DEAD_DOUBLE

hex stress

2012-02-14T16:30:00.002-05:00

Hoqu Bets
Host Bete
Hosp Fete
Hecks Fess
Heq Spec
Hex Stress

neck

2012-02-07T16:26:00.000-05:00

lite feint

2012-02-06T15:36:00.001-05:00

marble feint

2012-02-06T15:34:00.000-05:00

Q:

2012-01-22T12:33:00.002-05:00

A:

My grandmothertold me a story. When she was a youngwoman, and bombs were dropping themselves on Europe, food was scarcein Arnem, the Netherlands. The bitter winter had frozen the ground,so that even a shovel couldn’t break the surface of the earth. Ona particularly cold morning, a German plane was shot down, andcrashed into a field filled with potatoes. The women of Arnem, mygrandmother included, ran into the field, newly thawed by the burningwreckage of the plane, and gathered potatoes in the half-light of theevening. Not having shovels, they used sticks and other tools to digthe potatoes out of the earth. Some women used their hands, nothaving anything more effective at their disposal. This story is true. It is also true that my grandmother is now dead, a part of the storythat she would find herself unable to relate. All stories excludesomeone from their center.

A:

A talking ape,fluttering its fingers against the bars of the cage.

A:

No one is in themiddle.

A:

I don’t remembermuch about it, though. I remember your hands. Your hands on thewheel, following the lead of my words. I remember your hands. Yourhands at your side, emptied. I remember your hands on the table,your hands on the ground. My own hands were damp, and slipped easilyinto the loose topsoil.

from Thomas the Obscure, by Maurice Blanchot

2012-01-22T12:29:00.002-05:00

Henevertheless decided to turn his back to the sea and entered a smallwoods where he lay down after taking a few steps. The day was aboutto end; scarcely any light remained, but it was still possible to seecertain details of the landscape fairly clearly, in particular thehill which limited the horizon and which was glowing, unconcerned andfree. What was disturbing to Thomas was the fact that he was lyingthere in the grass with the desire to remain there for a long time,although this position was forbidden to him. As night was falling hetried to get up, and, pushing against the ground with both hands, gotone knee under him while the other leg dangled; then he made a suddenlurch and succeeded in placing himself entirely erect. So he wasstanding.

green, yellow, magenta, white

2012-01-16T22:03:00.000-05:00

found spam poem VI

2012-01-16T15:57:00.003-05:00

I was at the country side

and suddenly

saw Massimo Kamscin

putting hand up

till elbow.

Have you ever seen some ...

something ...

like this?

Just take a close look at that picture:

Tell me please,

if you want to follow me,

next time I travel outside the town.

both ii

2011-12-21T00:52:00.000-05:00

both

2011-12-21T00:47:00.002-05:00

a warning

2011-12-19T16:11:00.006-05:00

I am only
able to give you
this piece of bread
right now, but

be warned

that I have thought
of all of the thoughts
that keep
rising from this
crater at
our right
hand.

blue dome

2011-12-16T12:30:00.002-05:00

Anselm Kiefer, Everyone Stands Under His Own Dome of Heaven, 1970, watercolor, gouache, and graphite pencil on joined paper, 15 3/4" x 18 7/8". Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Denise and Andrew Saul Fund, 1995.

green moment

2011-12-15T22:08:00.003-05:00

a victory for art

2011-12-11T13:18:00.001-05:00

Esthetics have devolved into rare types of stupidity. Each kind of stupidity may be broken down into categories such as bovine formalism, tired painting, eccentric concentrics or numb structures. All these categories and many others all petrify into a vast banality called the art world which is no world. A nice negativism seems to be spawning. A sweet nihilism is everywhere. Immobility and inertia are what many of the most gifted artists prefer. Vacant at the center, dull at the edge, a few artists are on the true path of stultification. Muddleheaded logic is taking the place of clearheaded illogic, much to nobody's surprise.

-Robert Smithson,

ON THE OCCASION OF THE ART AND TECHNOLOGY SHOW AT THE ARMORY

types, like blooms

2011-12-07T18:38:00.001-05:00

cave song poem
desert, or sand, poem
fur poem
sub, hematoma poem
glottal poem
hand poem
fern spore poem
second lung poem

wind(ow)

2011-12-07T18:24:00.001-05:00

from "sea surface full of clouds" by Wallace Stevens

2011-12-07T18:18:00.001-05:00

   IV

In that November off Tehuantepec
The night-long slopping of the sea grew still.
A mallow morning dozed upon the deck

And made one think of musky chocolate
And frail umbrellas. A too-fluent green
Suggested malice in the dry machine

Of ocean, pondering dank stratagem.
Who then beheld the figures of the clouds
Like blooms secluded in the thick marine?

Like blooms? Like damasks that were shaken off
From the loosed girdles in the spangling must.
C’était ma foi, la nonchalance divine.

The nakedness would rise and suddenly turn
Salt masks of beard and mouths of bellowing,
Would—But more suddenly the heaven rolled

Its bluest sea-clouds in the thinking green,
And the nakedness became the broadest blooms,
Mile-mallows that a mallow sun cajoled.

two tiers

2011-11-27T18:56:00.001-05:00

mir v

2011-10-18T19:32:00.002-04:00

dramt gauze

2011-10-11T11:10:00.000-04:00

script sag

2011-10-07T16:46:00.001-04:00

dome drop

2011-10-06T20:20:00.000-04:00

When were we? The sky arc fell; there was no sky. There were no domes sung again, or dome musics they called it -- low clouds rolled the horizon. Geometric space was geometric event was becoming-geometric bodies. “Take this board, this face, this triangle, this rough in your hand, low drone of the curve.” What is this ghost triangle below a triangle?

The bodies bent over the tools, faintly sorting. The bodies found an opening in the tarp, beginning to materialize. The bodies pushed arcs into together. There was a body made into a shaping, but it was getting darker from the blue evening .

There is no dome, but there are plans for a dome. They sat at a table, like any revolutionaries, faced with a form though, this time. No reliving the face of the past. Nomad dome for collapse sound, for this time.

fleur v

2011-10-06T20:00:00.001-04:00

Foucault replies to questions from the audience at Berkeley's History Department in 1983

2011-09-06T15:03:00.001-04:00

Given the fact that you don't try and refute theories, you claim not to be a structuralist nor do you believe in a totality, then why should we believe you?

There is no reason.

(laughter)

bloc (l1, l2)

2011-09-06T14:38:00.001-04:00

dome drift 1

2011-09-06T14:36:00.001-04:00

dusk pipe

2011-07-13T10:59:00.000-04:00

pseudo name and a wig

2011-07-12T11:30:00.000-04:00

She is too vain to stay out of the limelight for long
She actually thinks people really believe her due to the verdict
I would love to hit her in the face with a shovel
Whats she gonna do?? go blond, change her name?
She will never be truly free from guilt of her own making
She can run, but she cant hide
What they think to do about her dirty habits?
They will make a head trasplant to her? Ha!!
We can sit and wait no long, Diane!!
She has a this face of afraid rabbit. Ha!
Who don't know her, then buy her!
For her actions, the whole world gonna know
where is the psychopath!
She should alter her face to look just like OJ
Someone will find her. She can run but she can't hide
I hope she lives in fear the rest of her life!
She is too narcissistic and selfish to hide and disguise herself
She will be out everywhere in a matter of time
That's right! Seriously, she has a mental disorder, so it's a indicator of it
What about her "Bella Vita" tattoo. She better wear long sleeve shirts every day
I WOULD JUST LOVE TO WRECK THAT FACE WITH MY FISTS! GRRRRRRRRRRRR
Pseudo name and a wig won't do much for her
All you have to do is look in the club and you'll know who she is
SHE MAKES AMERICANS SICK,
EVEN A 3RD WORLD COUNTRY IS TOO GOOD FOR HER
NO MATTER HOW YOU DISGUISE HER,
HER FACE TELLS THE STORY
AND SCREAMS OUT BABY KILLER
Maybe she can go live with her make believe nanny,
or her made up boyfriend
What she needs is a brain transplant;
A monkey brain will work just fine.
Even monkeys care for their babies.

[culled from the comments on the July 12, 2011 New York Post article "Casey Anthony will don disguise"]

ray twines

2011-07-12T08:44:00.000-04:00

"Effluviad" by Gregory Betts

2011-07-12T08:43:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the advent of transculturation
the sky will be your racial asset
will trouble the stateliness of the
only recently immigrated
will increase in apparent contradictions

Welcome to scholarly oblivion, rationalized lynching
anti-racist anthropology, undermined population growth
all problems dissolved and by extension race
within change understanding of
necessary blood and iron, bronzing silicon memory

Welcome to the tribal origins of peripherality discussion
(what brings this together) to cultural encounters
hybridization, creolization, and diaspora
throw off still pains
when the inculcation connotations
remobilize the critical function
growing poppy and terrorizing their opponent
this is precisely what is elsewhere

Welcome to the crime of such magnitude that
innocent people indiscriminately condone the ruins
shrine-like features metal tree girders street sign
growing out of her head has become a baseball cap
lettered professional screens, canvas, wooden
hawkers of professional hawking
a diffusion of the ubiquity of advertising
testimonies to the ongoing technological encroachment
of admiration, resentment, its negative effects

Welcome to the new nineteenth-century cyborgian imagery
just as it is difficult to understand
it unhinges the parallelism clear enough
obviously a reaction I would like to argue
the no less maleficent spokesmen express incredulity
the reticence in voicing transpiring opinion
the interim has apparently ended

Welcome to the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the new post-Cold
War period, the BBC headlines, the Paris of 1968, the Islam Karimov
country, the next four decades of the 1920s set
to destabilize the collapse of communism, the green light
district, the monolithic in-depth, dispassionate analyses,
the Mossad, the stratificational contours of Protestant
denominations, the broad overall picture is not something
that happens to us

Welcome to the reception of European popular religious literature
to the more transparent Lutherans, Moravians, Mennonites
to the missing from the fare of colonial readers
to the full-page facsimile reproductions, the
musical notations, the specialized field
overarching the chronological schema

Welcome to the rotunda in John Barth fiction
Welcome to mass immigration reinventing the double of moral value
Welcome to the colonial shadow that follows the equator
and attendant savagism of various
literary interpretations of the city, of US intervention
into Cuba´s literary hypotheosis, of rootedness and restless fathers, harbingers
of the germ theory, the mythical professional
relationship policing the borders of women´s bodies

Welcome to Kredit Kard, Kanada, a neo-industrialist
post-urbanized suburb with a population driven
into panic by the circulation of in all other respects
the well-known questionable claim of the interculturally unknown,
witness the daily deicide, babies that chew jaundiced breast milk,
the gone missing evidence
the vitally read under the sign of nature

These boundaries simultaneously crossed, step
in the actual dis-
solution picks
traditions as
a parallel ethnicity
equal share in
formations
rediscovered
was Tom White
male and female
man and woman
male-dominated feminist, masochist masculinist
deep within the wake of the tofu 1970s?
This damned mob
compilation this monograph
this proto-product
now a generation
laden with linguistic esoterics
research the apt interpretations of
new insights into the inner workings
of the latter´s skeptical philosophy
as a heuristic filter – as in the
rest of Europe, population growth
increased the number of historians –
surveys to history
the future majority with
the high rate of endogamy

such a powerful presence, her
daughters sought unmarried
Swedes comprising one quarter
of Chicago wages
was a professional early
movie studio filmed serial comedy

religious women became
role models for
Irish women
the future majority
was also an attractive option
among the best paid foreign workers,
writers employed in
their attack
that realism is the little teacup
during the last third
of the nineteenth century
ultimately, so timely
rich, new irony
new readings, new debt, new local colour

naturalized writers employed
the American book market
during the rapid disappearance
of transformation, fragmentation
the conventions of effeminacy
in other words
the absence of a
theoretical framework
the trajectory of
individual careers
the present selection
of the 1991 ascendancy, the
central characters
in a book length study
of a substantial amount
of neglected literary scholarship
in many ways
written on a bad day

“For a number of years the so-called recognition of the
arbitrary nature and the problematics of the theme
requiring and collapsing the knowledge of the
the ethnic grounds to develop a form of the
amongst themselves and a
modus vivendi that could well
here the recycling effect mentioned above…"

In the TV show
the popular TV show
locked in in a
container
under constant popularity
it refers to the need for
a more meaningful dialogic -- --
and a
revolution, a playful un-historic
one
in line with the lighting
of shoes
as a crude attempt
to make the time--
less relevant

it is no simple coincidence
transmogrified products
return to confront their producers
seen as a kind of opening
expanding fields, dripped saccharine,
as a kind of confirmation
of the core tendencies
whether they are for or against
ambiguities
negotiating with the pieties

Welcome to the target of an embargo, welcome to the nuclear test site, welcome to the massive instrumentalization, to the domestic stage, and the huge majority, and
the key priorities of the continental vision

Welcome to the warlords and barmaids, welcome to the
violently sexist and the tyrant in place, welcome to the
criminals who let their backers escape, to the same
number of innocent people, to the brutal murderous
regime, to the attacking administrations, to the study
we find diverse, to the foreign policy of nationalisms,
of dictatorships, of the country we constantly invent, of the enlightenments,
of the us to believe in; welcome to the no threat of
arrest, to the crushed confirmation, to the tyrant
in place, to the leading suspects, to the destruction of houses
to the leading policeman turning away
out of earshot,
he turns to his left and to his right
looking to participate
in the loss of
someone he did not know
he is preceded and accompanied
by uniformed police officers
two-by-two
the way he saw others being treated
which never gets to hear about
that he perforce observed
What is it that so embittered him?
If it is true
allow us to comprehend
but the grim resolution
to hunt him down.

Welcome to the only civility that dictates the reticence
in voicing such opinion, to the evidence that played
a key role to contain the spread of communism, to
the drug baron exchange, to the famous by
persistence, the seven-year-long devil
transpiring from various biographies
so antagonistic
and underrated ever since

Welcome to the pattern of adjustment, to the evolving technology,
the evolving histories, and the inexorable dictates of
industrial production. Welcome to the thirty thousand dead
Turks, to the thanks misgiving, to the failed weep,
to how such a position can usher in the devastation,
to the tension mounting; to use a different methodology
than traditional historians, to drain the fields of blood and the bodies
suckled into the earth. Welcome to linguistics, statistics,
economics, historical cartography, sociology, ethnology,
topography, teleology, homines taxidermy, to the true
values of stateliness, to the 14th Century Canadians fishing in death, already,
to the
annual meeting of the local historians of the world,
to a toast to the image of a particular national
character, to modernity, urbanization, toward a modern lifestyle
toward the characteristics, to the language, the food, the clothing
songs traditions crafts settlement patterns of deviance, defiance
socializing kinship folkways memories of the chief
librarian who may yet continue to publish in the aging, effluvious way.
To the intoxication of constant metamorphosis
welcome to the welcome to
the weight, the sinews, the flaccid seraphim, the battering wind,
the welcome to the welcome to
the girth in stasis, the sun song, the tan lines of card board buildings self-
consuming
welcome to the welcome to
the beast approaching the young
and
the young who
consume the consume

from "Nets" by Jen Bervin

2011-07-12T08:23:00.000-04:00

['nets' created using/out of the originary structure of Shakespeare's sonnets]

mauve moves

2011-07-11T20:16:00.000-04:00

dusk, florida

2011-07-11T13:22:00.000-04:00

trance collapse

2011-07-10T15:23:00.001-04:00

tricks

2011-06-29T18:11:00.000-04:00

Her speech is nothing,

Yet the unshaped use of it doth move
The hearers to collection.

They aim at it,
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts,
Which, as her winks and nods and gestures yield them,

Indeed would make one think there might be thought...

dialectical materialism (one explanation)

2011-06-25T07:46:00.000-04:00

"The Way Things Work" by Jorie Graham

2011-06-25T05:39:00.001-04:00

The Way Things Work

is by admitting
or opening away.
This is the simplest form
of current: Blue
moving through blue;
blue through purple;
the objects of desire
opening upon themselves
without us; the objects of faith.
The way things work
is by solution,
resistance lessened or
increased and taken
advantage of.
The way things work
is that we finally believe
they are there,
common and able
to illustrate themselves.
Wheel, kinetic flow,
rising and falling water,
ingots, levers and keys,
I believe in you,
cylinder lock, pulley,
lifting tackle and
crane lift your small head--
I believe in you--
your head is the horizon to
my hand. I believe
forever in the hooks.
The way things work
is that eventually
something catches.

That Precision

2011-06-23T13:43:00.001-04:00

Does it seem tthat I am precise in love.
Does it seem tthat I am precise in love.
Does it seem thatt I am precise in love.

"Vowels" by Christian Bok.

2011-06-23T13:36:00.000-04:00

VOWELS

loveless vessels

we vow
solo love

we see
love solve loss

else we see
love sow woe

selves we woo
we lose

your face was in a body next to my face

2011-06-23T06:44:00.000-04:00

traum raum

2011-06-20T09:12:00.000-04:00

On a promotional photograph of Donald Sutherland in "Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!"

2011-06-20T09:07:00.000-04:00

Pater familias, as he leans in easy, an easy family snapshot, wishing he were headless, wishing he weren't a revolutionary, wishing his left hand was a dagger. Donald Sutherland in lace, in a kind of triangle within a triangle, on its end, not the long but the point. That point a wish for a dagger. Donald Sutherland looks forward to his son, a revolutionary moving in the space of a day, a limit less with clear eyes than clouded, feeling only the press of the present.

historical pressures

2011-06-19T09:01:00.000-04:00

der spiegel

2011-06-14T11:35:00.000-04:00

latent candle

2011-06-12T17:29:00.000-04:00

Rocks

2011-06-12T17:24:00.000-04:00

Holding the rocks, they beat a path to his door. Oh what a door! They were speechless at it. Its fragrant darkness, I mean. There was shuffling in the moonlight, and flamethrowers dragged on the pavement. I cannot see further than it, he murmured. She answered with a low whistle, pulling the wool hat further down. Suddenly faced with a dark patch, they realized how they had stumbled.

Weapons

2011-06-12T12:42:00.001-04:00

The mysterious skin of the weapon was new to her. She faced it with a set face, the blue sky radiating. This fabric, maybe nylon, was pressed between her forefingers, simple patterns slept against the edge of her thigh. The trigger felt strong, as expected almost. There was something elegant and missing in the trigger space. The most she could conjure up was a fable about wolves, but that seemed to rise from some blue fold deep in a vein beside her heart. She raised it to her eye, conjuring a point at the brink of a landscape. The weapon shrugged off all feeling. This was its secret: it was never new, and always ready.

"Death Fugue" by Paul Celan

2011-06-12T12:21:00.001-04:00

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at nightfall
we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night
drink it and drink it
we are digging a grave in the sky it is ample to lie there
A man in the house he plays with the serpents he writes
he writes when the night falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete
he writes it and walks from the house the stars glitter he whistles his dogs up
he whistles his Jews out and orders a grave to be dug in the earth
he commands us strike up for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink in the mornings at noon we drink you at nightfall
drink you and drink you
A man in the house he plays with the serpents he writes
he writes when the night falls to Germany your golden hair Margarete
Your ashen hair Shulamith we are digging a grave in the sky it is ample to lie there

He shouts stab deeper in earth you there and you others you sing and you play
he grabs at the iron in his belt and swings it and blue are his eyes
stab deeper your spades you there and you others play on for the dancing
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at nightfall
we drink you at noon in the mornings we drink you at nightfall
drink you and drink you
a man in the house your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamith he plays with the serpents

He shouts play sweeter death's music death comes as a master from Germany
he shouts stroke darker the strings and as smoke you shall climb to the sky
then you'll have a grave in the clouds it is ample to lie there

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at noon death comes as a master from Germany
we drink you at nightfall and morning we drink you and drink you
a master from Germany death comes with eyes that are blue
with a bullet of lead he will hit in the mark he will hit you
a man in the house your golden hair Margarete
he hunts us down with his dogs in the sky he gives us a grave
he plays with the serpents and dreams death comes as a master from Germany

your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamith.

fence pont

2011-06-12T12:20:00.000-04:00

"Flower" by Paul Celan

2011-06-12T12:18:00.001-04:00

The stone.
The stone in the air, which I followed.
Your eye, as blind as the stone.

We were
hands,
we baled the darkness empty, we found
the word that ascended summer:
flower.

Flower - a blind man's word.
Your eye and mine:
they see
to water.

Growth.
Heart wall upon heart wall
adds petals to it.

One more word like this word, and the hammers
will swing over open ground.

plast wall plast

2011-06-12T10:20:00.001-04:00

neg specie

2011-06-12T09:46:00.001-04:00

red specie

2011-06-12T09:41:00.001-04:00

compositional un

2011-06-12T08:15:00.003-04:00

"An Order of Event" by James Bertolino

2011-06-12T08:15:00.001-04:00

Just beginning now an
order of event
reverses separate movements to this new & simple
dance -- a knitting,
a fabric of limbs,
night warms at the heart of our whirling.

Light now, it's light we
emit, & this
energy the center of the universe.

"An Historical Fact and a Memorable Fancy" by Al Zolynas

2011-06-12T08:13:00.001-04:00

When Kant was composing
his Critique of Pure Reason
he would look up from his manuscript
at the tower in the center of town.
He gazed so long the trees grew up
and obscured his vision.
He informed the city fathers of Konigsberg
and they gladly chopped down the trees.
Thus he was able to finish his work.

Here in the country outside my window
the trees tower and wave their arms mockingly.
I work anyway, here a word, there a line.

Always when I awake in the morning
I run to the window to see if this is the day
my three hundred farmers have arrived,
morning chores all done, murmuring
quietly, axes on their shoulders.

-from The New Physics

blue field vs

2011-06-11T15:01:00.000-04:00

image float

2011-06-01T16:39:00.000-04:00

2.8

2011-05-31T19:38:00.000-04:00

cursory curse

2011-05-28T11:28:00.000-04:00

historical pressures

2011-05-28T11:22:00.000-04:00

two views of an outstretched arm

2011-05-25T11:48:00.000-04:00

CLR THRY

2011-05-22T09:17:00.001-04:00

2.7

2011-05-19T14:03:00.000-04:00

night moves

2011-05-18T19:09:00.000-04:00

force field field

2011-05-18T18:58:00.000-04:00

Economic Histories of the Forest

2011-05-09T17:56:00.001-04:00

1: So, it seems like we could talk for a while about this, couldn't we...

Travelers stand in absolute silence.

1: At the very least, we are in agreement about the beginning, right? We know that it starts with soldiers, and marches, and the sounds of exercise, and feet on cobblestones...

2: We know that there is a forest, filled with light from above. Frosted, as they say, with snow. A canopy of trees over-head.

Travelers [thinking aloud]: What should we do with his head?

1: Maybe we should bury it? At the base of this tree? You know the saying, "A grandfather's head is a hard thing to be rid of."

2: We know that this sort of trial, this sort of experiment, has its limits...

3: But its limits are only the limits of conversation, of object, of language-in-looking. So long as we avoid those, and stay to the edges, we should be fine. I know a secret path through the forest, which follows the run of the road, but out of its sight.

2: The light from above is shifting and unsteady.

1: Will and courage, good people!

orgn

2011-05-09T17:46:00.000-04:00

Incantation

2011-05-08T23:18:00.000-04:00

What do we pay for?
We pay for the familiar touch
We pay for the arranged letters
We pay for the laughter
We pay for the glass tubes and boxes
We pay for the windows open
We pay for the ambition
We pay for the front row
We pay for the slick pavement
We pay for the waves
We pay for the other fools
We pay for the stock tips
We pay for the lapdogs and fishtanks
We pay for the air quality
We pay for the power converter
We pay for the drink
We pay for the enemy
We pay for the isotope
We pay for the french cut
We pay for the history of it
We pay for the extension of the regime
We pay for the march
We pay for the exchange of rocks
We pay for the fear
We pay for the potato cutter
We pay for the seance
We pay for the force of the eyes

nonperson for person

2011-04-19T14:56:00.000-04:00

un-trance un-trace

2011-04-19T14:49:00.000-04:00

FCTSS

2011-04-19T14:22:00.000-04:00

"Once" by Paul Celan

2011-03-14T21:26:00.002-04:00

Once,
I heard him,
he was washing the world,
unseen, nightlong,
real.
One and inﬁnite,
annihilated,
they I’ed.
Light was. Salvat

held hold

2011-03-14T20:59:00.001-04:00

straight lines are to be believed

2011-03-14T16:13:00.000-04:00

two youths

2011-03-01T17:59:00.001-05:00

scald so called

2011-03-01T09:13:00.000-05:00

passive scene with bird

2011-03-01T08:53:00.001-05:00

"Prop State" - pt 6

2011-02-28T07:23:00.000-05:00

Scene: Noon, jungle

A Pig Farmer looks out over a sty. The air is filled with curling, vaporous squeals. The guides are pulling ropes taut from out of view, seemingly erecting a tent, or other temporary structure.

Pig Farmer: The faceless masses...

Guide 1: Tighter now...

Guide 2: (humming, then singing) I pressed my mouth against your back/

Guide 3: (singing) The pinkish skin of a sweet young sow/

Pig Farmer: You there!

Guide 2: (singing) Believed my head to have split in half/

Pig Farmer: Your singing is upsetting the hogs, tra la la...

Guide 1: We won't be a minute here, our ropes are almost set.

visibility

2011-02-27T07:26:00.000-05:00

"Prop State" - pt 5

2011-02-27T07:22:00.000-05:00

Scene: Night, factory

Alfred Jarry addresses the shareholders, who are represented by the guides. The light in the factory flickers to some hidden music. A podium has been erected, constructed of books of various critical theory, to assure the shareholders of the seriousness of the operation. Baruch de Spinoza waits behind a deck of turntables.

Jarry: (reflectively at first, then stronger)

Oh my friends.

Was it Diogenes who wrote in the absence of friends? We have no morals to share here, no wisdom of profitability. We have lost our way in a poetics of production, the worker and the reader sleeping in the same bed. We are no heteronomous fellows!

Oh my friends.

I would rather return to the cliff than go on living in such a trance. Could it be believed that the fac- tory we have dreamt of for so long will finally come to pass? Who could believe it? We have imagined into the world a new-world. We have adorned our placards with slogans and IP addresses, lengthened our toe- nails to get purchase on the new grass, grown our hair like the ravens, and filed our teeth. We understand time in ways that others refuse to: factory time is simply a wider time than that of the world outside. It is within this wide time that our new worker will labor, her feet protected by company slippers, and her palms padded with company gloves. Our workers will be protected from market pressures, will create, in their entrails, small inviolate economies meshing into the factory body with small sounds of surprise.

Oh my friends.

Our workers will be in no single vector state. No need for lectures here. No. Ha. You know very well what I’m talking about, being educated men. Into this wider time we will be able to slip more workers, more ethics. We alone will recognize the worker as more than a cog, as more than a machine to be used up and discarded, but instead marshaled according to a new model. Our workers will be recognized in the factory as friends. They will be recognized as a distinct series of moving vectors, each with a specific trajectory. They will have souls, will have wide conduits in the quantum computer, will be busy formulating programs for fading and loving.

It is these quantum workers that will drive our factory. We will have no fixed points, but a constantly shifting matrix butressed by suicidal love for the culture of the West. That sweet decaying vapor that we call the individual. Darwin, in his later years, grew to hate birds.

Gentlemen, this is what we are up against!

Spinoza: (starts record and sings)

We return/
Through advances in simple vertigo/
To a new understanding of our actions./
We have set aside chisels and nets/
Busying our times/
With stretching strings/
And building lutes/
To sing materialist songs.

"Prop State" - pt 4

2011-02-21T15:48:00.000-05:00

Scene: Evening, campus

Henri Rousseau is surrounded by guides, who attempt to extricate him from the derrick. They be- come increasingly tangled, and must use the improvised weapons to saw each other free.

Guide 1: I pulled him in to kiss him.

Guide 3: His breath was salty.

Guide 2: A sea opening up a horizon.

Guide 3: I bit his tongue.

Guide 1: Spat it out.

Guide 2: And felt a love like never...

Rousseau: George Bataille once wrote to me about the mouth, writing in a fit of anger, the kind of rage that ran like a dark thread through his optic nerve, sensitizing it to demon vibrations in architecture, writing as he stood, pointer in hand, before a cadaverous sheet...

Guide 1: What?

Guide 3: Tell us.

Rousseau: (distracted) A computer worm reset my homepage to http://www.divinedicks.ru ...

Guide 1: Worm?

Guide 2: A worm gave me a gift. The gift of a particular shade, a shade you wouldn’t even believe....

Guide 3: I saw a shade of blue out at sea once.

Guide 1: I was once on an island.

Guide 2: A shade you wouldn’t...

Guide 1: There was a drug, distributed freely by the tourism industry, distributed to fat germans in ships, to pale comics on shipboard clubs. Sends the user down a glittery surface, forgetting each inch, a kind of program of which the user is just runtime. In it, a two-sided world infinitely reproducible, transparent, moveable, through microadjustments of the fingers. But this drug....

Rousseau: (interrupting)
Economics is far closer to the occult than any of us would like to think. It is simply the ruling classes’ proclivity for a world within a world. A riddle like that of the secrets of the market where they squat.

Guide 2: No poem is for the reader. No picture for the beholder.

Guide 3: Blue the shade of a giant molecule...

Guide 1: Viva quanta!

Rousseau: Bataille once wrote to me of animals, the animal’s mouth. This mouth is a prow, plowing through the waves. It is the foremost projection of a sleek horizontality. A ship’s silhouette, a straight line from mouth to anus. Not so, for men. For men, eyes have driven the mouth into obscurity.

Guide 2: Forget our names.

Guide 1: Mouth the songs.

Guide 2: No need to speak.

Rousseau: Something has happened, but what?

Chorus of Guides:
But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God...so better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than to be ingloriously dashed upon the shore, even if that were safety.

For worm-like, then, oh! Who would crawl to land?

"Prop State - pt 3

2011-02-15T13:42:00.000-05:00

Scene: Noon, jungle

Henri Rousseau stands at a kind of improvised derrick. It has no drill, only the support structure. He wears a full climbing harness and carries ropes.

Rousseau:

I am devoted to the hidden face of American happiness. There is no foe worth overturning that is not first worth painting.
(He fiddles with coupling, attempting to climb the derrick. It is obvious that he is afraid to go above the first bracing, and may be experiencing spells of dizziness and vertigo. Music swells. Baruch de Spi- noza appears and begins to sing as Rousseau unsuccessfully climbs.)

Spinoza: (sung)

In there, Solar anus and political death /
In there, some Ego loss/
In there, some spirit guide/
In there, some burnt ember/
In there, some thrice sinewed boy/
In there, some frame music/

Scene: Evening, factory

Alfred Jarry cleans the gearing on his bicycle. The golden light ricochets around the noiseless fac- tory. There are hollow notes sung from the birds lining the rafters. He addresses a camera mounted high on the factory wall.

Jarry:

Gentlemen, I am building a new survival poetry; the old one was riddled with holes. My poem keeps tipping over; I’m trying to put too many ideas into it. I need to start from the ground up. That’s why I bought this factory; to renew the face of the world. To hold it to its promise.

What is this deep water? I can see only the end of the political age. I shake hands with this man, with that man, and the dumb pleasure of theater dissolves into something resembling theater, but entirely unlike it. Have you heard the story of the orangutan? This stupid monkey, sitting with a pile of dogeared books, his face fat with the pleasures of his cage, his shit neatly stored in a drawer....flexible....would you believe that he could suck himself off? What sort of man runs free? What sort of man has the buying power of his own dick? Anyway, this monkey, this demon seducer, left to his own devices, wrote a novel. The novel, written on black paper, was unpublishable. We asked several, and they agreed. But then there were the calls. The meetings. What have got to lose, they finally agreed. And overnight: a sensation. In short, this fatuous pleasure machine, this hairy man-child had managed something that none of us had been able to conjure: to sketch a new model for production, that avoided all the old economic pratfalls. All the activists, the orchestra owners, the Smith and Wesson holsters, the Volvo-drivers, the stage-managers were forced to admit: they had all been trumped, by this long-toothed soothsayer. The world was new again. The faces were new again. They had become the whole. Even this face. Do you remember?
Is this not the face? Let me come closer.

(Sets down tools) Is this not the face?

"Prop State" pt 2

2011-02-14T17:21:00.000-05:00

Scene: Noon, jungle

Henri Rousseau, brush in hand, fingers soft in kid gloves, boots muddy from the peat, brushes the sweat from under the rim of his hat. He carries with him a book of poems by Swedenborg and a dirty bundle of schematics that he has begun to draw. The sky has opened up after the morning rain, and it is difficult to see, from the brightness hemorrhaging the particulate air.

Henri Rousseau:

I remember you...I have left my children, my half born, my stillness. Could we have a picnic here, among the pines? Could there be sacrifice, banishment from empire, soothsaying and entrails, faceplates shattered by warring clans? Could there be the frontispieces of mantels, broken church doors, succulent fruit and vegetables?

Could there be nothing less than the total despair of the stadium, the dull buzz of the crowd gone mad for blood? I remember you, I think.

I remember you from your paintings.

Your lines were drawn in hues of grey, soft colors of the factory floor, the servant’s quarters. Was there nothing more between us but shades?

There is a factory ahead! The trees are filled with birds, kept at bay by the arms of schoolchildren. The factory is dark now, but only a few years ago, strode across this valley, this river-welt, with fantastic steps. The factory is dark now.
I wrote my novel on blackened paper, I forced on my amnesiac brother a recognition, I balanced the ardor of millions, I opened my window onto the world-as-window. The factory is dark now.

Guide 1: (far away) The factory is no longer dark; it has been bought!

Rousseau: The factory is dark now, but has been bought.

Scene: Noon, factory

Alfred Jarry sits at a desk in a wood paneled management office in the dark ribs of the factory. His eyes are half-closed, his fingers at his temples. He has adopted this somewhat iconic pose to further im- press the shareholders, who will appear at the factory shortly. He is positioned so as to be silhouetted by the strong midday light, presenting an image that is comforting and self-aware. The bicycle he rode to the factory leans against the office wall, its frame speckled with mud from the road. The furniture is not the drab angles one would expect, but are sharply drawn, colored, and facing each other with the respect that comes from knowing one’s place in history. The factory, for now, is silent.

protexst

2011-02-04T17:40:00.001-05:00

protexst

2011-02-04T17:28:00.000-05:00

"Prop State" - pt 1

2011-02-04T15:42:00.000-05:00

PROP STATE

Mortals have settled in their minds to speak of two forms, one of which they should have left out, and that is where they go astray from the truth. They have assigned an opposite substance to each, and marks distinct from one another. To the one they allot the fire of heaven, light, thin, in every direction the same as itself, but not the same as the other. The other is opposite to it, dark night, a compact and heavy body.

-Paramenides, "The Way of Truth." 50/55

Let our luggage pass duty free through the gates of heaven.

-Apollinaire, written on Henri Rousseau's tombstone.

A school rests on the edge of a jungle. Or rather, in its center. Lush and full of frightened and confident animals, the jungle is not benign, and not malignant, containing a hidden organizational system. In fact, it resists easy categorization, although it often serves as a meeting place and archive. A factory spreads caustically in the center. Of the school or jungle, it is often not clear, as both move back and forth through time, as if photographed by many lenses. The campus appears surrounded on each side by strip malls and conference centers. Several guides to the school regularly present tours and generate the initial pedagogical and administrative structures. They prefer subtle music. Although anonymous workers, they control the descriptive model of the school. Their ambitions to middle management are misplaced. Henri Rousseau, wanders the jungle, hoping for some sort of sloughing off: the antipodal grace of the surviving cave-people; the poetry that was surrendered at Thebes, ground to dust, and reappeared in the gilt slo- ganeering of anti-Fordist activists. Baruch de Spinoza, breaks from grinding lenses, to sing hymns. Alfred Jarry, vigorous bicyclist and factory owner, only wishes to write again, but feels a sense of duty to his shareholders. A Pig Farmer, leaning on his now useless spade, hopes for the continued modernization of his profession, through advances in genetics and skin fabrication.

ACT 1:

Scene: Noon, campus

Public Address, sent as a series of messages to every mobile device on the campus:

_______ ___________________

and then, seconds later:

alas.

Scene: Evening, campus

Guides enter, fashioning weapons from whatever is at hand. They are ethical, conserving what resources they can, using what
is available to them sparingly. They make their way slowly through the smog of the campus steamrollers, the sharp smell of asphalt, the muted evening heat of the blackened surface. The light is blue-green, the white masks at their mouths glowing in the dusk. They speak the same language.

Guide 2: This humidity....

Guide 1: We are not certain that this school is asleep. We are early; the air is cool.

Guide 2: (gesturing)
To the left you will see the cantina, where the students organize, and present impromptu lectures. These lectures aren’t researched, but are created on the spot, from the information available in the air.

Guide 1:
Above are the cliffs, where the despondent throw themselves. Above the cliffs, the gods.

Guide 3: (introspectively)
How many legs are required for suicide? Do octopuses commit suicide?

Guide 2:
How many legs are required?

Guide 3: (murmured)
How many...

Guide 1:
Who will forgive us our metaphors? Who will descend to present us with safety vests?

Guide 3:
Who will remember the swine-herders, the lonely drop-shippers, the faithless sheep-cullers, the pull-men, the neo-structuralists, the antiquarian book dealers?

Chorus of Guides:
When we were young, our mothers taught us to write, to write in language that could float in the air for others to pluck. We had a name for this floating, but we are old, and have forgotten it. Our mothers met under the freeways, always leading with spray cans towards the tunnels; the drainage was our teacher. The edging of the jungle was all that we needed to know. There was no end point, only subterranean truth.

We bring this memory to our work; we apply ourselves daily. There was a moment when we seemed necessary: that moment when dull faces turn towards a microphone, blushing with pricked conscience and the expanse of surprisingly ancient radio waves.

"Prop State" - excerpts

2011-02-04T15:37:00.000-05:00

The following posts will be excerpts from an artist book that I'm working on.

"I'm Glad" by Pier Paolo Pasolini

2011-01-29T23:18:00.001-05:00

In the roughness of Saturday night
I'm glad to watch people
outside laughing in the open air.

My heart also is made of air
my eyes reflect the joy of the people
and in my hair shines Saturday night.

Young man, I'm glad with my miserly
Saturday night, I'm happy with people
I am alive, I am happy with the air.

I am used to the evil of Saturday night.

yellow cloud

2011-01-29T23:11:00.000-05:00

Pascal's Triangle

2011-01-27T14:11:00.000-05:00

A syllable is short, with one beat, or long, with two. In how many ways can a metre of four syllables be constructed? Four shorts or four longs have just one pattern for each, while for three shorts and a long, or three longs and a short, there are four (SSSL, SSLS, SLSS, and LSSS, for example). For two of each kind of syllable, there are six possibilities. Do the sum for metres of one, two, three, four and more and a mathematical pattern emerges. It is Pascal's Triangle, the pyramid of numbers in which the series in the next line is given by adding together adjacent pairs in the line above to generate 1, 1 1, 1 2 1, 1 3 3 1, 1 4 6 4 1, and so on.

- Steve Jones, via The Telegraph

red square 2

2011-01-26T00:16:00.000-05:00

red square 1

2011-01-24T17:24:00.000-05:00

Reading Position for Second Degree Burn
Dennis Openheim 1970
Book, skin, solar energy.
Exposure time: 5 hours.

"Political Poem" by Amiri Baraka

2011-01-23T17:34:00.000-05:00

(for Basil)

Luxury, then, is a way of
being ignorant, comfortably
An approach to the open market
of least information. Where theories
can thrive, under heavy tarpaulins
without being cracked by ideas.

(I have not seen the earth for years
and think now possibly “dirt” is
negative, positive, but clearly
social. I cannot plant a seed, cannot
recognize the root with clearer dent
than indifference. Though I eat
and shit as a natural man ( Getting up
from the desk to secure a turkey sandwich
and answer the phone: the poem undone
undone by my station, by my station,
and the bad words of Newark.) Raised up
to the breech, we seek to fill for this
crumbling century. The darkness of love,
in whose sweating memory all error is forced.

Undone by the logic of any specific death. (Old gentlemen
who still follow fires, tho are quieter
and less punctual. It is a polite truth
we are left with. Who are you? What are you
saying? Something to be dealt with, as easily.
The noxious game of reason, saying, “No, No,
you cannot feel,” like my dead lecturer
lamenting thru gipsies his fast suicide.

tuss light

2011-01-23T17:28:00.001-05:00

political Dynasty

2011-01-16T10:17:00.000-05:00

Jump to Political families in Republics‎:
Some political dynasties: The Beazley and Crean
It has been suggested that Kennedy family
political line be merged into this
We study political dynasties in the United States Congress
since its inception in 1789. We
JAIPUR: AICC general secretary Janardan Dwivedi
defended Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who said
the “largest” political dynasty in terms of both the
number of members placed in Congress
A New Face in the Kennedy Political Dynasty:
Joe the Third. Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Even industrialized democracies are not immune
to the politics of dynasty. Although the
Aug 9, 2010 ... While Barry Soetoro's family lavish
themselves at a luxury Spanish resort
dO u agree with stAtement?
is pOliticAL dynAsty undemOcrAtic?
will ... based on my
We study political dynasties
in a ____ full of plutocrats.

[source: google search 'political dynasty', jan 15 2011]

moon phaser

2011-01-16T10:04:00.000-05:00

ms nsty

2011-01-15T20:41:00.000-05:00

man proposes, god disposes (june 10, 2010 - aug 5, 2010)

2011-01-15T20:39:00.000-05:00

TerryM again ontane said ...
Man proposes, God disposes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

June 10, 2010 5:27 PM

walsha said ...
Cast not the First Stone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

June 14, 2010 4:55 AM

Yijie Yi Jie said ...
Support you!!! Look forward to your updates!!! Am sure will be even better!!!! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

June 22, 2010 10:27 PM

Rui said ...
Water is always the same, but they are new every moment.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

June 29, 2010 11:21 PM

The court said ...
Happiness is not everything, people have a responsibility.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

July 3, 2010 10:07 AM

Wang Ming Ren said ...
When a human heart can hold different conflicting things, that people will start to become valuable.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

July 7, 2010 6:30 PM

Yijie Yi Jie said ...
So excellent blog, do not step're down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

July 9, 2010 11:41 PM

JasonBirk Jia Qi said ...
We're too old too fast, but smart too late.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

July 11, 2010 11:09 PM

Xing Yu Xing Yu said ...
Lonely and bored Oh Come see your BLOG!! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

July 14, 2010 3:27 AM

Liu Xiu-Ying Tsai Health Home said ...
Enjoy your own life, not in comparison with others.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

July 16, 2010 6:51 PM

Yun Yun Mao Mao said ...
Difficulty is not a new concept, but rather to avoid the old concept.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

July 19, 2010 2:41 AM

Zhengya Qi Zheng Yaqi said ...
Life is like surging waves, if not stop the rock, how can they create beautiful waves?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

July 21, 2010 7:20 PM

Wan An Wanan said ...
Do not get things to think about, think more of their own hands have . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

July 24, 2010 3:46 PM

Liu Shixian said ...
Really kind man, forget the good deeds they did, they head in the present work thing of the past have been forgotten.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

July 27, 2010 4:37 AM

Tang Ming-home said ...
Hello ~ to ask about safety first . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [/ url] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

August 2, 2010 5:01 PM

Qiu Jian Xun said ...
Learning makes a Good Man Better Man worse and ill. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

August 5, 2010 8:19 AM

from "Ambient Stylistics" by Tan Lin

2011-01-15T20:37:00.001-05:00

So. On the 10th of March I board a plane into Seattle, rent a white Honda Acura and drive 87 miles to Concrete, WA, which is on the edge of the park and where the Bear Park Motel is located. When I arrive, my aunt shows me to Room 17, and whenever I have gone to the The Bear Park in the intervening years I stay in Room 17, just as Salvador Dali when he came to New York always stayed at the St. Regis and always in Room 1628. Although I don't remember any, there is as I gather from the photographs an occasional painting in the rooms, and once when I first thought about visiting, when I was in high school, I remember thinking about a photograph of a door that had been kicked in. After arriving, my aunt proudly tells me that the Bear Park is one of the only motels in America where there are no phones in any of the rooms. I believe this says something about the clientele, about the kinds of people who have and have not stayed at the Bear Park Motel on the western edge of North Cascades National Park, the people who have died and not died there, had sex and not had sex, lied and not lied there way out of that godforsaken landscape or one of those rooms. I have often thought of the motel and have asked my aunt many times if she had ever discovered a corpse in one of the rooms and she said no, never. On my second and last night at the Bear Park I asked my aunt if she liked running the motel. She said she did but she added that the worst thing about running a motel was never being able to take a vacation. And drunks bang on the office door, which is the door to their living room, and this wakes her and her uncle up in the middle of the night. People come to cheat in their motel. I have taken that trip to Glacier and the Bear Park Motel many times. I know the head is made for places like the Bear Park Motel where a half-Chinese woman runs a motel filled with language and its lies.

When I was in graduate school getting a Ph.D in 1983 and writing poetry on the side I met a woman who spoke 8 languages-Chinese (mandarin and cantonese and an amoy dialect known as xiamen), German, French, Vietnamese, and English, almost all of them fluently except for German, which she learned in school I think. She was born in Saigon, was raised in Paris and told me she had never ridden in public transportation before NYC because she had spent her childhood in the back seat of a limousine and whenever I think of her I think of her in the back seat of a limousine and basically just living there and reading her favorite books there (she was born a reader just as all avid readers are born not made), and being taken to restaurants, and waiting for her father to put her in the car so she could go to school. I believe she told me her father was in business and that her mother was capable of extreme cruelty. She was very pretty for her age and very slight, almost trop raffiné, and her name was G________, but she had a laugh that was just loud enough, and she was very fond of smiling and not quite smiling at the same time. Her eyes were brown with the color of scuffed shoe polish. From the moment I met her I believed she was an exquisite liar. One night I asked her if she lied in one language better than another because I knew she loved questions like that (all questions for her resembled lies), and she said she knew she could lie best in English, because it was not her favorite language and was most free in it but when she was in bed with someone she preferred to make the sounds of endearment and physical longing in Chinese. One hot very early July morning, my father who was visiting Brooke Alexander, a gallery owner who deals a lot of print works by contemporary artists in NY, walked up the five flights of stairs in my walkup apartment on 125th St. in Spanish Harlem, and met her by accident (she was leaving). I introduced them, asked them to say a few words of Chinese to each other because at the time I was not sure how well she spoke Chinese, and they exchanged a few words in mandarin which I did not understand because I do not speak or understand Chinese except certain names of food. I have always told my friends that I can speak Chinese but only in a restaurant.

Years afterwards when my father had decided to buy another house and was living in Santa Barbara and I had gone to visit him during my summer off, my father asked what happened to her, said she was very well brought up, and that she spoke a very beautiful mandarin. I believe that she reminded my father of my mother though I realize this only now as I am writing it.

Fig. 1b

One night I remember she had told me she was a virgin. I knew she was not really lying because she was lying to me in my favorite language, which is English because it is the only one that I really possess as a language to imagine things in, and because I have always thought that she is probably one of those persons that can only lie well over the phone. I continue to believe to this day that she was a terrible liar in person, although I am probably lying to myself, and of course this is the main reason I fell in love with her after we had ended things, and this is the main reason I still, years later, remember her voice when I am on the telephone and am lonely and am waiting for someone on the other end of the telephone to tell me they love me. One can wait for years to hear a beautiful lie like that. Nearly ten years later I ran into a friend of hers on the Columbia campus near the statue of Rodin's The Thinker. I had gone back (I love the campus and steps where the students sit out on a warm day) to see a professor of mine, George Stade, who wrote a novel called Confessions of a Lady Killer and is my one of favorite professors because he of all my professors, he always acted glad to see me (and I believe he genuinely was) when I came in to talk with him about orals exams, or dissertation chapters or whatever. Anyway, Christina and I talked for a long time. Eventually the subject of G________ came up and she told me that G________ had finished her thesis on the Princesse de Cleves, had married a Swiss banker, and was living in Geneva. Today I feel a strong urge to know what country her parents live in, if they are even alive, and I have an irrevocable desire to meet them, not to talk to them, just to be introduced to them, to go through the mechanical social pleasantries with them. Sometimes there are times when I wish G________ had lied that night when she told me she was a virgin. Without lies, the brain would be more empty than a midtown office building. Without lies, the emotions would have nothing to live for except themselves and no emotion should have to live with itself for very long. Lies are the ways the mind has of accepting our own emotions. None of the lies we tell is real except to the person we tell that lie to. It never really matters if one is telling the truth. It only matters if one cares enough not to tell a lie to someone. There is nothing so sad as a family without liars. My father died in 1989 of a heart attack (he was the best liar in our family) and of course there were things that I never said to him. Everybody needs to lie to someone. As I was saying, the rooms at the Big Bear Park rent for $37 a night.