E.E.

Hazel 2

2012-02-14T02:57:00.000-08:00

Today is a day for love, which is suitable because I have the loving news that Hazel 2 is happening on March 7. Since I didn't post about Hazel 1, I should say that Hazel 2 began with Hazel 1. There were six female readers, all friends of mine, and we read on February 1st. Each of the Hazel 2 readers will each select a reader to follow after them for Hazel 3 which will happen in early April. Soon, we'll have a long flowing chain of names of friends associated with Hazel. Hazel is a reading to promote female experimentation in a way that claims our historic right to non-conformity. That being said, these reading experiments do not need to be revolutionary. A small effort to blush is just as good as a momentous effort in these readings. Last time after the reading several of us hung out and soon enough it was 2am, then everyone went home and I turned out the lights and went to bed still feeling refreshed. Someone told me it was the best reading they'd ever been to (Hazel 1) so I'm hoping Hazel 2 will be just the same.

Hazel: afterthoughts & what I read last night

2012-02-02T19:14:00.000-08:00

Last night, I had my first Hazel: A Reading Series reading with the following readers: Me, Rita Sapunor, Claire Sherba, Dia Felix, Shruti Swamy and Clare Marie Myers. People filtered in throughout the reading and the readers sat on a small, yellow children's chair, so they were facing everyone else who sat on couches. For those sitting on the stairs, it felt like an arena since the reader was the lowest point in the room, which everyone else bouquet'd out from. The readers I invited were intentionally all women and they were encouraged to read something experimental, which some did and some didn't, but the point was to be open about our work, so we all succeeded. I think it went well. I heard good things from the people who came. Each of us readers chose one reader to follow in our place for Hazel 2, which will happen in early March.

Today, I've been reading Brecht and he wrote some things that inspired me in a critique of Luckacs' History and Class Consciousness or Theory of the Novel (I should know which, maybe its both). He redefines 'Realism' to be historically present and inventive in its means, not necessarily 'sensuous' a la Tolstoy or Balzac; not necessarily anything, since the situation determines the means. I have felt for a long time, since my old days of playing free-improvised piano in high school that nothing is necessarily the proper means and that it is best to do away with pre-existing narratives about what a piece of art should or shouldn't be. The proper means arises in the moment and it is a changing process, not a fixed landing point. I am glad that Hazel felt 'Real' in the way Brecht describes and my understanding of what it means.

This is what I nervously read:

Preface to "The Science of Fashion" (or) "The Fashion of Science"
by Erica Eller

Science, the study of interesting things, has never been so fashionable. Life as we know it has no significance without scientific explanations that seek to render the unknowable into dinner talk. Whiteness is a quality found in salt, snow, eyes, bones, and clouds, and each of these visual clues form a vast and elusive question mark, which we dare not ask, for fear of seeming ignorant. Underneath our impenetrability, roses are red, blood is red, and rubies are red, but books are only flipped through. If you decide to read this one, it might contain an answer, or it might not. The question always determines the answer, so if you ask why is snow white, and the book says because its in season, it may at least demonstrate that shifting trends slide dangerously through our senses every instant. The fashion of science is a very foolish area of study except when you consider that heat causes water to boil therefore fashion is alluring. The allure of fashion is deliciously axiomatic. Teenagers never can decide when to stop questioning their elders, so take this book and put it between you and them in order to shield your countenance from their critique. If they pose the question to you, "Why?" you can simply turn to page 156 for the answer, which of course is 'Z'. Never stifle teenagers with overly rational answers, because they are the chic ones of the household. It is best to encourage them to suspect you for lying to them so they might rebel and attempt to rewrite the book. Let them discover its secret on their own – the void. In fashion, each rebellion is productive because it brings about the newest trend. The object of this book is to subject scientific axioms to minor metamorphoses so they might become cute decorations to wear around our necks. 2000 of these decorations have been arranged into an appendix at the back of the book. You may be tempted to copy their designs, but be warned that plagiarized ideas are never as good as the higher priced original. The best selling modern authors have each been consulted about the surface appeal of this book, and they all agreed that it was so simple the public would want to understand it, but that it would remain mysterious enough to ensure that only scientists would accurately classify it as Genus: Empty and Species: Fashion. Each scientist has admitted to a host of flawed assumptions, therefore we best selling authors doubt the validity of their categories. Regardless, we thank them for their reputation. The cut out portions of this book were merely substantive, but since you might find useful hints and additions to be compelling, we saved them for the 2nd 3rd and 4th editions, to be published over the coming years, with variable release dates, so the press will stay on their toes. Our unparalleled success has been repeatedly touted by our PR reps who designed fictive statistics to back our claims. Since the year 2000, a trillion copies have sold, which is incontrovertible proof of this book's necessity, and it has induced the author into a state of bliss so profound it surpasses the effects of his or her morphine addiction. Thus, this book is the antidote to all scientific claims, and yet, it subsumes science into its auspice, since, as the author has tirelessly instructed, science has never been so fashionable. Neither labor, nor distribution has either fully put this theory into action until now, which makes both third-world-factory-workers and multimillionaires laugh at the same ongoing joke. For art-teachers and critics, I assure you there is no harm in embracing the positive rhetoric of the It-Girl. It is advisable to refer to this book in its rightful context as the it-book. Please note that every question posed is in itself a posture, rather than a legitimate concern, and we treat our answers as flexible solutions to transient whims. No major material alterations will be barred from future editions. We encourage change, especially when it is so rapid it remains the same. The publishers of this book publish it in seven different color and shape combinations, in full confidence that the book's multifarious aesthetic will cause it to become a collector's item and that customers will want to purchase every color and shape combo for themselves. Publishers everywhere are noting this simple marketing technique and applying it to classics with much less interesting covers than ours, such as Aristotle's Poetics, and Tolstoy's War and Peace. Publishers and consumers alike appreciate books that look and feel fun and sexy. In conclusion, what you see is better than what you don't see, because at least it’s basically real.

Dolls

2012-01-17T21:47:00.000-08:00

Hell O ’ Dollies by Junji Ito:

Hell O’ Dollies by Junji Ito

Two Beautiful Names

2012-01-10T23:31:00.001-08:00

1. Luisa Valenzuela2. Lucretia Martel

A Journey Round My Skull is now 50 Watts

2012-01-07T12:35:00.000-08:00

This is by no means breaking news, but A Journey Round My Skull is now primarily 50 watts. This is one of my favorite sites. I only recently discovered its

various permutations.

Its current permutation is this:
50 Watts

It used to be (and still is to some degree):
A Journey Round My Skull

This wonderful collector is also elsewhere on the web. You can find a full list of sites here:
Will Schofield's blogs

(The Image I posted is from a series on 50 Watts called Looks Like Rain)

guerrera/o gris

2011-11-27T14:19:00.001-08:00

Guy Bourdin (1928-91)

2011-11-08T09:20:00.000-08:00

These are some video images of women through the strange telescope of fashion and through Guy Bourdin's lens. Fascinating.

"Bourdin was not alone in demystifying the object, but he was the most radical in his approach. The photographs of Guy Bourdin and contemporaries such as Helmut Newton, proved that advertising need not be an elaboration of a safe, prescribed fantasy. Bourdin emphasised fetishism, power relationships, and the potential for sexual violence, as well as the artificiality of the image, its gloss rather than its reality."
---from this biography

Why I'm Gonna Fucking Protest: A well-trodden Manifesto

2011-10-14T20:15:00.000-07:00

I'm taking time out of my paper-writing for the protest tomorrow. Why? It has nothing to do with personal debt, of which I have very little. It is because United States corporate interests, which are actually multi-national corporate interests, involve the exploitation of land with the ever-loosening of safeguards for human or environmental health (which leads to proliferation of cancer and other diseases and higher insurance premiums, neither of which, I like) AND the noticeable absence of media attention granting accurate data to the population - I recently discovered that in a report that California's natural waterways have worsened by 170 percent since 2006! due to harsh chemicals from pesticides and due to bacteria, corporations exploit cheap labor outside of the U.S. rather than ensuring work here in the U.S. - in part, a result of Reaganomics, which Republicans with corporate interests revere although it leads to a widening gap between rich and poor and thus, the only jobs available in small towns are at Wal-mart, corporations they have foreign economic interests and the U.S. government seeks to appease these multi-national corporations by using the strong-arm so-called diplomacy of military might which has lead to a 10 year occupation in Afghanistan; meanwhile 1/4 of our budget is sucked into military INSTEAD of investing into non-violent domestic education and to one of the greatest resources: smart, educated people. The top 1% of the wealthiest people in the U.S. pay less in taxes than I

do, and they complain that the average consumer is not spending as much as they should, yet, 'trickle down' does not happen - when the banks were bailed out, executives were paid out and went on holiday. Good for them. I'm too, am considering holiday in the form of ex-patriotism as a viable personal option for dealing with governing leaders that have very short-sighted economic interests and vision for the potentially stabilizing and implementing sustainable policies which ARE available to our decision-making bodies - both Wall Street and the U.S. Government.

Step down, imperialistic Ceasars!

Ad Lib: Life of the Writer in Bed

2011-10-11T21:43:00.001-07:00

1. A writer writes in bed. Think of Paul Bowles. I see a stone floor as a bed and maybe a blanket of tropical heat, lying in a sandstone hut, and smoking kif there. A stray cat enters.
2. A writer writes in bed, writing letters to their homeland. But their homeland is just outside. Their bed is a sovereign spot, a private peaceful spot where there are only dreams and nightmares of what goes on outside the walls.
3. A writer writes in bed when outside, the sky is falling. The writer is prepared to die as long as they are able to die in bed. Life-in-bed and death-in-bed, forever. Without a bed, there is nothing. Bed is an immortal plane of pacifism.
4. The writer in bed does not write very often. The writer in bed mostly reads books.
5. Sometimes a writer in bed hears complaints from people who come barging into her or his bedroom. It's nice outside, they say. Let's go for a bike-ride. No. I have too much to read, the writer says. There's a party going on tonight, there's free wine! No. Wine is irrelevant, the writer says. But you go and please tell them at the party I miss them greatly, but I'm very, very busy in bed, the writer says. What will they think she or he is doing? Perpetual masturbation.
6. A writer writes in bed to continue this dynamic of a private-public persona. Privacy always come first, until it is given up in the form of a document. Then there is a communal transaction with the outside world. The metropolis greatly displeases the writer. There is great displeasure in newly marketed gadgets, advertisements, and infrastructure. The writer doesn't want things. The writer would rather drink from a river than from a faucet, but the writer does not trust that the river is free from the pollutants that are generated by the metropolis. The writer does not want to own anything but books. The writer has amassed a number of books by ordering them in the mail. There is great displeasure in the urge for a writer to move fast. The writer in bed moves slow! There is great displeasure in progress. I repeat, the writer in bed moves slow! Dies slow! Fades slowly from recognition! The writer in bed exhales slow and then later, is discovered. The writer in bed has time to think things through differently. The writer in bed interprets reality through the lens of unreality. The writer in bed lives and breaths dreams. The writer is complex.
6. A stray cat purrs beside the writer's bed. The writer in bed ignores the cat. This is equilibrium.

Algeria(s)

2011-09-30T18:59:00.000-07:00

I like lists. This is my self-edited list for Algeria, presented as a literary construct. This list presents both literary genius and literary pain in relation to French Empiricism, which might be better understood in relation to Roman Empiricism. Thus, we begin with Augustine of Hippo...

Augustine of Hippo: "Augustine was born in a North African Roman province in present-day Algeria - a backwater of the Roman Empire. (...) Augustine recognized the need for some way to authorize the interpretation of Scriptures to prevent Christianity from fragmenting into sects. The existing hodgepodge of unconnected and sometimes contradictory narratives (and translations) could not simply be taken as a group of literal documents. (...) The development of an adequate theory of signs, especially of tropes is one of the goals of Augustinian hermeneutics - as it is for much subsequent theory of interpretation, including modern semiotics (Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2nd ed. pg 154-155)
Jacques Derrida: Born in French Algeria 1930.
Helene Cixous: Born in French Algeria in 1937.
Andre Gide: b. 1869, "In 1893 and 1894, Gide traveled in Northern Africa, and it was there that he came to accept his attraction to boys.[2] He befriended Oscar Wilde in Paris, and in 1895 Gide and Wilde met in Algiers. There, Wilde had the impression that he had introduced Gide to homosexuality, but, in fact, Gide had already discovered this on his own.[3][4]" (wikipedia: Andre Gide)
Jean Genet: "He worked with Foucault and Sartre to protest police brutality against Algerians in Paris, a problem persisting since the Algerian War of Independence, when beaten bodies were to be found floating in the Seine. He expresses his solidarity with the Red Army Faction (RAF) of Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, in the article "Violence et brutalité", published in Le Monde, 1977." (wikipedia: Jean Genet)
Frantz Fanon: "Fanon left France for Algeria, where he had been stationed for some time during the war. He secured an appointment as a psychiatrist at Blida-Joinville Psychiatric Hospital. It was there that he radicalized methods of treatment. In particular, he began socio-therapy which connected with his patients' cultural backgrounds. He also trained nurses and interns. Following the outbreak of the Algerian revolution in November 1954 he joined the FLN liberation front (Front de Libération Nationale) as a result of contacts with Dr Pierre Chaulet at Blida in 1955. In The Wretched of the Earth (Les damnés de la terre), published shortly before Fanon's death in 1961, Fanon defends the right for a colonized people to use violence to struggle for independence, arguing that human beings who are not considered as such shall not be bound by principles that apply to humanity, in their attitude towards the colonizer. His book was then censored by the French government. Fanon made extensive trips across Algeria, mainly in the Kabyle region, to study the cultural and psychological life of Algerians. His lost study of "The marabout of Si Slimane" is an example. These trips were also a means for clandestine activities, notably in his visits to the ski resort of Chrea which hid an FLN base. By summer 1956 he wrote his "Letter of resignation to the Resident Minister" and made a clean break with his French assimilationist upbringing and education. He was expelled from Algeria in January 1957 and the "nest of fellaghas [rebels]" at Blida hospital was dismantled." (wikipedia: Frantz Fanon)
Film: "Le Petit Soldat" by Jean Luc Godard: "The situation in Algeria and the denunciation of the use of torture by both sides are the main themes of the movie. This led to the film being banned for three years in France." (wikipedia: Le Petit Soldat)
The Algerian War: "The Algerian War, (Arabic: ثورة جزائرية‎ Thawra Jazā’irīya, "Algerian Revolution"; French: Guerre d'Algérie), was a conflict between France and Algerian independence movements from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria's gaining its independence from France" (wikipedia: The Algerian War)
Etymology of Algeria: The country's name is derived from the city of Algiers. The most common etymology links the city name to al-Jazā'ir (الجزائر, "The Islands"), a truncated form of the city's older name Jazā'ir Banī Mazghanā (جزائر بني مازغان, "Islands of the Mazghanna Tribe"),[14][15] employed by medieval geographers such as al-Idrisi. Others[who?] trace it to Ldzayer, the Maghrebi Arabic and Berber for "Algeria" possibly related to the Zirid Dynasty King Ziri ibn-Manad and founder of the city of Algiers[16] Ziri itself means "Moonlight" in Berber.[citation needed] (wikipedia: Algeria)
Postcard: ALGER - Vue générale prise de la Jetée.
Film: La Jetee: "Of course, as Harbord is not the first to recognize, the film's gloom and paranoia are products of its era. Marker began making "La Jetee" at the end of France's eight-year war with Algeria, and was still working on it during the Cuban missile crisis." (Article: Chris Marker: La Jetée' by Janet Harbord, Unraveling the mysteries behind the 1962 film by Lawrence Levi)
Story: Djamila Boupacha by Simone de Beauvoir: "In 1962, Beauvoir and Gisile Halimi co-authored the story of Djamila Boupacha, an Algerian girl accused of being a terrorist and tortured by the French during the French-Algerian War. This book may be read as an extension of Beauvoir's critique of the Marquis de Sade. Instead of fleeing from the horrors of the real into the safety of the imaginary, Beauvoir takes up her responsibility as an author to expose and confront realities that the state would rather hide. Her purpose in writing is concrete and political. The book is both a protest and an appeal. Countering Sade, Beauvoir and Halimi show that the truth of torture lies in the unjustifiable politics of abusive power." (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Simone de Beauvoir)
Story: The Lustful Turk, or Lascivious Scenes from a Harem (1828) by Anonymous: First published in England by John Benjamin Brookes, the book was not widely known until it was reprinted by William Dugdale in 1893. This tale of sex and sadism consists largely of a series of letters written by its heroine, Emily Barlow, after being abducted by Moorish pirates and held prisoner in an Algerian harem. The David F. Friedman sexploitation film The Lustful Turk (1968) is based on the novel. (wikipedia: Sadism and Masochism)
Marquis de Sade: Connection to Algeria unknown.
Meaning of Latin Suffix Algia: Pain

2007. Sunset, camera, eye.

2011-09-19T22:50:00.000-07:00

Plain Wrap interviews E.E.

2011-09-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

Click here to read the latest Erica Eller Interview:

PPPPPLAIN WRAPPPPP

Riffing on Erica

2011-09-17T13:14:00.000-07:00

Ecclectica, erotica, ejectica, erectica, electrica, effectica, epileptica, equestrica, extraextrica, elliptica, Eritrea, effervescica, regressica, undressica, made a mess ica, confessica, didactica, galactica, hurt my back ica, wearing black ica, terrorica, heretica, guerrerica, linearica, millionairica, complicatica, erratica, exotica, ebb and flow ica, evolutica, day glow ica, eiderdownica, very slow ica, encaustica, enchantica, elastica, elucidatica, elegiacica, effeminatica, expansica, exhibitica, euphemismica, escapica, enigmatica, egotistica, egalitaristica, electroacoustica, empiricistica, empyrealica, emptinessica, endochrinica, encyclopedica, elapsica, errorica, errica, erica.

Albinos

2011-09-15T00:44:00.001-07:00

© someone I've never met, but I stole their photo, and I'm sorry.

1. If you read in the footnote of Marianne Moore's "Observations" version (out of print) of her poem "Poetry" you'll find an albino deer.
2. The end of Herzog's "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" has albino crocodiles or alligators, I can't remember which.
3. "Moby Dick"
4. Lewis Carrol's White Rabbit
5. Snow
6. Albino black bears appeared in a recent National Geographic article entitled Spirit Bear
7. There was another book I read in middle school with an albino rabbit in it and I can't remember what its title was. It was a scary book. That's twice I can't remember in one blog post.
8. Maybe my memory is albino, too, and that's why I can't see into it, its too bright, too blank, except for two incredible eyes looking back at me.
9. There are other lists in online if this is not enough.
10. What would you do with this list anyway? This list is about nothing. Superstition. The voice in the wind. Forget about it.

I didn't mean for this to be a mix tape...but here's Soy Rebelde

2011-09-15T00:41:00.000-07:00

Don't you forget about MR. Tony Williams

2011-09-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

I haven't and I won't. I hold a special place in my heart for this man. In fact, I just listened to "Liberty" on Native Land, and thought my-my, this drummer is the shit (but it's not up on You-tube for me to share).

I should have read Nicanor Parra earlier

2011-08-30T17:27:00.000-07:00

Nicanor Parra is one of those unescapable appendages growing out of the side of Bolano's corpus that grabs us readers by the collar now instead of earlier and shakes our jugular (this is for those of us who didn't already know of Parra pre-Bolano. And how is there a pre-Bolano and a post-Bolano anyway? How has he so masterfully planted his foot in our reading path and said, look? I'm looking, I'm looking, and trying to learn Spanish, which should have been incorporated into my education from the start). So Nicanor Parra's appearance on my bookshelf is a result of reading Bolano, which did not necessarily have to happen that way.

http://www.montevidayo.com/?p=1822

Bolano leaves us wondering ...who else is out there? Who don't I know about? Who haven't I read? For the record...
Roberto Bolano never mentions Eugene Ostashevsky.
Roberto Bolano never mentions Ariana Reines
Therefore, I've got to keep reading.

Writers of Short Books: César Aira and Jean Phillipe Toussaint

2011-08-14T11:22:00.000-07:00

César Aira's fiction is like 13 cats of different ages in a hall of mirrors chasing yellow, red, and blue bouncy balls in slow motion with literary still frames when there is an eclipse between any of these components from the perspective of the reader. And it is also about love (see this Harper's interview: Into the Unforeseen, A romance of César Aira by Rivka Galchen).

Jean Phillipe Toussaint's Fiction is like Proust's great metaphoric nephew who discovered the metaphysics of holding one's breath on a bridge at an important moment in historical time by checking the surrealistic correspondence between his pulse and the clouds and his most recent object of love from an encyclopedia of beloved objects. And it is about romance.

The Lesson of this Blog Post is that readers and writers of short books or experiments in fiction are welcomed never to stray from the themes of love and romance.

Today's thoughts on the writing of Rulfo and Lispector

2011-08-07T16:05:00.000-07:00

Two books that are on my mind today are "Pedro Paramo" by Juan Rulfo and "The Hour of the Star" by Clarice Lispector and I suppose what underlies this act of pulling them out of the book pile and focussing on them both has something to do with poverty and the exalted language that death provides as a platform for those who were unfortunate in their lifetimes and vocalized in death. Each of these books is an attempt at vocalizing the importance of the rejected members of society through the enactment and reinforcement of the power of death. Death gives even the most under acknowledged members of society a platform of reverence to start from. This status of tragedy forms the basis of the impact of each of these novels.

They each share the figure of the helpless female as the focal point that drives the ultimate tragedy of each narrative. In "The Hour of the Star" it is Macabea, a young, frail, unselfconscious character who floats through her simple life into an absurd death of a car accident. In "Pedro Paramo" it is the young Susana who the terrible Pedro Paramo loves and who forms the eye of the storm of violence in the town of Media Luna with her death. These deaths form an important signal of surrender and they give voice to an important shift of power, a transfer from violence and disparity to remorse.

In Helene Cixous' book, "Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing" she provides important insights about the role of death as a factor of productive writing in the chapter, The School of the Dead. She discusses the close connection between Clarice Lispector's own impending death, and her characterization of Macabea's. In fact, at some point the biographical influx in the text seems to haunt the text as a hovering story that has more validity than the fiction. Suspicions about real emotion and real tragedy in the speculative realm of fiction can be batted off of biography because biography provides a promise of validity, while as fiction escapes that promise. The biography represents the material reality of a living author and it gives a sense of rationality to the otherwise slippery text that fiction embodies. Fiction is a series of unanswered questions, and it behaves as an impetus to engage our intuitive reasoning. The strange lingering material facts about both Clarice Lispector and Juan Rulfo's lives comprise a sense of authorial disappearance. Rulfo was a tire salesman and he only wrote two books, but these two books form pillars in the canon of Latin American Literature. Lispector died of cancer after writing the book in which her author reveals the conscious decision to kill off Macabea in "The Hour of the Star". Both authors were effective producers of fate, rather than fated subjects due to their writing.

The notable artifice of the death is worth mentioning in both of the texts. Juan Rulfo's text, "Pedro Paramo" hosts a series of voices at various stages of life, afterlife, and the in between spaces that speak in a timeless simultaneity that splays itself over the course of the pages of the book. As mentioned earlier, the fictionalized author in "The Hour of the Star" whose interjections form a series of meditations on the spiritual functions of death and give the reader insight into the decision making process about the characters in the text form the bulk of the material while the descriptive aspect of the world of Macabea is relatively scarce. The world of the text is the process of the dictation, in that case.

The ability of an author to write beyond death through artifice is of explicit interest of mine and is something that is encountered in the texts of Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson as well. It has been suggested that Edgar Allen Poe expressed the sardonic nature of death as a powerful facet of humanity and that in his works, he fetishized dead females by presenting them as the ultimate form of beauty. The figure of the helpless female in an ultimately brutal world due to the unlimited power of treacherous men becomes a fated martyr in many of his works. The difference between simple martyrdom comes when writers developed the response of giving these females or other martyred figures voice from beyond the grave. Emily Dickinson extended the voice of her poetry up to the moment of death and then passing through, often to a realm of unanticipated immortality. This exposure of the unspeakable, something so grave, is an assertion of hope and possibly of power for the sake of the anonymous lost figures of the world who are victimized and extracted from their ways of life by force. Women are often seen in opposition to force, but they also combine to form the measure of its extremity. The extent by which women are effectively silenced is a sign of a world closed down by the threat of violence. The extent by which women may be able to express sexuality is a sign of acceptance, but the sign of equality, for me, is the extent by which women are enlisted into the sphere of intellectual influence. Thus, the women figures of Monique Wittig call out to me, those of Anais Nin, the women of Lydia Davis, of Jane Bowles, of Eudora Welty, of Agatha Christie, of Virginia Woolf, George Eliot, Jane Austen, and I'm sure there are others waiting for me. I'm still searching for these women authors and characters.

Today the books on my shelf look like tombstones, and I feel a connection with the deaths of the authors who wrote them along with their words that have been cast in stone. It is not unlike a cemetery in my room today and it reminds me of the close ties between religion and text. Writers often come to a point of understanding that transcendence of reality will not come through prayer or ephemeral music, but through documentation, and each of the books that are filled with words present a form of transcendence, both social and spiritual. And yet, there are limits to the efficacy of these dead books, too. These days, writing is practically a conversation. Writing has become more alive with the rate and flow of the stream of writing on the internet, but that is another topic altogether.

Finding out about Infrarealism: Juarez

2011-08-07T02:25:00.000-07:00

Juarez is the city that inspired Roberto Bolano's book, 2666. The book is more than a city, more than a region, more than a phase of history, it represents impossibility. The book succeeds terrifyingly in its open-ended continuation within current affairs. Here is an appropriate (if tangential) opinion piece about NPR's framing of the city's strife in the news:

http://www.montevidayo.com/?p=1729

Finding out about Infrarealism: Mario Santiago

2011-08-07T02:12:00.001-07:00

Infrarealism: still finding, still out.

I'm tapping into the divine providence of the web because I realized that a fortuitous genius posted this link in a comment to me back in January on something I had posted:

AN INTERVIEW WITH MARIO SANTIAGO:
http://altarpiece.blogspot.com/2011/01/following-is-translation-of-1995.html

(My apologies, I'm more comfortable with paper and pen)

EE in The Otolith

2011-08-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

Read Olympia in the online lit journal The Otolith (Issue 22) - it is a new story written by yours truly.

http://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2011/05/erica-eller-olympia-if-there-is-dark.html

Put Money into Books

2011-05-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

Aside from the $120 I've invested in purchasing summer reading material over the last three days, I found money that I put into a book a while ago that I had forgotten about. I think I put it in there because I liked the way my grandparents used to stash money in places in their cupboards and closets and then forgot about it. I decided to divvy money up within books that had an impact on me. I thought of it as a way to invest in books in a way that symbolized my faith in their oblique meanings and in my efforts to become a writer. I put a twenty dollar bill into Bret Easton Ellis' Glamorama about two years ago. I knew I would forget about it and then later be happy when I found it. Somehow my plan worked remarkably well. I just found it today when I opened Glamorama to see how to format an epigraph.

The double epigraph in Glamorama has always stuck with me. At one point, I was sure it was a Hemingway reference. Now I'm not so sure. The epigraph is this:

There was no time when you nor I nor these kings did not exist. - Krishna

You make a mistake if you see what we do as merely political. - Hitler

I remember believing that Bret Easton Ellis might somehow be playing off of the double epigraph in the beginning of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, which reads:

"You are all a lost generation." - Gertrued Stein in conversation

"One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever...The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose...The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits...All the rivers run to into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again." - Ecclesiastes

Now after I found the twenty, I'm browsing through the two books because I thought there was more of a distinct connection between them. I'm having difficulty making the connection at this point in time. I guess I'll have to go back to my notes. I thought it had something to do with the last chapter in Ellis' book. Or was it The Great Gatsby? Both Ellis and Fitzgerald talk about the future in the end of their books:

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther....And one fine morning - So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." (Fitzgerald)

vs.

" - and I'm falling forward but also moving up toward the mountain, my shadow looming against its jagged peaks, and I'm surging forwards, ascending, sailing through dark clouds, rising up, a fiery wind propelling me, and soon it's night and stars hang in the sky above the mountain, revolving as they burn. The stars are real. The future is the mountain." (Ellis)

And maybe the seed of inspiration is purely this juxtaposition of past and present that is at stake via endings and beginnings, and a weird intrinsic push and pull between the two. Both sets of epigraphs and last paragraphs contain juxtapositions that lead backwards and forwards at once. Some people call this the Vesuvian face, or the Angel of History, or any other metaphor that can capture both directions at once. I'm interested in predicting my own forgetting to remind myself in the future about what I've already found in books that has been both secret and fruitful. It is a small reflexive poem to add hidden treasure into books because I know hidden treasure of a different kind can be found there.

So I guess what I'm saying about money in books is that if you can forget you put it in them, finding it later gives you that backward/forward dynamic. It is important to invest in a book that allows you an opportunity to relive what you enjoy about it in the future. Try it. Bret Easton Ellis' impact had something to do with reading it in context with Walter Benjamin's Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and Debord's The Society of the Spectacle. Now I'm trying to recover that vague connection and it seems like a puzzle. I'll have to spend some time to remember what made me think the connection with this book to others was so compelling.

I'm going to put the twenty back into one of the books on my shelf. It is an important decision to make because the book I choose will mean something for me when I find it in the future. I'm going to put it into a page of W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn - the page where Sebald references Borges' Orbius Tertius - page 153. When I came to that page I laughed because I noticed Sebald's way of asserting his own textual artifice. It filled me with strange joy and the next time I discover that twenty, I hope to rediscover that same joy, knowing that my money doesn't mean anything except the meaning I imbue it with.

Is it a Movie or is it a Photoshoot?

2011-05-16T17:27:00.000-07:00

She's so High

2011-05-09T22:54:00.000-07:00

If ever I saw such a good idea as this, well I did - today! I'm such a big fan of self-portraiture and I found someone else who is too, but this lady...
( Natsumi Hayashi ) added one more thing to the mix because she only takes self-levitating-portraits, check it out:

SHE'S FLYING!!!

Blasphemes

2011-04-03T00:58:00.000-07:00

I have stumbled, once again, on my talent (or penchant) for making blasphemous poetry. I've decided to compile some of them from both past and present in this post.

Blaspheme #6: Song of Sandwich

Until the night shall cometh
I've seven little squares
of cheese inside my sandwich
I won't offer to share –
this is my reward for stretching
dollars till they tear.
Says one to the other
(why must I over hear)
‘I'm not about to tell you…
and neither would you dare –
write minor reportage
about my underwear…
I'd rather not abortion
Nor am I an au pair’
Two voices in a ‘sandwich’
surround me in my chair
I silently dissuade them,
I am a March Hare
mining fields abundant,
my thinking needs repair
wishing I was there
(not here)…
A minor correspondence
crawls out into the air
shallow is its bonnet
rowdy is its hair
my nemesis is meaning,
but it seeps inside the lair
of every poet's dreaming
who ever had a spare
word to lace a paper
inhaled just to impair
the sharp blade of morning,
or deep-bliss in the stare
of Mona or Madonna,
Magdalena or Cher...
If this doesn't have a subject
you know, neither did Seidel,
but this has smaller budget
and I don't write as well.
Imploring on a subject,
look how flat I fell!
But words still sing so swell,
yes, words still sound so rare
when they find their proper pair…
swelling oceans have a moment
of pause before they break.
‘Couldn't call you on the phone
or invite you for a steak –
I couldn't quite afford it
when all I had was this:
a lingering abyss,
a pocket in the head,
(con’t)
a dome of whirling flakes,
the snow on mount Tamalpais,
and a fear of earthquakes.
But minor are the missing,
for those we often seek
are sweeter when they're early
and shier when they're bleak.
In finding we are flossing
the food out of our teeth…
leave it there to rot, now
leave it there to write
the lines of how Kraft singles
and Wonderbread unite.
The voices in a sandwich,
They call me an absurdist,
but I think I heard them wrong –
I thought they said an artist,
I gazed at them so long –
It never had occurred to me –
Myself and I could belong
to the archives of our longing
the names who stack so high,
all fingering their ladies
no mothers asking why
they haven't had their coffee
or drank all of their tea
or took to Law of Murphy
they're so filled up with sea…
(sigh)
sea water in their salty tears,
sea water in their lies,
a crab or two down under,
a carcass hosting flies…

Chorus:
I've only an addiction
to making mess of this,
the art we're so in tune to,
I sing you streams of piss.

Blaspheme #1

What heaven, not August, but April clemency
This day, this hour, each mindfully mercenary
prolonging the mind's eye, so sadistically sensory
upon one dreadfully yellow, deceased canary

It is my duty, on a pisser, to sip sherry wine
Beneath transparency-interrupted, so asinine
And last Tuesday, the hall-rat swallowed cyanide
Kitten brought it forth, asking 'twere it mine?

Have it pussy, I said, the rat is yours
The garbage, too and what hits the floors
from the pantry and spittle of breakfast pan fires
(Where kitten goes, kitten minds her kitten mores)

But these tally not to my foremost Memento Mori
'Twas the rotten hand beside my morning glory
A stagnant purple hue as opposed to canary yellow
I bowed to the unfortunate, and said, why hello!

This adaptation to a day of serendipitous weather
Brought with it a stench not as light as a feather
I wondered if it were to have once had a father
Where he, less appendage or perhaps list of parts, rather,

Went scurrying away to, away minus this
Hands are useful, beloved, not so easy to dismiss
These thoughts, I enclose to my lover in a missive
Knowing I've all the munition to make putrid his kiss

The thought of any lopping off leads to thoughts of those,
The other appendages south of the nose
But his keen ear has grown quite immune to my news
Preposterous as it is, he disregards it as prose

It's said that spirits create a mental state of frolic
Though not a drunkard am I, nor anonymous alcoholic
But a well-versed subscriber the the Walldorf-Astoria chronicle
Music to my ears, a classic recipe for a gin and tonic

But really now...have you seen, you ask, a bird, a rat, or a hand?
All three, I'll admit, weren't initially planned
But the weather, so ripe, kept my hand so pinned
In the shade to my pen and my pad, understand?

Blaspheme #2

Teeth chattering, a racha racha,
Chewing on the rail, a racha racha,
Shakers in the air, a racha racha,
Clatter in the window, a racha racha,
Broken glass chimes, a racha racha,
Rumbling machines, alive!
Tambourines rain from the balcony,
One, two, three
Counting the rachas
Dodging the glittering keys, racacacha
Flung out from, Aracha Aracha!
The rising tide, Aracha Aracha!
Towering top-heavy bookcase
Upon tilted third-floor deck
Leaning with avalanche
A racha racha racha ra!
Piled up from the bottom
A stack carried up
Box upon boxes
Foxtrot cockroaches
Marches and Cha chas
Chimney top drop
Amacha Amach!
chains a chop chop!
A fight to death you stinking Bitch!
Flung the car-body out the window
Crashed into the alley and
She pounded back on drums
Before purging them from the ledge
Crossfiring Amacha
Pulling arms for the riches
Cutting skin for the stiches
Beneath the orchestra,
verbose pitches
Amacha Amacha!
Bang Bang A boxing Match!
She unhooked your Latch!
Look at your britches' blotches!
Games in the gutter.
Neighbors close up the shutter.
Enough! They mutter.
A mutterer's amore.
Is Aracha, the whore.

Blaspheme #3

Knocker my latch and
liquor the kvetch
Missed you and now
I'm falling asleep?
Foul Juggernaut
Ornery scoundrel
Lost in shaded stanzas
Rat a tat tat
Vermin in vermouth
Lousy absent minder
lifted a finger hush
wired me nothing
wafting waiter I whittle away
hovering wakeful with
Papa holding poppy(cock) and
Kissing puppy
to my sappy stupor
shut my trap to weep
weaker and weaker he knows
Down in the gutter me goes

Blaspheme #4

Everything to touch turns to VD
Telly has a light show, soft core, seedy
Anchor your wealth in the sinking market
Titanic kilter, when the car’s limey park it
Dance in the books, snowball cash flow
Mother’s tears, acid raindrops in dayglo
Nuclear testing time, take out your Scantron
Don’t put your eggs in a satchel with Enron
Dimes donuts dimples dipthongs
Yes no Maybe, political songs
Standards in time, sans time zone
Zipper my nipple, cable my cone
Cable unable to cast a rod
If you could, would you believe in God?
If your name was an omen of hope
Would you cast it out like a rope?
Noose in the nose, white filament
Somber and never forget to pay rent
New days under a new reply
Miser miserable miserably
Constant as the north star
Immortal as the trash
My name asunder
My scabs balderdash
Insinuate my fat like
A miniature stash
Offered up to the one
With the flash splash cash
Dimmer the donner for dinner Madonna
Bella Marianna, aviary, my goner
Goodbye nooner newer than Vana
Strident and wise like shim sham crystal Mana
Jury and jitter, little green liver
Drunk in a time when my line was linear
Shallow the grey goose, sloshing in Russia
Suppressed and a shortage come quicker in flusher
Toilet, sink, drain, mop, and scrubber
Squeeky clean lest you must wear a rubber
Down a dark corridor nothing in my tomb
Dead newborns waiting for their voodoo womb
Came too quick with the news of a murder
Enough is entitled to rough cuff and bluff
Israeli misread my repetition
Bullets rattled my limbs with their transition
Calling all rebels, laureates with vision
The heart answers blood to the hand’s indecision
Feeding the hungry with deft precision
You’ll have your share and time to spare
You’ll have your thirst like the addictions of squares
You my friend took last night’s light
Poked me till I stood upright
Shined me with a star so bright
Pulled me in and squeezed me tight
Call me lucky the fucker’s nooky
Call me your bitch and name me pookie
Quip my lip and lap up my matter
Thoughts asunder, Notions a scatter
Nations climb upward citizen’s ladder
My president’s birthright, lineage of Mad Hatter
Chuck your ties out when they start to matter
Everyday my Cheshire grows fatter
Kitty pussy loves her poppycock
Fly me to the moon so I can rap a knock
Rattle the door to the universe
Then sing out your carol, the one you rehearse.

Asa Nisi Masa

2011-03-20T14:52:00.000-07:00

Pretending to be Dickinson

2011-03-18T20:22:00.000-07:00

1.
Cochineal is the heart - that dusts the cheek
Rouge - the blood - as it cools - leaks
Malleable the hand - that calms - doves
Murder - the lamb - that lies - loves

2.
Until the hour crawls up to meet
one upon whom - all the feet
walk - scatter - sow - deploy
Ammunition finds - a decoy

3.
It was not tide for it was smooth
It was not cloud for it was flood
It did not rain when it expressed
It bled and stained a white - dress

4.
Hallowed newness - lack exploits
Mighty winds of vogue divorce
Picking needles off the hem
Fashion - mayhem - discourse

5.
Minds move not what keeps them taut
But taught are we - in them - not

Bikini and Enewetak

2011-03-18T06:56:00.000-07:00

My two-day insomnia has led me to compile this:

What follows is an ode to a series of historical events related to the displacement of an "uncivilized people" who had lived on their island for over 2000 years, but were moved, with the promise of moving back, in order for the U.S. military to test its H-bomb. I don't believe they ever did move back. I find it sad, but sad isn't the word. It dampens me.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists discuss the possibility of the Enewetak to move back home: CLICK

Time line of Events: CLICK

Remembering 57 Years Later: CLICK

Nuclear Disapora Photographs of the Bikini and Enewetak People: CLICK

Bikini Word Etymology: CLICK

More about Contemporary Spanish Writers

2011-02-24T10:34:00.001-08:00

(which, in my case, requires translation into English)
Here is an article where you find a bunch of names/works to add to your reading list, from the Quarterly Conversation.

A few keys to understanding Spanish contemporary fiction, and five authors to—at least—enjoy it

Women in Publishing

2011-02-07T18:23:00.000-08:00

I listened to this entire interview of Zadie Smith which addresses her newly appointed position as "New Fiction Editor" to Harper's Magazine:

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2011/feb/02/zadie-smith-books/

I listened with some discomfort due to the obtrusive and pointed interviewer, but the voice of this notable woman - Zadie Smith - is encouraging for me and I'm glad to know she'll be reviewing New Books in Harper's Magazine - one of the only magazines I subscribe to.

I may have not posted this interview, since I'm no Zadie Smith aficionado, except that I just also read another writer's summation of women in publishing by way of another magazine, The New Yorker, which features full-essay length reviews, similar to Harper's. What this article brings forth is primarily how the magazine lacks women in editorial positions and how the disparity is not easy to dismiss:

http://www.bookslut.com/features/2011_02_017200.php

I haven't done a full analysis of the editorial staff of Harper's, so this comment is not to draw comparisons between the two magazines, but instead, I wanted to briefly post these two links for the sake of an interesting dilemma in the world of fiction writing and publishing which is namely - sexism.

Along these lines, it should come as no surprise that I've decided to take an Emily Dickinson class this semester, and I was very interested to discover her ambivalence toward publishing, due to its inherent limitations which include patriarchy and 'contemporary American taste' which a different, though related, dilemma altogether.

(Unfortunately, I felt that the above-mentioned blog-article regarding The New Yorker pandered in both form and content to what is known as 'contemporary American taste'.)

Thankfully, Emily Dickinson transcended both dilemmas in her own way, through private correspondence as a means to make her writing public and by etching freedom behind closed doors - as the story goes.

A Conversation with some of the Best Young Spanish Writers according to...

2011-01-23T23:52:00.000-08:00

Granta (click to read about it).

First of all, I am now applying a big (SIC) to this entire blog-post. I guess that covers my ass from plagiarist haters and editors alike.

This was the evening at City Lights Books which was a talk with three of the published authors in the collection hosted by Daniel Alarcon, who would make for a great television interviewer, although he's already got a career made out for himself as an author. It has me wondering...why don't writers work as television show hosts for their day jobs? Perhaps not all of them would fare well.

So I'll try to capture the evening which I hardly remember, but luckily I took notes. First of all, I got there VERY VERY early, so I could sit and I sat. I sat next to a few Spaniards who were flaunting around a literary journal called Bostezo which I still have very little idea about, because I still need to learn Spanish, gosh darnit.

Anyway, Daniel Alarcon introduced Andres Felipe Solano (Columbia), Carlos Yushimito (Peru), and Carlos Labbe (Chile). Here's what I wrote down...

Barre wrote a 'novel-as-game' in the form of a hyper-text. I have no idea what the title is. He did it in a collective with friends to recover the playful aspect of writing.

Yushimoto said, "I'm trying to find eloquence in spring water because I have been drinking some beers...and I'm feeling vulnerable."

The name Reuben Fneseca came up (maybe).

Barre is against the idea that literature should be pleasing because the avant guarde is a space of freedom. His work is not directly driven rhetorical work, but rather circular, as in Baroque (read Bathasar and Cervantes and learn something about Spanish Baroque literature before reading further)...(No really)...(Note to self - follow your own rules). He said that deep entertainment is not just amusement. Or perhaps this wasn't Barre, but rather Solano that said all of that. No, it was Barre.

Solano talked about boredom during war-time, unrest, and violence as part of his Latin American aesthetic. He said something about having a versimillitude to realism and how crisis may produce formal experimentation, but that he is not sure if this does much of anything for or against the state of crisis.

I think someone said...probably Barre, the Chilean, that Totalitarianism and Pinochet's TV strategy helped build a strong show-business industry in Latin America because no one would go out into the streets. They were house bound in fear, basically. Or something to that effect. This produced boredom? Oh yes it did.

Solano likes to write fiction in atmospheres and that he writes non-fiction the same way he writes fiction, using atmospheres, because they are not so different after-all.

They brought up how the Granta collection dates their generation to the Fall of Franco. Someone said, "We have our own dictatorships" and that actually there is not much of a connection between the Latin American countries and Spain, in terms of writing. Then someone mentioned the name of someone who they thought was the best Mexican Writer - Yuri something? Not sure.

Someone said that this Granta collection was a Londoner's view of Latin America and Spain including 2 or 3 authors who claim to be Argentinean, but they are Spanish and that the Catalans (this was definitely Barre - the most impassioned argumenter) are more like the French than like Spaniards, that France is African now, that the U.S. is Latin American now, that Spain is African, Latin American, and French.

Yushimoto said that a lot more readers can access up-and-coming Latin American writers because of the internet.

Barre also said that Bolano is Mexican, Spanish and a little Chilean. Neruda is Chilean and due in part to Neruda, everyone in Chile is a poet (or claims to be one). He said that the circular logic of Latin America comes in part from Native Indian logic. He also attributed it to the Arabs who he said are not so directly driven. Borges, for him was a founder of a circular? Latin American rhetorical tradition?

Onetti was recommended for his intensity and his boredom. Other names were mentioned that I'm not sure if I wrote correctly - Nosilla, Carpentier.

Barre said that Cuban authors were epicentric. Or rather that Cuba is an epicenter.

Yushimoto (I think) brought up how Onetti said that for Vargas Llosa, literature is a wife, and that for him, it is a bitch. Thus, they prefer Onetti.

They mentioned the strange political backdrop of the Nobel Prize for Latin Americans including Marquez who is one of the only famous authors who stands by Fidel Castro and Llosa who is one of the only authors who stands by the liberal economy of the right wing.

Someone mentioned how contemporary people have fragmented aesthetic options due to globalization. And they continued to say that "we are very different", referring to Latin Americans because they have not one, two, or three paradigms, but many.

This includes many "Saturnal" writers.

Lastly in my notes, I have how the invention of Bolano in the U.S. makes for the end of an era of only high-society writers getting recognition from Latin America.

Someone gave a shout-out to some Chinese authors such as Wei Hui, Mo Yan and Yu Hua. I have no idea if I spelled any of those correctly.

I do remember a few of the questions. One woman asked in Spanish if they thought that this book contained some of the true sadness that perhaps should, according to her, be found in great Spanish writing, or from their previous generation. I do not recall the answer to that question.

Yushimoto assured the audience that this book had a lot of sex in it. They typified the sex as being for lack of a better word, uncomfortable. I wish I could remember that bit of the conversation, because it was "deeply entertaining". It lived up to their ideal.

WHO IS DANIEL ALARCON (SIC)?

2011-01-23T23:01:00.000-08:00

Someone I'd like to read.

I saw him read at City Lights Bookstore this Tuesday - reading a short story because he got selected to be in the 20 under 40 collection put together by the New Yorker.

I also saw him host an event at City Lights Books which was a conversation with a few of the authors in Granta's new selection of The Best Young Spanish Novelists, who are all born after 1975. It, consequently, has some great people to take a look at. So far, I love the stories by Lucia Puenzo, Carlos Yushimoto, and Andres Barba, but I haven't read them all. That night was a hoot because the writers sort of argued in the grand literary tradition of Latin America and Carlos Labbe (sic) started to redefine territories by stating that Spain is not Spain anymore, but rather an amalgam of France, North Africa, and South America. This led to him saying that Bolano (sic) is not Chilean, but rather European and Mexican with a distant sliver of Chile still present in his work. It was not fun for me to hear how incredibly un-circular he thought North American/English writers tend to be, which is perhaps true, but it still hurts... Yet, I was cured by Yushimoto's immediate charm who said, "I am trying to find eloquence in spring water because I have been drinking some beers and I'm feeling vulnerable..." Perhaps I'll do a better recap of this reading from my notes, later. In the mean-time I'll get back to D.A.(sic)

This doesn't mean that I spend all of my time at City Lights Books, but it does mean that of the past two times I've gone there, Daniel Alarcon (sic) has also been there. So I looked him up. He has received just about every Fellowship available and he lives in Oakland. Therefore, we have vastly different educational backgrounds, but we are practically neighbors and we potentially share an interest, if not just in Latin America, in the writers from that 'region' or state of mind, so-to-speak.

Here are some links to things written about and written by the above-mentioned author:

1. Links on his site

2. and the ever-resourceful, yet academically distrusted Wikipedia entry

I feel that it is time to read Daniel Alarcon (sic)'s book, Lost Radio City. (by the way, perhaps it is unnecessary to say, but I thought I'd mention that I don't do symbols that aren't immediately type-able, so I'll just stick to sic)

P.S. Here is a list of upcoming events at City Lights Books, in case you're interested.

P.P.S. I also am feeling increasingly inadequate for not yet being able to speak Spanish. I feel that if I could speak Spanish, I could potentially approach Daniel Alarcon and tell him what I know of the Latin American Writers I like including Borges (no shit), Cortazar (obviously), Donoso, Aira, Bolano (absolutely sic), Garcia Marquez (sic?), Zambra, and the poets Neruda, Vallejo, Lezama Lima, Paz, and Huidoboro, as well as those I haven't read including Allende, and Eltit (sorry ladies). Time to get back to my Rosetta stone, or just watch some more movies such as the one I fell asleep to last night - Headless Woman.

DADA Revivalism

2011-01-23T22:37:00.000-08:00

Today I became interested in this article about the "REVIVALISTS" - a way of classifying the generation of culturally influential people born from 1974-1983, which is the generation I myself fall into, having been born in 1983.

In addition to only briefly scanning the article, I got hung up on a few things - what, exactly, is being revived by the revivalists as a whole? AND does this mean anything? And also, how does this author have the gall to classify every generation since 1755? Although, I'm curious to learn more about what was 'en-vogue' from now back to that year, it brings to mind many questions about where the 'center' of cultural influence comes from according to this person, including geographically, economically and socially, who the intended audience is, and what happens to the fringe culture that gets shucked away because it doesn't fit tidily into these boxes. But I must admit, someone took a lot of time and care into making these boxes.

So let me bring this back to home... the article has me questioning my own art. If I am reviving anything, might it be DADA? For example, the first time I ever really learned about DADA per se was in my 20th Century Art History class at the University of Idaho in my junior year. I was reading a blog-post today that reminded me of some of my own pursuits in writing. It said the following...

Donna Kristiansen, in her article What is Dada?, explores the origins and the beliefs of the Dadaists. She claims that Dada can be characterized by three key elements: spontaneity, absurdity and negation (458, JStor 3205188).

This caught my attention because all of these things have been key components in my cultivation and understanding of art. From incorporating found photos into a story, my joy in the part about the professor in 2666 that is designed to narrate him creating a ready-made, the hours-long jam sessions I had while I spent learning to free-improvise with my jazz teacher in high-school, my interest in the Jewish tradition of hermeneutics which emphasizes negation and absence as well as presence (a la Gershom Scholem), and chance, which has been so impacting on me in my life, that it seems to have transformed chance into coincidence, which suggests grand-design (although I would never succumb to such a cumbersome tactic in forming my beliefs).

Anyway, my conclusion is that I am a DADA Revivalist, who currently has a taste for Latin American authors as my primary focus.

Of course there's a blog...

2011-01-23T21:13:00.000-08:00

that focuses on studying the same shit I'm studying - it's opening caption is "The blog about Latin American Experimental Literature" although I'm not sure the examples they use are still as experimental as they may have once been. Anyway, thank goodness for other students. This blog focuses on some of my favorite books and stories - "Hopscotch" by Julio Cortazar and "Tlon, Uzbar, and Orbis Tertius" by Borges which I consider to be well-established classics, whose authors are name-dropped in interviews by other widely read authors from Paul Auster to Roberto Bolano, rather than 'experimental' oddities. Ah, but aren't these minor discrepancies? If only I could reorganize the 'norm'.

http://ammanarie.wordpress.com

Here's some other people commenting on Spanish lit that looks worth digging into...but I wish someone would just point me to Roberto Bolano's doppelganger so I can have a conversation with him about my studies.

http://quarterlyconversation.com/tag/spanish-literature
http://splalit.blogspot.com/

Bolano and Santiago's Infrarealism

2010-10-01T22:30:00.000-07:00

I want to post my findings on Roberto Bolano. I consider him a hero, of sorts for me, or perhaps someone who is like a teacher.

Here's what I already own of his, or about him (in English translation) on my shelf:
Roberto Bolano: The Last Interview & Other Conversations (Melville House Publishing)
2666
Savage Detectives
By Night in Chile
Nazi Literature in the Americas

Other books I've read:
A Distant Star
Last Evenings on Earth

A few things in Harpers:
The Return (story)
The Wandering Years... (article)

An interview with the Translator:
The Chris Andrews Interview (Quarterly Conversation)

AND LAST AND MOST INTRIGUING
is the information out there being dug up about INFRAREALISM, a movement created by Roberto Bolano and Mario Santiago Papasquiaro
A Translation of the MANIFESTO
The Original Manifesto (in Spanish)
Info about INFRAREALISM
Here is an interview in Spanish (which I can't read, but used the limited resource of Google Translate) of Mario Santiago

Also, keep an eye on the parallel poetry movement that began in Peru: Zero Hour

This is not at all comprehensive, but serves as a log for me to keep my bearings on this issue. Something to return to, when my interest strikes again.

Texts for Nothing by Samuel Beckett

2010-08-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

I'd like to write specifically about Beckett's Texts for Nothing, but of course the Introduction I read will bleed into my impressions, as well. To create an impression in writing is much like leaving a fingerprint, unique and with a certain solidarity that can be mimicked, but not fully. This imprint is a particular voice, style, what have you, that sources out from different areas in the mind and lingers on the page, as a moving swirling grip that maintains sovereignty in and of itself. The singularity and the distinction of voice is something that Beckett so clearly captured and something that many moderns were aspiring to create, or did accomplish in one way or another. Some of the objects that this voice reflects are immaterial, immobile, sort of like double negatives that create something out of nothing, or nothing out of something. In line with these conundrums, these lyrical, logical quagmires of absence, the word nothing both is and is not a subject, or an object and with Beckett's Texts for Nothing this particular nothing is used and diffused like a piece of paper folded into a brilliant assortment of crumples and shapes. Folded and folded again, the paper becomes worn and trodden, without any fibers left unchanged, unturned. Where there is nothing, there are a million folds that pull the word into shapes. The fourth text for nothing caught my attention for its lyrical beauty, with sentences that I wanted to repeat over and over on the tongue. There is a sense of the tension between a drive for death and a drive for life and these two drives take on different I's that are a singular I in the voice of the text. It is said that Beckett is a master of the disembodied voice, and the disunity of voice, but the body for me is contained in sound, in repetition. There is a sense of completion through the incomplete repeat. With rhythmic abundance, the text with no body forms a song that we can all take upon our tongues and rehearse. These texts also pull in different functional characterizations in a life, part of a voice's life that includes mundane fixtures. In Text 3, nothing is used in conjunction with Guinness, the bar, the free bench on which to sit and the cloak covering a man who must have looked dirty, to outsiders. But these texts rarely make a declarations for the outside. These are voices that remain inside, with the swirling thought patterns that form song, the continuous references to horns and the sounds that call out into bleak sky, with no origin, like an echo. And if nothing is a direction, an object without object, then nothing is something that creates this deep mystery that is a toy for only a skilled craftsman to use in order knead the framework of everything into the void of this one word. If it weren't for the rhythm, I might have found these trails of words to be too esoteric, too self-reflecting, but of course, the self for Beckett is a non-entitiy here, something compiled inside a loosely framed body, leaning, heading distinctly, and with abandon on the edge of a cliff, for death. Soon death will wash over and the voices remain, I think he knew this all too well, and these words seem to be in a sense, a Requiem for a soon gone self. But its life is etched through this slow progression with verbs and the motion of non-entities. We are spun around in fleeting postulates that escort an empty sphere. The feelings that arise are the coordinates of truth. Why did I read Beckett? It seemed to soak into my mind like a cheese or a flavor that lingered, not merely as an instantaneous burst, but sort of in a slow, downward movement, like water through soil and I do trust that Beckett's words will thrive in me. They will be words that I'll return to. His categorizations are of the most basic kind. He categorizes the living, in a sense, as the act of simply moving, making movements and continuing to move, preferably without obstacle. There is habitation, and places that are hostile to habitation. We arrive in one piece under glass, under a magnifying glass in the sun, there is no rest, no house, no shelter, but there are limits. These limits of economy, worldly tracts of movement versus immobility define for Beckett, the modal tendency of life, when one reaches the limits of a mode of life, the tune changes, the movements adjust and the struggle to move between modes signifies the limits of death. Lastly, I still question something that came up in the Introduction. Why on earth did Beckett wish to write in French? His English is necessary for us who find English to be a graceless mode. Beckett breathes hope into the lyricism of English, which relies on simple logical twists and repeats them into a woven structure of a mounting, elaborate trajectory, unfinished due to the nature of the obstinate design. For me, English is always unfinished, always unrefined. Beckett allows this state of difficulty to assume grace.

The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams

2010-08-11T22:36:00.000-07:00

First of all, If this writing that I have done is poorly written, so be it. My attraction to the writing of Tennessee Williams is not without bias. I know that he stood up for his own botched style. Gore Vidal seemed to consider him a botched writer, but not without appeal. Tennessee Williams once asked Vidal to correct his odd syntax as he saw fit. Vidal corrected backwards sentences and shortened phrases and cleared up confusion. After doing so, Williams defended himself by saying, "What you have done, is effectively remove my style" or something to that effect. In regards to this statement, the appeal of the style is there for me, too, but it is a ponderous thing. In The Night of the Iguana, there is style that almost outshines its plot in a very quirky or awkwardly endearing way. With the ambiguous role of sexuality stemming from the remaining wet-spot on the woman's belly, the apparent homosexual getaway of the scene for two writers, and the strange staging of movement between rooms, thoughts overheard between walls, it is almost as if the separation between men and women is a structure that is broken down, in an almost dismal way, through the use of architecture. And what of the difference between the vacationers and the locals, with their local customs, that in theory do not match those of the woman-visitor with her mind for superiority over them, to which the writers muse over, mock her for, and refuse to take into account with any degree of seriousness. Is this story about the unserious life of artists, washed into the fold of what matters - sex. Or what counts - leisure. Or what aids the transition from the serious life, to one of leisure - drugs and alcohol. This story asks, when and to what degree will some women allow themselves a way out of their neurosis. This woman is of course, Ms. Jelkes. She is concerned, she is a spy, she holds the heated position of meddler. Her curiosity is one with a liberal aptitude that would not necessarily reject the men for their cohabitation, but it actually comes down to a battle of wits between her and the older man, as if age were the combination that will unlock the secret to their sameness. Or perhaps it is the similarity of neurosis, because each of them share the habit of drug-use. Or perhaps it is a combination of the feeling of remove, in a world where they feel entitled to some kind of negotiated form of community. Thus, in exile, what becomes of community? But this is not exile, per se, it is retreat. They are all on 'vacation' but to get away from what? Themselves, perhaps. These things are enough for a story, but not enough for Mr. Williams. In his so-called style, he cannot resist making something of a spectacle out of the moment of 'climax'. There is a storm and a white bird appears, and the shutters to the windows flail, and the younger writer exits the scene. This is the battleground for Ms. Jelkes and her self-induced chastity that shrinks away from the overly eager leap and attack of her male counterpart. What remains is the disappearing storm, and the wet-spot, that she touches in a very theatrical gesture, once she has retreated to her own room. What of a "Room of One's Own?" Ms. Jelkes wants to break through to the writers, she wants to share their room. There is no Ms. Jelkes without the others. She needs them. But they could do with or without her. This is enough to make her feel hopelessly disembodied in her speech, awkward, and overly congenial. Ms. Jelkes is the maneuver from one disembodied repression into a battle to oust what Williams effectively names a 'demon' as if the virginity within her, the self-induced virginity was possessing her and causing her the grief of seriousness. Thus, if everything boils down to principle, we can only live to a certain extremity, and fail to see a 'fuller' picture. She knows not what she says when she claims to know suffering. She is essentially a blind hypocrite. So sad that she must be a she. Of course it is up to a male author to shed light on an important woman in this way. As if the ignorance were a fault of some kind. The writers seem equally dysfunctional, but they get along fine, in their dualism. Jelkes, on the other hand, is alone. As a lone figure, she is shown as helpless, rather than courageous for her attempts to know these authors. As it is, the authors will not be known, will not be subjects of sympathy, will not be 'akin' to poor Jelkes.

The walls are what impresses me most about this story. There is an Iguana under the floor boards, there are voices spilling through the thin walls, there is a storm smashing the door into the frame, back and forth, there is a shared veranda, there is, in essence, no privacy, no stability, and the building structures are as solid as a cardboard box. The beach setting, however, is one of false beauty, but it is the scene's backbone. Without the beach, there is no Corte Madera. The beach is the geographical margin encompassing this story, it is a place where one can see only into the horizon, without a care for the surroundings. It is a place where one can look away indefinitely, from where they sit, from where they are. It is the geography of escapism.

Back to the climax scene, the utter 'escape' into strange allusions during this passage, of bestiality, god's wrath in the form of a storm, and the compiled pizazz of multiple climaxes, turns it into a fireworks show. But what actually comes to pass? It is hidden from the reader. The man lunges, misses, and a wet spot lands on the woman's body. We know she explicitly fought him, after inviting him into some form of understanding between the two of them. They are the oddest pair in this story, with the oddest interaction, because 1. Where does her sense that they are alike come from? 2. Why does the younger writer temporarily disappear in this scene? 3. What is anyone thinking? 4. What do the gestures, coated with the gloss of fancy illusion refer to?
What I'm left with is a fanciful blur for a climax. I find it rather funny: a fireworks show with an illusory 'bang!'. This is genuinely funny to me. This writer has done something incredibly awful, but in a way, he's done it effectively. He has also brazenly got away with it. Not that I would ask Tennessee Williams to remove his white bird, or his storm, or his wet-spot from Ms. Jelkes' belly. I just want this writing to happen to us, with more and more conviction, in order to know that writers can do whatever they want. Writers express what they can how they want to and this botched art is so incredibly and confusedly non-proprietary to the canon, non-proprietary to the king, with the semblance of 'poetry' in a way that is luxuriously ridiculous. It is this sentiment that secures my love for Tennessee Williams, because like Ms. Jelkes sharing sentiments with the old writer, I, too, feel a shared-luxurious-ridiculousness with the 'bird' as Gore Vidal nicknamed him. Is this not a form of pure defiance in the face of a certain sexual, moral, political, and aesthetic seriousness?

Secret Weapons by Cortazar

2010-07-27T14:23:00.001-07:00

Secret Weapons is a very difficult story to follow, because it uses an odd mechanism of writing with one consciousness that is inhabited by the ghost of another's. Both of the consciousnesses are in love with a woman, Michele. The current lover will potentially marry her in the future and the former lover is her rapist who was murdered by a few of her friends. Michele gets scared when her current lover tries to make love to her because she sees traces of the deceased rapist in his mannerisms and the conflated memories that he recollects. The location of the initial crime was Enghien and this detail, along with the weapon, a double-barrel shotgun, and dry-leaves, upon which the rapist fell to his death, provide clues to the conflation of the present and the past scenes. Other recurring images include a glass ball on the top of the stair bannister, ascending the stairs with a key to the girl's room, and visions of the houses where the action takes place. These particulars are woven with distinct elegance, in spite of the confusion, through motorcycle rides and a trip to visit Xavier, the doctor who prescribes anxiety medication for this condition. It seems that the condition of inhabitation is revealed through the story gradually, and the full sense of the condition is never quite reached, but it is alluded to through mounting information and a continuous flux, to and fro between these past and present scenes. Part of the charm of this story is that it doubles as a story that carries the tone of a rejected lover, who simply wishes for his lover to give in, and finally make love with him. This tone is pushed towards a sense of the more complete scenario involving the psychology of a murdered rapist who committed the crime during the occupation of France by Germans in World War II. The writing moves with ease through an astute reflection of interior thought-processes and articulated gestures that suggest repetition, throughout. The motif of mechanical repetition gives this story a characteristically modern-feel including images, sound and words that interrupt the naturalistic window-picture scene with abstracted functionality, such as the feel of a metal cylinder in one's hand (the handlebars of a motorcycle) or the magnified presence of footsteps leading toward the lock. Magnification, and movement give a sense of flow and speed that keeps the pacing of this story quick. It is best to read it in one sitting, reading as though searching for clues, fast.

A call for contemporary Borgesian heroes

2010-07-26T22:20:00.000-07:00

Is magic, in the way that Borges describes, to use a causal relation between objects and processes which do not connect with logical formulation, but instead, with a vestment of conviction, allowing the disparate parts to connect in a way that suggests that a hidden system belies the connection, without following rules of common sense, is this magic akin to nightmares, with the unnatural powers of horror and fear? If narrative fiction is bred from magic and nightmares, what do these terms suggest for the contemporary reader? Which images, tropes and messages haunt our contemporary readers in this way, and how does it bridge the gap between the time of Borges' nightmares and the time of ours? Certainly there are different forms of nightmares and magic waiting to be used in fiction. What hybrid forms of disaster and unexpected networks are available to me or to any other writer? Each writer must be one of two liminal spaces or more, conducting nightmares on a page, to mirror the forms of experience that haunt them. But what nightmare ensues, while one is writing? Is it possible that writing is a removed from nightmares, containing secret allusion to something that is neither fearful or strange? Does the writer of the nightmare secretly allude to fearlessness? Does the writer who draws upon magic and concealment to achieve their mysterious narrative structure allude to reason, and form? Or are there less overtly oppositional stances that the dreamer and the magician take? Perhaps the Linguist, the Anthropologist, the Mathematician each have different approaches to their own nightmares and magics, as well. But if the various formulations of secrets are reduced to mere trickery for the sake of fiction, what then, is the sake of fiction? If a writer writes the dream of a dead mathematician, what then transpires on the page? A series of removals repeated in order to give the feeling that something has not been lost, something has been unveiled, uncovered from what has been put aside, put away. Does fiction attempt to deal with the loss of memory, the loss of collective memory, and the return to a sense of regaining what has been lost? Or rather, who has been lost? Thus, the Greeks are forever lost to scholars, and yet, they are most often returned to. Likewise, the Christians lost their Jesus. Likewise, the devotees of Rock n' Roll have lost their Elvis forever. These losses are nightmares of certain sects of people. They are continually reassembled, held up in iconographic form and maintained as idols, dolls and figurines. Thus, the revisitation to the Greeks by philosophers allows them to re-articulate the tomes of antiquity, to maintain a particular starting place of written thought, and uphold its ancient doorway into the realm of questioning. Certainly, there are forgotten masters who could be found, through magic, through the blind passageway of entering a book to a randomly opened page. Or from dreams. Certainly, there are potentially unknown masterful thinkers whose methods and practices where so threatening, that they were extinguished, driven to exile, and kept away from their books and the outlet of writing, by society altogether. This thinker is a certain dangerous hero writers should take up and reignite for their readers. Is it not? Who is the infamous Borgesian hero, trapped in a web of fictive embellishment, of today?

Mimicking Borges by Rediscovering Fiction

2010-07-02T01:26:00.000-07:00

IN PREPARATION FOR A STUDY OF MY NOTES by E.E.
The problem of my notebooks extends beyond archiving. The scraps of information, anecdotes and the upstarts of blind stretches into poetry or artistic representation compiled within these texts lend themselves to either an extensive unfolding and expansion, or a reductive extinguishing, via the trash-can. I'm caught between these two options and more options are presenting themselves to me as a solution, everyday. I could follow an archival method and simply file them away in a chronological order for future biographers to collect and unravel to piece together my persona using evidence, but I'm afraid that my life will not lend itself to further investigation and that with my death, these notes will be reduced to garbage, at last. Perhaps I should simply toss them, myself, to be free of them, free of self-obsession. And while this obsession over my own notes certainly depicts a need to resolve some kind of mystery, I also feel that the mystery extends beyond myself. My obsession with the notes involves a notion of time, and these notes are evidence of time passing and leading further from a starting point and if the meanings compiled in the notes suggest anything, they sort-of chart my own change, a process of change, a mathematical segment of a life and by proxy, the web-of life that each individual life reaches out to. This gives me the idea that perhaps I should try to chart and create parameters of the meanings of the small creations that bloom from the notes, to create a more organized and translatable study of my own reflective obsession. Perhaps the problem of these notes is not simply a problem of self obsession, but the problem of mirrors, mazes, and reduplications that transpires within the ongoing folding and unfolding that occurs within this obsession.

I wonder if obsession is even the correct word, with all of its negative connotations, of disorder, disease, addiction, and a lack of will-power. In actuality, it is possible that I should consider the study of my notes a project. Within this project, I would like to categorize and generalize the various strands of thought and modes of representation that come out of the notes, like a structuralist. But, of course, I would like to resist the impulse of the structuralist and make claims to a different sort of analytical stance, in part because of the emotional and intuitive direction I must inherently take towards the physical pages which are mere remnants of the self. Perhaps it extends into phenomenological or even psychoanalytical realms, but as an individual living in the post-modern world, I would even like to take it further and critique the outset, if I'm even able to pull the frame back far enough to understand what this problem solving encompasses in terms of not only my structural standing, but my metaphorical bearing and the meta layer of the notes. I would like to know how to be a post-structuralist for this project, not for the complexities that arise, but simply to belong to the time that I am in, and to fit without anachronism into my own history, but perhaps this is where philosophy or religion kicks in, because the element of chance comes into play, and when it comes down to it, I feel that I am a victim of history, caught in a trap of fate, that I cannot properly represent myself as a human being to others, because of the overwhelming forces that impose themselves upon my life, in relation to grand history. I'm caught in a dilemma of either breaking down my notion of grand history, by cultivating the traces of a history via circumstantial evidence, my notes, or tossing out the notion of history altogether and overcoming my neurosis once and for all.

There are many complexities that I haven't done well to address with adequate explanation, but to simplify the difficulty of approaching the notes, I guess I see them as sacred texts, generated by a me that is ephemeral and has already since passed with only linguistic traces to account for the passing. My present self will approach the past self, or the ghost of a self, through language. The inherent difficulty with language is the same as the difficulty of mirages, convincing images fade into thin air, the closer one approaches them, because they are brought into being through a process of illusory representation, the difficulty of placing any conviction into the outcome of my study into the meanings of my notes is that the meanings link up to nothingness, the past that is ephemeral, and only in the doing, the act of creating, is anything really accomplished. Thus, the ongoing reduplication and re-categorization of all of the meanings I have collected in notes is an act of fiction. The vestiges of philosophical and ethical epiphany are merely patterned flares that contradict the strain of life that actually produces them, because they are the shadows of a reality that is the self. They are the void of meaning, using the guise of communication. Only in the act of appropriating and continuing the investigation do we find life, because life is not life, life is living. It is an invisible activity that passes unseen with every turn. Language competes to reveal the living thing, but for its lack of unfolding, without the present speaker, it merely reveals the only truly active participant, the reader.

Zetland: A Character Witness by Saul Bellow

2010-06-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

This week, I read Saul Bellow's story, Zetland, A Character Witness. The title makes it sound like perhaps there is a crime involved, but actually, that's not the case. The word witness in the title suggests that this fictional report will include a distinct cataloguing and inquiry into a particular event. Indded, what follows is not so much the witness of a particular event, but a lengthy summary of the past that ends in a father's ultimate refusal to come to grips with his loss of control over his son's fate. The character Zetland is brought into inquiry in terms of his relationship to his father. His life is detailed beginning with a paragraph that branches the Zetland duo to the beginning of time, as if the Zetland namesake is a strand of fate in life that will go on forever and has always existed. The fluid prose cites modern thinkers left and right as though they are adjectives to describe the rich and thorough studies of both Zetland and his father. Bellow is able to draw out subtle differences between both the elder and the younger Zetland to unite them, while also distinguishing them from one another. The result is that even late in life, the elder refuses to accept his son for his failures. Due to illness, Zetland is not able to become the distinguished philosopher or professor at Columbia that the elder Zetland had directed him towards for all of his life, without relenting. It seems as though the elder's inability to forgive the younger for failing to achieving those accomplishments reflects an inability to come to terms with the dreams he himself had failed to achieve, and subsequently diverted onto his son. We read in this story, with the minutest of detail, an obsession that is transferred from one generation to the next via guilt and condescension. This story is familiar, an inevitable rebellion that even in the most controlled scenario can be brought out between a younger generation and the older generation. The remarkable lingering feeling I get from this story, apart from taking much delight in Bellow's verbal virtuosity, is that lives do not improve over time, history does not progress, and that the obsessions of the past change via mutation, rather than the idealist notion that greener pastures lay ahead. This is perhaps the most remarkably modern underpinning of this story, aside from the set of names that comprise the characters' understanding of what is modern from an intellectual standpoint.

The Swedish Kafka: Par Lagerkvist

2010-06-16T17:22:00.000-07:00

I read a few Par Lagerkvist stories from the collection, "The Eternal Smile". I have only read his novel, "The Sybil" otherwise, and found it to be completely enchanting. One of the things that struck me when I began to read these short stories, was their decided lack of moral stance. While there is much that was written that perhaps criticizes or draws out the extremes of the themes from the time-frame he was writing (1920s), his approach toward the themes of fascism, religion, good and evil, and freewill, which are all common, weighty themes during his time-frame, are treated like fictions that need not explode into judgment. For example, in "The Children's Campaign", the story is about a made-up society in which children have their own army and ranking systems that exist apart from the adults. They go to war with a neighboring army of adults, and throughout the story, we witness the ways in which the children advance and ultimately defeat the army of adults because of their ability to focus completely and with their utmost faculty, without the hesitations of critical reproach, to the task of fighting and killing for their country. Perhaps this story can be read as an allegory, with the ending sliding toward the expected conclusion of a celebration led by their society. The story has a unique set-up, development and conclusion, by taking its hypothetical construct seriously and with simple descriptions and details, but without any apparent irony. So, one might ask, is this story about fascism? I think it probably is, because of the sense one has of blind might, errant will, and the explicit 'childishness' of war-mongering, but at the same time, it is merely a story, which follows its own arrangement without hesitation or ironic double-speak. It could just as easily be read for its insights towards youth and adulthood.

Lagerkvist's story, Love and Death is a paragraph-length story that involves one lover encountering the sight of an ugly Cupid and when the cupid's arrow hits the lover, he is shot down with a trail of blood flowing after his love who walks on, unknowing. At first glance, I'm moved by this story. Its simplicity is striking and the resounding feeling of loss and defeat is lovely. The trail of blood is a similarly beautiful image that have seen used in the novel, "100 Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. There is a passage in which the ribbon of blood is a signal to the community of a person's death, that stretches all across an entire town. This blood, the moving, liquid symbol of death, and in this case, the death by a cupid's arrow, reminds us of the pain that love induces, the grip that love has, how it takes hold, and destroys. Love is perhaps a harbinger of death. In this sense, the possibility of passing on is highlighted. The dying lover must leave his love to the singular day which his unattainable lover moves beyond, into the future. Love is inevitably wrapped up in time, which can be synonymous with fate. I'm reminded of the song, "Perfect Day" by Lou Reed with its memorable and sentimental chorus, "Oh its such a perfect day, I'm glad I spent it with you, you just keep me hanging on, you just keep me hanging on..." In this story, we experience the flip-side to the chorus of the song, which implies...when you don't keep me hanging on, I die.

Lastly, "The Basement"...
This story was as alluring and eerie as a story by Kafka. A man walks a dwarf home, out of politeness. The dwarf invites the man in, to the basement of a large, well-lit house. The man is nervous to be seen entering the house, because there is a party going on in the upper floors, to which he was not invited. The dwarf's living quarters are impeccably clean, so much that the cleanliness does not seem worthy of the space. The dwarf describes how he came about acquiring the Basement space. He feels rather lucky to be living there, and he describes the arrangement with his landlord who lives above him. He tells the man who walked him home that the landlord probably owns his house, after he doubts that God is necessary. The remainder of the conversation appears to be a leveling between one person who thinks they are better with the other. The dwarf's phrases connote that things are not as the man understands them to be. He tells the other man, "life is full...But each day is heavy to bear. I tell you this because I think we understand one another so well. And one mustn't pretend to be better than one is." The narrator gives no response, he only paints a picture of the dwarf's posture. Several phrases ring out at the end of the story, as the man leaves the dwarf's basement. The man notices that the lights are off on the upper floors and says, "It could not have been a real party if it was already over. The old man's lamp was the only one burning; it lighted me nearly all the way home."

The tone of this entire piece is that of difference. The narrator gazes at the dwarf with a sense that he is an 'other' to the extreme. The story seems to resonate with the evocative phrases that contradict this notion, given by the dwarf. It is as though he is trying to reveal to the narrator how corrupt his own gaze at misfortune actually is, without ever breaking through enough for the narrator to realize his own judgements. It is a complicated narrative, that has a transparent quality, as though understanding is only just under the fragile surface of the words. This story is not only about dwarves and 'regular' people, it is about the notion of God and overlord being comrades or perhaps one i the same, for determining fate in the lives of others. While the scene reveals a dwarf abiding to the edicts of his overlord who demands that everyone pays, it also notes that perhaps that kind of subservience is the same attitude taken up by devout worshippers. And this is merely drawn out as something to ponder, but not with a tone of denouncement.

The overall encouragement of a space to ponder is part of the generosity of Par Lagerkvist's writing. Whatever he hoped to achieve with the trajectory of his stories, the endings usually result in this effervescent space without an overt taste of the author's preference towards the themes that rise up in his stories. He does not pin answers or solutions or dogma into his stories, they are left to be debated, the themes are merely opened up and teased out until they are to the point of complete gravity and magnetism. They loom with a sense of beckoning, to wake up and be reminded of their mysteries, not their conclusions because they are non-conclusive. They loom like a vapor that seeps in. They are stories that are to be kept deep in the back of our minds, forever.

On Lydia Davis: Random Selections from her Collected Stories

2010-06-09T00:23:00.000-07:00

Here's thoughts about a few stories by Lydia Davis:

Glenn Gould
Of course, Glenn Gould is about a writer who talks to someone who talks in a particular way. Although it also appears that the narrator talks in a similar way. And she learns things, anecdotal things about Glenn Gould, who she used to try to emulate through a conversation with this man, Mitch. She discovers that both she and Glenn Gould shared an affinity for the Mary Tyler Moore Show, but she doesn't know why. Then, she describes what it is that draws her in about the show, why she watches it. We learn about this woman's habits with the television, too, as though it were a ritual, rather than a form of entertainment. It is a ritual for her and therefore, it is something sacred. Glenn Gould is something sacred for the woman, too. She used to want to play the piano like him and she finds it interesting, or at least worth mentioning that he disapproved of the so-called genius of Mozart, specifically for the use of alberti bass, which for anyone who has played the piano, is a funny joke, because we all know how annoying, yet simple and gratifying it is to play an alberti bass, especially to play it fast, so that it impresses recital attendees. Or at least that's how I felt when I was young, playing the piano. So I relate to this woman and I relate to her affinity to Glenn Gould, but I don't really relate to her love of television, but through the course of her talking about it I can. Who hasn't been a recluse, at times? And yes, she describes the enjoyment of television as a form of reclusiveness, or delay from the other things that are more urgent, more pressing. And what of Mitch, where does he go by the end of the story? Is he another anecdote in the back of this woman's mind, the man with lots of details. Are we called upon to merely draw similarities, distant at best between Mitch, the woman, Glenn Gould, and the Mary Tyler Moore Show, but not Mozart?

Is this about getting to know people? Is this about making friends out of strangers? They talked on the phone, she and Mitch. Glenn Gould said that he liked to talk on the phone best, this information is given, he liked to talk on the phone because he could hear the sonority of a person's voice better. He could understand their emotions, better, maybe. But what about the cold distance on a telephone? What about the hidden body, the disembodied voice? Overall, the distance between all of these entities, the ones who rise to the surface from this story, Mitch, the Narrator, they all seem so distant from each-other and these anecdotes are what hold them together. They have something hinge their fragile friendships on. Why, then is her idolatry of Glenn Gould less fragile? Where is the fragility in an idol, a disembodied idol, who speaks through anecdotes in interviews which we collect, as though they somehow belong to us. What holds our celebrities intact?

Of course, Glenn Gould, for the narrator is dead. But he wrote about Toronto, television, and the idea of the North. Is he not still an idol in the work of Lydia Davis then? Who also wrote about Television? Is Television a subject written in dedication? A connection to re-emphasize her oblique connection to Glenn Gould? She tells us what it is about Glenn Gould that does it for her. There is a list, a long paragraph, all things that are like little strange reminders of a long-lost cousin, an eccentric King, a disobedient professor. A motel person, not a hotel person. And what does that mean? The anomaly of a brilliant mind embracing the Low-BROW? That somehow, we can access the same resolute perfectionism, without the piano, the sanctioned instrument for genius? Forget genius, this is about minor, minor, small but not incoherent detail. This is about love.

Why do we categorize the narrator's husband in the same space as Mozart? Because the narrator also likes to be alone, and the husband is a hindrance to her solitude. Is Glenn Gould a repetition? A mirror, for the narrator? For us? With each description, a formula arises, but there is no solution. We hear about her child. This woman has a child and that is part of her estrangement. She talks about the neighborhood, the buildings, their structures, their forms, their shapes. I guess this is her life apart from the television. Somehow the television is more compelling than the houses she describes, with their surrounding geese. The chronology of her baby's progress mirrors that of the episodes. The episodes of the Mary Tyler Moore Show form a method of gaging time, for this mother. Her husband doesn't care about the show.

Her longings? To peer into other people's lives. She wants to watch people, without being seen. Glenn Gould, she says, was something of a recluse, by choice. He arranged his life as he wanted it. That's enough to know about this story. It is about hiding, arrangements, and setting one's self apart from all of the others.

Foucault and Pencil
A hall of mirrors. This story is about a story that involves a discussion of argument and travel. Travel as a form of argument. With each sentence, the story moves, does not stop. Actions. One by one, the actions are depicted. Thoughts are actions in this story. The actions are mirrors of the work. The story is a form of argument and travel. The actions, the words, the reasons for what is said and what is not said is all given. Is this mirror a way to write? Who else does the mirror frame? Which book, which pencil, which argument is it now? To each their own.

Examples of Confusion
I love these. She has written the way things aren't ever described, because they don't make sense. Slippages. The ways people fall short of accuracy, giving evidence to hopes rather than observations. But it is not written without care. There is immense sadness waiting in these passages.

Television
I wanted to read this because I have just read a book called Television by Jean-Phillipe Toussaint. Of course they're different, but its an interesting topic, as mentioned in "Glenn Gould". These are reflections, possibly written while watching Television. It comes in three parts. It describes how we perceive the world of television and believe in it, and all of its people, the false versions without perversions. They provide faces to love, to use in the imagination. Just like I love Gina Rowlands, and all of these since I loved the one who told me about her and Lydia Davis. We all love someone, especially the stars. Its nicely detailed how easy it is to switch channels, and when the switch happens, this is marked. The channel switching is charted according to numeric channel. Television confuses us to believe in its greatness, somehow. Perhaps it is because we cannot see its inner workings. It appears, but it is opaque. Television has its many uses, particularly to stall time. The use of television according to Lydia's use of time is most important. The comparison between real-life and televised life is also important, there is a distinct disconnect between the two. Reality confuses. Television is depicted as though there should be no confusion. The plot interests Lydia Davis, she says. It interests her. It has something to do with television. Perhaps it has to do with the compression she mentions, compressing time, fitting the time-segment, with plot that gives us something other than just time.

Lord Royston's Tour
This is a brilliant written endeavor. We enter the mind of Lord Royston. We are taken around the edges of the known world in a time that was long ago, when ships and horses were the main forms of travel. This charts the minor detailed thoughts about clothing, food, and behavior that crop up out of Lord Royston's tour through Poland, Russia, the far reaches of Russia, nearing Tibet, down to Persia, and finally, the disaster that prevents him from ever returning to the place he came from. I'm reminded of another story that unfolds along similar lines. It is Cesar Aira's "An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter." With each, we are given a stunning array of passing details and in their passing they are fed like bites of a meal, we feed from one image to the next with anticipation, to be further shocked, and dazzled. This is the world as we do not already know it, backing up time to a place where the parts of the world that stood out to people's sensibilities was similar, but not the same. This chronicling style of narration is brilliant and it leads onward, as though the future has not already been circumscribed and with the mistaken pretense of possibility in the character's perspective. This is the beauty of history, the already dead, relived as though there were a hope of life. This is such a common surrealism, we pass it by. Lord Royston's Tour shines in this way, without foregoing the surrealism of already dead wonders.

Miami Essays by Joan Didion

2010-06-07T00:28:00.000-07:00

I read Joan Didion's essays Miami One, Two and Three and approached them as though they were fiction. Sometimes I feel like non-fiction is fiction. Other times like when I've read Borges or Bolano, I've felt like Fiction was Non-fiction and there is a different approach for each. With fiction, there is a quest for novelty. Funny how that word novel, the form of writing that prose claimed as its own, is related to trifle, amusement and whimsy via the word novelty. Or is it? A novel idea, for example, is something that has an almost familial link to our notion of fiction. It suggests that there is room for possibility, even within the fixed order of time and space and historical documentation. And in reading Didion's essays about Miami, I felt that my approach, by incorporating an expectation of fiction, was useful because there is a line that she walks along that makes her non-fiction compelling. Via the novelty of language, she is able to paint her picture of the exiled presidencies and make a case for destination-decision making by Cuban politicians in Miami. And the way that Miami is transformed in the imagination from merely the peninsula figure of the other 50 United States is by isolating it as a specific, strategic byway for previously unknown foreign assets, markets, and personages. For Didion, Miami is an adjunct to foreign metropoles first, before that of its own United States and because of this, there is an extensive sense that 'behind the scenes' there is a parallel history that gets undermined and under-reported. She tells a story with a slant. This slant is the heart of her fictive aspect.

What, then is the Didion slant? Since I'm not interested in pigeon-holing her voice into the limited impression I've had from reading only these three essays, I'll say that in these essays, there is a sense of Didion's own surprise or astonishment at the underpinnings of a network that does not behave the way protocol engenders. What does this mean? We have the story of Stephen Carr trafficking weapons to Nicaragua. We have Prio being assassinated before his television set tuned into "The Robe". We have Reagan's Rhetoric juxtaposed with the harrowing line, Miami stories have endings. What are these endings? Sanctioned assassinations by and for the CIA, executed by Cuban nobodies, or somebodies whose claims to fame are imbedded in a secret realm of heresay, true stories that don't surface, and therefore don't effect reality. All of these details create a dramatic sense of urgency, information that is hot and bothersome due to the exposed ethical knot that is tangled up in Miami.

To a certain extent, these essays hint at how easy the fringe of sanctioned history and propagandistic rhetoric can be unravelled. It was in the radio station hallway that Didion embarks on a series of anecdotal stories that lead to more questions than answers, as though Miami is full of blind starts and stops that link up to both Washington D.C. and Milan, and who knows where else. These sites of action include WRHC, a radio station that airs mixed information and odd confessions by one of the former president's sisters back to Cuba, they include a Howard Johnson hotel, with a supposed guerilla rate for con-men hired for jobs, and they include a cemetery where the former president Machado is buried, to emphasize the death, the end, the finish of political stories for a Cuba whose exiled performance of politics happens on the stage of Miami.

This is a construct of the imagination that folds up and rises in a convincing flow of cut and dry names, places, weapons, and links that form a serial view of previously unknown human players in a strange game of to and fro. Political to and fro, rhetoric as fashion, waves of debate that light up on variable protagonists, different people filling in the same figurative roles. Didion highlights the narrative fiction that politics embodies by localizing it in the realm of Miami. A place, with suggestive sites that form hot-spots to reveal data that has been given Didion's voice to be subsumed into the people's story of reported events. Didion lets the tables turn to point rhetoric back in the face of Reagan, the CIA, and forced histories that apparently etch names on stone plaques in fields of green that blanket coffins.

E.E. writes for Exquisite Corpse (WWAATD)

2010-05-28T00:58:00.000-07:00

CLICK LINK:
http://bit.ly/9lEB1M
Third line down signed, E.E.

FOR YOUR HEALTH:
All you need is words. All you need is words. All you need is words, words, (love) is all you need.

That's AMORE!

...thanks and praise to DW Lichtenberg

Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje

2010-05-25T10:26:00.001-07:00

I read the first three chapters of Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family and it swept me into a blur of ingredients that included microscopic details that were flung at me in contrasts with each sentence. Even the verbs slipped in like snakes. The story is about Ceylon and it entertains family history, but only the memories that legends and dreams are made of. This story is on the cusp between poetic myth and reality. While it is non-fiction, it takes the form of lyrical romantic poetry.

Here are some of the short phrases with impact for me:
"ice clothed in sawdust" "Half a page and the morning is already ancient" "bright bone of a dream" "useful habit of retreating into almost total silence" "She had not felt a thing. Her left breast had been removed five years earlier and he was fondling the sponge underneath her gown." "He lived on gin, tonic water, and canned meat" "Inside are wooden pews and their geometrical shadows and stone floors that whisper against children's bare feet." "Lifting the ancient pages and turning them over like old, skeletal leaves." "I wash my hands and see very clearly the deep gray color of old paper dust going down the drain." "The black thick feather of black bus exhaust everyone was sentimental against, the man vomiting out of a window, the pig just dead from having his hairs burnt off..." "it was so rich I had to select senses." "And still everything moved slowly with the assured and fateful speed of a coconut falling on someone's head, like the Jaffna train, like a fan at low speed, like the necessary sleep in the afternoon with dreams blinded by toddy."

Ondaatje uses poems, adding them so we can sink into the distilled images and feel them fully with our bodies. Aside from Coconuts, cinnamon, cobras, shotguns and alcohol, he uses inventories, contrasts, lists, pace, numbers, dates, names and artifacts as the site of poetic lodging. The otherness of Ceylon becomes a sweeping otherness that is not described as inviting, but in literature, its adornments are vivid and poignant. The things that would be so bitter to feel and experience in reality are celebrated in a way that everyone can indulge in the extremities of the tropics, because it draws on the faculty of a reader's imagination.

The broad gestures this text creates alongside its anecdotal material make it at once vast and miniscule, tweaked to a precise and discreet angle to form a prismatic cast of light. Historical information flows alongside family history. The narrator's own rediscovery of all of these elements enables him to both experience and flesh out the Ceylon at once.

It doesn't matter where this story is leading because with every turn, it lands on something strange, unexpected, and in appropriate doses, so that it takes on a hypnotic rhythm without a grand arc, everything slipping towards poetry and actual poetry not excluded, the mention of one thing fades into the next like a long distant memory that is being reinvoked by some slip of consciousness from taking a drink, or sweating in the heat.

When reading is experienced as re-living someone else's dreams, it gives a disorienting suspension that feels like floating through secret corridors. I feel that Ondaatje's words are all like secret corridors where I'm a hidden guest. Fold upon fold.

House upon House upon House

2010-05-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

Click here to see the full collection of some great HOUSE PAINTINGS

Here are some of my favorites:

Fireflies by Yoko Ota

2010-05-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

This morning, I read Fireflies, a short story by Yoko Ota. It was selected and compiled in a collection called The Crazy Iris: and other stories of the atomic aftermath edited by Kenzaburo Oe. In the story, there is a sense that something is vastly different about the world since the aftermath of the bomb, in a metaphysical sense. The opening scene describes her attachment to the place of a burned castle, a ruin of the aftermath, and a poet's commemoration to the dropping of the bomb in Hiroshima. The poet was Tamiki Hara and he had committed suicide, as a way to express his sense of loss. These descriptions mark the narrator's difficulty of being able to look at things associated with the bomb, but they are all around her.

All of the narrator's relationships to people are strange because they are seen through the filter of a writer's detachment and she points this out, explicitly, by stating that she is a novelist, perceiving and taking notes of the aftermath with writing in the back of her mind. This is swept away by the immediate rush of feelings that seeing a young girl who was deformed by the nuclear flare produces. She befriends this girl as part of her studies, towards the end of the story.

Each section helps to personify the aftermath in a way that has an accumulative effect, directing different attentions at her cousin's family who all seemed to have lost hope after having lost their home, her cousin lost her husband, too. There is a scene when she interviews a well known man who had been scarred by the flare and survived. She talks with his doctor who expressed that the number of people who had died was likely double or triple than what was reported, if they included later deaths, and the soldiers who had died.

The tone of the piece is cool and detached, like it admits of itself, but there are also beautiful visceral associations that rise up in the text, of the collapsed castle, the burnt stone, the slugs, and the fireflies. These passages mark the sense that while many things that were once intact are now burnt, still and un-moving, there is also life bubbling up from the wreckage, life that is perhaps contaminated, but the world has not taken on an immunity to life after the burn. Several times, there were strange slips of the imagination - as if the stones were living beings, and as if the rampart was not broken...

When the narrator describes her cousin's lost husband, it is interesting because it seems to fold into the overall feeling of loss for the entire piece, but it was actually related to something other than the war, and other than the bomb. It marks the ways that the mood seeps in through illogical means, that all create an overall feeling that things will never return to a feeling of wholeness, or unbroken parts, or parts that are not in disrepair.

I like how Ota blends reflective commentary with more untempered observations to create an oscillation of her meandering movement through the world and her impressions. One startling impression is the way that having seen the nuclear flare sets her apart from others who can only imagine it. She feels that it has somehow changed her in a way that has made the memory of its unnatural horror indelible, much like the way the castle was broken and not repaired for the sake of respecting its memory.

There are interesting cultural gestures that seemed striking, including the narrator's self-conscious repression of her desire to embrace the disfigured girl. She attributed her manners to being Japanese, as though the story was written for an American audience, or other foreign audiences.

There is interesting political insight that is also included during the narrator's conversation with the doctor. She mentions that the militaristic rush to use new technological forms of weapons, as part of instilling global policy has resulted in mass killings by the hundreds of thousands and that this seems to be part of American policy. This policy demands to maintain their right to use the weapons, including poisonous gas, and it suggests the potential of the American military to use them again, without regard for the lives of people that are killed or effected. There is an overall sense that Americans have little regard for the Japanese people in Hiroshima and that they moved forward for the sake of policy, rather than with regard to individual lives. This is depicted to reflect the German Nazi regime's use of poisonous gas for mass killing.

The story moves through different registers of discourse including domestic life, public hospitals, public monuments/ruins, physically marred people going about their daily lives including sharing gifts, sharing food, and leisurely activities. The overall tone felt calm, with a subdued tendency towards finding unanticipated friendships. The friendly tone outshines the tone of loss, and decrepitude.

Who is Ivan Bertoux?

2010-05-11T00:24:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Ivan Bertoux, Deputy Cultural Attache for the Consulate General de France in San Francisco, I am now taken with William T. Vollmann who I'll hear reading from an unpublished manuscript on Sunday at a private event at Tosca after the City Lights event (see below).

Who is Ivan Bertoux? Good question. At first, I mistook him for Jean-Phillipe Toussaint at the Todorov talk on Dictators as Artists at Stanford last Thursday. I pulled out my copy of Camera from my bag and said...nothing. I just waited for him to say something. And he invited me to the Vollmann Reading after I mentioned I had seen him at the Toussaint talk at SF State that I didn't stay for because it was in French.

In an e-mail, I asked him what his title (see business card) meant. I asked him if he was some kind of agent or go-between for the intelligentsia. He replied by saying that he was less of a 'double-agent' and more of a 'go-between' representing 10 states along with connections at Stanford, Berkeley, SF State, a French radio-program on KUSF, etc.

His next event is being held at City-Lights Books, this Sunday at 5pm with four French authors reading their work: Vis-a-Vis

SOME ASSEMBLED QUOTES without book titles

2010-05-05T00:22:00.000-07:00

"At issue, then, is whether one can find a way to theorize the question of modernity that relocates it within a global context and, at the same time, enables that context to complicate, rather than simply reverse, the narrative logic of modernization." (Mitchell, 7)

"The marginal character or the "marginality" of this class both in their own country and in the diasporas established in the territory of the colonial elite or the indigenous petite bourgeoisie, played out very much according to their material circumstances and level of acculturation but always at the individual level, never collectively.

It is within the framework of this daily drama, against the backcloth of the usually violent confrontation between the mass of the people and the ruling colonial class that a feeling of bitterness or a frustration complex is bred and develops among the indigenous petite bourgeoisie. At the same time, they are becoming more and more conscious of a compelling need to question their marginal status, and to re-discover an identity." (Cabral, 62)

"Just as Sudan derives from the Arabic word for blacks, so the name Guinee probably comes from the Berber aginau, or agnau, signifying a mute or a person whose language is incomprehensible; the designation has been applied particularly to the blacks living south of the Sahara." (Ribiere, 13)

"The liberty that this critical (in all the senses of the word) disengagement assures us of, therefore, is a solicitude for and an opening into totality." (Derrida, 6)

"Developments and forces external to any possible definition of the essence of capitalist modernity continually redirect, divert, mutate, and multiply the modernity they help constitute, depriving it of any essential principle, unique dynamic, or singular history." (Mitchell, 12)

"The key problem here is that the basic "law" of dialectical materialism, the struggle of opposites, was colonized/obfuscated by the New Age notion of the polarity of opposites (yin-yang and so on). The first critical move is to replace this topic of the polarity of opposites with the concept of the inherent "tension," gap, noncoincidence, of the One itself. This book is based on a strategic politico-philosophical decision to designate this gap which separates the One from itself with the term parallax." (Zizek, 7)

"Rather than having to do with class structures, as in the societal models of "Discourse in the Novel," exotopy has to do with relationships between distinct cultural and ideological units. It would apply to conflicts between nations or religions rather than between classes. In this perspective, dialogism is no longer a formal and descriptive principle, nor does it pertain particularly to language: heteroglossia (multi-variedness between discourses) is a special case of exotopy (otherness as such) and the formal study of literary texts becomes important because it leads from intralinguistic to intracultural relationships. At that point, the binary opposition between fiction and fact is no longer relevant: in any differential system, it is the assertion of the space between the entities that matters. Binaries, to the extent that they allow and invite synthesis, are therefore the most misleading of differential structures." (de Man 109)

"Some independent African states preserved the structures of the colonial state. In some countries they only replaced a white man with a black man, but for the people it is the same. You have to realize that it is very difficult for the people to make a distinction between one Portuguese, or white, administrator and one black administrator. For the people it is the administrator that is fundamental. And the principle - if this administrator, a black one is living in the same house, with the same gestures, with the same car, or sometimes a better one, what is the difference?" (Cabral, 83)

"The family link ensured that, after a certain period of acrimony had passed, close cultural, and sometimes political and economic, ties could be reknit between the former metropoles and the new nations." (Anderson, 192)

"QUESTION: What are some of the specific financial and political things we can do to further the struggle?
CABRAL: Personally I don't agree with that question. I think that this meeting is a meeting of brothers and sisters. You represent several organizations. I am very glad because we want your unity. We know that it's very difficult - it's more difficult to make your unity than Pan-Africanism maybe. But we would like you to consider this meeting a meeting between brothers and sisters trying to reinforce not only our links in blood, and in history, but also in aims." (Cabral, 91-92)

"For different reasons and with different consequences, the two groups thus began the process of reading nationalism genealogically - as the expression of an historical tradition of serial continuity." (Anderson, 195)

"In our opinion, the foundation for national liberation rests in the inalienable right of every people to have their own history, whatever formations may be adopted at the level of international law. The objective of national liberation, is therefore, to reclaim the right, usurped by imperialist domination, namely: the liberation of the process of development of national productive forces." (Cabral, 43)

"But equally, in some respects, culture is very much a source of obstacles and difficulties, of erroneous conceptions about reality, of deviation in carrying out duty, and of limitations on the tempo and efficiency of a struggle that is confronted with political, technical and scientific requirements of a war.
The armed struggle for liberation, launched in response to the colonialist oppressor, turns out to be a painful but efficient instrument for developing the cultural level of both the leadership strata in the liberation movement and the various social groups who participate in the struggle." (Cabral, 53)

"It is because writing is inaugural, in the fresh sense of the word, that it is dangerous and anguishing. It does not know where it is going, no knowledge can keep it from the essential precipitation toward the meaning that constitutes and that is, primarily, its future." (Derrida, 11)

"A profound feeling that a radical break with the past was occurring - a 'blasting open of the continuum of history'? - spread rapidly." (Anderson, 193)

"To disrupt the powerful story of modernity, rather than contribute to its globalization, it is not enough to question simply its location. One also has to question its temporality. One must abandon its neat image not just of geographical space but also of historical time." (Mitchell, 7)

"Having told us first that force is just a means, not an historical-economic cause, he reveals at the end that force operates on history itself; contributing to the movement of history, it is therefore something "economic" after all." (Mitchell, 9)

"Deprived of their complexity and diversity and reduced to mere expressions of force, they serve the purpose of forcing history, the way a greenhouse forces plants. Colonial developments whose difference in social form, disrupted timing, or displacement across the globe seem to undermine the effort to make history homogenous become simply the unlawful force that forces history ahead."

"We might muse upon what it might signify from within it. In the future it will be interpreted, perhaps, as a relaxation, if not a lapse, of the attention given to force, which is the tension of force itself. Form fascinates when one no longer has the force to understand force from within itself." (Derrida, 4)

"The failure of the radical African alternative represented the inability of the independence politicians to evolve a strategy based on the real forces of change. Philosophies and general statements of fine principles have no practical consequences for Africans. Indeed, Cabral made a major contribution by explaining that Africa did not need more abstract ideologies but a plan of action." (Hadjor, 35)

"It is not attitudes that shape how we live, eat and work, rather it is the other way around. Even the highest ideals and the nicest attitudes cannot prevent discord if there is little to go around." (Hadjor, 35)

"Modernization continues to be commonly understood as a process begun and finished in Europe, from where it has been exported across ever-expanding regions of the non-West. The destiny of those regions has been to mimic, never quite successfully, the history already performed by the West. To become modern, it is still said, or today to become postmodern, is to act like the West." (Mitchell, 1)

"In our opinion, the foundation for national liberation rests in the inalienable right of every people to have their own history, whatever formations may be adopted at the level of international law. The objective of national liberation, is therefore, to reclaim the right, usurped by imperialist domination, namely: the liberation of the process of development of national productive forces." (Cabral, 43)

"To have ideology doesn't necessarily mean that you have to define whether you are communist, socialist, or something like this. To have ideology is to know what you want in your own condition. We want in our country this: to have no more exploitation of our people, not by white people or by black people." (Cabral, 88)

"We have to create for ourselves the instruments of the state inside our country, in the conditions of our history, in order to orientate all to a life of justice, work for progress and equality. Equality of chance for all people is the problem. The problem of equality is equality of chance." (Cabral, 89)

"The cosmic clocking which had made intelligible our synchronic transoceanic pairings was increasingly felt to entail a wholly intramundane, serial view of social causality; and this sense of the world was now speedily deepening its grip on Western imaginations." (Anderson, 194)

"A distinctive feature of many experiences of modernity is what can be called its contemporaneity or presence. The modern occurs as that form of temporality that Walter Benjamin calls homogenous empty time, in which time is apprehended as the uniform, unfilled spaces marked out by the calendar, the timetable, and the clock." (Mitchell, 14)

"It is only this effect of a unitary, punctual, contemporaneous present, as Bhabha points out, that enables Foucault to present racism as an "anachronism." Race is an element recuperated from a pre-modern past and reinscribed in an otherwise homogenous present. The West is the space that haunts this present." (Mitchell, 15)

"The implication of the end in the beginning, the strange relationships between the subject who writes the book and the subject of this book, between the consciousness of the narrator and that of the hero - all this recalls the style of becoming and the dialectic of the "we" in the Phenomenology of the Mind." (...) In the final pages one sees the hero and the narrator unite too, after a long march during which each sought after the other, sometimes very close to each other, sometimes very far apart; they coincide at the moment of resolution, which is the instant when the hero becomes the narrator, that is, the author of his own history." (Derrida, 22)

"It is true that in some places the form of the work, or the form as the work, is treated as if it had no origin, as if, again, in the masterpiece - and Rousset is interested only in masterpieces - the wellbeing of the work was without history. Without an intrinsic history." (Derrida, 13-14)

"It is no doubt the case that what Appadurai usefully calls "the work of the imagination" plays an increasingly important role in the postelectronic age. Yet it is important to remember that the orchestrating of image and imagination, the managing of the place of meaning in the social world and the experience of personhood, and the manipulating of populations and ecologies by their reductin to technical schemes and disciplinary programs, were already characteristic features of modernity in the colonial period." (Mitchell, 17)

"The map and census provide figures that are imagined to picture the nation as a real and knowable totality." (Mitchell, 18)

"Anderson considers the significance of these proliferating representations to lie in the experience of replication, meaning not simple copying but endless serialization." (Mitchell, 19)

"The conception of historical time renders history singular by organizing the multiplicity of global events into a single narrative." (Mitchell, 9)

"Presenting them as variations establishes the concept of a universal history, in relation to which all local histories - delayed, displaced, blocked, or rearranged - receive their meaning." (Mitchell, 9)

"We have to combat the causes of racism. If a bandit comes in my house and I have a gun I can not shoot the shadow of this bandit. I have to shoot the bandit. Many people lose energy and effort, and make sacrifices combatting shadows. We have to combat the material reality that produces the shadow. If we can not change the light that is one cause of the shadow, we can at least change the body. It is important to avoid confusion between the shadow and the body that projects the shadow. We are encouraged by the fact that each day more of our people, here and in Africa, realize this reality. This reinforces our confidence in our final victory."
(Cabral, 77)

"It is no doubt necessary to take a realistic approach and to stop dreaming and asking the impossible, for as we Africans say, "only in stories is it possible to cross the river on the shoulders of the crocodile's friend." (Cabral, 23-24)

"If the play of meaning can overflow signification (signalization) which is always enveloped within the regional limits of nature, life and the soul, this overflow is the moment of the attempt-to-write. The attempt-to-write cannot be understood on the basis of voluntarism. The will to write is not an ulterior determination of a primal will. On the contrary, the will to write reawakens the willful sense of the will; freedom, break with the domain of empirical history, a break whose aim is reconciliation with the hidden essence of the empirical, with pure historicity." (Derrida, 12-13)

"In this vein, more and more 'second-generation' nationalists, in the Americas and elsewhere, learned to speak 'for' dead people with whom it was impossible or undesirable to establish a linguistic connection." (Anderson, 198)

"For where Fermin still thought cheerfully of 'extinguishing' living Indians, many of his political grandchildren became obsessed with 'remembering,' indeed 'speaking for' them, perhaps precisely because they had, by then, so often been extinguished." (Anderson, 199)

"What is startling in the American namings of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries is that 'new' and 'old' were understood synchronically, co-existing within homogenous, empty time (...) This new synchronic novelty could arise historically only when substantial groups of people were in a position to think of themselves as living lives parallel to those of other substantial groups of people - if never meeting, yet certainly proceeding along the same trajectory." (Anderson 187-188)

"Having to 'have already forgotten' tragedies of which one needs unceasingly to be 'reminded' turns out to be a characteristic device in the later construction of national genealogies." (Anderson, 201)

"As with modern persons, so it is with nations. Awareness of being imbedded in secular, serial time, with all its implications of continuity, yet of 'forgetting' the experience of this continuity - product of the ruptures of the late eighteenth century - engenders the need for a narrative of 'identity'." (Anderson, 205)

"From Braudel's remorselessly accumulating cemetaries, however, the nation's biography snatches, against the going mortality rate, exemplary suicides, poignant martyrdoms, assassinations, executions, wars and holocausts. But, to serve the narrative purpose, these violent deaths must be remembered/forgotten as 'our own'." (Anderson, 205)

"The effect is probably stronger in the case of numerical representations of the nation, which make it possible repeatedly to compare nation states and arrange them in groups and sequences." (Mitchell, 19)

"Representation always gathers its strength from the way one picture is echoed and confirmed by another." (Mitchell, 19)

"Yet the effectiveness of this world-as-picture lies not simply in the process of serialization. It lies in the apparent contrast created between images, which are repeatable, serializable, hyperlinked, open to endless imitation, and the opposing effect of an original, of what appears to be the actual nation, the people itself, the real economy." (Mitchell, 19)

"On the other hand, Western philosophical tradition, as Dipesh Chakrabarty's essay in this volume reminds us, the modern individual came to be defined as the one who could occupy such a disembodied observer of the world. Freed in this way from the traditional constraints of habit or belief and transcending their localism, it was said, modern subjects could discover a universal faculty of reason and employ it to represent to themselves the experiences and feelings of others and to submit their own interior life to its pedagogy." (Mitchell, 20)

"The production of modernity involves the staging of differences." (Mitchell, 22)

"Imagination is the freedom that reveals itself only in its works. These works do not exist within nature, but neither do they inhabit a world other than ours." (Derrida, 7)

Imagination is an expression with will and force, so to speak. "The same goes for the notion of the imagination, the power of meditation or synthesis between meaning and literality, the common root of the universal and the particular - as of all other similarly dissociated couples - the obscure origin of these structural frameworks and of the empathy between "form and content" which makes possible both the work and the access to its unity." (Derrida, 7)

"To grasp the operation of creative imagination at the greatest possible proximity to it, one must turn oneself toward the invisible interior of poetic freedom." (Derrida, 8)

"The experience of conversion, which founds the literary act (writing or reading), is such that the very words "separation" and "exile," which always designate the interiority of a breaking-off with the world and a making of one's way with it, cannot directly manifest the experience; they can only indicate it through a metaphor whose genealogy itself would deserve all of our efforts. For in question here is a departure from the world toward a place which is neither a non-place nor an other world, neither a utopia or an alibi, the creation of a "universe to be added to the universe, " according to an expression of Focillon's cited by Rousset (Forme et Signification, p. 11)" (Derrida, 8)

HOW to Tie a Tie

2010-04-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

Its important to know.

http://www.tie-a-tie.net

We Who are About to Die features Vignette Fictions

2010-04-19T10:14:00.000-07:00

We Who are About to Die posted a friendly feature about Vignette Fictions thanks to Dan Lichtenberg. Thanks to Dan for the kind words.

VIDEO GAMES - a fictional confession

2010-04-11T17:03:00.001-07:00

I hate video games because they are the one imposing prospect that begs to take my life away from 'me' for the pursuit of perfection. Video games could reduce my life into a singular pursuit. They beg to teach me everything about the world in a way that will only alienate me from it at the same time. They promise so much and even if these things were to be fulfilled, the cost of complete devotion to such a monster would be a detriment to my humanity. In pursuing video games, I would agree to lose my language of humanity and in doing so, I would attain the abilities of a superhuman. I would lose the ability to relate to people in a regular way because I would have denied society in order to perfect the monster. Video-games would consume my time and permeate my dreams. I would turn from a five-sensed living, breathing human, into a multi-dimensional sensory being who things in abstract ways, cumbersome to the average person. Video games beg me to sacrifice all the other loves in my life--parties, spontaneous rendezvous, art, sex, literature, philosophy, and people. I hate video games because I love them. I'm constantly torn between living the life of a monk with my bible being the Nintendo set or living the life of me. I know that video games will bring me more pain and sorrow than benefit. What hurts me most is that I know the benefit could possibly be worth a lifetime of devotion, but alas, I choose not to. As much as I'm drawn to the life of Video-Games, I never believed that I was good enough. I hate the Nintendo because it hates me. I'm not good enough to master it. Prodigious people fascinate me but I only occasionally felt worthy of their ranks. As much of a rush as the feeling of genius is, my lack of consistent ingenuity leaves me sad and tormented. Pouting won't instill ingenuity, though, only dedication will. I'm too dedicated to my emotions that the fucking Nintendo won't let me into its elitist club and video games will always be a struggle. I'm drawn to the prodigious for their air of inaccessibility. The have progressed so far along a path of devotion and knowledge that we "ordinary folk" simply cannot fathom the meaning of the shit that they say, and yet it seems profound. The truth they encounter is much richer than the deception we fall for. They make few mistakes and those mistakes are immediately transcended and subdued. Truly impeccable human achievers have a way of putting meaning to chaos. They grapple with the chaotic (or the misunderstood) in the world enough to make it seem tame and controlled. They are not daunted by confusion. Confusion is something the prodigious overcome. They make possible the impossible. I'm also drawn to the prodigious for their ridiculously faulty, neurotic, and immature dealings in the other areas of life besides their area of expertise. Am I wrong to profile 'the prodigious' into a tight, envious definition? What other facility do I have to fight for my own invalid, lazy, and cowardly attitude? I must deface the ones I idolize in order to avoid the feeling of inadequacy amidst them. My only other option is to try to become one of them; a prodigy. But prodigies are not made, they are born.

Associations...

2010-03-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

For some reason the following movies have a similar resonance for me:
Paris, Texas

Beyond the Limits of Control

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

My Shortest Piece of Fiction, to date

2010-02-17T01:56:00.000-08:00

If the first thing last is still the first than why does it come last? The way you explained it to me was that the dog tried to eat the bird and then the bird flew away. When I found the actual document, I discovered that it was written in a different order, but not necessarily the wrong order. It seemed to me that you had made a correction, or rather, what you assumed to be a correction, but now I question your motives. According to the actual document, the bird flew away and then the dog tried to eat the bird. Please tell me, why did this hopeless dog even try?

Reading/Not Reading

2010-02-11T22:20:00.000-08:00

Reading (for School):
James Allen MacPherson: Selected stories from Hue and Cry
Dickens' Bleak House
Charlotte Lennox's Sophia
Bataille: The Dead Man

Not Reading, but wish I had time for:
Perec: Life: A User's Manual
Herzog on Herzog
Deleuze and Guattari: Anti Oedipus
Rezikoff: Family Chronicle
Jane Bowles: Camp Cataracts
Donoso: The Obscene Bird of Night
Sartre: Saint Genet
Bataille: My Mother

The Tin Drum

2010-01-15T17:37:00.000-08:00

I'm currently reading The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass. I decided to read this book because I had already heard of it and one day, I typed "The Tin Drum" into You Tube and found the following trailer for a movie that was made based on the novel:

I have been to the section at City Lights Books where Grass' books are all compiled and standing amid other European authors. I've thought of buying one of them for a long time to see what his writing was like. My curiosity became even more pronounced when I saw the movie trailer, in all of its ridiculousness.
With the book still in the back of my mind, I went to Seattle around January 15th to visit my dad who was in the hospital and who has since passed away. While in Seattle, I got sick and read a couple of books in bed. I read Roberto Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas and a book by a Russian author named Bulgakov called Heart of a Dog. Both were highly amusing but neither prepared me for what I was about to embark on with The Tin Drum. I only got my hands on the book by chance. I visited my friend Richard and while looking through his book collection, I noticed he had the copy in the photograph with its charming cover illustration. I ended up trading Heart of a Dog for The Tin Drum at Richard's house.

I'm on page 488 and hoping to read the remainder of the book over the weekend. So far, the life-story of Oskar has taken about as many turns as you could possibly fit in that number of pages. He is now a 21 year old boy, with slightly expanded growth from his initial growth stunt at age 3 that limited him to the height of 3 feet. His charms include a screaming voice that shatters glass, insistent drumming of a toy drum, and now a hump on his back that he uses for its appeal to art-students to get paid for posing nude in an art-school.

I like this novel because I'm drawn to the random opportunism embodied by the character Oskar. He follows whims that are composed of mounted feelings that have accumulated during his life and his awkward positioning as a dwarf and a cripple. Throughout, he defies expectations by following his strange heart that is charming in its amoral, unwavering belief in itself, without expectations. I don't know where the book is leading because it unfolds like a chronicle and at times it becomes dense in the strange position of the narrator including a chapter written by the nurse at a mental hospital who writes Oskar's story for that period of the novel. During that narration, the nurse is involved with an ongoing knotting and unknotting of a string in his pocket. This strange device reflects the story-telling as a metaphor, but it also makes the narrative stance suspicious because I wasn't sure if the nurse was not rather the patient, or if it was merely trying to make that reversal by suggestion. Either way, the imagery throughout is phenomenal and the way that Grass takes motifs like the glass breaking voice and weaves it into a million possibilities for different scenes: breaking glass for burglars and clandestinely allowing them to steal their wanted goods, breaking glass for a gang of hoodlums and becoming their leader, breaking his teacher's glasses, etc. is so useful to read for writers who wish to achieve the same unlimited advances in plot from minimal tropes.

I also like the way that the sides of this story deflect the historical and political situation of World War II and its aftermath. There are no sides in this novel, just people with flickering hearts that go about their business with the spontaneity and caprice that history books forget to factor in. I'm fascinated with the way Grass piles on the eccentricities and I'm immediately planning to pass this book on to friends after I'm done with it.

Shipbuilding

2009-12-28T00:16:00.000-08:00

(A paragraph by E. E.)
If he wanted to build a ship, he would have brought home the wood by now. I haven’t heard from him, nor seen him from the balcony. The sky up here feels like a cold compress. My first impression is usually wrong. Thank goodness for my two feet, to carry me away from the scenes that disturb me. I’ve heard orca whales scream bloody murder from the docks. He wailed a symphony of cries into the night in bed beside me. He decided to build a ship after the death of his father who sank at sea, fishing for Marlin. My greatest fear is that this endeavor, this big idea, will disappear before he puts it to motion. Someday, he may sink, too. Someday, sinking sails may be torn from the masthead and released into the sky to become loose parachutes for the sun. Until then, distant winds swallow future shipbuilders’ trials at sea.

Afghanistan Opium Trade

2009-11-30T15:55:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed this article about the opium trade in Afghanistan. It sheds light on a complex situation that is hard to understand here on the other side of the globe. Certainly, first hand accounts are preferred, but when those aren't readily available, it helps to read articles like these - especially since many people are questioning Obama's purpose of keeping the U.S. in Afghanistan.
The master of Spin Boldak: Undercover with Afghanistan's drug-trafficking border police—By Matthieu Aikins (Harper's Magazine)

Writing Excerpt: Conterfeit Living by E.E.

2009-11-29T14:52:00.000-08:00

This is a piece to file away among the other bits of my experimental fiction. The photograph is a Man Ray photo.

Who betrayed this information? What, in particular, suffocated your sight?
If you see something there, don't blur your eyes. The words will mean much less.

What words? I asked.

The rules of the game. Capital rules, capitalism. Capital letters on a blank white wall. She said.

There are no rules.

What you did was illegal. She said.

Sharp pains strangled my wrists from luxury watches and jewelry. I didn't want to continue like this. All of my commodities were shrouded in masking tape until my aspirations became mutilated by this policing, questioning woman - my mother.

What brand of watch did you steal?

I turned on the television.

What brand?

The television played a commercial selling Dial soap.

Gucci. Gucci Brand Theft. I said.

You effing liar.

I'm wearing the clock. Its on my wrist. All she would need to do is look down, notice the insignia, and confirm or discredit my claim. The clock is designed to speed the decaying process of the soul, I've noticed. It is a fermenting machine that breaks down hope, so that one feels incapable of ensuring time for dreams and tea-parties and such. Amid being grilled, I think about how my best friend Judy spends her time as a receptionist, working for gorgeous men. She always seems to find herself lost in erotic contemplation, with the steady rhythm of the clock, the opening and closing doors that produce male doctors, male nurses, and male patients, men who she would unclothe in her imagination. To say that the imagination lacks for use-value is a crime. I found it empowering to know how Judy imagined that when the two hands of the clock met, it was like an orgasm. Noon was her lunch break.

Give it to me. Mother screamed.

If I had 'proper' money enough to erase my body, I'd make it two dimensional, to appear more photographic like the supermodels. If I could discard just one dimension, shave it off, look thinner, more iconic, then I think I'd feel more at ease. I could slip under the door, my theft wouldn't be false advertisement, it would be plastered on billboards in deft realism. As it is, the depth weighs me down, the dimension, the gravity. There is no end to what I've put behind me. Some of my very successful friends tout the idea that you must put a lot of money in to see a return. I put a lot of money into a black hole.

Give it to me! She came racing towards me. I watched her fall.

My money remains unseen, trapped behind bars in secret funds that reside behind framed pictures on my walls. My money has no origins and no destination. I am like the virgin Mary who generated the divine monetary Jesus from an untouched womb. I generate money. Without origins, my money isn't entirely illegal. It situates my state of well-being outside of the 'proper' norms of society. Mother doesn't know where I come up with these Gucci watches. She thinks they're stolen. I consider them 'generated'. I do business with nameless, paperless persons. These people do not exist in the traditional sense.

Mother wept.

I'll never be published like those supermodels Cindy or Natalia. Their schtick is legit. My face, though marketable, is an illegal image, confined to a faceless trade.

My mother looked glamorous in her lament. I reached my hand out to her to lift her up off of the hardwood flooring. I asked her what she wanted for Christmas.

I want you to stop whatever it is your doing, Sarah. I want you to be good again. LIttle Sarah. I want you to come clean and give back all of the things you've already taken.

Think of everything I've given you Mother. Do you really want me to give back your brand new Whirlpool Dishwasher? Let's be realistic. Forget about the things Jack told you. He doesn't mean what he says. He has a big imagination. You really can't believe everything you hear from him, okay?

Still, she wept.

Okay? Goodbye Mother. I'm going to come back next week to take you to the Theater. It's a David Mamet play - your favorite.

Two days later...

Its Monday and its not me in my office, anymore. I'm a servant, a machine producing clean heaps of money for the client. I'm standing with the heaps of greenbacks to be washed, knowing they contain the filth from hands I've seen gesturing through the bank halls. I'll wash it all away, purging their memories down the drain and drying them on the line. I'll wash it away, knowing its not me who does the forgetting, its them. They shuck it all off on me, the faceless servant who is paid to get rid of the filth. The stains of the greenbacks aren't forgotten by me. They fill up my mind with questions. Vomit, blood, soot, mucus. These people are ill and they don't even realize, they just shuck off the indications onto me, whose job is to wash it away. When will they wake up and realize that their routines are ill, irresponsibly ill? They don't even remember when they last vomited because it happens with such frequency that its become a part of the routine. The pills they swallow, the drinks they spill, these are not forgotten by me. But its not me in this room, washing it away. If it were me, I'd want to take their bodies into my arms and hug them then give them time to relax. These people are disastrous, plotting forth on a dangerous time-table. I can do nothing for them other than wash away the evidence. I'm just their machine for hire, washing it away.

These people are your so-called friends. My mother reminded me, in a phone-message. You've gotten mixed in with the wrong crowd. She said.

The Space Review: Studying a legend

2009-11-27T16:56:00.000-08:00

For anyone interested in the history of Russian Space Technology or the Space-Race, have a look at this interesting article about Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. He is generally credited with the development of the basic mathematical formulae for space travel. The book-review cites his interesting relation of his work to the Russian politics during his lifetime. This information gives Russia's projects enlightening exposure in our post-Cold War era.

Portrait of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

A drawing by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

Image of the Konstantin Tsiolkovsky Crater

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

2009-11-25T11:50:00.000-08:00

NOV. 25, 1922

Janey Smith is my Hero

2009-11-25T10:24:00.000-08:00

The following story makes me want to mask my diary with the characters of a children's book or re-write the news in claymation imagery. Do it to history, name drop Voltaire, and it becomes revolutionary. Hence, Janey Smith is my Hero.

GHOST TOWN (OR HOW THE BABY BUNNY BECAME VOLTAIRE) BY JANEY SMITH

Inside the cabin, on the western frontier, the baby bunny moved a little bit out of the way of a bumbling tumbleweed by sliding like he was on the ice all clumsy until he was behind a bucket. Then the bumbling tumbleweed made a weird turn up the wall of the cabin and came back down towards the baby bunny. Then the baby bunny said “no don’t” and the baby bunny moved its feet going backwards in the direction of a broom behind which the baby bunny hid from the tumbleweed. Then the bumbling tumbleweed bounced all soft like a sad balloon along the dirt floor of the cabin until it bumped into a door. The baby bunny looked out from behind the broom. The bumbling tumbleweed got sleepy because it was depressed and so the bumbling tumbleweed leaned against the door all drunk with sleep and it sleeped. The baby bunny peeked out from behind the broom again. The baby bunny looked both ways, then he crossed the cabin floor. The baby bunny studied the sleeping tumbleweed, which was dry and prickly. Then the baby bunny looked around the deserted homestead.

It was empty.

The only edible thing—other than the glue holding the cardboard cabin together—was a mangy old bearskin rug, which was the color of dirt. The baby bunny stared at the mangy old bearskin rug and remembered his life as a baby bunny, back when he was smaller and a little bit more gay than he was now.

The baby bunny thought he saw a door in the middle of the mangy old bearskin rug. Then he entered a room that was totally bare, like the rug, that looked like the room in which he used to live when he was a baby. The baby bunny waited in the bare room for someone—his parents—to throw him a cabbage. But the baby bunny didn’t have any parents. So, he waited and waited. When it finally came, the baby bunny then screwed everything up and tried to survive on a chunk of government cabbage for a week.
And there it was.

When he peed in the bare room next to the cabbage he would make cabbage soup. The baby bunny’s “clothes”— his fur, his feathery hair behind his little ears made especially for petting, and the room—smelled like cabbage. The baby bunny petted the cabbage tenderly, like it was his girlfriend. It was all he had. The cabbage would say: “Darling, this is so awful. This room stinks.” And the baby bunny would say: “Yes darling, you are right. I will go get a job at the needle exchange outlet behind the Safeway.” And then the cabbage would say, “Don’t you have any condoms?” And the baby bunny would stare at the floor all sad like he was a baby lamb because he was so poor.

Then something happened. The baby bunny raised his little head towards the ceiling of the cabin, and a tiny tear sprouted just beneath his eye making his eye look lopsided: “Sex cannot be the only luxury item afforded the working class,” the baby bunny said, and he concluded, “and it cannot constitute its only truly revolutionary act.”

The baby bunny snapped out of it. He waddled over to the TV set on the floor of the cardboard cabin and he turned the TV on. Then the baby bunny curled up on the mangy old bearskin rug until he was perfectly still. The bumbling tumbleweed saw him and bounced, all determined, like a soft balloon over to the baby bunny and got next to him and cuddled with him, making static electricity. The baby bunny started to fall asleep.

One week later, the baby bunny met a tiny red ant from a hole in the floor that taught him how to make Molotov cocktails using his own waste matter. The baby bunny took a shit, sniffed it, and smiled. Then, dramatically, the baby bunny took hold of one of the smooth branches of the bumbling tumbleweed, who shivered with joy, and who started to float, full of hope, into the air.

This is how the baby bunny became Voltaire.

The Glassines play tonight at El Rio in SF

2009-11-24T11:25:00.000-08:00

The Glassines are Sarah Borruso on vocals/guitar, Kelly Gabaldon on vocals/guitar, and Erica Eller on drums
El Rio is an excellent bar near my apartment in SF.

Facebook Languages

2009-11-24T10:24:00.000-08:00

Facebook announced to me today that it now offers UK English as a language option. I decided to switch to it, for a moment. I didn't notice any differences, immediately. Facebook says that it provides service in over 70 different languages. This is exciting to me because even though I don't speak any different languages fluently, I've taken Spanish and Japanese classes in the past and the nuance of language already proved amazing. In another life or perhaps far into the future, I could imagine myself becoming a linguist. I scrolled down the list in Facebook: Afrikaans, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Melayu, Catala, Cestina, Cymraeg, Dansk, Deutsch
It would be nice if each language option had an explanation of region, reasoning for inclusion, for curious people like me. I find it interesting that there are three English variations.
English (UK), English (US), English (Upside Down)...
This one caught my attention. I switched to upside down and the linguistic difference is that it appears upside down, just as it describes. I wondered why this option is available...is it to make it hard to read what your typing by other people viewing your screen in a public setting, or is it for dyslexia?
ɯoɔ˙dıןɟspɹoʍ˙ʍʍʍ
:spɹoʍ ɹnoʎ dıןɟ uɐɔ noʎ ǝɹǝɥʍ ǝʇıs ɐ s,ǝɹǝɥ ˙unɟ ɹoɟ ʇsnɾ sı ʇı ǝʞıן spunos ʇı puɐ ǝןƃooƃ ɥʇıʍ ɹǝʍsuɐ ǝɥʇ ɹoɟ ƃuıɥɔɹɐǝs pǝıɹʇ ı

Online Reading

2009-11-23T13:03:00.000-08:00

GOODBYE TO ALL THAT by Joan Didion

I really like this essay by Joan Didion. I arrived in San Francisco when I was 20 and although I'm still in my twenties and although her essay is about New York, it reminds me of how I felt when I moved here, even how I sometimes feel, still.

Self-Test

2009-11-19T05:18:00.001-08:00

Count from one to ten with your fingers. Notice anything? No perhaps you should try reciting the Jabberwocky. Twas Brillig and the slithig toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. How mimsy were the borogoves and the momewraths outgrabe. Beware the Jabberwok my friend, the claws that catch the jaws that bite. Beware the jub jub bird and shun the frumious bandersnatch. He took his vorple blade in hand...Did that do anything for you? Try memorizing a few important phone numbers from your cell-phone. Mom: ###-###-#### Best Friend: ###-###-#### Someone who you aren't friends with (but their number is in your phone): ###-###-#### How did that feel? Try again tomorrow dialing your non-friend (without looking) and re-introduce yourself. Explain to them what happened. Take a walk to the nearest landmark. Ask yourself - Where am I? Make up a word. Make up a bunch of words and write a chilling tale of a monster then memorize it. Count backwards from ten to one and then think about zero until you fall asleep. Try counting an animal other than sheep, but still an animal that travels in groups. Notice anything?

Lit Site: HTML GIANT

2009-11-16T11:31:00.000-08:00

Click to view

Why Post-Modernism?

2009-11-10T11:02:00.001-08:00

I'm writing a paper. This paper is about Glamorama, the novel by Bret Easton Ellis. In the process of this paper, I am grappling, once again, with post-modernism. Modernism was already 'post' when I was born. Perhaps that's where the difficulty comes in. I don't have much of a framework for the background that preceded the 'post'. In light of yesterday's 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I realize that so much of these themes and constructs are linked explicitly to a politically difficult world. The momentum of millions of conflicting voices is like white noise. Still, the more I read and study 'text', I'm drawn out of the screen that I take for granted. Besides engaging with what surrounds me, I ponder what is absent and what has changed. Where are things going and where did they come from? Aside from whatever category of discourse this is, the important feature is momentum. Walter Benjamin wrote about the changing tides of history and how technology would create a norm of out-moding the past. Traditions become less fixed. It makes me wonder...were they ever fixed? Of course, our world has sped up. The momentum of interface moves in rapid turnover. During all of this...I'm still. Still. That's a world like a film-still. It possesses static. It is self-contained. Still. Hold still, wait longer, still. Here in this place, I remember how politically charged I was as a child. Hearing about the Berlin wall really made me sad to know that families were split apart, for no good reason, and not allowed to cross back. This was all I knew. I knew that a lot of things weren't fair. Like how ecological inter-workings are ignored and interrupted for the sake of 'business' and 'capital gain'. I knew about this as a child and even then I wondered, but why? I've always wondered. Why? This leads me into the labyrinth that every thinker embarks upon. Its true that oftentimes I shy away from this question because it is too bold, too subversive. At the same time, it is the only thing I really have. It keeps me still in the constant motion. I question still. Doubting political interests, and believing that there is a real-world that isn't political. It exists outside of humanity. It's the natural world, with birds and concrete, equal people that all look the same from a bird's eye view, people that appear in miniature, constructing their ant-hills. It's the natural world with trees and seasons. A constant turn-over, due to the rotation of the sun. There is a cohesive unified natural world where the disparity of a moment balances over time...with or without human interest.

Electric Literature

2009-10-30T15:52:00.000-07:00

I just found out about this great new spin on the Literary Journal. The editors and creators of Electric Literature have embraced all kinds of new-media and they are supporting writing as an art-form despite the technological changes that are effecting the publishing industry. There is hope for authors, yet. This Journal is embracing the digital formatting options available and making good use of digital design capabilities, as well.

Mice and God

2009-10-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

The sounds over head, its like tiny pockets. There's pockets in between the patches of things falling down. The things that are falling down, don't you see, that's what I'm getting at, they fall. It seems like it can't be seen, but it can. Its easy to sit there and pretend that you haven't gotten into the little pocket where you are. But there you are. Somehow, its a cacoon. There's a little mouse in the walls, disguising itself as rain. Its digging into my pockets. Its gnawing into the pages in my books, destroying them. Soon, its going to find itself stuck in a little hole inside of a book. That's the sound of rain, the fear of mice, chewing up my books. That's the sound of mice, the falling rain. There's something deafening about the books that sit on my shelf. I'm afraid that in the earthquake, all of them will loose their hard-backs, when the wrath of god judges them, those books will all lose their spines and I'll be lying in bed, swimming in pages. This is balderdash. And it will be a nest of pages for me to go searching, or trying to put them back in order, again. Where does god toss all of the spines once they've been sucked up by his vacuum. Where is there to 'throw away' in heaven? So if this is my refusal towards god, where are the mice? When the rain befalls the mice, where do they run to? Where are their pockets? Somehow I've gotten stuck into a deep pocket. But I have the delusion, mind you, I know its balderdash, and I'm the first one to use that word and tattoo it on my forehead, I have the delusion that this pocket is up on the clouds up there. I have the delusion that buried in these pages, I'm up swimming towards the blue sky, the one that glows over the ceiling of clouds. The deeper I go, the freer I breathe. I'm tearing up the pages like a mouse. So if I'm like a mouse and this is my cacoon, where is the rain? Don't you see? Its the cat's meow.

Artificial Embrace

2009-10-14T15:40:00.000-07:00

In memory of meaning, I give this toast. Once, long ago, I would attempt to make my words trigger pinpoints in real-time. Instead, they misfired bleating against the glass wall of a champagne flute. Today, I celebrate artificiality, for its blasphemous bearing on who and what I am. Salute, raise the flute, and let the bubbles rattle my aching head with that curiosity that falls between the words. These words aren't what they might have been, if they were realistic. Three cheers for the dying memory of who I was when the profundity of things made me spin. Now I can walk again.

Ruminations from the Rain

2009-10-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

There are ankle deep puddles to avoid on the street, today. On the sidewalk, the pine throws down its bristles, having been snapped off in the wind. I'm watching for gaps in the clouds to show me a portal to blue sky. The escalator pulled me first through a waterfall dripping off of the edge of the subway structure then into the rain falling from the sky. I"m wrestling with the wind for my umbrella. Without a coat, where would I be? Without these boots? Some of these people don't have umbrellas and they huddle close with someone who does. How intimate it is to share an umbrella. Today, on the radio, absolutely nothing happened on Wall Street, according to one reporter. Inside, I wonder if my plants are jealous of the outdoors, because of the moisture in the rain. There was a dismembered umbrella in the drain. The reporter on the radio warned of the storm drains becoming blocked. I was able to finish a book at a cafe, without loosing focus. The low pressure front mixed with coffee at a cafe has become my newest recipe for concentration. I can hide on a day like today, and even when I'm out walking on the streets, I'm more alone. Other people hide, too. Where do people go when they have nowhere to hide? What happens when we are ill prepared for the weather? We catch cold, it breaks down our defenses. The gate to the parking lot of my apartment on Cesar Chavez was closed to avoid potential flash floods. Its storm season. Somehow, its like we have to learn all over again how to behave in this weather. Drivers have lost their bearings, for one thing. People stay home from work. How many private celebrations are going on in the city with home-cooked stews, freshly baked cookies, and hot toddies? How am I still so hot and sweaty, walking around? My body temperature tilts different ways from cold-wet-rain temperature, sweating up from under my collar and thick-clothing-shells, into central heating, where the sweat trickles down from my forehead. I wonder what pictures were drawn on fogged-over windows today. What traces were left, to soon disappear? When I was a kid, I drew hearts on the windows. Then I could see into the moving landscape from the bus through a heart-shaped opening. The rain disguises my sweat, and cheeks are bright red. I wish I could collect a cloud in a jar, today. It would be full of this rain. I want to know what my rain is made of, specific to the area. Does it carry traces of the plant-life, the marine-life and the mountain water shed from where it was evaporated, miles and miles away? There are no shadows in the rain. The tips of my socks are still wet. How many naps were endured? What kind of dreams did people have today? I had dreams about the places in the book I was reading. My book poured over me much the same way that this rain did, and it bottomed out in a flood. I was surprised at how it fell awash over me. Somehow, I know my inside is always reflected in the outside. Its a matter of realizing I am transparent. This water is transparent, too. It is clear, and cleansing, but it is so hard to muster through. The refreshing part comes once I've had a chance to warm up. The refreshing part is in retrospect. This is what the Mister says anyhow, he made me remember how things happen to us, without us knowing, until after they have passed. This idea behaves like rain. It pours and runs down things. It carries things away, but we hide while all of this is going on, curled up under piles and piles of blankets. Having been put beneath something, I realized my limitations. Having to take public transportation, today. But realizing there was nothing to complain about, in the end. I am fully capable. How many hands have to be taken for granted? Its a cheerful rainy day. My car got fixed. By the time I picked it up, it wasn't raining anymore. Its a cheerful rainy day, because I'm going to make someone happy, just by showing up. Not everyone decided to show up, today. Earlier in the day I flaunted the possibility that I might not show up, in front of him. After a few hours, when my car was fixed. I let him know. Like a flood, I let him have it, a definite plan. I would show up! What a manipulative terror I have become. But it worked, somehow. Now we have something to look forward to. Soon the clouds will clear.

Running with my imagination over Michael Jackson's Death

2009-10-10T00:32:00.001-07:00

Its Tuesday now, and its time to go for a run. Little Jacky's in the corner, whistling his time away while the other boys are outside shouting. Somewhere in the closet there's a dark shadow that grows up from the base boards and the night-time is creeping in through the side-panels. The angry dog behind the pantry door is barking in a comical way, it sounds like he's shouting "murder". I steer clear of the pantry door, inching my way toward the foyer where a large gilded mirror soaks in the darkness that grows out from the closet.

Its Tuesday now, and its time to go for a run. Jacky doesn't remember the last time his dance moves were caught on tape, but it might have been just yesterday. His eyes sparkle under the neon lights like they always have. Jacky's always been a sweet boy, the kind you just can't take your eyes off. Clap! Do it again, Jacky. Clap Clap! Jump up, touch your toes. You're a super star. You always were one, and you always will be. Jacky's name gets jotted down in history unlike mine and so many others. Either way, its Tuesday now, and a shiny black box is hanging over the moon like an eclipse. No one knows where it came from. Its shadow crept over sweet Jacky cloaking the back of his head while he searches for his moon boots in the closet.

The black box records everything and immediately sucks up the evidence like a vacuum. The black box stores its information in an alternate world, much like a black hole. We'll never know what gets blacked out on the white pages that enter the black box and disappear. All we know is that the boys outside sell us plenty of high quality fiction, instead. The boys outside, on the manicured lawn, shout about what the story should be. They jot down scenarios that are by no means accurate but these scenarios fit our expectations, anyhow. They fancy themselves editors, financiers, and international Publicity Reps. So often, they rise up and holler, slapping each other's shoulders in agreement.

I never felt like I could make my mark in their back yard. They've too many hoops to jump through. Its too much like military training camp out there, except without the big advertisements. You can only join by word of mouth. When the word about me went up in the air, it got tossed around for a minute, then settled in the wrong file. Once they pulled the file, they marked my name in black. Unlike me, Jacky's name was always marked white. His face even turned white. It turned into a big white mess, faint and powdery, like he was in shock. They confused him by feeding him new moves on the chess board, when he should have been practicing his spin.
Pretty soon, they reached check-mate and he suffered greatly from their heavy-handed game.

Something covered up Jacky's face tonight, a big shadow from the black box that sucks up the information. The minute I saw the array of subtle adjustments, the boys pulling at their belts and signaling with slight nods, all I could do was whimper. Their shouts rose up and stormed in. With a clap, Jacky collapsed in the closet. It took me by no surprise, however. I knew right away that it meant bad news for me. I knew I'd have to run. Now, I'm part of the evidence that needs to be eradicated. The only one who knows my name is the man in the moon and he's eclipsed tonight by that pesky black box. Nevertheless, the moon will never forget that I went out running towards the door. I went out with every ounce of effort I had. Not that I'd escape, anyhow. Still, its better to die a martyr, even if its a reworked death, then to just disappear.

Luckily, a thought crossed my mind, fast. It was one of the oldest tricks in the book. I realized the group of fashionable boys were pointing their fingers at the image of me in the mirror. There was about five paces between my nervous smile in the mirror, where they thought they had me targeted, and the place I actually stood. I still had a chance to run away, unseen. They shot fast at the mirror, pulling guns out from the folds of their Armani suits, aiming right at me, but only breaking glass.

When they shot the mirror, glass fragments dropped, spewing glittering daggers everywhere. The whole wall opened up, like an eye opening up from a dream. Apparently, they accessed another world by breaking that mirror. The other world contained all of the information that the black box had withheld. The alternate images twisted fast, racing in circles to greet us, like released ghosts. When the inverted plane recognized itself through the hole in the broken mirror, the two sides looked like a mismatched pair. It was not a pretty sight. The shouting men, who called the shots and wore expensive suits on one side were reflected in Cotton T-shirts, locked up in prison on the other side. Through the gaping hole, Jacky's reflection looked black again, alive and well, up and out of the closet. Jacky even wore his moon boots.

A bit of pride welled up inside of me as I looked back at the strange situation. I realized that even though I might never have a famous reputation like Jacky, I still achieved something that he wasn't able to do. It seemed, judging by the hole in the wall, that I had escaped the influence of the black box. Even though I was in my most vulnerable state, running for fear of my life, I felt a lick of relief. Unlike Jacky or the boys in Armani, I had a matching reflection. On both sides, I ran.

Plastic Fork

2009-10-07T23:42:00.000-07:00

(Here is a snippet from the Archive...)

A plastic fork haunts me. It melted in the pan beside my egg. I dare not take a deep inhale. The fumes are quite toxic and they waft toward me. Across the room, they graze near the open window. The window is rattling from the drums that are pounding outside. It is Carnival, today. The carnival parade resounds from only a block away. Down on the cement floor, ladies rush towards the sounds, wearing sequence and sandals. They're probably late getting to their floats. I'm far above them, amid toxic fumes. I am alone in my cramped studio apartment. It was out of carelessness that I used that fork to lift my egg. I was not fully awake. Coffee brewed, too late to help me realize what would happen because of that faux utensil. It was a mistake to set it down and go to the bathroom. I blame it on the punches of Caribbean horns that distracted me. On the toilet, they made me think of taking a vacation: Cuba, Belize, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, hell...Tijuana.The sizzling of my egg blended with the second-line percussion. After relieving myself, I lifted up from the toilet and flushed my piss away. At the sink, I ran water over my drooping hands. That was when I noticed the faint, unnatural odor of burnt plastic. That fork destroyed breakfast.

The Glassines perform Live!

2009-10-05T11:28:00.001-07:00

Please come see us!
Sarah: Vocals, Guitar
Kelly: Keyboard, Vocals, etc.
Erica: Drums

Nouveau Roman

2009-08-26T15:44:00.000-07:00

I just read that Julio Cortazar and others were influenced by this trend in writing and it relates very much to my own. It decentralizes the role of character and their drive within the world toward a more depersonalized, object oriented world. This idea relates to the work of Franz Kafka, as well.

My writing is unfastening into new generative means for creating stories. For a recent story (not posted), I generated a lexicon based on the idea of a soft glowing ambient feeling and linked it to a patient who is addicted to morphine in a 1960s nursing home. I'm very interested in passage-ways, trails of thought, and light, too. An ambient feeling like the feeling of listening to Brian Eno is something I wish to develop in my writing.

The Flood

2009-08-20T10:49:00.000-07:00

When the flood hit, we weren't prepared for the innovation in technology and the infinitesimal reductive reach of microscopic engineering. The traces of my life, mapped in simulated files are enclosed in several compact drives crowded between staplers and scissors in the top drawer of my adaptable (multi-use) desk. What happens on this desk is cleared off of this desk by the time I've switched tasks. Task master, efficiency freak. Breath of a monster, a hot-wired tape machine flicking code like a talkative radio program. Rapid-fire, unforgiving, unfinished, not ever. The lamp burns deep into the night, with a bulb designed for saving energy. Numbers crunch, buckle and squelch the other contenders like words, and bodily functions, even whims. None of these fit the agenda. The agenda is this: one trillion dollars will soon fit into a single molecule where it will travel so discreetly that only its elusive charm will hinder its interest rate. Fall out from this monetary molecule will land in fictional bank accounts linked to real dreams. American dreams. We will live and breathe this wealth, unknowing, having it brush into our nervous system, the tiniest particle, only to drift out through cell-tissue into oxygen breeze. How many trillion dollar molecules belong to the flood? Countless... How many trillion dollar molecules comprise a droplet of water such as a soft salty roller creeping south on my daughter's cheek? She's upset because she doesn't know the location of Bermuda, sad that I can't drive her there tomorrow afternoon...
- Where did you learn that word, honey?
-The internet.
-Oh. Okay.
Thinking back, I recall where I had learned it. It was an episode of Full-house, that annoying sitcom, when Joey and Jessie got to meet the Beach Boys on a trip to Hawaii. That's when I memorized the lyrics to their hit single, Kokomo. Bermuda, Jamaica, Oooh I want to take ya.
-Take me, Mommy. I want to know what will happen if you enter into the Bermuda Triangle. Maybe it will make you less busy!
(Was I busy?)
-Is that it? Mommy's busy. Okay.
Busy as a mad-scientist, only tangled in figures, numbers, and currency, not bumping between bunsen burners.
- Mommy made some money for you because she's busy.
- Money like Las Vegas?
- Yes, like that. You'll thank me for your jackpot.
Oh, the things she's learned. The places she'll go... (Fear creeps up)...A gamble. Mommy's busy as a gamble. Wager is a small child. Something the size of a molecule floats through a room, a prowler. Am I stalking it or is it stalking me? I'm out with my particle vacuum, building an inheritance for little blue-eyes. Numbers crunch her attire into haute couture. Numbers jerk her into position, diplomacy, homage, ritual, reverence. A shining gold path leading to emerald towers.
There's someplace like home! There's someplace like home on TV, the other girls tell about it in school, it shows up in the coupon section of the Sunday paper. Mommy doesn't know about it.
- Mommy doesn't speak to me, she speaks to a monitor. Mommy says commands. Mommy decodes my feelings.
(Where does she learn these terms? Her acquisition of language is unnerving (paranoia), always conjoining unrelated things. She conjoins dreams to reality and works herself up into a fit!)
- Mommy (she screams), Mommy! You programmed me, so figure it out!

Mental Dump: Story upstart...

2009-08-10T08:58:00.000-07:00

I landed on the surface. I could have stayed just above the surface. Looming over the surface. Floating on the surface. Soaring over the surface. But I wanted to go below the surface. I found myself scratching and itching the surface. Now I'm rubbing the surface and digging into the surface. The many ways I treat you like a lump of clay make me feel like an artist, someone who makes something out of nothing. Together in the laundromat of all places, we breached the surface.
There's something odd about the clothes you wear. They're not like the ones you wash. Whose clothes are you washing anyway? Are they your work clothes? They're tattered and covered in paint. I suppose you're a painter. Not like Michaelangelo or Da Vinci, nothing like that. You're one of those blue-collar painters who wait for jobs on the side of the street because they don't have the identification to apply to a legitimate job. I'll bet you don't pay taxes. I'll bet you're an illegal immigrant. I'll bet you got that scar from a fight, and I'll bet you don't understand half of what I'm saying because of the language barrier. There's always that. Its unavoidable here in San Francesca.
The only thing we care about is love, anyway, making love without any obligations to one another. In that regard, the language barrier isn't even an issue. We only make sense out of gestures and touch and the rocking of hips. I know that you have rhythm. I've seen the way you dial your telephone. Your fingers are full of ticking, tapping life. Its that kind of volatile momentum that made me notice you in the first place, dialing your padre to mention something about sending home some of your pay. I came to see what you would do if I touched you. I walked forward, met your eyes and reached for your hand. All you did was smile. Your teeth were all even, too. Your skin was like the surface of a stone; hard, worn, and smooth. I knew. I knew that you were not a stranger, after all. You could become anything in my hands, in my arms, in my home. I asked you to come home with me.
It was one of those moments where something very rare and unusual is brushed aside as being entirely normal. We both acted as though our swift and unprecedented union happened how it happened all of the time. You basically took my hand and went along with me, not a flinch. It was the kind of instance when two strangers meet out of the blue and behave with the same familiarity as they would around someone who is very close to them, but momentarily absent. To fill the absence, we picked up right wherever we left off. Strangers transformed into immediate placeholders. You took the place of a former lover, in one breath. There was no gradual transition. It was like turning on a light and finding your bedroom to look just like you had remembered it when you left. Anyway, you came home with me and I was the most grateful person in the world.
I have one trajectory: to hold the attention of a man - the fickle thing. I aim to show him what can be done about us. Now I'm holding a fork in front of my mouth, examining it, misusing it. The white surface heat of a boiled potato steams under my nostrils. My eyes gaze into a mirror. The mirror hangs on the wall, directly behind him and he thinks I'm staring at him. I can hold the attention of a man this way. I will keep him suspended between me and the mirror. It is a trap. I fling the potato using my fork as a sling shot. It hits me square in the eyes of the mirror. He is impressed, he's laughing, he rolls his eyes, so I pull them back to my fork. I'm misusing my fork. It is not a fork carrying food from my plate to my mouth for sustenance. It is a pointer. I'm holding his gaze. It is an arrow pointing to me, the leader. Together we will eat dinner. Bite after bite. After dinner, we will make love. I'm holding us together, this way. I'm keeping his focus. I'm his target. I must hold this position still. I'm his stillness and his peace. The attention of a man is made of wild and rapid misfire. I can cure his mistaken violence that I see in his eyes and hear in his voice. I can ease this man's violence by turning it into something else. I can turn violence into lust. I can turn fear into trust. I can turn a threat into a thrust.
His name was Enrique. I called him Rococo.
Things were lousy before I latched onto him. It was not long after I had lost someone who was very special to me. It happened one awful night at the joint where I do business. It was my piano bar, 5pm, two hours before show-time. If it weren't for the jealousy I aroused, I'd have been the dancers' favorite among the staff. They all wanted to get their hands on Alan, but I was in the way.
"Alan doesn't belong to anyone of you! Alan belongs to the music!" I shouted at them.
I avoided the girls' hisses and scowls, and dove right into Autumn Leaves on the rickety Steinway so Alan could warm up his voice. The girls said our pieces were falling apart, just shoddy peices of cheap old music. Alan complained that he didn't have it in him anymore.
I told him, "With that attitude, you won't get anywhere." He paced over to the wall and leaned up against it.
"You don't own me, don't try to boss me around." he said in a quiet voice.
"What did you say?" I asked, to make sure I heard him correctly.
"Don't boss me around, I don't belong to you." he replied.
"Of course you don't, but regardless, my time is a higher priority than your feelings. My time holds a far greater promise of cash," I retorted, dusting off the side panels of the piano. A miserable look stained his pretty face for the rest of the night. We trudged through practice, anyway. Of course, Carla said something I wished she hadn't. She pulled him aside to say, "Hey Alan, no one listens to that shit anymore."
When I darted a threatening look at her, she bustled off stage. Her words bore down on the both of us.
"Forget about them, I said. Its just us, here. You, me and the music," I said.
Backstage, I told all of this to the bartender, Margo, who said, "Well aren't you a lousy dog named Fidelity?"
"No," I denied it, "I don't need to be loyal to that boy just because he's brilliant. He's a mess."
Alan came up to us with eyes that were spinning in circles, dizzied by a whirlwind inside. They spun inward and outward. I gawked in amazement. His clouded eyes held the universe. I grabbed him by the shoulders.
"I will try to be empathetic but when the drugs wash out the color in your cheeks, there is a big obstacle between us, Alan. Please remember that simplicity is a virtue, and my needs are simpler than you know. I need to see your eyes recognize me at the piano."
Alan started to cry and sobbed, "I never want to see you again."
I tried to reason with him, "You know, that's a harsh sentence, Alan. I think your judgment is nullified by the drugs because I know you need me."
"No I don't!" he cried.
It only took a few months for him not to even recognize me. He forgot how my legs had bent over his shoulders backstage, how my hair had curled in a silhouette, and how my voice always laughed at the news he brought back with him from the streets. I inventoried each painful memory and promptly put them aside. I suspected he'd forget about me, so why should I still long for him? I learned to forget during the after hours at my piano bar where small jokes built on pervasive older jokes, deeper cutting jokes. I laughed with Margo when she drew a cariacature of me on a bar napkin. I laughed at her for not knowing the half of it.
"Why did you make me look so forlorn, and so defiant?" I asked.
She said, "Its because you're an artist."
If only that were true. The truth was, I lost my baby boy Alan to the universe. I lost the most brilliant boy, my genius baby boy to stardust and neon lights. To take his place, I summoned you, Rococo, at the laundromat.
One morning I sorted through my mail, alone, and I received a strange reminder about Alan. I passed my credit card statement, cell-phone bill, the internet and cable bill, my student loans statement, and finally, I reached a hand-written letter addressed to Alan. He must have given the sender my home address back when he didn't have an address. It came in a pink envelope and the name on the return label was not one that I recognized. It read Sylvia Sterling, from an address in London. I tore it open without any hesitation. Inside, a card filled with photographs of a lone woman in the far reaches of the world, on a bike in Madrid, at the sea-wall in Croatia, on a camel in Egypt, and at the Taj Mahal in India. The woman had a gorgeous figure. She was tall and thin with tan, healthy skin and dark brown eyes. Her hair was pulled back in the pictures into a loose pony tail and the loose strands were blond and wind-swept. She was the primary figure in all of the pictures and it was uncertain who was taking them. The letter was nearly illegible. I started to read it, beginning with Dear Alan, that much I could decipher. The next sentence was more difficult. It seemed to say, 'I've been wanting to wake the tarrifs inside the midget'. While I re-read it to try to understand better, Enrique walked into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. Seeing him in my kitchen, walking with such ease made me realize that Alan was fading away, in the distance. Enrique made things simple and easy for me. He softened the blow of losing Alan. He helped to minimize my aching need.
I like minimal things. I don't want to be bothered. Minimal things allow for quiet times to pass, undisturbed. I remember the softest faced boy in my first grade class. His name was Peter. The way the light caught in his eyes was beautiful because he knew how to sit still. He could be gazed upon because he didn't fidget, he didn't interupt his posture over minor things. My eyes could trace with wide sloping movements over the surface of his demeanor. He had green eyes with carmel skin and an unusually large mole in the shape of a wilted leaf beside his nose. I was deathly afraid to be caught gazing all over him, caught looking absurd, unable to explain my prolonged, silent concentration. What did I see? An object of longing. Minimal things allow space for longing to crystallize.
I like to long for things. I like to feel the pull of absence, the bittersweet nothingness that seems pure in comparison to the false, gaudy originality that floods through trendy scenes like madness, hyper gestures to define an attitude, elusive for the sake of manipulation. They all know who they are, born products of capitalism in full swing, myself included. The advantage I have is distance. I saw the world through the lens of a Cessna window, high above the surface of the earth, cut-off, pulled along with my family while the rest of the world's surface uncoiled beneath, almost too slowly to notice the changes. I was exposed to the world this way over a course of twelve years, beginning at age seven. These visions were as common for me as the flicker of the television, two extremes. Oxygen often ran short, inducing sleep and dreams of the most pleasant sort, dreams of devoted solitude in the sublime silence under the current of the propeller's rumble. I learned to dream away my loneliness, long ago. I learned to drown it out, too, at the piano.
The more time I spent with Rococo, the more I came to find that he was more unruly than I had hoped for him to be. He was thrifty in the worst way. I understood his condition, to a certain extent. I sympathized with him. Capitalism swirls making candy to pass out to refugees of the wars that American soldiers fight. He was no different than them. Our nation dangled candy before his eyes and he followed his first impulse to take.
What, that I would love a thief? It was the natural kind of love that falls onto your lap like a spot of white guano from above. Pure and spontaneous, dropped down from heaven, I was the landing pad. And that he should snatch me such luxurious things to cradle in my arms with a suspicious posture, well that was only natural.
Enrique, malicious, Enrique. Tangling my hair when he was drunk and lascivious, pulling at my sides to come with him to sit first on the toilet seat together, next on the table, next on the stair railing where I nearly slipped down the shaft of stairs. Each place, Enrique kept pulling at me to put me in position, laughing at me, telling me to dance and to rub his temples, sing to him or just whisper in his ear the foul Spanglish words he put in my mouth. Enrique, Enrique, twisting all of my words until they collapsed in exhaustion. In the evening, we rode in his van to the supermarket. His steering wheel spun wildly to race through traffic. He wanted some ice cream to eat after smoking a joint. Out in front of Safeway, one cop was tying his bootlace and another was shouting into a walkie-talkie.
“Mother fucking cops. My father would slit my throat if I had that kind of fat chin hanging down from my jaw. I know what to grab hold of if they try to give me shit. That kind of turkey neck is asking for it because if I reached lower, I’d be searching ten minutes to locate a tiny ball sack to yank.”
“Enrique, enough!”
“What honey, do you really want me to bow down to those lousy cock-sucking lunatics? I’m going to sneak a Hagen Daaz right under their fat noses. Those bunched up hog-snouts won’t catch a whiff of it.”
“For God’s sake, Enrique. How many pranks do you have to pull just for the hell of it? What do you have to prove?”
“What, now you’re on their side? What kind of woman are you? Where’s your spine? Come on, I’ll grab a bottle of the best wine, for you, if you just do as I say.”
“No. I’m not doing it. I’m not having any part of it.”
“Baby, it’s for us. It’s us versus them. Have some fun once in a while. You really need to relax. You’re too uptight and it concerns me. Good Lord, Your health! You’re looking pale. But its nothing a little glass of wine won’t fix.”
What, that I was loyal to such a prick? Enrique darling, revered, respected, revealed, like a Prince of Thieves, rising against the whole mechanism of blood-thirsty contractual agreements and slipping between the lines, racing to undercut the establishment faster than they could manage to prosecute. It was sad to succumb to inspiration that stemmed from the pit of my nausea where his antics fueled my fire. What was once too complex became too simple. I had mistakenly sided with a terrorist. He even had a gun.
I wanted to get Rococo a real job. I knew just the man to help me out. His name was Sean Lamoyne, and he fell into my category of dislikes, a jovial friend of the world, harmless, respected, optimistic. My category of likes was well defined, immune to facades and illusions of audaccity. My likes included cancer patients, ripped stockiings, men in pink shirts with deep hollow voices, tinted windows, striking glances, and wads of cash. A proliferation of wadded up cash, cash stuffed in jeans pockets, jacket pockets, socks, shoes, and any number of hidden cubby holes, in desk drawers, stuffed in between books on the shelf, and in a framed safe behind the Matisse reproduction. I liked to be surrounded by as many wads of cash as there were pigeons in the street in this statuary city for the rich. In that regard, he was far too friendly to suit my demands for privacy. He looked like a schmoozer and a mooch. He was far too linked to archetypes in television for my literary taste. My archetypal vision had long been raped by a disastrous flood of literature including the works of Camus, Gide, Poe, Bataille, Genet, and De Sade. His stature lacked in this regard. He suffered the plight of the mundane, the straight and narrow, the obvious. At first glance, its difficult to determine who is square or not. A square is an elusive figure who often feigns a more radical demeanor than they care to transpire. Trends in fashion are a safety net allowing these false radicals to pull on the appearance of a dissident. Fashion is a silly game. One word with a friend of the world and his square frame unclothes itself naked and aloof to the consequence of his foul naivety. As yet to be raped, he is a nuisance, begging for demise to wash over him, accidently. Certainly my haughty observations are baffling by certain standards but I needn't justify my distaste any further. As I've already mentioned, I know what I like.
We met at the bar known as 'Murder Clues' a clever name that hardly suited the sports-bar atmosphere. One would expect something a bit darker, with vintage trappings. This place was packed with loud-obstentatious ball-bearers from the neighborhood foot-ball teams. I ordered something stiff to ease the nonsense. He arrived dressed like a used-car-salesman and he immediately offered me something else to drink. I assured him that my whiskey was plenty to sip on. He gave me a big smile with a piece of salad in between his front teeth and let out a sigh that smelled like raw milk. I shuddered and gulped a large swig from my tumbler. It caught in my throat and I started to cough, choking on the alcohol.
"Are you alright?" he asked with an appropriate degree of concern.
"Yes, yes. Go get yourself a drink." I said, hurrying him along.
I racked my brain for how to end our transaction as quickly as possible. I decided not to beat around the bush.
"Sean, can you get Enrique a job in sales at your Check-cashing joint? He needs a full-time job and no one else will hire him because he's an illegal immigrant."
"Honey, you got it. Anything for my favorite piano player."
"Great. I gotta run."

I found my thrill...

2009-07-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

Franz Kafka, William Carlos Williams, Eugene Ostashevsky, Rabelais, Julio Cortazar, Borges, Genet, Boris Pasternak, Eugenio Voszenesensky, Susan Sontag, Baudrillard, Paul Bowles, Bataille, William Burroughs, Lagerkvist, Roberto Bolano, Nicanor Parra, Bahktin, Kristeva, Jane Bowles, Leonard Cohen, Bret Easton Ellis, Nabokov, Dostoyevsky, Camus, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Bachelard, Henry Miller, Shakespeare, etc.

Negative Self-Talk

2009-07-21T10:56:00.000-07:00

My writing is infected. There is a trapdoor in every line of simple words that pops open and swallows them. They are sucked into the interpretive pit where they are captive to the consternation of the world. The consternation of the world appears in the furrowed brows of the masses. No individual can escape these unifying gestures. We are all plotting similar footprints with our shoes. Words are like a foul odor that signals the vile nature of pretty things. Words are the worst thing that ever happened to me. I recoil at the thought that they smother my thoughts with err. Under the heavy weight of words my thoughts disappear, sacrificing their meanings to a thick jargon that paints a picture of motivations that I do not uphold. My words leak hints to others that are instructions about how to destroy me. They will crowd me into a corner where they will slice my throat with these words. The others are disgruntled, they would prefer I said nothing at all. My words are not the words they wanted to hear from me.

Get out of the City...

2009-06-22T13:44:00.000-07:00

1. If for some reason your plumbing fails, fresh water is also available in streams found near mountains, or rivers found in valleys. Pollution is a significant factor (unnecessarily), so choose your streams wisely.
2. Sidewalks were once trails and people could read other animals' foot-prints and droppings in the forest. Some people still can.
3. Using motorized vehicles requires plowing and leveling a long strip of land into a road to access the remote wilderness, this entails that the wilderness loses its 'remote' quality. As an alternate, some people ride pack-horses, fly airplanes or helicopters to small landing strips, or simply trek by foot.
4. Rather than using a camera, your photographic memory is adequate for compiling data and telling stories of the images you've compiled.
5. Most of our technological devices make us dependent on an unnecessary commodity: electricity. The valuable use of our electrically charged devices may be over-rated. Alternate ways to communicate: Talking in person with the one you are with. Alternate ways to keep warm: fire, layered clothing, and warm embraces. Alternate ways to write letters: pen and paper, USPS. Alternate ways to know what's going on in the world: Observation of immediate surroundings.
6. The alternates listed in number 4 require certain kinds of flexibility that may be a large obstacle for some people. This flexibility includes: 1. Patience
2. Self-reliance 3. Sociability 4. Occupying the immediate surroundings as if they are the primary reality instead of the displaced reality that technology enables, with cell-phones, computers, cars, and other devices.
8. It is not wise to abandon one's immediate surroundings.
9. Not everything has a functional use in a utilitarian sense. Utilitarians and economists (unfortunately) seem to govern every city. Avoid the utilitarians when you wish to 'get out' they might ask for a detailed report when you return. Their reports require electronically dictated evidence.
10. Freedom adapts to its surroundings, too.

The Day after Bloomsday...

2009-06-17T10:16:00.001-07:00

I went to a reading of excerpts from Ulysses at Bird and Beckett in Glen Park and it was full of Gray Haired readers, some of whom haven't seen the light of day since they first picked up Joyce's Masterpiece. Anyway, in lieu of my Bloomsday post which is late to the punch (yestrday was the day), I'm going to post an excellent video of sections from Finnegan's Wake

JUNE SHOW - INFO

2009-04-30T11:19:00.000-07:00

Spec's 41 YEARS!

2009-04-27T14:04:00.000-07:00

Here are my impressions of the Spec's party - my favorite Northbeach dive-bar turning 41.
1. Outside: dog drinks old lady's margarita because she mistakenly set it on the ground below her seat.
2. Outside: dog gets into trash.
3. Music: Accordian duo turns to washboard, vocalist, and violin Quintet. Later sounds include simultaneous bag-pipe and blues guitar. Women, dogs and men dance in the circular shape like matisse's 'the dance'.
4. Old scoundrels buy me drinks and tell me I'm 'like an actress'. I act appropriately self-important.
5. An old scoundrel gives me stolen crayola markers. Another more noble old man puts them back where they belong then discusses his home-made tamales.
6. Food: Many trays of various meat. Perhaps a salad or two. Meats include: salami, Bologne, Sausage, Beef cold cuts, Pork cold cuts, Mussels, Smoked Salmon, Chicken, Turkey, and other unknown meats.
7. Inside: Someone takes my hand, cutting through the crowd to lead me to the bathroom. One the way out, I do the same for someone else.
8. Oh yeah, first drinks are free.
9. Median age of the crowd: 55
10. When asked what my pale liquid drink is (tequila) I start responding: Fernet 'Blanca'.
11. We finally meet the best conversationalist of the evening: Bearded Rob. He has anecdotes about everything and I mean everything.
12. Good times with everyone: Claire, JP, Kenny, Ben, Rob, the guy who gave me a neck massage, and the owner who let us take his picture.

The Missing Link

2009-04-16T23:38:00.000-07:00

Actually, its my brother on Easter Sunday, tired from the last round of Wii Golf, brainstorming ways to spend his tax return.

Make Believe

2009-03-29T23:34:00.000-07:00

Next on the Agenda:
Wage a make-believe Revolution,
Chart a pretend war,
Hypothetical World War Three.
With an Online Simulation,
We will depict
How nuclear detonations
Catastrophically interrupt
Our daily Lives
With Death.
With the internet
We will explore
the mass dissemination
of imagined photographic manipulations
displaying atrocities beyond repair.
In doing so,
We will have created
A grand vision
Of a new romantic nightmare
Unfolding in fake reportage.
In comparison,
Aerial Photographs of
'Clear Cutting in the Amazon'
or visions of
'Antarctica's Melting Glacial Drifts'
Will Appear
Mundane.
Thus, we will trump
All of the other nightmares.

Earth Hour

2009-03-29T21:23:00.000-07:00

Click Here!!!

Mental Dump #4

2009-03-29T20:34:00.000-07:00

This one is something like Surrealism. For me, its a little bit too random, but parts are okay. (Breton, you fool, look what you've done to me).

I'd like to order an earl grey tea and spill it on the floor to see the look on your face. The look of humor or disgust? I can't predict what you'd do, but I love to bring it out of you. Let's go dancing when the wind is just cold enough to make our skin hairs prick up like little alarms. Then I can hover close to you because in your warmth, I'll find something that I've never found in anyone else's warmth. It goes something like this: Tears infused with lavender burning on the hood of my Hyundai, pooling as they bubble, nearing the point where gravity pulls them all of the way to the cement floor. Forever, I'll wait for the tear to drop but it won't. It hovers there on the hood of the car as the paint chips off over centuries of decay and eventually the tear evaporates leaving the scent of rust and compost. I've never felt this sensation anywhere else but its particulars are refreshed with each embrace.

Darling, I went to find an outfit to wear to the movies with you and I had a sick feeling that nothing in my closet would do. The shops were closed and painful music blared in my ears. I finally just threw on a pair of your pants and my grandpa's duck-hunting scarf over a black dress. My coat was the wool one with elbows that are worn through. With a flower in my hair and my hair covered with a wide brimmed hat, I found you smoking against the wall at the Castro Theater and you said, "Hi."
It seemed like you didn't pay heed to my clothing because the first thing you did was reach in my coat and pinch my side. I laughed because the pinch was a bit rough. It made me sad at the same time. The irony amounts to more than I can usually bear. The irony usually makes me want to throw my clothes into a pile on the floor where you can light them on fire. Together we will lay in bed, pinching each other until we bruise and bleed. The confusion will amount to a larger pool of blood on the floor that in the sunlight will eventually evaporate and leave that same scent, of rust and compost.

The movie we saw was another foreign film without subtitles and the conversations of the people in the row behind us covered up the language, anyway. The images were obscured by the curtains that weren't pulled all of the way open so the faces were all ripping over the thick velvet. The clothing I wore was all too tight on me and I kept shifting my weight. I could see you growing more and more frustrated, having wasted all of your dollars on a corrupt form of entertainment. Finally you couldn't take it any more and you got up with an irritated thrust. You stomped up the aisle that was steep, like a mountain. You had some words with the theater manager and they must have been well chosen words because after that, everything was immediately put in order. The people behind us were asked to leave. The curtains were pulled open and subtitles in English appeared for us Americans. The manager even brought me a garment box that was tied up with a bright-red satin bow. I pulled the ribbon open and found a gorgeous cocktail dress wrapped in tissue paper in the box. WIth wide eyes, I stared in amazement at the gown and kissed you in slow-motion on the corner of your mouth. You whispered something in my ear but I didn't understand it. It was a phrase that held more meaning in another context but the one that I was in was filled up with my amazement. I trotted to the ladies room and tossed my trousers, coat, dress, and scarf into the trash receptacle. The new gown fit me like a dream.

When I returned to the theater, the seats had been removed from the downward slope to the screen and most of the couples were ballroom dancing, bathed in the light of the movie. You held out your hands in position to begin a waltz and I ran down to place each of my palms in yours. You acted like a marvelous gentleman. Certainly you knew that without your words addressed to the theater manager, the night would have been a huge mistake. Instead, we were having the time of our lives, with a huge well of dignity inside of us. It shined through each dance step. I spun in circles and each time I lost balance, you pulled me back into place. My erratic motions paired with your adjustments made for a strange style that the others started to mimic. All of the women embodied a whimsical acted-out lunacy.

I got tired of this terrible style that I had begun accidently. You wouldn't let me stop, though. Each time I tried to even out my balance, you'd push me out, nearly causing me to sprain an ankle unless I gave into your adjustment. The dance grew more and more restrictive and soon enough, I felt as though I was really going mad. I started to pant and panic. My dress tore at the hem. Tears pooled in my eyes and you looked at me with a vast smile that expressed a unique sort of dignity. I folded into your arms and you shoved me back into position. I went limp and you kicked me up from the bottom. I started to sweat and you tossed me out to get some air.

There are people like you at the laundromat. Those people sing in Amharic. They sing the beautiful clothes washing song to their Ethiopian-christian deity. Your friend told me that my eyes were beautiful. Is it because I'm the other one, the blue-eyed monster, the eyes that you're not used to where you're from? I told you that your singing was beautiful and you said that it appeals to people like me because it sounds foreign to us. Your friend didn't like the singing though, too familiar. There are people like you in art galleries creating worlds that are so alien and unfamiliar in their beauty that it draws me in like a floating seed in the air, seeking new ground. There are people like me who like to write it out on the wall.

The Symmetry Project

2009-03-28T23:56:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I saw the Symmetry Project performed, as a guest of my friend Damon Smith, featuring the work of Jess Curtis, Maria Scaroni, and Klaus Janek on bass. It was unlike anything I've ever seen; absolutely beautiful in its postmodern aesthetic.
Jess Curtis
and the music of
Klaus Janek
who is also friends with my friend
Damon Smith

Esoterica

2009-03-27T02:46:00.000-07:00

Decomposition. Parts separate and sort themselves into matter that smells. New senses depict the decay, telling what sight may miss. Sight looks down and sees earth, brown earth, in the color and composition of decay. Sitting down, rolling down a grassy hill, children cover themselves in decay. Worms bathe in decay. Fish swim in decay. I breath decay and its okay. Take my hand and put it where you think there might be an opportunity for decay. I don't know where you intend to put it. I think it will offer me insight into your aesthetics. Please bring me something foul to put on television. I could broadcast anything. Foul is for the children to bathe in, glowing bath of electric light. This is decay. This is another instance of decay. Mental decay. Forming new visions of dreams that lose depth because the flatness of things decays depth. Sorts out into a wall that stand like a fortress, making us believe that we cannot breakthrough. Do you remember when history did not own any televisions and people dreamt of space that they could maneuver. With television, space is a one-sided endeavor, decided by programmers who hired actors and actresses to depict allegories that infuse our minds or one-line catch phrases to become mantras, the answers to questions where curiosity goes flat. There is a momentum halting jargon that brings people into submission and its prime progenitor is the television. What am I saying, anyway. Text is becoming twice, tree times, exponentially more constant with the advent of the internet. A great soaring mouthful splattered onto a two dimensional screen. A screen where I grow tired and in the morning, where I gaze, drinking coffee, and in the afternoon, where I gaze, looking toward no horizon, just a two dimensional pan of icons that I click on to pop up something else. These windows appear and they are stacked, one on top of another like pieces of paper but flatter still, non-individual sheets, just a simulation of objectification. This screen is the pan in which my text goes soaring out like little birds who have found their endless sky. The screen of the computer is the words' garden, ripe and fertile for them to exponentially proliferate. Times are changing and technology brings language to the fore. Keep watching the sky

B.O.R.E.D.O.M.

2009-03-25T14:50:00.000-07:00

Various people have me thinking of Boredom: Tao Lin, Jacques Debrot, Andy Warhol, Tony Dryer & Jacob Felix. Boredom is the new wave of emotional complexity. Not knowing how to pull pants on or off. Tangled cords of gadgetry all convening in one or two surge protectors. Upload/Download. A Drawer of Organized File Folders. Handwriting practice. Editing Email Drafts. Re-readings. Re-readings. Editing Email Drafts. Handwriting practice. A Drawer of Organized File Folders. Upload/Download. Tangled cords of gadgetry all convening in one or two surge protectors. Not knowing how to pull pants on or off.
Submitting to Boredom: Re-reading my favorite Blogger's Oeuvre. Learning how to spell Oeuvre.

New FAVORITE Living Author

2009-03-23T12:32:00.000-07:00

TAO LIN
http://heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com
Check out title of '2007' novel.

Mimic Octopus

2009-03-23T11:47:00.001-07:00

Mental Dump #3

2009-03-17T23:33:00.000-07:00

Since I think writing fast vignettes helps my writing, I'm going to continue with the next story that I recently compiled. Its called 'The Winter of History'

Emerson, the school boy, studied late in the evenings all December. For the first time in his life, the details of history unfolded before him, projecting imagery onto the wood-slatted roof in his attic bedroom. With the low light of a candle he tore information from his history book, quietly mesmerized in the cold where the buzz of his space heater covered the sound of turning pages from reaching the ears of his mother, on the level below.
Here, his imagination soared up to the corners of the attic where spiders and beetles made their homes in shadowy corners, to save themselves from the cold. They descended the walls finding warmth in the cracks between books on Emerson's bookshelf and under his bed. By candlelight, he raced to find horrors upon horrors in the text, discovering that history amounted to an elaborate eulogy for entire races and nations of people.
He read evil into the course of World War II and pondered his Grandfather's participation. December grew colder and colder and ice sickles grew from the gutter outside his window. His studies ensued along with the constant discomfort of the frozen season. A week long storm welled up around the wood homestead in Rathdrum, Idaho where he lived. Each morning, his mother would heat the station-wagon so she could drop him at the bus-stop, one mile down their gravel driveway. The gravel was covered in ice and the chains of the wagon wheels slid to a stop at the bus-stop intersection.
Each night, the cold air tickled him to sleep. He clutched his knees with gangly arms that could not muster warmth even under mounds of blankets. In contrast, each morning, he felt too warm, having generated heat that surmounted the outside air, insulated in the pockets of wool weave and quilted folds. The outer most layer of his bed was his Grandfather's army sleeping bag, a thick green canvas sheath that protected him from the chill.
The American Army in World War II stood out like a glorified knight in shining armor for Emerson who read of the German atrocities by night. The matter became complex, as he tried to factor in the Russians who waged a Revolution and the many details about the Western Front. Masses of murdered people piled in his imagination, heaping like the blankets atop his bed. One night during his studies, he lit his first cigarette with the candle that burned on his desk for late-night study.
...but the Americans, he thought, weren't they Germans, too? Africans, and Natives and Asian Immigrants. English, French and Italian immigrants who all participated together along with their former Kingdoms? Emerson's Grandfather was German. He was a German with classic German appearance. Tall and thin, with pale eyes and complexion. He was of Aryan descent, the preferred race of the Nazis. This comparison made Emerson cringe.
The weather grew worse in the middle of the month. Power outages and road-closures due to snow drifts gave way to school-closure so that Emerson was left home, alone. His mother warned him not to go out in the snow to play because he might catch fever. Without central heating, the fire in their wood-stove was the only source of heat and it left unfettered frost looming in the reaches of the house.
Emerson continued his mental mappings of the War and discovered the course of battle over time. He felt removed from the atrocities, but they formed hints about the world that anticipated something awful. He couldn't understand warfare. He couldn't fathom deaths in the way that they amassed on the page. Meanwhile, America was untouched, waging war abroad. Furthermore, his grandfather's stories of relative safety during the war made his personal experience of World War II resonate with a feeling of adventure. It was the only time his Grandfather ever received a subsidized vacation to Italy, Morocco, and Greece. Without power, Emerson's contemplative days passed slowly. His box of cigarettes grew fewer in number.
One morning, Emerson rolled over in his bed to find his electronic alarm blinking numbers. He realized the power was back on. Emerson ran down the stairs to find his mom cooking instant oatmeal in the microwave.
"The power's back on!" he shouted.
"It is! And guess what day it is!" his mom replied, "Its the first day of Christmas break!"
"Awesome!" shouted Emerson at the top of his lungs while he leapt in the air. He ran into the living room to turn on the TV to the Cartoon Network.
"Sweetie, don't forget. Today we are going to your grandparents' house to bake Christmas cookies with your cousins."
"Today?!"
"Yes, this afternoon."
"Sweet! I love Christmastime!" he shouted loud enough to scare the spiders into the wood-grain.
At Emerson's grandparent's house, his cousins were already putting on their snow-pants and mittens to play outside in the snow and take turns on the snow-mobile. He rushed to join them, with a manic attempt stuff his sweater into the elastic lining of the pillowy pants. Soon, he rushed outside and launched a snowball at his cousin, John.
"Trevor, come here! Let's hide behind this heap of snow to wage an attack at John and Mike!" He shouted, collecting Trevor by his side.
Trevor joined him. Almost instantly, the boys formed teams. The enthusiastic crossfire went on without cease. Mallory giggled with her neighbor, Susie, to cross between the two snow-forts. John's eager thrust accidently nailed Mallory in the forehead and knocked her to the ground. Emerson ran out to be sure she was alright. John took this as an invitation to launch an onslaught at his easy target.
"Quit it, Jack-ass!" shouted John, "I think she's hurt."
"Mama's boy!" shouted John's partner Mike.
"I think she's hurt." they mocked Emerson in shrill voices.
"Fuck off!" shouted Emerson.
"Yeah fuck off!" shouted Susie who piped up, taking sides.
They looked at each other in agreement and Emerson realized that Mallory's friend was very pretty, and fearless. Aunt Joan came to check on the kids and to see why Emerson and Susie were huddled over Mallory, who was on the ground.
"Hey, what's going on, here?"
"John hit me in the forehead." Mallory sniffed.
"Come inside Mallory, I don't want you sit with your head in the snow," she admonished, "Besides the cookies are almost ready."
"Cookies!" the kids shouted and ran back inside like a pack of dogs.
Susie and Emerson took their time walking back, together. He started to tell her about World War II. He explained Hitler, in his own words, "An evil demon wearing stiff clothes." He tried to explain all of the European heads of state during World War II in one line, each. Finally, Susie looked at him with wide eyed curiosity and asked, "What about America?"
He stumbled over her question, the words lost upon him. Somehow, he felt complete admiration for Susie. She caught him off guard and he realized, he didn't even know the name of the presidents in America during the war. Instead of answering her, he quickly kissed her on the lips and ran off into the kitchen where the other kids were filling up glasses of milk and gathering at their parents' feet in the living room. Her skin flared up in a crimson stain.
The night before Christmas, Emerson made his way through the his history book to detail the turns of events forged by Americans during World War II. For the first time, his mind turned to the other side of the world, discovering Pearl Harbor. Pages turned and turned. Finally, after much arbitration, he stumbled upon information about Hiroshima and his mind went blank.
"Hiroshima," his lips whispered to the dark corners of his room.
"Hiroshima," he mumbled out loud.
Europe faded away. He held back tears and swallowed them like a girl who has been insulted. He tip-toed to the kitchen where he had spied on his mother's whiskey for months. Unlatching the cupboard from a stool, he retrieved the bottle and ran back to his room. For the first time, he swallowed the vile liquid while he read about America and nuclear warfare during World War II. For the first time in his life of many times to come, he fell asleep drunk.

Self Portrait

2009-03-16T22:51:00.001-07:00

Mental Dump #2

2009-03-16T22:16:00.000-07:00

(This is a short story about some Marina Chick whose luck runs out, or something to that effect. I wrote it tonight.)

The tables had turned. A pair of black dice lay before her. She grabbed them and toyed with them in one hand. Her mind was elsewhere. The sun cast a warm ray that burned her skin through the window from between mini-blinds. The striped pattern of light on her arm wavered as her knuckles rotated the dice in hand at the same pace as the wheels that reeled in her head. The tables had turned.

Mavis knew from the beginning that the sum of money she had invested in the creative fund was a gamble. Still, she didn't foresee this outcome. Jude had steadily gained bargaining power through his success in leading the fashion division that was Mavis' brainchild. There had been many indications that he wished to make new demands on the existing board of directors but never did Mavis expect that Jude would abandon them without negotiations. Overnight, he resigned, leaving his end of the contract unfulfilled and all of their clients in a position to follow him. His legacy in fashion design was wielded in part by a handful of influential screen actors and actresses who had sported his designs on the red-carpet and at benefits throughout the past five seasons. Now Zephyr Trading, the stock brokerage firm that spearheaded the name-brand launch of Jude's designs known as Amoreux would have to find a fresh new face to fill his position, while either pressing charges (which would greatly reduce their favor in Hollywood) or pleading for some kind of hushed severance negotiation with Jude. But this second option would do little in Zephyr's favor.

Jude flounced around like the ultimate wild-card, appearing and reappearing all over-town in the least likely of places, the most reputable places. It was unclear how he had managed to gained the glitterati's favor with such speed. Jude had been Mavis' friend for years. He was adorable, her favorite 'project' so-to-speak, like a little brother. He was the kind of boy you are compelled to pat on the head when he does something good. She had no idea he had the ability to make such a short-sighted maneuver. Furthermore, he appeared to be gaining momentum, despite the inevitable consequences.

Momentum. Gravitational momentum, blundering forward like the die when she tossed them out the window, in a careless gesture. Below, a pigeon hopped out of the way as one dice of the pair soared down, landing in it's pile of crumbs, and ricocheting into the street where a bus' wheel came to a stop on top of the plastic article, It's face read a solo 'dot'. Off in the gutter, the other landed on the edge of a metal grate. A sewer rat popped its head up to sniff the foreign cube whose face read another solo 'dot'. Mavis threw snake eyes, that morning.

With her long-island nearly sucked dry, and her silk robe sliding off her right shoulder, piling at her elbow, Mavis whistled 'Ain't Misbehavin' out of tune. The knot of jumbled hair on her head sank down over her cheek-bones and she lit a cigarette. Her Saturday was off to a decadent beginning and she still had a list of errands to complete before meeting with her psychoanalyst at three in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, Jude strutted up to the mail slot at Mavis' gate and inserted a hand-written letter. It was similar to letters he used to send, while traveling. He'd always kept polite and consistent communication open with Mavis because he had known from the beginning that her patronage could lift him out of his mediocre regional success into the speedier realm of high fashion on an international level. Finally his prediction was beginning to pay off, and he wanted to thank her for all that she had done to support him over the years.

Mavis heard the metal slot shifting from her open window and she blew a ring of smoke, in curiosity. Reaching with mistaken fingers, she batted at the table for her lighter while gazing out the window. Upon a closer listen, she could hear footsteps fading away with a familiar pace and timbre. She envisioned Jude's Prada boots and vintage trousers ambling with sedentary grace. This recognition caused her to race down the stairs and out her front door to spy out her tall, private gate. When she burst out onto the sidewalk, all she found was a taxi parked across the street in front of her neighbor's driveway. The driver was taking a nap. His turban-wrapped head leaned back over the headrest, with eyes shut.

Finding no one else, she closed the gate and opened her mail compartment. A scent of rose-water wafted up from an envelope pressed with a custom seal. It was like every other letter Jude had ever sent to her, although this article superseded all previous editions in refinement. It signaled an air of superiority. She tore it open with her French tips, leaving a fray of roughage along the seam.

A pretty cursive sang to her with subtle niceties that skirted the traitor's disobedience by coating it in silky praise for Mavis dearest, Jude's so-called "crowning tigress of the city" who "tromped around with perverse magnetism in his one-of-a-kind chiffon tunic during the holidays."
"You gloating, puckish faggot!" she hissed at the page.
Finally she reached the final paragraph that tickled eerily under her skin, "Alas, my lady, I bid you adieu. Your generosity has flowered immensely in my hands. I hope you recognize the impact of your contribution to our nation's fashionable elite. Even though I'll be working to fulfill their needs without Zephyr, I wish to keep our personal alliance free of misrepresentation. Most of all, I respect you. You're a gorgeous person. Best of luck, Judo."

She clenched her fists around the edges of the thick-bonded letter and breathed in a dose of rose-water paired with fury through her nostrils. A pink heat churned upward from the pit of her stomach and her tightly wrung musculature twisted further. She fumed with the letter in hand while her kitten, Dandelion, tackled the hem of her robe.

She turned with bulging eyes at the cat, and kicked it aside with a swift boot. The thrust was too strong for the kitten to bear and it wailed in discomfort before slamming into the wall in front of Mavis. Stunned at the force of her gesture, Mavis stared at the lump of fur before her. She called out its name, noticing that it could not pick itself up from the cement.

"Dandelion?"

Dandelion didn't make a sound.

"Dan...delion?" Mavis' voice trickled up into the air as she slowly tiptoed toward the kitten.

She knelt down like a criminal, peeking at the neighbor's windows in both directions to be sure no one had seen her. She shuddered at the sight of the cat's awkward frame. Her french tips clutched the fur of the tiny limp creature with shaking anxiety and two tears wet her strained line of vision. She wept over the accidental murder of her young, sweet pet. The sound of a knock on her gate from behind made her jump.

Mavis sank to the ground so that whoever it was couldn't see her standing at the front steps. She saw a shadow shifting weight between the cracks in the wood-slatted fence.

"Mavis? Is that you there?" asked a man's voice that she did not recognize.

She didn't say a word. She just clung to her dead kitten as though it were a teddy bear and as though she were a six year-old girl.

"Mavis! Open up. I can see you sitting there."

Tears welled in her eyes and she couldn't bring herself to move.

"Who is it?" she whimpered.

"Are you drunk again?" asked the voice.

"Who the fuck is it?!" she shouted back.

"Honey, its me! Your Father. My voice is stuffed up from a sinus infection."

Mavis set down the cat and rose slowly, tightening her robe to cover her undergarments. She drug her feet towards the gate in resignation and opened it to find her Father's twinkling eyes inspecting her demeanor from under the brim of his Fedora. It was the same Fedora he'd worn for the last thirty years, as long as she could remember. His neck was covered in a neatly wrapped wool scarf. More importantly, his overcoat looked like it could hold her weight, so she unbuckled her knees, and folded into his embrace like a bag of garments bottoming out.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

"Yes, papa," Mavis pouted, "something's terribly wrong."

The tables had turned.

(Written by Erica Eller, 2009)

Mental Dump #1

2009-03-12T23:42:00.000-07:00

(The following is the result of my mental dump of the day, situated in the prose/fiction genre of dumping. By making these writings public, I hope to push myself toward a new potential for my insular mind by allowing myself to be tasteless and un-selfconscious at once while still being accessible. Perhaps a particular style will develop as a result. Perhaps I will defy embarrassment as time goes on. They're minor hopes but reasonable ones.)

"Its funny how his work never improved in twenty years." (Dwight)
"He's plateaued, and a plateau is such an untrustworthy model." (Theodore)
"It contradicts evolution, devolution." (Dwight)
"I think he was locked in some unchanging hovel when he wrote that novel. Or maybe its the result of this city, where seasons aren't distinguishable." (Theodore)
"Perhaps he just sits at home, reminiscing, forever satisfied." (Dwight)
"Yes, the plateau affirms satisfaction." (Theodore)
"When one is happy, why should any change occur?" (Dwight)
"He's found a zone of utter contentment." (Theodore)
"He's found what others search and search for but he acts as if it were merely natural, a birthright, so to speak." (D)
"Meanwhile people like us are digging for evolution, to divulge some inner crystal, mining for gems." (T)
"But what have we become? Critics!" (D)
"I'm actually quite concerned that my whole life has been spent searching in a vacuum for ghosts." (T)
"Critics know where to find value, weighing the options left and right, down to microscopic fractions." (D)
"I thrash with desperate arms at these ghosts who mock me with their sullen faces that melt in my grip." (T)
"Smaller and smaller compartments, constructs, building blocks, and fractals." (D)
"They dart toward me, taking occupation of my spirit, leaving me shivering with a cold sweat." (T)
"Its a lego-set of meaning fitting together into an interconnected infrastructure."
"The mystery renders me inept." (D)
"The bits and pieces just amount to a bigger piece of bits." (T)
"Luckily, I have some demons to oust, otherwise I'd suffer from boredom." (D)
"Do you think he's ever bored with his satisfaction?" (T)
"He seems to be constantly perplexed." (D)
"You're right. He seems to find little perplexing details to whittle away at in his imagination." (T)
"He puts them in my consciousness where they get trapped, minor details like the weight of vermouth on my tongue." (D)
"Yes, and the sound of ice jostling in a glass." (T)
"Say, do you want to have a drink?" (D)
"I'm dying of thirst, now that you mention it." (T)
"Likewise." (D)

Off they went, one squarish, the other stout to find seats at George Kaye's, the bar on Piedmont Ave. They were talking, of course, about their beloved Simon, who had recently published his fourth book entitled Spirits. It was about festive merriment in a time of war. The two men were both failed writers who had been inching along with their local readings and minor story publications for years. Their biggest success had been accepting positions as editors to a joint literary journal between the three friends entitled, "The Wayward Whisper: Writings from Near or Far." It was a local oddity published by Amigos Copies, once a month, also known by its acronym WW. Collaborators ranged from Bhuddist Monks to Elementary school librarians. These folks were all a loosely connected network of post-middle aged, middle-class thinkers whose appetite for flights of fancy had never been quelled by practicality.

The two men were both named after Presidents: Theodore and Dwight. As they wandered into Kaye's, they didn't bother to acknowledge the many faces who all looked ready to drop to the countertop like dead weight. Auntie Selma, the barfly at Kaye's, was the only face that transformed upon their entry. She greeted them by their respective pet-names, Tio and Dewey.
"Whoa Tio, your whiskers grow like the weeds in my neighbor's ditch!"
He rubbed his face in wonder.
"And You! Dewey got a tan, out in the sunshine!"
He too rubbed his face in wonder.
Their own appearances baffled them because neither had bothered to examine their reflection in a mirror for months. They were too wrapped up in revising the ten-year anniversary collected works of WW, representing the its best writing, and had forgone the practice of common toiletry.
"Come over here, let me give you each a kiss."
They wandered to her as though hypnotized, passively following orders under her spell. They lined up before her and accepted kisses like taking communion, just as they once did when they were Catholic school-boys.
"That's right. Now Tio, Auntie owes you a drink. What will you have?"
"Scotch."
"Awww, now hear me out. Dave appears to be out of Scotch so you better order something easier on the liver."
"Nonsense!" Dwight defended Tio.
"Hey! Who asked you? Scotch is not on my bill, today."
"Dave never runs out of Scotch and that's a fact." Dwight whined.
"Well, I don't suppose you'd allow me to have brandy or tequila or rum. No vodka or cognac, either. No liquor straight, anyway. So why don't you order whatever you think is best for me," ruminated Theodore.
"Will do, sweetie pie. Dave! Howsabouta Mai Tai for this boy and a Pina Colada for Dewey."
"She apparently wants us to partake in her display of flamboyant garnish." mentioned Dwight.
The men looked at each other with mutual complacence about the offer.
Selma had a large round frame, and each detail shimmered with gloss. She had glossy nails, glossy eyes, glossy hair, and glossy lips. In the bathroom, even her stool dribbled out like a puddle of gloss from a remote glossy anus that murmured with glossy sounds. She wore glossy satin shirts that shimmered over her wealth of glowing skin. Her words rolled off a thick tongue in a glossy jumble from a voice that gurgled with an abundance of glossy saliva in her throat. Auntie Selma was just like a giant slug, sliming her gloss all over the bar at Kayes.
Dave poured the colors of juice into each glass like mixing paint.

Russian Poets

2009-03-06T11:55:00.001-08:00

Anna Ahkmatova: Tartar sounding name with Open 'A's' on the ends of the names, Her real name was Anna Gorenko, Non-avant guarde, Modern Classicism, Pedigree, Collage like diversification of content, Humbled by past literature, emotional subtlety, intimacy of history, political stance relating to imprisoned son. Wrote during the October Revolution.

Voznesenksy: Studied with Pasternak till his death. Critics claim he is ambiguous and formalistic. Thematic variety, emphasis on Architecture, linguistic variety (describes his tombstone as 'a lump of Rock', and uses scientific language but expresses bewilderment toward technology) He thought form should be a back-drop, a looming presence and he was ambiguous it might have been a mask because he was one of the few who remained defiantly prolific during political campaign against his work and other artists by Kruschev. Wrote about America. WIDE POPULARITY during 60s during the anti-art campaign of Kruschev.

Khlebnikov: Radical Poet. Poetic conception of Time in a grand scheme, "King of Time" for prosody, metre, timing, Use of historical-fictive & non-fictive interplay, Traces Russian language back to Slavic Culture rooted in Persia to distance it from Western Europe and the bourgeois. Russian Futurist, avant guarde poetry. Wrote during October Revolution.

Mayakovsky: Died by Suicide via Russian Roullette, on third attempt. Prodigal aspect, young success. Friends with Pasternak. Propagandist as well as poet for the Bolsheviks. Acclaimed by Stalin and Pasternak (a seemingly contradictory feat).

Pasternak: Known for Doctor Zhivago. Organic unity, natural aspect. One of the least "alienated" of 20th century Poets. Touted for lyric beauty. Radically original as if the world were born everyday. Synthesis of sound, image and narrative elements linked together with the specificity of objects. Wrote during the October Revolution.