it happen before. It's not fun.
I was reading Anais Nin's journal again on the train this morning and realized that hers is really much betterthan mine. Where did she find the time to write so much? I don't think she had a steady job. She wasmoonlighting in NYC as a psychotherapist for a while, but even then she still wrote what seems to me to be a lot. I also have to consider the fact that mine is public and has a lot of potential for changing my immediate relationswith people. I end up editing a lot and not writing about certain subjects that are too sensitive or private. That definitely takes away from the therapeutic value of regular personal writing.
Last night I ate this kim-chi and had three Sapporos. It seems like it was pretty early when I fell asleep. MDomino was kind enough to remind me to borrow his cell phone and set it for 8AM, which I did. I ended up wakingup at 7:59AM, but anyway.. earlier on in the night I must have gotten up to do something. Whatever I was doing orwhyever I got up, I decided that I should sleep in MDomino's bed. The couch is my bed, I never sleep there. Well, I wake up at like 4:30 or something and have no idea where I am. Where was I reading that the Sufis orsomething think that this sensation is the closest to enlightenment that we become?.. So, then I figure out thatI'm in MDomino's bed, which is briefly satisfying until I ask myself WHAT I am doing there. Hoping that MDominocould shed some light on the situation I ask, "What the ---- am I doing in your bed?!" He thought that this wasfunny, so I guess it's ok, but it's still weird. I have a long history of doing weird things in my sleep. I wakeup in different rooms, with my head on the opposite side of the bed that it was when I went to sleep, talking,teeth grinding, snoring, eating, moving, and much worse.
My eyes are stinging and it's stuffy in here.
03/04/01
Friday after arriving in Astoria, Z, MDomino and I went to have dinner. We came back to spot a very large cockroachin his very clean and very white apartment. I'm not really _that_ disgusted by the creatures, but they are sneaky andyou don't know what they're up to. Z didn't like it very much and I was concerned that it would decide to hide in mypile of stuff (sleeping bag, shirts, pants, backpack, sweaters, etc. that MDomino graciouslytolerates taking up spaceon his living room floor) but MDomino managed to take a glass and put itover the bug. Now it wasn't so threatening. MDominohad encountered some even larger bugs at an undisclosed residence in Brooklyn and they had named the two bugs they hadfound Ponce De Leon and Christopher Columbus. They had captured these in jars and thrown them several yards over fromtheir backyard. This one on Friday was Magellan. I didn't have a problem with approaching Magellan now andtransferred him into a jar with a lid. The operation did freak me out a little and I had to walk back into the livingroom and not think about it scurrying around and almost jumping out as I was capping the jar.
There was some discussion about what to do with Magellan now, but I had to think about it for a bit. I decidedthat he deserves a chance and that the subway system would provide the adventure suitable for an explorer such asMagellan.
I labelled the jar with masking tape that his name was Magellan and that he had no home. I also explained that hehad lost a lot of money investing in stupid stocks. I put my email address and this URL hoping to hear more about thefate of Magellan. At Union Square I left him on a City Hall bound new 6 train. I wonder if he made the abandonedstation loop. As the train was pulling out and people sat down where the jar was, I noticed someone pick it up and showit to their friend.
I hope that Magellan does well.
03/13/01
It's 3AM and I'm at work. Oh, noooowwww I remember. I have dreams ofmuddy, back breaking hard labor.
03/15/01
Friends, countrymen, thank you for lending your sofas. I have beenriding the wave of sofas, hostels, and floors since September orsomething. Of course, I have been accomodated in guest rooms and ithasn't been exactly HARD in the grand scheme of things but you're neverreally alone when you're homeless. You always have to be social. It'sfine and I'm so used to it that it will be weird to have my own livingspace but I am happy.
I crack my jaw too much and grind my teeth.
03/14/01
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 20:01:32 -0000
From: John Kosinski <boxrjohn@hotmail.com>
To: milk@ductape.net
Subject: succor at last

i am getting paid to write CODE! ALL DAY!
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
03/16/01
I slept in the living room of my new sublet in Crown Heights. I reallylike the house, it's older and comfortable and the floors are verysqueaky. I will move upstairs into my room very soon.. tonight? I amexhausted and saw these huge bags under my eyes this morning. I watchedSense and Sensibility last night or part of it. It was a very girly movieI think.
So I've heard about Foot and Mouth disease from two sources in twodays. The first time I heard it I thought it was Foot *in* Mouth disease,which I thought was a very interesting name for a disease. Perhaps I havethis disease. I was reading in the newspaper that theyare 'destroying animals in 2 square mile swaths' or something. What amessed up job. Not only that, but then farmers were burning the bodies? It's really almost enough to make me only eat McDonald's. Maybe Ishoudn't eat meat. I've always been convinced that the -real- healthsecret is to poison yourself with loads of beef and butter and if you'rereally going to get your Mithridates on then supplement that with nightlydoses of whiskey or gin. Smoking cigarettes detracts from the beneficialproperties of beef, butter, and whiskey. However, most people who consumeindecent quantities of beef, butter, and whiskey also smoke. This is whythis method has not been publicly recognized. I think that I'm wrongthough. I don't really like to eat chicken unless it's from a fast foodplace, and even then it's a little bit freaky. Beef is a pretty soundmeat, so I'm very comfortable with it, but lately all these diseases havestruck the cows and I'm wondering if I should give it up. I'll create ameatlog. I mean, I'll create a log of my meat consumption. I'm sure thisI don't have the resolve to religiously keep it up, but at least I'lldocument my flakyness that much better.
I'll start the meatlog now by going to purchase some liverwurst. Boy Ilove liverwurst.
03/19/01
This little freaking wireless Palm modem keeps shocking me pretty hardand it's not the day for shock therapy. This morning some wiltingsouthern girl tries to pass blame on me for not telling them that theproblem that she and her very important (at least he thinks so) boss wereexperiencing had been fixed for hours.
He starts attacking me and I tell him that I understand hisfrustrations and that there was a hardware failure that I could not haveknown about. So I got in at 9:15 or so even though I left early. PerhapsI could have beat them in in the morning because it's a rather big day andwe're having this event and everything. Whatever. The mailserver keepsbugging out as well and I'm sure that that is going to cause me someproblems. Basically I told the person I effectively report to that if Iget any more crap from that guy then she can expect my resignation. Heapologized, but I really only have so much tolerance for the bullshit. Igenuinely believe that I can be happy washing dishes and poor. At leastfor a while. Not that I'm really going to resign, but I also don'tthink that they'd really let me go. It would be welcome anyway blizzip.
Brooklyn is growing on me. I like my house although myroommates are sort of alien to me. Not that we can't get along orcommunicate, and I even like them, but they're sort of _strange_. I likethe lighting in my room and have been thinking of it all day as I've beengoing through hell. A bed. Clean sheets. NPR. Freshly brushed teeth.My mostly black laundry drying everywhere since we have a washer but nodryer which is really great for my clothes as I usually end up toastingthem into weird crunchy shapes at the laundromat. Brooklyn where theydon't have a city hall but a Borough Hall. Wouldn't Manhattan let them?Did it used to be Brooklyn City Hall? When I walk down the street I thinkthat people think that I am trying to buy drugs or maybe they're justtrying to rip me off because I'm white. Maybe they're really just tryingto sell me good shit and they offer to everyone that seems like aprospective client and I seem like that.
It's so close to springtime in NYC and I'm hoping that this spring willbring many relaxed, healthy days. I've challenged Turp to a boxing matchand have to get into shape now, so I'm quitting smoking. I still feel abit sick from drinking too much beer and smoking too many cigarettes thisweekend, but think that maybe tomorrow I should go for a jog throughBrooklyn if the weather is good in the morning. I'm notsure that we'll get around to the fight, but I still have to train. Thissummer might be a big skateboarding summer. I have to be in shape forthat since the past few summers I can almost get all loose and in shapebut I spend too much time just struggling to get comfortable again. Ithink that I should definitely travel again. Perhaps to Egypt, althoughthe summer may not be the best time. Fall. I could see SF this summer.
I'm fully immersed in the mundane. Reality is very real. I can't seethe strangeness of the texture of the ether.
I'm not recording every time I eat meat. Who has the time andattention for that?! What a dumbass idea that wouldn't have even producedinteresting results unless I could do a poll where people could rate howmuch more or less meat than me.

...Chewing up Municipal Property and the Like...

2011-08-19T01:50:00.000-04:00

06/14/01

Money comes and goes. Probably love too.

Ever steal a parking meter? Not me. But I'll tell you how I would if
I were going to do it. First, I would find a quiet street with those
double meters on the same post. They look like a Y. This street is
preferrably one that is used a lot during business hours and everything
and the best day to strike depends on when they empty them. Beforehand,
you might want to find a really strong tube of steel or maybe a 2x4,
although I would guess that a 2x4 might be a little too squeaky during the
'get the meters off the post' stage. The length of the tube should
probably be at least 5 to 6 feet. The longer the better, more mechanical
advantage.

Now approach the parking meter taking care not to be noticed by police
or any Goodie-Two-Shoes types. Put the end of the metal tube between the
two meters on the post. Holding the other end of the pipe, walk around
the post (I would try counter-clockwise first) until you're using one
meter to push against the other and make both of them want to move in
opposite directions. If you're lucky, you'll notice the meters will start
to give a little and then you'll liberate them.

When they're free from being attached to the post, try to lift them
off. Take care, they're heavy and you'd probably be making the local
authorities cranky. Haul them off somehow and then either pick the locks
open or bash the tops off with a sledge hammer, whichever works.

I would estimate that there would be anywhere from 20 - 80 dollars,
depending on the schedule when they are collected.

The way a Rajah taught me to cut a mango.

2011-08-16T18:25:00.001-04:00

This might make you laugh.

2011-08-11T21:54:00.000-04:00

a C. Figueroa

I had a dream I started out hanging out with my friend Zoe Glassner as well as a Candace Bushnell in character in NYC. Well, Madam Bushnell invited me to Miami, but then booked us into a 1 bed suite. I was sort of happy about that. I mean, as far as sluts go, she's certainly a prize. Well, I'm in Miami and she's hosting all these parties and all these weird characters that I don't know from around the world are all imposing their interests and demands on the environment/atmosphere so I get frustrated and take a walk.

I mean people from Mauritius, and a elven blond woman speaking Welsh or something fucking impossible. And then young, idiotic, American, athelete Dave Matthews fans. It was just intolerable. I liked the strangeness at first, but they fought over my music, which Candace was happy to let me govern.

There are sharks in the water at Miami Beach and there is some crazy insane storm. So I follow these people on to this bus and it ends up being like all marines, and they were total assholes. We drive out to see on some imaginary causeway and blah blah blah and then the driver throws away my skateboard because "it could have a bomb in it". I'm so pissed off, but I make my way onto a train, except I find out that the train is taking a bunch of other Marines to Atlantic City. I notice you are on this train. You get the train to stop, but we're still in stripmall hell, anywhere, USA. Then I'm on my own again with the guy who plays Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs and another bad guy and they're challenging the US sovereignty in some weird way and the non Mr. Pink bad guy wants me to kill Mr. Pink with a scissors, but I want to kill both of them and get off this new fucking train. Then I woke up.

Fucking hell.

Oooh! A proposition! Should I take it up?

2011-08-08T09:56:00.001-04:00

MSG 0:

Delivered-To: utsuprainfra at google's mail domain
Received: by 10.229.78.135 with SMTP id l7cs68680qck;
Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:23:12 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.236.182.8 with SMTP id n8mr1180560yhm.282.1312172591112;
Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:23:11 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path:
Received: from mailhost.uark.edu (mailhost.uark.edu [130.184.5.66])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id m2si9045894icw.70.2011.07.31.21.23.10;
Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:23:11 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of cbritton@uark.edu designates 130.184.5.66 as permitted sender) client-ip=130.184.5.66;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of cbritton@uark.edu designates 130.184.5.66 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=cbritton@uark.edu
Received: from uark.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by mailhost.uark.edu (Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2-6.01 (built Apr 3
2006)) with ESMTP id <0LP8005YQEBPZ2U0@mailhost.uark.edu>; Sun,
31 Jul 2011 23:11:50 -0500 (CDT)
Received: from [65.49.14.59] by mailhost.uark.edu (mshttpd); Mon,
01 Aug 2011 05:11:49 +0100
Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2011 05:11:49 +0100
From: "Charles R. Britton"
Bcc:
Reply-to: chenguan06@msnzone.cn
Message-id:
MIME-version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Sun Java(tm) System Messenger Express 6.2-6.01 (built Apr 3 2006)
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-language: en
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Content-disposition: inline
X-Accept-Language: en
Priority: normal

I am Mr. Chen Guan, Foreign Operations Manager of the Bank of China (Hong Kong).
I have a business suggestion for you of $50,000,000 Million USD.
Further details Contact me via email (chenguan06@msnzone.cn).
*****Note********
If you are not interested in this business offer please do not respond.

MSG 1:

Return-Path:
Received: from [192.168.1.106] (c-76-99-17-190.hsd1.pa.comcast.net [76.99.17.190])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id dw11sm1703445vcb.13.2011.08.09.00.15.19
(version=SSLv3 cipher=OTHER);
Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:15:20 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <4E40DE82.7040104@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2011 03:15:14 -0400
From: Giosue
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:5.0) Gecko/20110624 Thunderbird/5.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: chenguan06@msnzone.cn
Subject: Re: Business Suggestion
References:
In-Reply-To:
X-Enigmail-Version: 1.2
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Master Chen,

I'd like to know your proposition. To describe a business "suggestion"
to be "of $50,000,000 Million USD." is unclear to me. Is this what I
stand to gain, or is this the investment you seek?

Regards,
Mr. Giosue Etranger

MSG 2:

Delivered-To: utsuprainfra at google's mail domain
Received: by 10.229.135.149 with SMTP id n21cs183757qct;
Tue, 9 Aug 2011 01:52:50 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from mr.google.com ([10.52.94.200])
by 10.52.94.200 with SMTP id de8mr3908454vdb.3.1312879970000 (num_hops = 1);
Tue, 09 Aug 2011 01:52:50 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.52.94.200 with SMTP id de8mr2763861vdb.3.1312879969633;
Tue, 09 Aug 2011 01:52:49 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path:
Received: from snt0-omc1-s14.snt0.hotmail.com (snt0-omc1-s14.snt0.hotmail.com [65.55.90.25])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id a8si3508438vcw.46.2011.08.09.01.52.46;
Tue, 09 Aug 2011 01:52:47 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of chenguan06@msnzone.cn designates 65.55.90.25 as permitted sender) client-ip=65.55.90.25;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of chenguan06@msnzone.cn designates 65.55.90.25 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=chenguan06@msnzone.cn
Received: from SNT139-W6 ([65.55.90.8]) by snt0-omc1-s14.snt0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675);
Tue, 9 Aug 2011 01:51:34 -0700
Message-ID:
Return-Path: chenguan06@msnzone.cn
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
boundary="_fb5f9674-b0d3-4e8e-8156-b32e4e6edcb1_"
X-Originating-IP: [65.49.14.77]
From: Chen Guan
To:
Subject: More details on the business proposal?
Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2011 08:51:33 +0000
Importance: Normal
In-Reply-To: <4E40DE82.7040104@gmail.com>
References: ,<4E40DE82.7040104@gmail.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 09 Aug 2011 08:51:34.0320 (UTC) FILETIME=[8A94C300:01CC5671]

I am Mr. Chen Guan, Financial Director, Bank of China .

I located you through an agency that helps seek people by their email.

Our Client, Gen Zaiki Abdul Ali a businessman and also who was with the Iraqi Forces, made a fixed deposit, of Fifty Million United State Dollars only in my branch. A number of notices were sent to him before the war which began in 2003 and also after the war but, no response came from him. We later found out that the General along with his wife and only daughter had been killed during the war in a bomb blast that hit their home.

After more inquiry, it was also discovered that the Late General did not declare any next of kin in his official papers including the paper work of his bank deposit. What bothers me most is according to the laws of my country at the expiration of 8 years, the funds will be reverted to the ownership of the Hong Kong Government if nobody comes for the funds. Against this scenery, I have all the information needed to claim these funds and I want you to act as the beneficiary of the deposit, there is no risk involved in this matter, as we are going to adopt a legitimate method and the attorney will prepare all the necessary documents.

All I require is your honest co-operation and I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the Law. Please accept my apologies and keep my confidence.

I have attached to this mail, an agreement letter which you are to fill and sign, then scan and send it as an attachment via E-mail to me. If not possible you can send me the following via email:
Your Full Name:
Your Complete Address (Physical Address
with Zip Code not P.O.BOX):
Name of City of Residence :
Country:
Direct Telephone Number:
Mobile Number:
Fax Number:
Occupation:
Age and Sex:
Your copy of ID card :

before the Attorney can go ahead with the preparation of the required documents that shall place you as the sole benefactor to the funds.

I await your prompt reply on this.

Please note that I would be replying your mails via this email address.

Kind Regards
Mr. Chen Guan

Blah Blah Blah

2011-08-08T09:37:00.002-04:00

Lexapro made everything surreal and made me ... It was the least harsh. It's the levorotary isomer of citalopram (Celexa). I couldn't afford it, and while it was fun to be a 12 year old boy sexually again, it was too weird, the surreality. Celexa made me shake, my heart pound, and have panic attacks. They still prescribe it, I just can't take it. When I took prozac once, I had the most painful week psychologically that I could remember in my adult life, and you know I've had some rough times. Prozac made life hell, and I was obsessed with the geometries of the architecture of the building I was in. I was very close to suicidal on prozac. Abnormal thinking. Wellbutrin made me feel like I was having a heart attack and basically my thinking is this:

I'm depressed because I should be. I'm dissatisfied. It's appropriate. No one measures my seratonin / norepinephrine / whatever neurotransmitter levels, they just sort of shoot in the dark with these different compounds. Generally, I'm not depressed any more than one should be, and probably much less than one would be.

I capitulated my vow to never get a GED / diploma and did the damned G.E.D. It let me get into school. When I took the placement tests, I did really well so they offered me the year long Honors integrated curriculum, which was well described by my fellow classmate as "Like academic bootcamp or basic training". We ran through Plato, Socrates, Diogenes, Thucydides, Herodotus to Diamond, Spinoza, Reimarus, Locke, stopping by Diderot and doing Jane Austin, Dante's Inferno, Sophocles, Antigone, Medea, Hamlet, the Sonnets and much more. It was serious business. It turns out I'm a thorough Malthusian.

In the meantime, I take guitar, work on the Kryptos sculpture, keep up learning Spanish and French, and writing a book with a friend as well as my podcasts and personal blog. Oh, and i've been trying to get material together for a 'zine printed on paper. When Bucknell interviewed me for a scholarship (which I didn't get because I waxed romantic about UCLA and said nothing about Bucknell, who doesn't have the major that I want) the woman asked me "when do you find the time to do all of this?"

So I've thought about medication for depression, yes.

On 8/8/2011 9:22 AM, Victoria Moe wrote:

Did you finish high school?

Sent from my iPhone

On 8/8/2011 9:16 AM, Victoria Moe wrote:

And?

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 8, 2011, at 9:15 AM, Joshua <myemail@address.com> wrote:
Yes.

On 8/8/2011 9:09 AM, Victoria Moe wrote:
My friend. We spoke after you were hit by a car. I always wondered where you went. Fake boobs are great. Have you thought about takin medication for depression?

Sent from my iPhone

fires lit

2011-08-08T04:30:00.001-04:00

fires lit by nihiti

Some of the Places I Once Lived

2011-08-05T12:45:00.000-04:00

Etude Null

2011-08-01T09:37:00.000-04:00

Humilidad

2011-07-12T08:58:00.001-04:00

25 February 2009
Mark Domino
gisoue
where the hell are you? the world would have missed a lot of my genius if you'd sent me out that window.

can't believe you'd stoop to facebook! still using lynx?
01 March 2009
Mihi Nomenest Joshua
i know about that window. it's not that far down.

ALpine.

just tried to watch Lexx consecutively through to make some sense of it and decided that #4 just needed to get laid. then i stopped taking the drugs.

don't panic.

Some Letter

2011-07-05T14:25:00.000-04:00

Yes, I had a company with J- A- called A- & W-, Inc. We were technology consultants and we had perversely thorough contracts, the templates and other legalities propelled by W- V- and others at P-.com. Our first client was Reader's Digest in Chappaqua, NY (or really close, I can't remember the mailing city). I, as you know, did not finish high school, but none of my clients ever asked me for a diploma. They just assumed I knew what I was talking about because most of the time I did. S-.org was one client that I was the primary consultant for and my duty, as I felt, subscribing to the McKinsey & Co. ethos (see mckinsey.com) was to tell them to hire someone to handle all of the in-house stuff like printer jams, connection issues and the like. I was more about policy and planning. I represented their IT interests on the board as a liaison, not a boardmember.

My business partner, J-, and I were in David Rockefeller Jr's office in Rockefeller Plaza. There was a photo of him hanging out with a pensive looking Bill Clinton on a wooden porch. They had their own in-house IT team, as you can imagine, but I was the primary consultant for s-.org. (if you google my name, look at the third hit). They were hosting S- because S- is Peggy's child (I think, I can't speak for her). J- became really brash and rude on the telephone in an office HOSTING as a guest one of our clients. I hung the phone up for him, called the other man back and explained that I would speak to him to resolve whatever challenges we shared and that I was most surely at his service to accomplish this. I was, believe it or not, the people man. At least that's what my clients said. It was then that I understood that Emily was doing what was best for her and that was not me. My roommate decided she was moving in with her boyfriend and J- was breaking my heart with the antics. I decided to sell my half for some nominal amount to J-, endorse all the clients to him, and then go backpacking. So I did.

When I was in Prague, the HR lady at S-.org wrote to me saying they were going with my plan and hiring someone. They trusted me and asked if I would do it. I was running out of money so I was very grateful. I asked why they weren't staying with A- & W-, Inc. (I'm the second father, she was my baby, I wanted her to thrive). They said that A- "didn't ingratiate himself with the staff". I said OK. I relayed this to J- to make sure I wasn't crossing any lines (see, I do follow rules when they matter). La la la.

Life became amazing. I had money, benefits I doubt I will ever find again, and 4 weeks paid vacation to start. I had an office with a window and I ordered Kandinsky prints. Soon enough, though, I threw all this away. You know I'm a wildcard but not everyone does. When I'm good I'm the best. When I'm not, I'm pretty fucking bad. So, because we had a USAID grant and I had selfishly violated one of the terms of the grant, I was given unemployment. That was 405 dollars a week. When 9.11 happened, GWB extended it for a year. Then a friend in NYC invited me to a birthday party in Biarritz. I told him I would go. Z- told him I wouldn't be able to make it. I can't tolerate when people who love me speak for me. That made me all the more sure I was going. It was insane. I was nearly homeless in San Francisco and somehow richocheted from NYC to CGD to the train to Biarritz. On the train, I met Sophie Russo. She became my lover. She was the daughter of a doctor and his mistress in Paris, and had her own separate house on their estate in the good banlieu. St. Cloud or somewhere near, as I recall, was where they lived.

I worked it out so an old friend would deposit my unemployment checks, which were getting mailed to a Brooklyn address, and looked for a job in Paris. I didn't speak a word more than Bonjour when I landed. I suppose I also knew "maman" because it's in the first line of The Stranger, and other words that English has appropriated. Still, it was rough. I was taking morphine sulphate and drinking a lot. I met G- at a party at kilometerzero.org. She and I knew each other from as soon as we met. It was pretty beautiful. My friend Samuel was staying with me from Stockholm, and I made him take a walk. There you have it.

I came back to the US to try to round up some more money, and then left again for Paris with no intention of returning. The movie Bowling for Columbine and a comment that my friend Ch- made sort of led me to understand that I was nauseated by a lot of Americana. G- & I paid the security and all that but couldn't move in until the beginning of the month. We went to the UK to wait at her parents' house in Lincolnshire. When we were there, her father sort of talked to her and it did become clear that France was a big challenge and even though I'd be illegal if I stayed on my course (which I did), I would be better off finding work in a country that spoke English. So we moved to London, then Nottingham. I worked in kitchens and also did independent consulting where I would send and invoice and the client would send me a check. No UK Customs & Excise was necessary. I did, though, go to them and explain my predicament, the element of true love, and they gave me an official looking paper that explained to prospective employers that it wasn't on them to provide a National Insurance number (the UK equiv of an SS number), and used TN01061978M for a temporary number. It was all pretty beautiful.

Later, though, G- looked at me one night and said, "why don't we go to the U.S. and get married, live there for a while, and you can make a living easier?" I asked, "can we get married in Vegas?" She replied, "that's what I wanted to do!" So you see, there's a screw for every nut!

We did so, I got hired on the phone on a Thursday and the job wanted me to start that Monday. I took everything I could on the plane, told G- it was underway and to bring everything she could in two weeks. She did. I worked at Pep Boys HQ during their rollout of a new Point-Of-Sale system sort of covering what was not covered. Ever since I saw Pulp Fiction and heard the lines,

Jules: "You're sendin' The Wolf?"
Marsellus: "Feel better, Motherfucker?"
Jules: "Sheeeit, Negro! That's all you had to say!"

I've wanted to be "The Wolf". When I'm good, I'm almost that reassuring. Usually, I'm more of a liability. As the Wolf, I did the Pep Boys' project and got hired at H--I.com as the Network Manager. G- was living with me in South Philly. We were doing what we wanted to do, living the dream and all of that. There are three reasons why she went back to England:

1. She had a plane ticket to go visit
2. She was very lonely and I worked all the time
3. A more personal one that I'm not comfortable disclosing really

So, she went to England. I went to South Florida. She told me she wasn't coming back. I stayed in Miami. I lived there at 820 Ocean Drive for a year. Then I came back to Philadelphia and stayed in a 5 bedroom my friend owned that was empty to keep it "lived in" sort of and clean and secure. I was working as a waiter in Miami. In Philadelphia I caught up with an old friend, R-, and G- had been in England for a year and we agreed that it wasn't really working the way it was. She had a boyfriend that looks so much like me others have told me, "I guess G- has a 'type'!" and so I approved. He must be devilishly handsome, I thought.

R- had just passed the bar exam, became an attorney to practice in PA & NJ, and we lived together for the past two years until about 2 weeks ago today.

So there you have it. Warts and all, it's been the quick snapshot of what I've been up to. I've been other places and had other drama, but mostly I've found that so long as my heart is pure and my mind is clear life works out for me. When my head isn't clear and I'm up to no good it doesn't. As such, I'd say that so long as your motives are good and you use counsel, strategy and perserverance coupled with faith, your own situation is bound to work out. No matter what, "there's always a hole somewhere" (a sort of IT phrase regarding security). I do feel for you and do not believe it is in your own, your man's, or your childrens' interests to be paying to have the US interfere with something much older and more natural than federal governance, but I'm deviating from the sentence I want to give you:

It'll work out; be sure of that.

Dreams June 11, 2011

2011-07-04T15:34:00.000-04:00

Dreams of St. Albans:

On an airplane to Indiana. Near Alabama (Baton Rouge I say). The pilot asks me questions. A beautiful girl is being abused, harrassed by some fuck. I tell him to chill, he takes offense. It escalates. I ask him if he reads USA Today. He says, “He's an asshole, not an idiot”.

...Walking through a bizarre, like somewhere in Morocco with Jason Charles. He talks about money; investment stuff, not real money.

Finally we get to his ride: a silver motorcycle. He rides us on absurd dangerous trails, highways in the sky, icy, covered in ice past wreckage and bodies.

I ask him to cut the threads from my teeth. He does at two separate places. One is a public bathroom.

We park and descend through a scaffold of paths fraught with danger. Two or three pairs of pants fall from guys who dissolve. Some sort of reagent or acid.

In NYC he says he lives at the end of the #2 train. We end up in an imaginary place I dream of. St. Alban's park area. This is a place that appears in many of my dreams. I look for alprazolam in my coat. There are russians in a NYC apartment. It feels so familiar. The St. Albans park is familiar. Just outside Manhattan, in Queens.

Somniculosa

2011-06-30T09:20:00.002-04:00

A long time ago, or maybe not so long ago, there was a sad boy. He grew up into a sad man. No one ever wants this. No one but sad people ever want it for the people they like the least. He spent his days without talking to people, his nights without looking at stars. The only thing that he looked forwards to was sleep. Sleep was as close to happiness as he could find. The world went away, and he went away with it.

It wasn't so simple, though. For he would dream. The dreams he had made his sleep broken and uneasy. Mornings came and he couldn't hide in sleep. By the time mornings came, he'd usually been shaken from the dark hideaway that the sleep was by the dreams which haunted that sleep. He dreamt of everything from falling into autumn valleys from high places, even being so small that he was tossed from a car on a bridge to being imprisoned in strange facilities of his psyche where he was kept by inabilities. Dreams where he did wrong and wasn't found out and dreams where he had done no wrong but was prosecuted were equally effective in upsetting him.

When he woke though, the regularity of the sadness was perhaps more cruel. He felt the life slipping from him, moment by moment, hour by hour. While the idea of killing himself, finding that ultimate sleep had crossed his mind, he never fully engaged it. It would come just as quickly as a morning on the scales of time he framed it all in. There was no need to rush something so permanent. What he knew was that something would give. Something had to give. If it was he that was to break, his mind to fissure and crumble, or his body to die a slow and wretched cancerous death or a fast and merciful heart attack or fatal stroke, then so be it. Otherwise, the universe would make room for him and he would be free.

What made him sick was the feeling of inability that plagued him. He was, in all likelihood, more than able, but he felt unable to extricate himself from his misery and death. Sometimes he read a story, a play, or watched a film that lit a light inside, that moved him to want more. He looked around him when he was forced to go outside and saw not much more than zombies of the modern age. Sure, he was a pessimist, but there was a reason. He couldn't rightly see that the status quo was anything but tragic. Even the games he played and the projects he took on for the sake of feeling like he was doing something were empty. He did it for someone else. It wasn't what he wanted, and it scared him.

Maybe he was losing the ability to want. Not in some enlightened buddhist way, but in a very sick way. To not want, never to be excited, never to feel alive were the characteristics of this loss. Even when he lived on heroin in England, his skin was pale, but there was something ghostly about him now. Like the scene in Back to the Future when Marty McFly is disappearing. That half-wayness of it all added to the unbearable weight of it all. He did retain a desire, though. One desire he knew, that he kept, that he would not be stripped of was to return to the light and levity that he once lived.

All that seriousness and certainty with which nearly everyone he knew ordered their lives would make him smirk. He knew, maybe all he knew, was that the universe was a joke, a blag, and that whatever was going to happen would or wouldn't and there wasn't much point in worrying about it. Thinking this way, he found himself starting a company that was presented as an offer to him. Knowing these things he found love and the beauty of New York when one is young and June comes. He loved planes. He loved the idea that one could buy tickets to other realities.

Sure, it was the same planet and the same people, but it was all different and, truthfully, at least to him, the priorities with which the people lived, while generally oriented the same, were different when it mattered. It mattered most when it came to relating. The way men & women looked at, spoke to, and handled each other. The way strangers did. The way that friends and the ways that colleagues regarded each other. They were different than in America. That was real.

The thought that any given telephone wire was there for as long as he was, give or take, and would be along after he was, give or take, was profound to him. It made him realize that the world, life, reality didn't need him. Extending this to the cosmos led directly to a more fundamental redux, but no one ever wanted to talk about that because there didn't seem to be much to talk about to them. Not to him. That was what was worth talking about more than anything else. It was all a comedy. Or a tragedy. Or both or fuck all.

This is what he missed. Men had all sorts of advice they were prone to give. He tolerated a lot of it, and had learned to entertain it. Maybe he didn't understand life. Maybe he did. Maybe that can't be absolutely determined.

There was a limit to how much he could sleep. One day he would feel so rested, he would not be able to stand still. Maybe on that day greater things would come to pass.

As June Ends, & Primavera Passes, the Summer Baiser is Laid Upon Us

2011-06-28T13:55:00.000-04:00

Voyage au Delaware pour l'achat de cigarettes

2011-06-27T07:49:00.002-04:00

Waking Up Early

2011-06-24T04:34:00.001-04:00

Those witching hours before dawn, from around 3:30 to 5:30 are the ones made for me. I go to sleep when I can, but naturally, without sedative or weights of depression, I awake from wicked dreams to the quiet hour when I can own the time. Last night's dreams were of being somehow stranded on some South Pacific island named “Christmas” Island, where the people were all perversely rich and had a way of speaking, not just the accent but the dialect was so polite that it was impossible to be sincere. I broke some precariously set advert for something or other, an ad that was paper placed in a glass platform on my table.

The service was like bad service in France, or in a cafe in Italy where you have to pay for things you don't expect to persons you don't expect in methods you don't intuit. After I threw this glass thing on the floor, smashing it, I walked out, a direction I felt was East, but it's an island and you can only go so far.

I found myself at a squat inhabited by rough fucks, and my girlfriend who shifted between the longer relationships in my life, was worried because I had disappeared for days. I felt bad for leaving her in the rough, but any of my girlfriends would have been able to take care of themselves well enough. The one that maybe wouldn't, though I can't tell, then appears. The lesser imp daemon Evile walked me up a street on this island where things were beautiful. There was something I meant to mail her but she wouldn't give me an address. So I figured I would mail it to the general area and if it got there, great.

I'd done this before. When I was in prison in Brixton, I mailed University of Edinburgh, the Russian dept. I think and they pinned my letter up on a bulletin board. The recipient found it. That was a good bit of luck. There's something special about throwing a message into a bottle and tossing it in the water.

So I'm still stuck on this island until I hear “Shhh!” and I wake up. I can't tell if my girlfriend woke me up because I was snoring and bothering her or if I dreamt that part. At least I wasn't angry. There have been instances where I dreamt something and woke up and was so angry because the in the dream the girl did something horrible and I didn't separate the dream from reality. It was unfair, and I later felt bad, but it takes some doing to get from being angry to feeling bad. It's a natural progression, perhaps, but not without some work when you wake up and have to separate your suspicions, your dream, and reality in bed at the time.

I try to go back to sleep, but it doesn't work. I pull myself together and press the coffee button. Then, my time to set my mind is go. These hours are so dark and beautiful. So eerie and quiet. My favorite time of day.

On the Way to the CAO 10th St

2011-06-24T03:52:00.000-04:00

Recipe For the Editor to Remove

2011-06-22T17:43:00.000-04:00

I didn't mean to number these.
But since they are numbered
I'm just going with it.
I think that probably
Loving yourself is more important
and also requisite
To any other desires one might have
For being loved.
And for being able to truly love
Another in ways I might aspire to.

Regular Podcast for Ut Supra Infra of Joshuan Enterprises, NLC.

2011-06-19T12:27:00.000-04:00

Reader,

Please go to the new podcast index site, where you can play individual episodes in page or subscribe so that you can be edified by my audio aesthetics on your subterranean, interstate highway, and suburban traffic commutes. By no means are these created with the commute in mind, and you'd be just as well or better served in listening at work or at home. Depending on the nature of the particular recording, it could serve as the background for any type of evening: amorous, cryptanalytical, dressed-up-and-nowhere-to-go, drunken, junken, or just plain plain, while you code, while you stitch, while you read, while you shower, while you cook, paint, or ritualize.

Track listings will be available on the site until I figure out how to tag the tracks in the podcast with art and all (i know it's possible, I've seen it), and after, but please tolerate the inconvenience until that is sorted. If you know how to do, then let me know how to do.

http://whattheuniverseisin.blogspot.com/ -- this is the aforementioned index.

What is the universe -IN- I ask. I've asked many, and got not much more than the same old answer that the universe is what stuff is in, not the other way around. Barbarians, I say.

Use it, twatnauts.

2011-06-14T11:09:00.006-04:00

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (BloodSeed)
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=f65r

-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Ornery

2011-05-20T14:51:00.000-04:00

Feel like slapping some mish. Making it all red. Tying up some schej and making sport of it all. Can't blame me, now, can you? Even if you did, I would go upside your head with a slap. That slap could be better invested, as aforementioned, so blame me if you want to. The manishie is almost of assertive appeal, but missing that decidedly appealing decisiveness. Wingy, too quick to give up. Make a man want it, or it just won't be wanted.

Wish I could focus this caffeination on something good, like an iOS app or the development of ObjC/Java doolala. Instead I write this note, which even in ten years will read irrelevance and impertinence. Slap***

Kryptos

2011-05-19T15:34:00.000-04:00

This is something I've been working on. Truly, I haven't been working on it enough, but I'm collecting bits of information that do not require assumptions. "Facts" I suppose, though I'm always wary of "facts" because "facts" != truth. We know that the blue marked NVPVTT is plaintext BERLIN (at some point, at least, and in some way, at least) and we know this from Sanborn himself. I also venture that the R in the ciphertext at the end may represent punctuation, as it has done in the previous ciphertext blocs. Any ideas or approaches are more than welcome.

My Music Library as of May 2011

2011-05-15T15:49:00.000-04:00

Blur	13
The Smiths	1985-03-18: Same Day Again: Apollo Theatre, Oxford, UK
The Smiths	1986-08-28: Thank Your Lucky Stars: Irvine Meadows, Laguna Hills, CA, USA
The Music Tapes	1st Imaginary Symphony for Nomad
Bright Eyes	3 More Hit Songs From Bright Eyes
Bright Eyes	3 New Hit Songs
Blind Pilot	3 Rounds and a Sound
Wolf Parade	4 Song EP
The Magnetic Fields	69 Love Songs (disc 1)
The Magnetic Fields	69 Love Songs (disc 2)
The Magnetic Fields	69 Love Songs (disc 3)
The Joy Formidable	A Balloon Called Moaning
Bright Eyes	A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997
Bruce Peninsula	A Mountain Is a Mouth
Terry Riley	A Rainbow in Curved Air
Uyama Hiroto	A Son of the Sun
Brian Seymour	A Thousand Tarzans
Various Artists	A Tribute To Joni Mitchell
The Beatles	Abbey Road
Artist	Album
Girls	Album
Johnny Cash	All Aboard The Blue Train
All About Eve	All About Eve
Godspeed You! Black Emperor	All Lights Fucked On The Hairy Amp Drooling
LCD Soundsystem	All My Friends
Henry Mancini	All Time Greatest Hits Volume I
Brian Eno	Ambient 1: Music for Airports
Harold Budd/Brian Eno	Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror
Laraaji	Ambient 3: Day of Radiance
Brian Eno	Ambient 4: On Land
Johnny Cash	American IV: The Man Comes Around
Editors	An End Has A Start
Tunng	And Then We Saw Land
Wolf Parade	Apologies to the Queen Mary
Arcade Fire	Arcade Fire
Andrew Bird	Armchair Apocrypha
Surfer Blood	Astro Coast
Johnny Cash	At Folsom Prison
Wolf Parade	At Mount Zoomer
The Flaming Lips	At War With the Mystics
Arcade Fire	B-Sides (18 rarities)
Modest Mouse	Baron von Bullshit Rides Again
Annuals	Be He Me
Beaux Animaux	Beautiful Animals
Neutral Milk Hotel	Beauty
Dirty Projectors	Bitte Orca
Muse	Black Holes and Revelations
Muse	Black Holes And Revelations
Johnny Cash	Blood Sweat & Tears
John Coltrane	Blue Train
Blur	Blur
Morrissey	Bona Drag
Tom Waits	Bone Machine
The Cult	Born Into This
The Cult	Born Into This (bonus disc)
Pixies	Bossanova
Tom Waits	Bounced Checks
Bright Eyes	Bright Eyes vs. Her Space Holiday
Her Space Holiday	Bright Eyes vs. Her Space Holiday
Thelonious Monk	Brilliant Corners
Broken Bells	Broken Bells
Wes Montgomery	California Dreaming
Tennis	Cape Dory
Bright Eyes	Cassadaga
Toro y Moi	Causers of This
The Cult	Ceremony
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah	Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Tom Waits	Closing Time
The Flaming Lips	Clouds Taste Metallic
Clues	Clues
Arcade Fire	Cold Wind / Brazil
The Album Leaf & Bright Eyes	Collaboration Series, Number 1
Pixies	Complete ‘B’ Sides
Joni Mitchell	Court and Spark
Screamin' Jay Hawkins	Cow Fingers and Mosquito Pie
Crystal Castles	Crystal Castles
Crystal Castles vs. HEALTH	Crystal Castles
The White Stripes	De Stijl
The Golden Palominos	Dead Inside
Pixies	Death to the Pixies
Pixies	Death To The Pixies Cd 2
Rolfe Kent	Dexter demo
Pulp	Different Class
Bright Eyes	Digital Ash in a Digital Urn
The Mountain Goats	Dilaudid
Sparklehorse	Distorted Ghost [ep]
The Magnetic Fields	Distortion
Bright Eyes	Don't Be Frightened of Turning the Page
Billy Bragg	Don't Try This at Home
Pixies	Doolittle
Sparklehorse	Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain
The Cult	Dreamtime: Live at the Lyceum
Duke Ellington & John Coltrane	Duke Ellington & John Coltrane
Gogol Bordello	East Infection
Howard Shore	Ed Wood
The Cult	Electric
The White Stripes	Elephant
Beirut	Elephant Gun
Malajube	Étienne d'août
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone	Etiquette
Bright Eyes	Every Day and Every Night
Neutral Milk Hotel	Everything Is
Modest Mouse	Everywhere and His Nasty Parlour Tricks
Sonny Lester & The Sonny Lester Orchestra	Exotica
Think About Life	Family
Fang Island	Fang Island
The Lovely Feathers	Fantasy of the Lot
Andrew Bird	Fingerlings 3
Bright Eyes	First Day of My Life
Bon Iver	For Emma, Forever Ago
Twin Shadow	Forget
Bright Eyes	Four Winds
Tom Waits	Franks Wild Years
Screamin' Jay Hawkins	Frenzy
Arcade Fire	Funeral
Thelonious Monk	Genius of Modern Music, Volume 1
Thelonious Monk	Genius of Modern Music, Volume 2
The White Stripes	Get Behind Me Satan
The Magnetic Fields	Get Lost
Death Cult	Ghost Dance
John Coltrane	Giant Steps
The Clash	Give 'Em Enough Rope
The Postal Service	Give Up
Tunng	Good Arrows
Sparklehorse	Good Morning Spider
Modest Mouse	Good News for People Who Love Bad News
Beirut	Gulag Orkestar
Gogol Bordello	Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike
The Smiths	Hatful of Hollow
Tom Waits	Heartattack and Vine
Billy Bragg	Help Save the Youth of America
The Lovely Feathers	Hind Hind Legs
Serge Gainsbourg	Histoire de Melody Nelson
The Magnetic Fields	Holiday
The Rural Alberta Advantage	Hometowns
The Antlers	Hospice
The 6ths	Hyacinths and Thistles
The Magnetic Fields	i
Menomena	I Am the Fun Blame Monster
Screamin' Jay Hawkins	I Put a Spell on You
Johnny Cash	I Walk the Line
Bright Eyes	I'm Wide Awake It's Morning
Miles Davis	In a Silent Way
Radiohead	In Rainbows
Radiohead	In Rainbows (bonus disc)
Neutral Milk Hotel	In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
The Antlers	In the Attic of the Universe
Chromatics	In The City 12"
Editors	In This Light And On This Evening
Tame Impala	Innerspeaker
Modest Mouse	Interstate 8
INXS	INXS
Sparklehorse	It's a Wonderful Life
White Rabbits	It's Frightening
The Chameleons	John Peel Sessions
The Helio Sequence	Keep Your Eyes Ahead
INXS	Kick
Bill Hoover	Kill the Monster Before it Eats Baby
Conor Oberst	Kill the Monster Before it Eats Baby
Miles Davis	Kind of Blue
Robert Johnson	King of the Delta Blues Singers
Robert Johnson	King of the Delta Blues Singers, Volume 2
The Stranglers	La Folie
Malajube	Labyrinthes
Malajube	Le Compte complet
Sea Wolf	Leaves in the River
Karkwa	Les Chemins de verre
The Rolling Stones	Let It Bleed
Bright Eyes	Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground
The Walkmen	Lisbon
Jeff Mangum	Live at Jittery Joe's
The Kinks	Live at Kelvin Hall
The Cult	Live Marquee London MCMXCI (disc 1)
The Cult	Live Marquee London MCMXCI (disc 2)
P.S. Eliot	Living in Squalor
The Clash	London Calling
The Clash	London Calling (bonus disc: The Vanilla Tapes)
The Smiths	Louder Than Bombs
The Cult	Love
Ratatat	LP4
Bright Eyes	Lua
Major Organ and the Adding Machine	Major Organ and the Adding Machine
Beirut	March of the Zapotec / Holland (disc 1: March of the Zapotec)
Realpeople	March of the Zapotec / Holland (disc 2: Holland)
The Smiths	Meat Is Murder
Animal Collective	Merriweather Post Pavilion
Menomena	Mines
Charles Mingus	Mingus Ah Um
Gogol Bordello	Multi Kontra Culti vs. Irony
Steve Reich	Music For 18 Musicians
The Music Tapes	Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes
Harvey Milk	My Love Is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be
[dialogue]	My Name Is Earl: The Album
Jerry Reed	My Name Is Earl: The Album
John Hiatt	My Name Is Earl: The Album
Los Lobos	My Name Is Earl: The Album
Lynyrd Skynyrd	My Name Is Earl: The Album
Matthew Sweet	My Name Is Earl: The Album
Nescobar-A-Lop-Lop and the Camden County Band	My Name Is Earl: The Album
Nilsson	My Name Is Earl: The Album
Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock	My Name Is Earl: The Album
Sammy Davis Jr.	My Name Is Earl: The Album
Uncle Kracker	My Name Is Earl: The Album
Van Nuys	My Name Is Earl: The Album
Young MC	My Name Is Earl: The Album
Johnny Cash & Bob Dylan	Nashville Sessions
Braids	Native Speaker
Arcade Fire	Neon Bible
Chromatics	Night Drive
We Are Wolves	Non-Stop Je Te Plie en Deux
Yeasayer	Odd Blood
Jacques Brel	Olympia 64
Neutral Milk Hotel	On Avery Island
Candy Bars	On Cutting Ti-Gers in Half and Understanding Narravation
Galaxie 500	On Fire
Muse	Origin of Symmetry
Muse	Origin Of Symmetry
Tom Waits	Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards Disc 1
Tom Waits	Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards Disc 2
Tom Waits	Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards Disc 3
Iron & Wine	Our Endless Numbered Days
Pale Young Gentlemen	Pale Young Gentlemen
Plants and Animals	Parc Avenue
Maps & Atlases	Perch Patchwork
Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin	Pershing
Aphex Twin	Pi
Autechre	Pi
Banco de Gaia	Pi
Clint Mansell	Pi
David Holmes	Pi
GusGus	Pi
Massive Attack	Pi
Orbital	Pi
Psilonaut	Pi
Roni Size	Pi
Spacetime Continuum	Pi
The Decemberists	Picaresque
Pierre Lapointe	Pierre Lapointe
Pixies	Pixies
Pixies	Pixies at the BBC
Girls in Hawaii	Plan Your Escape
Phil Ochs	Pleasures Of The Harbor
Beirut	Pompeii
Wes Montgomery	Portrait of Wes
The Legendary Pink Dots	Prayer for Aradia
The Golden Palominos	Pure (1994) Lori Carson
The Cult	Pure Cult: The Singles 1984-1995
Man Man	Rabbit Habits
Tom Waits	Rain Dogs
Sunset Rubdown	Random Spirit Lover
The Magnetic Fields	Realism
Islands	Return to the Sea
Tangerine Dream	Rubycon
Modest Mouse	Sad Sappy Sucker
Gang Gang Dance	Saint Dymphna
Johnny Cash	San Quentin
Aphex Twin	Selected Ambient Works, Volume II (disc 1)
Aphex Twin	Selected Ambient Works, Volume II (disc 2)
Ugly Casanova	Sharpen Your Teeth
Sunset Rubdown	Shut Up I Am Dreaming
The Knife	Silent Shout
The Knife	Silent Shout (bonus disc: An Audiovisual Experience)
Man Man	Single
Liars	Sisterworld - Watermarked
Man Man	Six Demon Bag
Blackout Beach	Skin of Evil
Godspeed You! Black Emperor	Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada [EP]
Sunset Rubdown	Snake's Got a Leg
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah	Some Loud Thunder
Regina Spektor	Soviet Kitsch
Nicolas Jaar	Space Is Only Noise
The Rolling Stones	Sticky Fingers
The Smiths	Strangeways, Here We Come
Joy Division	Substance
Annuals	Such Fun
Sunset Rubdown	Sunset Rubdown
Gogol Bordello	Super Taranta!
Pixies	Surfer Rosa / Come On Pilgrim
The Smiths	Sweet and Tender Hooligan
French Kicks	Swimming
Tom Waits	Swordfishtrombones
Bright Eyes	Take It Easy (Love Nothing)
Bobby Summers	Take It Off! Striptease Classics
David Rose and His Concert Orchestra	Take It Off! Striptease Classics
Sonny Lester, His Orchestra & Chorus	Take It Off! Striptease Classics
The Genteels	Take It Off! Striptease Classics
The Morning Benders	Talking Through Tin Cans
Billy Bragg	Talking With the Taxman About Poetry
Harlem Shakes	Technicolor Health
Beach House	Teen Dream
Miniature Tigers	Tell It To The Volcano
Titus Andronicus	The Airing of Grievances
Bette Midler/Tom Waits	The Asylum Years
Tom Waits	The Asylum Years
Editors	The Back Room
???? ????? ??????????	The Ballets (London Symphony Orchestra feat. conductor: André Previn) (disc 2)
The Gerbils	The Battle of Electricity
The Magnetic Fields	The Charm of the Highway Strip
The Clash	The Clash (U.K.)
The Cult	The Cult
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti	The Doldrums
Tom Waits	The Early Years, Vol. 1
Tom Waits	The Early Years, Vol. 2
Beirut	The Flying Club Cup
Modest Mouse	The Fruit That Ate Itself
The Good, The Bad & The Queen	The Good, The Bad & The Queen
Dave Grusin	The Graduate
Simon & Garfunkel	The Graduate
The Magnetic Fields	The House of Tomorrow
Billy Bragg	The Internationale
Desmond Dekker	The Israelites (Best Of)
Radiohead	The King of Limbs
Man Man	The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face
Titus Andronicus	The Monitor
Modest Mouse	The Moon & Antarctica
Andrew Bird	The Mysterious Production of Eggs
Harold Budd/Brian Eno	The Pearl
The Smiths	The Peel Session
Bright Eyes	The People's Key
The Smiths	The Queen Is Dead
The Stranglers	The Raven
Iron & Wine	The Shepherd's Dog
The Smiths	The Smiths
The Flaming Lips	The Soft Bulletin
The Southern Death Cult	The Southern Death Cult
Arcade Fire	The Suburbs
The Mountain Goats	The Sunset Tree
French Kicks	The Trial of the Century
Cursive	The Ugly Organ
The Unicorns	The Unicorns: 2014
The Magnetic Fields	The Wayward Bus / Distant Plastic Trees
The White Stripes	The White Stripes
Bright Eyes	There Is No Beginning to the Story EP
Modest Mouse	This Is a Long Drive for Someone With Nothing to Think About
LCD Soundsystem	This Is Happening
Pulp	This Is Hardcore
Galaxie 500	This Is Our Music
Horse Feathers	Thistled Spring
The Unicorns	Three Inches of Blood
Galaxie 500	Today
The Flaming Lips	Transmissions From the Satellite Heart
Pixies	Trompe le Monde
Malajube	Trompe-l'œil
The Unicorns	Unicorns Are People Too
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros	Up from Below
Sparklehorse	Viva Dixie Submarine Transmission Plot
Morrissey	Viva Hate
Gogol Bordello	Voi-La Intruder
Pixies	Wave of Mutilation: Best of Pixies
Pulp	We Love Life
Modest Mouse	We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
Man Man	Weeds Covers Season 3
The White Stripes	White Blood Cells
The Velvet Underground	White Light/White Heat
The Unicorns	Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?
Cymbals Eat Guitars	Why There Are Mountains
Johnny Cash	With His Hot And Blue Guitar
Wolf Parade	Wolf Parade
The xx	xx
The Flaming Lips	Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
The Flaming Lips	Zaireeka (Disc Sync)

I Want to Be Fired into Space (at a Promising Target, Of Course)

2011-05-15T13:38:00.000-04:00

What am I? I look on the street and see the cement in the sidewalks and the trash receptacles and the lamps for the night and think, “This is modern man.” Except it's only a sliver of a spectrum of cultures. That spectrum, though, only varies so much. We're all primates, and while our cultures frame our experiences, we all have similar if not the same sensory experiences. All we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste is phenomenologically processed and categorized by our minds. What then, of me, when I'm aware of this process? When I look at all the architecture in Philadelphia and my heart sinks. Why does it depress me? The people on the street are so sure of things. Family, loyalty, justice, god, etc. are all terms they're comfortable speaking authoritatively on. Never mind the priests who are comfortable to take a role in representing god. It all makes my mind spin.

I have a harder time imagining a universe that spontaneously exists than one spawned by some entity, but the rest, the details are uncertain. Surely any entity, any author of the universe, a god should be amused by the antics of man.

When I hear or see articles labeled “natural” or behaviors such as homosexual sodomy described as “unnatural”, or, as I have, encounter stories of technologies or practices “destroying nature”, I have to ask, “Isn't it all natural?” I mean, nature doesn't guarantee the survival of humans or the preservation of the planet. In fact, for at least the latter, I'd say what we understand indicates the opposite, that this planet is not going to last forever. We as a species may be doing ourselves in with our opposable thumbs and big brains, our technologies and even our agriculture. There are too many of us, and when this happens in “nature” there is often an event which serves to cull and restore the balance of life and the resources that life requires to perpetuate itself.

So, not to be apocalyptically whooped-up, or pessimistic, but to regard all of this with a sound perspective, I have to consider what it means. Should I have children? It doesn't appear that we, as a species, need that. However, I'm asking the question while others are out there breeding like rabbits. Humbly, I have to consider that those like myself who ask the questions are going to be outbred by those who just assume it's “natural” and god wants them to “go forth and multiply”. By my own logic, perhaps that's natural. Where does it leave me, though? Am I to learn to love the bomb?

I can end up giving myself a headache. Taking a page from Lucretius and friends I've met along the way, I can set myself to enjoyment in life. High thread count sheets, beautiful women, nice socks, travel, art, music, and let the world rot itself. I wish it were more easy for me to do that though. It's not easy for me.

So when I say, as I have, that I'd be willing to have myself fired into space alive, knowing full well that I'd not survive the journey, perhaps taking an agent to stop my heart at the same time the cold of space quickly preserves my body, with a full set of documentation in video and sound interfaces, so that, on the off chance I should ever be found (my interstellar sarcophagus should emit radio, laserlight, and other announcing indicators to draw attention) I could be reanimated if the technology exists (perhaps we have that technology, space is, depending where in space, quite cold), I'm dead serious. I'd do it next year, or any year when I had a year to prepare for it. I'd do it for man, to meet god, and for myself. Would you?

Transcript 2010-2011

2011-05-11T14:40:00.000-04:00

Time for a Commercial Break for Our Sponsors (me).

2011-05-10T12:08:00.002-04:00

make custom gifts at Zazzle

Crappy Mic Test... This is One of My Missions

2011-05-08T19:55:00.000-04:00

Tosca in PHL

2011-05-08T18:16:00.000-04:00

Tracks I am said to say or have said I love or have loved at one time or another:

2011-05-07T20:50:00.000-04:00

La piqûre - Karkwa
You Can't Always Get What You Want - The Rolling Stones
I Wish I Had an Evil Twin - The Magnetic Fields
La Folie - The Stranglers
Scattered Pearls - Casiotone for the Painfully Alone
All the Umbrellas in London - The Magnetic Fields
Swan Lake: Act II. No. 14 Scène - Пётр Ильич Чайковский
It's A Wonderful Life - Sparklehorse
Lovely Day - Pixies
The flood in your old town - Candy Bars
Manta Ray - Pixies
You Are a Runner and I Am My Father's Son - Wolf Parade
Singapore - Tom Waits
Bitties in the BK Lounge - De La Soul
Instant Karma - John Hiatt
Kisses Over Babylon - Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros
Ghost - Neutral Milk Hotel
A Shot In The Dark - Henry Mancini
1-2. Rachmaninov All-Night Vigil, 'Vespers' - Bless The Lord, O My Soull E. Wimeri - E. Wimeri, Finnish National Opera Chorus
Swallow - My Bloody Valentine
Cowbell - Tapes 'n Tapes
Dance Yrself Clean - LCD Soundsystem
Drunk Girls - LCD Soundsystem
Jus De Canneberges - Malajube
What Dogs See - Cymbals Eat Guitars
Hand-Me-Downs - Soul Position
I Was Born (A Unicorn) - The Unicorns
Comfort Eagle - CAKE
Hysteric - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Swans (Life After Death) - Islands
Gone Daddy Gone - Violent Femmes
Red Moon - The Walkmen
Black Cadillacs - Modest Mouse
Cleanse Song - Bright Eyes
Take It Easy - Surfer Blood
What We Had - Handsome Furs
Three Peaches - Neutral Milk Hotel
Commander Riker's Party - Think About Life
Treats - Sleigh Bells
In the Summertime - The Rural Alberta Advantage
Try - Colourmusic
Add It Up - Violent Femmes
Education - Modest Mouse
Joset of Nazareth's Blues - Titus Andronicus
The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Marching Theme - Neutral Milk Hotel
Lover I Don't Have to Love - Bright Eyes
Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts - Wolf Parade
Me And My Hand - Broken Social Scene
Spanish Gold, 2044 - Swan Lake
Handsome Furs Hate This City - Handsome Furs
Satan Said Dance - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Nature Springs - The Good, the Bad & the Queen
Cans - Tunng
Don't Haunt This Place - The Rural Alberta Advantage
The Deadroads - The Rural Alberta Advantage
White Light/White Heat - The Velvet Underground
Teeth in the Grass - Iron & Wine
Suco De Tangerina - Beastie Boys
Ode To Sunshine - Delta Spirit
English House - Fleet Foxes
Albert Camus - Titus Andronicus
The Gleam Pt. 2 - The Microphones
Let's Dance To Joy Division - The Wombats
A Bugged In Selection By Erol Alkan - Erol Alkan
Tessellate - Tokyo Police Club
Rabbit Habits - Man Man
clap your hands - Pale Young Gentlemen
Remember Severed Head - Clues
Left Foot Stepdown - The Bees
Anne Elephant - Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
(I'm A) Donkey For Your Love - BOAT
Railroad Man - Eels
March Into The Sea - Modest Mouse
Kiss Me Like You Mean It - The Magnetic Fields
Elope - Clues
Cannibal Resource - Dirty Projectors
Cave Mouth - Clues
Haarp - Clues
Two Characters in Search of a Country Song - The Magnetic Fields
Le Ruse - Tapes 'n Tapes
Healer - Chromatics
Volcanoes - Islands
Park Song - The Dodos
Shine a Light - Wolf Parade
Heavy Metal - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Stay Positive - The Hold Steady
Whalebones - Man Man
The District Sleeps Alone Tonight - The Postal Service
Mr. Soul - Neil Young
I'm Not Asleep - Vivian Girls
dropz - Peter Nalitch
Requiem - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Stop Breakin' Down Blues - Robert Johnson
Fields Are Breathing - Black Moth Super Rainbow
Gloria In Excelsis Deo - Antonio Vivaldi
Wanted Man (Live) - Johnny Cash
Hungarian Dance No. 5 - Johannes Brahms
The Maestro - Beastie Boys
Over and Over Again (Lost and Found) - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
The World at Large - Modest Mouse
Haunted Graffiti - Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
The Blue Danube - Johann Strauss II
No One Knows - Queens of the Stone Age
Someday Speaks Loudly - Colourmusic
Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) - Nancy Sinatra
Kiss Kiss Is Getting Old - Les Savy Fav
Willow Tree - Chad VanGaalen
80's Life - The Good, the Bad & the Queen
Running Up That Hill - Chromatics
Young Shields - Casiotone for the Painfully Alone
TNT - Tortoise
Melody - Serge Gainsbourg
With the Lights Turned Down - Throw Me the Statue
Gigantic Transatlantic Trunk Call (Bonus Track) - A.C. Newman
Gin & Milk - Dirty Pretty Things
MKK3 - These New Puritans
Andante Festivo - Jean Sibelius
Epitaph For My Heart - The Magnetic Fields
Windsurfing Nation - Broken Social Scene
White Queen to Black Knight - Six Finger Satellite
Time to Get Away - LCD Soundsystem
Thunder & Lightning - The Unicorns
Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen
Dinner Bells - Wolf Parade
The Ballad Of Butter Beans - Man Man
As A War - Pale Young Gentlemen
Put in A Little Gas - Colourmusic
Violets - Candy Bars
Tsuxiit - Islands
The Passenger - Iggy Pop
Modern World - Wolf Parade
Bullets - Tunng
Mykonos - Fleet Foxes
Crows - Clues
Perfect Fit - Clues
You Have My Eyes Now - Clues
In the Dream - Clues
Approach the Throne - Clues
Jogging Gorgeous Summer - Islands
Body - Mother Mother
If I Were A Carp - Final Fantasy
Digital - Joy Division
Le voyage de Penelope - Air
Cassius - Foals
The Gospel Song - Colourmusic
Dignified and Old - The Modern Lovers
Time To Pretend - MGMT
Forgiveness - Yeasayer
Circles - Colourmusic
Dead City/Waste Wilderness - Abe Vigoda
Eyepennies - Sparklehorse
Chrome's On It - Telepathe
Scene 7: Air de Mephistopheles: `Voici des roses' - Hector Berlioz
High On A Hill - The Little Ones
Challenge - Japanther
My Night With the Prostitute from Marseille - Beirut
The Basque Country - Candy Bars
Seventy-Nine - Japanther
Oh! How The Dogs Stack Up - Mogwai
Allegro - Franz Joseph Haydn
Partie Traumatic - Black Kids
Future Reflections - MGMT
God? - The Dodos
Sinking Feeling - Mixel Pixel
Blackout! - The Cloud Room
Из ресторана - Peter Nalitch
Your Pretty Sphinx Voice - The Sour Notes
Bad Kids - Black Lips
All Night - Figurines
Red And Purple - The Dodos
Sunshine and Clouds (and Everything Proud) - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Humans - Islands
Looking Over My Shoulder - A Big Yes And A Small No
Cupid Always Misses (The Ba Ba Song) - The Muttering Retreats
What A Fucking Mess This Turned Out To Be - A Big Yes And A Small No
Claire, Are We Safe To Be On Our Own? - The Deirdres
2080 - Yeasayer
Allegory Gets Me Hot - Times New Viking
Faded Away - A Big Yes And A Small No
Upon Viewing Brueghel's "Landscape With The Fall of Icarus" - Titus Andronicus
Midnight And I - White Rabbits
Контрабанды - Мумий Тролль
Nightless Night - Husky Rescue
Herring Bone - Department of Eagles
Act III: Sull'aria - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro: Voi che sapete, che cosa e amor - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro: Overture - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Night Drive - Chromatics
Feedback in the Field - Plants and Animals
Is This Love? - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ - Titus Andronicus
Mind Traveler's Song - Univox
Pi - Univox
Ghost Under Rocks - Ra Ra Riot
Hospital - The Modern Lovers
Spring Song - Colourmusic
Mercy - Plants and Animals
Three Changes - The Good, the Bad & the Queen
Chicken Pox - I'm from Barcelona
Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
Poor Jackie - Man Man
Long-Forgotten Fairytale - The Magnetic Fields
At the Bottom of Everything - Bright Eyes
Rehab - Amy Winehouse
Crowd of Drifters - The Magnetic Fields
Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley
King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown - Augustus Pablo
The Movement of a Hand - Bright Eyes
Unforgettable Season - Cut Copy
A Simple Way to Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work - Tortoise
Creep - Radiohead
Honeybear - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Lua - Bright Eyes
Cloche - French Kicks
I'll Believe in Anything - Wolf Parade
Kingdom of Doom - The Good, the Bad & the Queen
String - Tunng
Ariel Ramirez - Richard Buckner
Major Label Debut - Broken Social Scene
Mask - Chromatics
Promise - Violent Femmes
I Heard It Through The Grapevine - The Slits
A Song for the Deaf - Queens of the Stone Age
The Hunger - The Cloud Room
Titus Andronicus - Titus Andronicus
I Believe in Symmetry - Bright Eyes
Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day) - Broken Social Scene
O Lazy Days - M. Ward
Jail Guitar Doors - The Clash
Down Boy - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Infinitely Late at Night - The Magnetic Fields
Arms - Tunng
Bodysnatchers - Radiohead
Blood On Our Hands (Justice Remix) - Death from Above 1979
Stairway to Heaven - Rodrigo y Gabriela
Us Ones in Between - Sunset Rubdown
Crosstown Traffic - Jimi Hendrix
Nimrod's Son - Pixies
The Spider And The Fly - Elf Power
Oh Comely - Neutral Milk Hotel
The Boxer - Simon & Garfunkel
Landlocked Blues - Bright Eyes
In Heaven/Where is My Mind? - Pixies
Passing Me By - The Pharcyde
Love Song No. 7 - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Dancing with Jean-Maurice (Album Version) - Les Pires
Guilty Rocks - múm
The Russian - The Bees
Veni Vidi Vici - Black Lips
B For My Name - Beastie Boys
El Condor Pasa (If I Could) - Simon & Garfunkel
Nude - Radiohead
Brazil - Arcade Fire
Neighborhood #2 (Laïka) - Arcade Fire
Everything Is - Neutral Milk Hotel
Wet And Rusting - Menomena
Bang Your Drum - Wolf Parade
Winter Windows - Sea Wolf
Why? - Andrew Bird
Tango Till They're Sore - Tom Waits
Lil' Red Riding Hood - Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs
Tight Fit - New Young Pony Club
Ice Cream - New Young Pony Club
In the Rushes - Islands
Abominable Snow - Islands
Missing Pieces - Voxtrot
Emasculate the Masculine - The Unicorns
Panis Et Circenses - Os Mutantes
No Cars Go - Arcade Fire
Right in the Head - M. Ward
The Captain - The Knife
Happy - The Wrens
Peel Back The Moon, Beware! - Elf Power
Everyday I Love You Less and Less - Kaiser Chiefs
Song for the Dead - Sea Wolf
Jumping Someone Else's Train - The Cure
Mama, Won't You Keep Those Castles In The Air And Burning? - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Shoplifters of the World Unite - The Smiths
If - Islands
Carry Around - Annuals
The Well and the Lighthouse - Arcade Fire
The Truth (feat. Roisin and J-Live) - Handsome Boy Modeling School
Bratislava - Beirut
Smoke and Mirrors - The Magnetic Fields
Walking In My Shoes - Depeche Mode
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) - Arcade Fire
Israelites - Desmond Dekker
did i step on your trumpet? - Danielson
The State I Am In - Belle and Sebastian
Simple X - Andrew Bird
Publisher - Blonde Redhead
Quiver and Quake - Elf Power
Skin Is, My - Andrew Bird
It's a Curse - Wolf Parade
Road to Joy - Bright Eyes
Baby - Os Mutantes
Fraulein - Pale Young Gentlemen
The Prayer - Bloc Party
I Want Your Love - Chromatics
I'm Going To Stop Pretending That I Didn't Break Your Heart - Eels
Stand - The Bees
The Fool - Neutral Milk Hotel
$20 - M.I.A.
Spiral Stairs - Elf Power
Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings - Sunset Rubdown
My Light, Maria - Pale Young Gentlemen
The Dance of the Hours - The Clientele
Checkout Blues - Eels
Postcards From Italy - Beirut
Spoons - Tunng
Jodi - The Dodos

Easter Benefits for the Cute Jewess

2011-04-30T16:30:00.000-04:00

Home?

2011-03-14T18:40:00.000-04:00

When he was young, he wasn't afraid of finding himself with nothing but what he wore in a city that was new. Something changed. Now, when he thought of the doorways he had slept in, the rooftops, the subways and the ferries, he felt the hollowness. Without even being there, he felt that lonely pain. He was too old for that now. It probably happened in the past 5 years, this change, and really, most people wouldn't ever consider it a way to go. Homelessness was rough, and without an ambition, a dream to propel you through it you might get stuck. There wasn't a dream. The irony was, for all the ground he had covered, all he had traveled, he felt like he was where he began.

Without being actually homeless, sleeping in shelters or in squats, he was without anywhere he felt was home. A recording on a tape he used to listen to had a professor explaining that home wasn't a place, it was an idea, an abstract idea. It takes courage to believe in a home. Maybe for most people it wasn't anything of significance, but Jacob rarely felt that safety and surety that he associated with a home. So he checked the listings for jobs and kept his ear open for gigs that would let him satisfy the demands school made of him. It all felt like it was moving too slow. The most recent campaign had been a week or so, and was gathering momentum. Until he found a job and a room, he would be in the limbo he had known too much of.

He took his girlfriend's dog out sometimes. It struck him that he wouldn't even think of getting a dog, since he can't even take care of himself without fear. Something wasn't in him, he wasn't something that most everyone else was. Sure, he could get a job, a salary, and a lease, and maybe it would feel better, more like a home, but there would still be something fundamentally different about it all. He was always a visitor.

Elaine & Benjamin's First Date

2011-03-11T08:43:00.000-05:00

(Not the worst) Thucydides' Mitylenian Debate

2011-03-04T06:46:00.004-05:00

Cleon, in prosecution, presents the aggravating circumstance of Mitylene having revolted without having been oppressed by Athenian empire and, what may have been worse, allying themselves with the Spartan nemesis. Thucydides describes an interpretation of evidence, the Pelopennesian fleet having crossed the Aegean revealing the uncouth revolt to be premeditated. While the plebeians of Mitylene, under a Lacedaemonian Salaethus, having been armed faute de mieux, the expected Peloponnesian reinforcements tangled in distractions, did to their own credit immediately rise in insurrection against their officers and force the Mitylene leadership to end the revolt which represented a threat to Athens, this was not considered any substantial mitigation in what Thucydides sketches as a wrathful determination by the Athens council to execute all Mitylenian males and enslave all women and children. All of this presents a version of the scenario at the surface level, but as Diodotus articulates, it is not so cut and dry.

The penalty decreed, after the Athenians slept on it, seemed not in proportion to the crime. In considering the injustice in punishing all when among the set innocents should suffer, an appeal was scheduled. Cleon, from whom the original sentence and decree is said to have originated, makes a case to uphold said decree with Diodotus countering to reverse the decree. In spite of Cleon's sway, rather vicious reputation, and the loaded propositions of fault and impropriety among counsellors who could contrive to disagree with him, specifically that they work in deluded methods of sophism, or have sold their objectivity or allegiance, Diodotus proceeds to explain the complications involved in the determination of the Mitylenians' fate and to lay out how the advantage of Athens is compromised in Cleon's motion.

The real issue, as Diodotus insightfully states, "... is not justice, but how to make the Mitylenians useful to Athens." Diodotus makes the case that capital punishment for all, regardless of their rank or order in a revolting state, leads the logic that each man will fight to the death rather than consider a capitulation when it becomes available and clearly to advantage. This creates only more challenge and expense for Athens. What's more, if a scorched-earth policy is taken, no revenue will continue to flow, and that revenue is the very thing that lends Athens the influence she wields. Diodotus' final claim regards the working class, who by executing in this case are alienated. To do so would be to alienate the allies Athens can regard as friend in contrast to the oligarchy. Diodotus' line, in the language of his own conclusion, is rendered thus, "In short, I consider it far more useful for the preservation of our empire voluntarily to put up with injustice, than to put to death, however justly, those whom it is our interest to keep alive." He then intimates, in this ancient account, that the wheels of justice are better turned slowly, and carefully, in a remark that challenges Cleon's notion that "justice and expediency" are well matched.

2011-02-16T15:07:00.000-05:00

Omar was shaking from cold. He woke from uncomfortable dreams and found himself wounded in his bunk. Everything felt wet. It was one of those times when awareness ambushes you and drops like pieces of ice each burden you are to carry. His jaw was also shaking and he felt like he needed fruit, his teeth hurt when they touched each other.

As he sat up, pulling the blanket around himself as he swung his legs gently over the side, he could hear the steps creaking and tapping above him. A reminder of where he was, who he was, and how he was, they prompted him to snap into attention. There was a purpose for this pain, he knew.

Land of the Philadelphian; Dead or Alive?

2011-02-09T05:47:00.000-05:00

Land of the Living; Land of the Dead.

2011-02-08T08:43:00.000-05:00

Chinoisville

2011-02-07T16:59:00.002-05:00

Readable

2011-02-05T13:52:00.001-05:00

Basically, there were two young Jamaicans doing the young male macho bullshit in the yard. They were going to fight for unknown reasons, and Simon, who was very large if white, walked into the circle, stood between them and told them to cut it out because we'd end up having to go inside and none of us wanted that. Suddenly, the Jamaicans who were about to fight had a common enemy: Simon.

Harmony in the rudebwai world, great, but not so much for Simon. He was lecherous because he ran a brothel and had some crazy pink rubber mini-skirted strumpet visit him. You were there, because I only saw her because she was visiting him, and if I saw her visiting him, then you were visiting me. He was lecherous because he boasted in a paradoxically quiet way about how he "helped" girls who "were confused" and "needed him". God knows.

No, we were able to continue ordering pinepples in tab-ring open cans. I also remember we could buy like sardines and other canned foods. The sardine lids were good for making knives which the Serbian war criminal I was sharing a cell with briefly used for making late night snacks. He would chop up the sardines or whatever and make some sort of salad. It passed the time, which is all you're really trying to do in jail. Jails' great for reading, so long as no one is threatening you.

As far as I recall, the can of pineapples ended up briefly in my possession, with a big dent in it in a way that's hard to dent that kind of cylinder. It wasn't just like a dent in the side. It was like it got stomped on on one side from the top sort of.

I can't remember if they took it from me for "evidence" or what. I don't think I got to eat them though.

We could buy them from the commissary, with the 2 quid and change the Queen gave us every week. She gave us just enough to buy a pack of Golden Virginia but not papers, and smoking was more important than pineapples. The papers thing though... that was so fucking annoying. I wish I still had a commissary form. I would scan it and put it on my blog.

You helped me get through that time. I wish I learned my lesson then, though. I'm a pretty retarded fuck.

Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit?

2011-02-05T13:05:00.002-05:00

This exploration highlights the contributions of early Enlightenment theologists on the nature of religion and the issues their positions raise. These ideas will then be considered in the frames of later thinkers of esteem, and finally focus on application in modernity. Roles that religion has played will be identified, the purposes it has served identified, the needs it has met identified, and where those needs still survive it will be sought how, if they can be met, shall we find the way to meet them. While the discourse these Enlightenment thinkers set into motion is essentially relevant, the the practice of discrediting the unlikely truth of religion leaves us in a spiritual vacuum. Karen Armstrong presents in her paper “The Great Western Transformation” a possible way to fill that vacuum in an application of myth as art, and this paper endeavors to relate the various voices to be introduced so as to outline the character of this vacuum, and place Armstrong's suggestion as a part of the answer in filling that void.

Theology will remain relevant provided religion continues to loom authoritatively on morality, identity, mortality, and politics. The media and social dialogue of modern Western society frequently mocks religion. It does so sometimes affectionately but often enough in derision. This implies some popular movement away from religion. Nonetheless, a significant number of Americans believe in miracles and angels, celebrate the religious holy days, rely on religion to inform their values, politics, and define their identities. Whether the degree of devotion of a believer to their faith is vague social convention or enthusiastic, rigorous study, practice, and promotion of the doctrine when the custom calls for it, the institutions of religion aren't going anywhere until science can provide some answers about our natural realm, abiogenesis, space, time, and matter. Notwithstanding these mysteries, human experiences such as identity, community, and mortality may perpetuate religious tradition in need of a philosophy through which to practically relate to them. As long as religion remains in the popular psyche, theology in one form or another will flourish. The challenge seems to have become how to place these religious elements of the psyche in some rational, sane, and ideally peaceful way.

Generally, the scope of this examination is limited to consider religion in the Judea-Christian sense, as the primary models of the authors cited and that of this work are those of the West. Prior to and unfortunately during and after the Enlightenment, in waxing and waning frenzies, combinations of Church and State holding authority persecuted those who antagonized that authority in heretical or blasphemous deed. The works of Spinoza, Reimarus, and Hume, in opening up the dialogue and working an honest attempt to examine religion through the lens of reason at the dawn of the Enlightenment, marked the beginning of an era that allowed unfettered debate regarding incongruous religious features in public discourse.

Spinoza challenged the veracity of the interpreted accounts of miracles but kept a divine entity in regard. His approach in “Of Miracles” indicated the need to give canonical accounts license for poetic turns of phrase, hyperbole for increasing the impact of the account, and allowance for the limitations of the authors' grasp of sciences in their renditions. Importantly, he points out the problem of miracles being events which require the suspension of natural law to come to pass, seeking to explain the contradiction in the authors' subjective, motivated, and otherwise limited perspective rather than to consider that a divine actor should suspend its own natural law in the course of deeds. Reimarus, in “Third Fragment: Passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea” focuses but exclusively on the logistical improbabilities of the account. The Reimarus piece does not address divinity or religion any more than in challenging the truth of the words in the scripture, and so seems to follow Spinoza's line that it all doesn't add up as written.

Hume has a different approach, less reverent and more ordered to do away with what he presents the miraculous core of Christian religious belief as being: bigotry, superstition, and delusion. He writes, as introduction to his piece which adheres very much to a purely rational approach:

“I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument of a like nature (decisive arguments that silence the most arrogant bigotry and superstition, freeing us from impertinent solicitations), which, if just, will, with the wise and learned,be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion...”

His argument is that belief must be proportionate to the evidence. With scriptural accounts being at best founded on the accounts of eye-witnesses, he sums, “Our evidence, then, for the truth of the Christian religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses” with the further logic that the credibility of the evidence is diminished in passing to the disciples' disciples, as no account from another sourced by yet a third party can compare with the evidence of what one personally experiences. It could be argued that this line is extraneous, until it becomes clear that he asks his reader to consider the distinct lack of supernatural occurrences one witnesses, or hears testimony of from credible or multiple source. He mentions specifically the core Christian belief that a dead man came to life as exemplary of the very implausible nature of miracles as they contradict all evidence of our experience. In light of his challenge to the essential Christian belief, it is reasonable to interpret his view as one of anti-religious nature.

Regardless of these authors' beliefs, their pieces do represent the natural questions that will come to those that encounter the claims and demands of belief that religious doctrine make. Their work opened the honest public examination of the veracity of claims of religious institution and the hermeneutic awkwardnesses involved. It would appear that the institutions of religion had long been protected from question as representatives of god, brokers and proxies of god's will, by the fear of the common believer to blaspheme or appear blasphemous. Whatever the reason it had not been previously addressed publicly, Spinoza, Hume, and Reimarus were among the vanguard of Enlightenment writers applying reason to religious institutions' claims.

Unlike doctrinal accounts of miracles and the dictates of god inherited from history, modern claims of divinity and miracle would now be examined through the Enlightenment's frames of reason. For instance, if a contemporary man claiming to be god, cultivating a following and persuading witnesses of miraculous powers encountered state authority, the result would undoubtedly differ from historical accounts. Imagine said authority executed this man by hanging, yet he was subsequently discovered invigorating crowds and proselytizing in his miraculous reanimation. He may become a cause célèbre, but this account would certainly invite examination.

Modern scientific examination would apply reason in examining the effectiveness of the hanging, the manner of his death pronouncement, the consideration that he may have an identical twin, and other potentially viable explanations. Interestingly, the existing religious institutions may label this returned messiah a charlatan, an impostor, and a heretic while chastising his followers for offending god and truth. For, as Hume put it, "...let us consider, that, in matters of religion, whatever is different is contrary; and that it is impossible the religions of ancient Rome, of Turkey, of Siam, and of China should, all of them, be established on any solid foundation." In other words, these competing and conflicting truths are an impossibility. It is in this Enlightenment critique, and in working with Hume's presentation of the practice of weighing evidence anchored in experience, that the claims of religion leave it in an awkward and, in varying degrees, incredulous position.

Yet today religious temples fill regularly and people on the street proselytize, hawking salvation and pamphleteering of eschatological doom. People see Jesus in toast and ultrasounds. Claims are made that statues of religious figures cry and bleed. Like Harris observes in The End of Faith, pentecostal congregations test scriptural promise by trying their fate with venomous snakes. In fairness, this is representative of a minority of extremist believers. The majority practice their religious rituals with moderate and cautious regard for all things supernatural. Sampling a few dozen persons on the street in metropolitan or small-town America will reveals a belief in entities like angels and life after death. This means what, though?

Bultmann, in the 20^th century, makes clear that mincing words and feigning beliefs is not worth much to the believer and is dishonest of the cleric. One of his many cogent observations is the obsolescence of a three tiered realm, with heaven “up” and hell “down”, God and angels' strings attached to us in influence against contrary Satan and demons' persuasions. This myth leaves us in the middle of a planar realm, which the scientific revelations of Copernicus rendered absurd. That we can abandon this myth, on his line, gives that we must continue. As a man of the clergy, he notably addresses the paradox of claimed belief and actual belief, that people on the street may claim to believe in things that they cannot really possibly believe. Ultimately, Bultmann leads to a conclusion that, in modernity, we must regard the New Testament as myth and charges his readers to regard the symbolism in terms of the experience of existence in individual responsibility for action and redemption. The claim of belief in angels and miracles, while a very loyal act, is fundamentally complicated in the direct challenge to the standards applied for belief in every other area of the believers' lives.

Strauss, along Bultmann's examination of the claims of belief, moves to divide those who would preserve the historical accuracy of scriptural text from the preference of a view where god can intervene supernaturally in affairs. He leaves the options of scripture being either mythological or contradictory. He extends the line that Spinoza and others made that nothing occurs outside of the laws of nature by handling the accounts of supernatural as myth, and undermining the apparently desperate rationalist attempts of theologists to save Jesus from being thrown out with all of the scriptural bathwater. The aforementioned thinkers have left the concept that the ideal is the relevant value, the meaning of scripture and religion is what is important, not the perhaps irreconcilable accounts of miraculous affairs. Strangely, given the legacies of Hume and Spinoza, centuries later scholars are still wrestling with familiar theological ideas.

Religion, as an institution brokering knowledge of the will of god, such knowledge vested in antiquity to and preserved by the faithful, and offering a relationship, if by proxy, with god makes an indefensible presumption of proprietary knowledge of truth that can not endure the standards of reason. Simple agreement with any of the irreligious perspectives, however, without consideration of the methods and determinations of the philosophes, Aufklärer, British, and other Enlightenment philosophers on religion is to make a “leap to faith” in their own doctrine, and no more steeped in careful self-conscious thought than the stubbornly religious zealot's antics.

One of the best defenses the faithful to a religion can make is that god is omnipotent and omniscient, beyond understanding and thus irrefutable. After all, can one really understand the notions of an infinite universe if this universe should be infinite? This concludes the discourse, but makes only one point. The faith of an individual is based on that individual's standards. While some public claims that could be described as magical thinking might, in some cities, be grounds for a committed psychiatric evaluation, a popular belief with a history of tradition is somehow exempt from this. This indicates, in the midst of popular movement away from religion, a significant degree of tolerance and acceptance of belief and thinking in the religious vein.

Attempts to explain the need for religion anthropologically, along the lines of Frazer's suggestions of early ritual manipulation of microcosmic models to affect the macrocosm, imitative ritual magic, and the petition of deities for favor, or Tylor's proposal that religion is a "survival" of a phase along a track of progress in human social evolution are borne in reason. It is difficult to imagine credibility of a method outside of rationale and science to explain some of the features of shared human spiritual habit and thought. Yet the fact that reason, as consideration of evidence and premise of experience through rationality and logic in search of conclusive explanation, is the most sound and preferred intellectual method does not necessarily oppose religion with any hostility.

The functional and reductive approaches these examinations employ in attempting to identify the social role played by religion and those elements that constitute religion do not reveal an outright hostility towards religion. If the enlightenment critique may be characterized as challenging the credibility of the unseemly accounts of miracles and prophecies in scriptural canon and tradition, a potential threat to religious institutions, then Pals' remark that this indicates the enlightenment critique is still at work could be correct. Hostility or none, the dialogue remains alive and relevant.

Modern multiculturalism and relativism may have stunted the effect that Enlightenment thinking makes on moderate believers. Harris observes that by offering tolerance of other faiths, it grants moderates license for personal beliefs in fundamental elements of doctrine that are, if not impossible to prove, beyond the need for proof. Crucially, though, the believer doesn't have to meet any standards for their beliefs but those they choose to accept.

Whether or not a believer professes biblical inerrancy, the core of Christian belief is that Jesus literally died and after literally being killed, he literally came back to life from having been dead and, after a brief posthumous sermon, literally traversed the heavens. Without that belief, one is not really a Christian. While the symbolism is inspiring, even if the myth of Jesus is meaningful, true Christianity requires literal belief in the resurrection. A believer can't explain this belief rationally without denouncing the core doctrine or finding an explanation within the realm of natural experience. Accordingly, reason and religion appear mutually exclusive.

If reason cannot explain questions like, "What is the universe expanding into?" and "Where did all this matter come from?", even the most reasonable, enlightened thinker is at a loss to place themselves in life and the universe. Spinoza's proposition of divinity as a set of natural laws is not only more congruent with reason, it is also perhaps more palatable to believers finding a need to reconcile their views with their living experience and reason. Spinoza, like Newton, allows for some god of order.

Science as an enterprise in reason does not claim to authoritatively present the answers to questions it cannot. The scientific method allows for theory to be modified. Importantly, religion also must accommodate developments in science. Evolution, for example, is a theory. It is not proven, but it is a theory that works, in spite of the challenges of intelligent design arguments, because science is a search for answers rather than a catalogue of them.

That religion is frequently inherited and serves to define identity are principal features of its survival. Environment strongly informs morality, society, values, integrity, and order. Most importantly, parents are the first arbiters of right and wrong. Before a mind can work freely to place itself in life, society, and the universe through personal experience and commerce of ideas, learning to frame thought in reason and rationale, it must first subjugate the dogmatic certainty instilled by parents, encouraged by community, and echoed by state leaders. It may be practically disadvantageous or psychologically contrary to do so. Historically and today, families, relationships, communities, and civilizations are fractured and never repaired because of conversions between faiths and other modifications to religious identity. We are plagued by war and threat, perpetrated and suffered from collectives identified by, among other features, religion.

Armstrong informs that Newton believed he was proving the existence of god in the context of Francis Bacon's imposition “All the myths of religion should be subjected to stringent criticism and if they contradicted the proven facts they must be cast aside.”

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), who synthesised the findings of his predecessors by a rigorous use of the evolving scientific disciplines of experiment and deduction. He believed that he was bringing his fellow human beings unprecedented and certain information about the world, that the cosmic system he had discovered coincided completely with the facts, and that it proved the existence of God, the great 'Mechanik' who had brought the intricate machine of the universe into being.

While Bacon's rule would set to determine the provability of myths, he would have us cast aside the tradition of a spirituality that which we appear to have needed socially and psychologically as long as history has been written. Maintaining a respect for Bacon's rigor of determination in what is worth keeping and the demand that Hume's reason makes for purpose of evidence of belief, religious institution has long served us in various capacities.

Religion has served to repose knowledge and religious institutions have served as centers of information exchange and social organization. In recent history, for example, the civil rights movement was substantially coordinated in the American South through church networks. Churches have acted as patrons of art. The Gutenberg bible became a gateway to literacy in the 13^th century and onwards, and various translations had given slaves in the United States opportunity to teach themselves to read. Along with these practical services and the charities that religious institution has provided, the symbolism and framework of life have been a precious asset to our developing civilizations.

While it has come with a price, religion has given us a way to make sense of our lives, our place in the universe. With Copernicus' revelations, we began the journey to our present condition where one, if one follows the rigors of scientific thought, we find ourselves as primates on a rock rotating and revolving around a star of limited lifespan. Further along this line, one finds an idea that the only value of one's life is that which one ascribes to it. In this barren cosmos there is no need to be virtuous unless it is to one's personal advantage. There is a figurative Pandoran jar that is opened, and we are left in an existential crisis. Among other problems, one can fairly ask “what is the purpose of living?” and arrive with equal substance at suicide or an epicurean life. The psyche suffers, if not in the individual, certainly in the social. For when one decides they only have but to think of themselves they are already primed for criminal deed that imposes on others.

Armstrong makes a succinct vignette of the essential role that myth is needed to play in our collective psyche:

We need myths that will help us to identify with all our fellow-beings, not simply with those who belong to our ethnic, national, or ideological tribe. We need myths that help us to realise the importance of compassion, which is not always regarded as sufficiently productive or efficient in our pragmatic, rational world. We need myths that help us create a spiritual attitude, to see beyond our immediate requirements, and enable us to experience a transcendent value that challenges our solipsistic selfishness. We need myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, instead of merely using it as a 'resource'. This is crucial, because unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that is able to keep abreast of our technological genius, we will not save our planet.

We are not ready, willing, or well advised to abandon our mythology. As Armstrong presents, we should not if we want to survive as a species. What would serve us, and mark progress, would be a recognition of the value of symbolism in religious myth as we come to terms with the notion that our religious traditions are legacies of more primitive eras, and a promotion of humility and self-consciousness in regard to the beliefs we adopt and abandon as we grow and evolve individually and socially. It is one thing to identify as coming from a particular religious tradition and heritage, but until we can place the myths of religious doctrine as such, we are stalled and stagnant in a precarious place in our social evolution.

Armstrong suggests that we may find inspiration in heroes of aspirational character. Her suggestion places them in novels, and while there are complications with that idea it is in the right track of multicultural and tolerant form. Perhaps Spinoza and others have shown some example. As dogmatic religious institutions become more and more recognizable as very much human organizations, and as modernity pushes the genuine belief in the supernatural farther from our collective frame of reference, we may intuitively salvage the god of order that Spinoza presents. Our motives, divorced from the mythological scale of evaluation where the balance of transgression and virtue determines an infinity of suffering or pleasure, may very well be compassed on notions of honor represented in myths and recognized as such. This magical sort of thinking may be more practical than the most critical agnostic or fanatic religious would accede. So long as the myth is recognized as myth and has a function that provides for society, it is by far a more reasonable answer than notions of existential space-time and personified diety.

"Magical Thinking"? ...va te faire foutre

2011-02-04T09:47:00.000-05:00

I want to write a story. Really, though, I think I need to live a story. I know we all live stories, but I need some serious plot development. It makes for difficult writing when it feels like the life lived, the collection of experience from which to draw is lacking. Let this not be so much a complaint as an examination of the problem. I want to write, but I don't feel like I have anything worth writing, or rather, reading, as my life feels only barely, no, not even barely, worth living and having lived. Well, it's been worth having lived for the most part, unless one looks at the really big picture, but that picture depresses people and I don't want to depress people.

It's not young gizz in the wind anymore. People seem to have all these sorts of expectations. It must be true that I have expectations. I think they're different, the expectations I have of life and myself and those of other people. Generally speaking, I mean. Samuel Hargestam, a sort of genius, was able to articulate that he was “special needs”. I thought that was sort of funny, but we're in different spots Sam and I financially. I have no money. He probably doesn't have much money, I don't know, and he might be contending with some hell that I am not aware of.

That's just the thing. I need some mission. Some enormous, encompassing, consuming mission. I don't mean like Save the Whales or Children or whatever. At least, that's not what I think the mission I should be sent on is. Something more important, something ineffable. Ineffable, but completely believable, a mission in which I am invested with my life. Perhaps, for example, I could assist Samuel in his North American arctic destiny. Karma is an idea that's been corrupted, I think, and I am not confident that I perceive it in any accurate source sense but the idea that, “Do good stuff and good stuff will happen” appeals to me. The good stuff doesn't even have to happen to me, but that would be cool.

I'm not going to be an Oxford Don, but maybe I could be a Bucknell grad or something like that. As loathesome as some of the arrogance of academic antics can be, I can't claim any sustained humility that would put me above it, and believing I'm above stuff makes me an asshole. I think the term I'm looking for isn't “Karma” but “Misión dirigido Humilidad” or “Mission guided Humility” if it doesn't demand I work in the spanish language realm. If my sense is then true, that my life and experience, experience I must collect for mining metaphoric gold to filigree a fiction, then my course, as such, is right and true. My flighty spirit though, the nature of my spirit, knowing myself, must be checked. Follow some rules: don't fly to close to the sun sorts of things, etc.

A Letter Titled "Love and Respect" from August 6th, 2009

2011-02-04T09:21:00.003-05:00

I believe in big and beautiful things. I'm sort of sad that you didn't note my "murcielagos en el campanario" phrase. Maybe it doesn't mean what I think it means. You taught me the word "murcielagos" and it's one of my favorites. I've even heard it, though I can't remember if it was a movie, tv, or on the subway or where -- I got excited when I heard the word used in conversation. I mean to say, "bats in the bell of the church" as in "bats in my head". Borges, eh? Three brujas on the subway in New York City were grouped around me. I am telling you the truth, what happened in my life, in reality as G- E-. The one witch had a letter in her very stylish bag with a postage stamp from España. I started flicking my teeth in a silent lisp, like some sort of serpent spell had been cast upon me. She noticed and we had a brief salutatory conversation in my peculiar brand of Castellano which is, in truth, just Joshuese with a bifurcated tongue. The bruixa behind her asked me if I were a writer. I'm not joking, and I'm not making this up. I said nothing and the reason she probably asked is because I had a very beautiful notebook in my hand, and surely somewhere a nice pen attached to my jacket, shirt, or cravat, my own accessory and weapon. The reason I was on that train is because I was in Brooklyn to face the Court in regards to an old warrant for my arrest. The judge heard me issue two or three sentences to my public defender and then he interrupted and said, "The warrant is vacated, I'm considering it satisfied." I told the bruixa that no one paid me to write. She looked at me and said, "They will. Don't worry, they will." It was so freaking strange. The third in the multidão de bruxas insisted that I read a book called "The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis" and I didn't understand what she was telling me, the language didn't make sense until I got home to look it up. I haven't read it. I hope that they do pay me to write someday.

What I haven't told you yet with all these words is that your suggestion that I teach ESL or just English to my Haitian brethren resonates with a desire I'm harboring. I told my grandfather and my mother that I wanted to go to Afghanistan to teach English and they said it wasn't a good idea. It isn't. To teach English, however, could be a perfect and humble role for me to play in this strange tragicomic drama of life. I have always been fascinated with the tower of Babylon and language and communication. Hermes / Mercury with his Caduceus and whispers of divine knowledge make my eyes sparkle with life. The lingua franca isn't French anymore, and Afghanistan will have to wait. I'm pretty sure -I- could survive there (Afghanistan(because I'm insane?)), but I am getting long in the tooth to keep testing God with my antics.

I'm actually capitulating so much of my rebellious spirit and am doing the GED. So far I have passed the Math, Writing, Social sections; now I have to pass the Reading and the Science sections. Then, I will be a man. I feel like Rudyard Kipling's Mowgli in the United States, and I have a US passport. Your email, however ethereal and sadly unlikely to last much longer than as it is read in the electronic eye, speaks to what is happening to me. It feels like Jung's synchronicity. The insane can see patterns where there are none, so I am cautious with my own words now but please believe that it seems like your voice, your writing are all resonant with something greater.

My old signature was an O. Wilde quote:

"God knows; I won’t be an Oxford don anyhow. I’ll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I’ll be famous, and if not famous, I’ll be notorious. Or perhaps I’ll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too." - O. Wilde

My old motto was borrowed from a lover:

"Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse."

I couldn't read "The Republic" so I listened to it on mp3 in bed. I'm not young. In fact, I'm 31. My corpse isn't as pretty as I'd like for it to have been, so I figure I'll just try for my full threescore and ten. Thank you for thinking of me. Let Merle know that I hold her in a pantheon of characters in my heart, a special set of eyes and words. Just smile at Petra. I don't think I could ask anything more of you. Let me know if there is anything that you liked on utsuprainfra.blogspot.com. I think I wrote the witches story somewhere. It really happened, even if it wasn't really much that actually happened, it meant something to me, as did your email today.

Signatures come and go and apparently I live through mottos. Son cosas de la vida.

Return from outpost of The Man; meet with Agent

2011-01-31T14:13:00.000-05:00

headphones = transcendance

2011-01-29T02:05:00.000-05:00

nausea

2011-01-27T09:07:00.002-05:00

The sun was so bright that even when he closed his eyes, he had to squint. The sun was coming through them, a brilliant blood colored blindfold. He knew though, that the light would be good for him, make him feel better. It's not a one-dose sort of thing, but he felt it was appropriate as he was in Florida, and it was necessary to make the best of the trip. No matter what small things he changed, no matter what ideals he tried to embrace, what activities he tried to engage, nothing would change the truth. Like wishing and praying to have something un-done, the whole of it was absurd. He wasn't happy and he wasn't going to be.

For all he loved, and appreciated, and wanted nothing more than the satisfaction of victories and successes for her, he couldn't find a way to dream with her. She criticized his wholeheartedly sincere thinking as "magical" and though she crossed many lines, he forgave her because of all that he had done that necessitated understanding and forgiveness. A great mystery for him though was how and why she didn't want something else as much as he did. She seemed committed to making that which doesn't -- do. If that wasn't magical it was just plain insane.

What did he want though? Did he want to bounce along the floors of bus and train stations, copping a flight here or there with no money, no reservation, and no familiar faced friend or host? That was his dominion in his 20s, but it felt that as time moved along, the serendipity, the perfect grace that bouyed him so long as he kept faith was evaporating. If he reduced it logically, he could, if he felt, attribute the whole death of spirit, the whole sad vexation and vacuum of true happiness to women. He needed to be alone. Just him. No one to be loved by and no one to love. This is what he needed, above all. When he found it, he would surely have to contend with creeping thoughts about the mistake it is, the loss he would someday have to acknowledge. Like any game of chance, your next iteration is not guaranteed in any way.

Whenever he spoke the truth, the real truth, it caused dischord. Even when he tried to break the formulaic sexuality with the counter-formulaic spontaneity so obvious, it invariably failed due to one or another reasons. The horse was dead, though he was compelled to pretend otherwise. He was broken himself. For three years he had been dead in the water as a man.

Barely working, in medical institutions, and now chained to a daily regimen of pharmaceutical narcotics. To extricate from this one, he would have to return to the unknown and unfeared life he knew. The plan? To do away with these damned plans. They were worse than foresight for a man's spirit. You may have heard that, according to Greek creation myth, when man was made he was given the ability to see into the future. He knew when he would fall in love, become a father, make a handsome life, a home, or, and this became a problem, when the fates had some tragedy in store for him. It was clear to him as hindsight is to us when he would get sick, when those he loved would die, when his efforts would fail, and when he himself would find his end. There was no room for hope, or faith, or joy. The gods mercifully took this Promethean vision away, and left us with the Epimethian brother of hindsight so that we can learn from our mistakes.

So he made his offering to the gods and petitioned them to smite the endless wretched planning. Anyway, there seems to be a thing for man eating his words. He knew well that plans were at best amusing to the gods, and that it was a haughty and arrogant vanity to the cosmically minded fool.

Memories of Magic

2011-01-23T11:52:00.001-05:00

A white boy moved to Harlem

Found a cold water flat

On the fourth floor length

Of a 6 story tenement

Harlem was black and scary

Everyone agreed so

Harlem was dirty and far

From the village of genteels

To cross into Brooklyn

Was to give up, to submit

To accept that New York

Wouldn't really have him.

After he proved to himself

That 212 was not impenetrable

He found his lot in Brooklyn

Crown Heights, Franklin Ave.

St. Francis Place house

Sublet of a room from which

I could hear the machinery

Of displaced darkness at night

There were other places

And the Shangri-La that

Briefly was 147^th Street

But Crown Heights bore me.

Balls

2011-01-18T04:32:00.000-05:00

Balls to your television
Your front pages
Your talk radio

Balls to your stories
What she did
What he said

Balls to your causes
Saving humans
Saving puppies

Balls to your fears
Of brown skin
And subjugation

Balls to your justice
Your straightfaced
Hollow righteousness

Balls to your movies
Your tried heroes
Your tired villains

Balls to your pride
In your family
In your land

Balls to your hobbies
Your card games
Your lawncare

Balls to your cuisine
You eat like
Fucking insects

Balls to your fashion
Your houses and
Their rack brands

Balls to your sex
Your cartoon lust
Your porcine fuckness

Balls to your "music"
For want of
A better word

Balls to your cars
With your payments
And your insurance

Balls to your facebook
Your myspace
Your friendster

Balls to your bookclub
Your heartrending
Tell-all nothings

Balls to Oprah
to Stern
and to Murdoch

Balls to paid vacation
Benefits
and 401 Ks

Balls to every police
Every C.O.
and every sheriff

Balls to every creep
Every thug
and every predator

Balls to the lot of you
and Balls to each of you.
Just ... effing ... Balls!

I have tourette syndrome

2011-01-15T06:49:00.000-05:00

It's totally fucking true
The psychiatrist said so
Well, a different doc --
An actual neurologist
Suggested "tic disorder"

Either fucking way
I want this noted
And noted bene
On my permanent
Cocksucking record

As much as I loathe
To watch Oppenheimer moan
Fuck the fucks who gave
The Man access to media
Beyond carbon copies

The mark of the beast,
Indeed.
You want a swab of ?
What? Suck my dick
If you want fucking DNA!

You gave me a number
Actually, it's a pretty one
But go fuck yourself
If you think it adds up
To a man's deeds and destiny

You can have this world
You can keep your credit
You can keep it all
If you want to play like that
I'll just fuck off then.

Barometry of the Ego

2011-01-10T04:27:00.000-05:00

So much gas escapes
My sinuses open
Like the wet marsh air
Of Newarktown night

I'm returned to my body
The dreams of late
Haven't been anything
But consecutive nightmares

So then, where am I?
That feeling in the morning
If I were to ever get
Sleep at night

That feeling of certainty
I knew it in Crown Heights
I was me; who I am
I am real; this is immense

Kill me? Like Geronimo
Bullets can not do it
Unless propelled by
Greater forces than gas

The old way; the first way
Hard as hell to keep
Faith mocked, even cursed
Left alone with a sick heart

The beauty comes when
The barometer drops
And the blood is rich
With laughter and gold.

Academe & Intellectualism

2010-09-14T08:41:00.001-04:00

In school, the corral of misfits and outsiders I'm leagued with, we seem to share the burden of some chip to carry on our shoulders. Some are so overt and outright in trying to outdo the others. There are characters who work in the safest lines, that cite buddies for security in numbers. I'm not about to go on syphilitic rants with my only ally being Nietzsche and similar intellectually fecund patrons of prostitutes, but I'm not going to hide in what is safe.

It's amazing to be given material that I would dismiss if I were ever to even encounter it, for labels like "Modernism" stink to me of the language in transience. "What is it we're really talking about?" I can not ask myself. I have to play by the rules, no matter how offended I am by other players' characters or nature. In truth, I have to humbly defer to the modes of discourse prescribed, because, honestly, they're foreign to me and I suppose I'll need them to talk like them.

It reminds me of a dinner party I was roped into going to. The other guests were all older, aspiring middle class suburban urbanites. They could parrot out the media's memes, and frowned and shooed my discordant challenge to the fact that they're ignoring wholesale the great context outside of what the news anchors serve them. I have to converse with the table of my peers, and if the rules are we can only use what the news anchors are saying (and truly, these are much more esteemable sources than television newspeople) then until I find a way to cheat, I will play by those rules.

WTF?

2010-09-05T07:08:00.000-04:00

I wake up at 4 in the morning. Probably because I sneak off to sleep at 2 in the afternoon. It's no way to live, but it's close to rounding out at the right hours. Soon enough.

What bothers me this morning is that I feel my people, these Americans, and much of the "developed" world, live for movies. They get their thrills, their kicks, their drama in movies. Ok, I say, there was theatre before this, and fine. Am I too old to find persons who want to take on dreams and great adventure? No, I'm sure. Boxer and younger men still have that appetite. I'm just moneyless and have been boxed up in Philadelphia until I meet whatever it is I have to, to learn and achieve whatever it is that life has prescribed to me, before I can take on an adventure.

Boxer, I wish we had crossed Algeria. I just wished that you didn't have Billy Idol style blonde hair. Fuck the State Department.

Collected Memories

2010-08-19T15:28:00.001-04:00

Pictures in my mind.  Like postcards from the past.  Sitting on a train, riding through bavaria.  Not sick, just reeling.  Trying to find a vein in a toilet in a cafe in Paris.  There were no stalls.  The hole in the ground, with a bucket and a spigot for toiletry in Tangier.  The rooftops of Tangier.  The dark dark night at 2nd and Cambria.  Paris Metro Châtelet Gogol; Skenan and Euro paper.

Hostile Hostels in Edinburgh.  The jukebox with Toto Africa, the SudAfrikaan making threats at me.  The passenger I was through Lincolnshire.  The darkness of Harlem, the 6th floor view North North West.  Collages of porn.

Montages of sex and lips.  The celebration of victories in Action Discount, the mourning of young mortality in Action Discount.  New Jersey Zoe's room and kitchen.  Stealing a bottle of wine and a bottle of valium.  After that, the image fades.  Zoe's on York Ave; where I was left long enough to read all her Welsh books and sweat up her duvet.  The coconut FrozFruit.

Bathrooms, I remember so many bathrooms.  The wet, mossy stones of England.  The boxes in Brixton, the faces and the tobacco.  The sun coming in the window to my cell.  

Empty strip mall lots, and the asphalt.  The inconvenient stretched out spaces in suburbia.  Bottles accumulated on the coffee table in a college town.  Mario's kitchen with the fulgurite.

The great wooden furniture with the drawers under my turntables.  The young provocation of the fates and faithed efforts to cut through the aether with chemicals and the phurba of my dick.  The gate, the turnstyle gate to Mexico.  The hill I climbed in Daly city begging for truth and blessing.  The waves of cement and steel cresting over me in Brooklyn at 4th Ave.  4th Ave.  The bodega outside the window.  

The rooftop on 116th, the rooftop on 2nd, the rooftop on 147th, the rooftops the rooftops and the rooftop where I phoned Zoe up on 83rd.   I was so happy.  Looking at the cover of "Zero:  Biography of a Dangerous Idea" on the subway.  Snow on 135th street.  

Sitting in the back of a windowless white work van with layers of sod, shovels, firewood, and kerosene. Rumbling along blindly and smoking.  The rolling liquid terra of Wyoming, BLM wilderness and wild horses.  These are pictures I still have.

The faces so pleased, generous, antagonistic, defeated and affectionate.  The customs guys.  The rooms in high schools.  The sanctuary on Ocean Drive.  So recent, so vivid.  So much I can't say; the truth could hurt.  The nights before I left the U.S. for the first time.  The map on the wall, and Andy K.  Pencader dorms -- oh that dorm room.  

Bleedin' Kplate.  Boxer's car rides, the Kosciuszko Bridge.  Faded graffiti on NJ geology on the way into NYC.  School bus reading in 4th grade, sitting on the window seat on the driver's side.   Sharing the book with Jon, who insisted on reading faster than me.  I controlled the pages.  The feeling of 100,000 fireflies with Boxer at the helm riding the wave of lights uptown.  Decibel nights.  

Le Mazel.  The long bike ride, so long I thought I may be lost, down 6km of mountain.  The shorter ride back up.  The perfect quiet of the manse.  The nights I had alone.  The shade of blue, like shale, the sky, clean and open.  

London before I met Gemma.  Ryan's K lady, and her little fireplace that seemed like a toy in the bedsit in London.  London, watching television and trying to understand so many foreign words.  London, the sartorial form of the money.  London, the K rosewater bottle, brown like a peroxide bottle.  Whitechapel cafe, sun in the afternoon.  So young, and happy, and horny.  I remember these images.

POtatERskyiltZkin

2010-08-10T02:21:00.000-04:00

He was all fucked up. He looked like a knocked about tuber, and he stole food from everywhere -- half eaten or not, like it was all fruit of some vine grown for him. POtatER was a nimrod, an iguana baby. His mother, dying when he was 4, wondered what had she done to deserve such a burden? His father was other relations, but that would have only mattered in a world of society. The family were the only they knew. They'd come to know life as children with no parents, and, even though some of their bodies were sometimes so perfect and elegant, too frequently children died young or were born off. They just weren't fit for life. They weren't fucked, and would unlikely reproduce, so the nimrods were given to the lives of a sort of domesticated animal, a dog or pet.

Violence was a custom, though it was rarely so ferocious as to be lethal. They hadn't the heart to pity some of the children and grant them death. They weren't entirely aware of death, anyway. They just knew that sometimes they stopped breathing and when this happened they fell to rot away. All this was better managed out with the filth in the downwind, downhill area. It hadn't been convened that this may be their own fate someday. Their language was mean. They were given to air drawn symbols and gestures.

tatER was good at heart, in his way, but truthfully -- like a wild animal -- he wasn't capable of drafting up schemes of harm or considering any but his simple appetites and tactile gratifications. They made him wear a hide of a meat, but he soiled it and if it were raining he refused without being prodded along at a point to do his business downwind, and downhill. They had no name for it, just a face of disgust. "Augh" would get the idea across in context, but tonally it could also convey excitement.

god, what to do with this one...