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.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
"Prop State" - pt 4
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?
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?
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
"Prop State - pt 3
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?
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?
Monday, February 14, 2011
"Prop State" pt 2
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.
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.
Friday, February 4, 2011
"Prop State" - pt 1
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.
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
The following posts will be excerpts from an artist book that I'm working on.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
"I'm Glad" by Pier Paolo Pasolini
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.
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.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Pascal's Triangle
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
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
red square 1
Reading Position for Second Degree Burn
Dennis Openheim 1970
Book, skin, solar energy.
Exposure time: 5 hours.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
"Political Poem" by Amiri Baraka
(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.
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.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
political Dynasty
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]
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]
Saturday, January 15, 2011
man proposes, god disposes (june 10, 2010 - aug 5, 2010)
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
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
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Saturday, August 7, 2010
"Surface" by Jorie Graham.
It has a hole in it. Not only where I
concentrate.
The river still ribboning, twisting up,
into its re-
arrangements, chill enlightenments, tight-knotted
quickenings
and loosenings--whispered messages dissolving
the messengers--
the river still glinting-up into its handfuls, heapings.
glassy
forgettings under the river of
my attention--
and the river of my attention laying itself down--
bending,
reassembling--over the quick leaving-offs and windy
obstacles--
and the surface rippling under the wind's attention--
rippling over the accumulations, the slowed-down drifting
permanences
of the cold
bed.
I say iridescent and I look down.
The leaves very still as they are carried.
concentrate.
The river still ribboning, twisting up,
into its re-
arrangements, chill enlightenments, tight-knotted
quickenings
and loosenings--whispered messages dissolving
the messengers--
the river still glinting-up into its handfuls, heapings.
glassy
forgettings under the river of
my attention--
and the river of my attention laying itself down--
bending,
reassembling--over the quick leaving-offs and windy
obstacles--
and the surface rippling under the wind's attention--
rippling over the accumulations, the slowed-down drifting
permanences
of the cold
bed.
I say iridescent and I look down.
The leaves very still as they are carried.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
A Dry Scene
There was no end to this town, as they stood peering in it. “Too much word play in this script” was the whispered sound from behind the gaffer’s post. That post was well lit, at least. We bought this town, for this film, and can do what we will, was the thought animating the gunman’s eyes.
Those eyes which had seemed dead until this scene. Well, “dead,” he knew, was just a reassuring play of light on a lens. There was a windswept valley, and ridges dark behind that. And some silhouette, maybe an antagonist.
This death scene ran too long; on that they could all agree.
Those eyes which had seemed dead until this scene. Well, “dead,” he knew, was just a reassuring play of light on a lens. There was a windswept valley, and ridges dark behind that. And some silhouette, maybe an antagonist.
This death scene ran too long; on that they could all agree.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
"The Burning Ship" by Campbell McGrath
No room for regret or self-doubt in art,
doubt but not self-doubt. The ship hauls anchor,
the kerosene lantern flickers and goes out,
voices in the pitch black swell with anger
as shipmates mistake each other for enemies.
The lantern spills, the pilot drops a lit cigar.
Tragedy ensues and engenders more tragedy.
If only the moon could see, if only the stars
had been granted the power of speech.
But the blind remain blind, the voiceless mute.
The burning ship threads its way between reefs
in the darkness. Doubt but not self-doubt.
doubt but not self-doubt. The ship hauls anchor,
the kerosene lantern flickers and goes out,
voices in the pitch black swell with anger
as shipmates mistake each other for enemies.
The lantern spills, the pilot drops a lit cigar.
Tragedy ensues and engenders more tragedy.
If only the moon could see, if only the stars
had been granted the power of speech.
But the blind remain blind, the voiceless mute.
The burning ship threads its way between reefs
in the darkness. Doubt but not self-doubt.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Maurice Blanchot by Jean-Luc Nancy
The Infinite Conversation: This title - one of the most striking of all his works - we could take as an emblem of Maurice Blanchot's thinking. Not so much thinking, really, as a stance or gesture: a confidence. Above all, Blanchot has confidence in the possibility of the conversation. What is undertaken in the conversation (with another, with oneself, with the very pursuit of conversation) is the ever-renewed relationship of speech to the infinity of meaning that shapes its truth.
Writing (literature) names this relationship. It does not transcribe a testimony, it does not invent a fiction, it does not deliver a message: it traces the infinite journey of meaning as it absents itself. This absenting is not negative; it shapes the chance and challenge of meaning itself. "To write" means continuously to approach the limit of speech, the limit that speech alone designates, whose designation makes us (speakers) unlimited.
Blanchot was able in this way to recognize the event of modernity: the evaporation of worlds-beyond and, with them, of any secure division between "literature" and experience or truth. He reopens in writing the task of giving a voice to the part of the self that remains silent.
To give such a voice is "to keep watch over absent meaning." Attentive, careful, affectionate vigilance. It wants to take care of these reserves of absence through which truth is given: the experience within us of the infinite outside us.
This experience is possible and necessary when sacred scriptures with their hermeneutics of existence are shut. Literature - or writing - begins with the closing of those books. But literature does not constitute a profane theology. It challenges any theology as well as any atheism: any establishment of a Meaning. "Absence" here is nothing but a movement: an absenting. It's the constant passage to the infinity of all speech. "The prodigious absent, absent from me and from everything, absent also for me" that Thomas the Obscure speaks of is not a being or an authority but the continuous shift of myself outside myself, by means of which there comes, although always pending, the "pure feeling of his existence."
This existence is not life as unmediated fondness for, and perpetuation of, self, nor is it its death. But the "dying" of which Blanchot speaks - and which is not at all to be confused with the cessation of living, but which on the contrary is the living or "sur-viving" named by Derrida so close to Blanchot - shapes the movement of the incessant approach to absenting as true meaning, annulling in it any trace of nihilism.
That is the movement that by being written can "give to nothing, in its form of nothing, the form of something."
Written on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Maurice Blanchot. Jean-Luc Nancy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Strasbourg and author, most recently, of Listening, translated by Charlotte Mandell.
Writing (literature) names this relationship. It does not transcribe a testimony, it does not invent a fiction, it does not deliver a message: it traces the infinite journey of meaning as it absents itself. This absenting is not negative; it shapes the chance and challenge of meaning itself. "To write" means continuously to approach the limit of speech, the limit that speech alone designates, whose designation makes us (speakers) unlimited.
Blanchot was able in this way to recognize the event of modernity: the evaporation of worlds-beyond and, with them, of any secure division between "literature" and experience or truth. He reopens in writing the task of giving a voice to the part of the self that remains silent.
To give such a voice is "to keep watch over absent meaning." Attentive, careful, affectionate vigilance. It wants to take care of these reserves of absence through which truth is given: the experience within us of the infinite outside us.
This experience is possible and necessary when sacred scriptures with their hermeneutics of existence are shut. Literature - or writing - begins with the closing of those books. But literature does not constitute a profane theology. It challenges any theology as well as any atheism: any establishment of a Meaning. "Absence" here is nothing but a movement: an absenting. It's the constant passage to the infinity of all speech. "The prodigious absent, absent from me and from everything, absent also for me" that Thomas the Obscure speaks of is not a being or an authority but the continuous shift of myself outside myself, by means of which there comes, although always pending, the "pure feeling of his existence."
This existence is not life as unmediated fondness for, and perpetuation of, self, nor is it its death. But the "dying" of which Blanchot speaks - and which is not at all to be confused with the cessation of living, but which on the contrary is the living or "sur-viving" named by Derrida so close to Blanchot - shapes the movement of the incessant approach to absenting as true meaning, annulling in it any trace of nihilism.
That is the movement that by being written can "give to nothing, in its form of nothing, the form of something."
Written on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Maurice Blanchot. Jean-Luc Nancy is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Strasbourg and author, most recently, of Listening, translated by Charlotte Mandell.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Garbage men
Two guys, garbage men, grew tired of the language that they had been taught, and invented a new language. This in itself is unremarkable, and happens frequently. But this language, modeled on the trash compactor, was a compact language, fitting neatly into the spaces of words and letters in the old language. It was a model of efficiency, although it had to be spoken and written along with the old language, being dependent on the spacings. That was it's only flaw, really, if you believe doubling is a flaw. They couldn't think of a catchy name, and it never caught on.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
from "Love Poems" by Rod Smith
If a lion could speak, we would not understand him.
—Wittgenstein
Listen to the lion. Like
an owl in the
heaped instant
oil-death craft, my love
my driftwood my
Susquehana deckhand
disturbance, so sad, printed
into everything taken.
That enormous bandaged
boundary behind
the open muffling
Is to be filled rain
envisioned, tall
fear rim peopled &
transmuting different
bunk in us "surrounding
a little bird-buddha"
in an ad for an ad for
Listen to the lion. Biological
crank turned by burned
sausage into the vacuum
of affirmation where my
oft inner floated mesquite
self's Ismene suddness
is known spirals sleep and
clear. No roads can show
the middle eye something
other objects shot into
the sky. When giving.
No tactile surface
is stone moist to the
toned raking Paris
you wish. The sun
has several names, like
Sherman, Tazmo, Bonk,
& Harmine-- it's risen
raves retake Atlanta
from nothing's lost
laundry room key &
we, clean in those
clothes have regone
there, we've done
a hell of a job.
thank you. We've
done exactly what
was expected of
us. & we
are not dead. 6
tabs re-side baste
& coax ton's opera-knuckle
brisket. Pal 1
is the cloned guy, &
loosely they have
or will have nice
copulated currency, as
if a tusk warranted Suzuki,
as if, portly
a re-stained tore heart's
made timing looked
back in tears over this
strange be.
—Wittgenstein
Listen to the lion. Like
an owl in the
heaped instant
oil-death craft, my love
my driftwood my
Susquehana deckhand
disturbance, so sad, printed
into everything taken.
That enormous bandaged
boundary behind
the open muffling
Is to be filled rain
envisioned, tall
fear rim peopled &
transmuting different
bunk in us "surrounding
a little bird-buddha"
in an ad for an ad for
Listen to the lion. Biological
crank turned by burned
sausage into the vacuum
of affirmation where my
oft inner floated mesquite
self's Ismene suddness
is known spirals sleep and
clear. No roads can show
the middle eye something
other objects shot into
the sky. When giving.
No tactile surface
is stone moist to the
toned raking Paris
you wish. The sun
has several names, like
Sherman, Tazmo, Bonk,
& Harmine-- it's risen
raves retake Atlanta
from nothing's lost
laundry room key &
we, clean in those
clothes have regone
there, we've done
a hell of a job.
thank you. We've
done exactly what
was expected of
us. & we
are not dead. 6
tabs re-side baste
& coax ton's opera-knuckle
brisket. Pal 1
is the cloned guy, &
loosely they have
or will have nice
copulated currency, as
if a tusk warranted Suzuki,
as if, portly
a re-stained tore heart's
made timing looked
back in tears over this
strange be.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
from "Canto I" by Ezra Pound
And then went down to the ship,
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day's end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wreteched men there.
Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and
We set up mast and sail on that swart ship,
Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also
Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward
Bore us onward with bellying canvas,
Circe's this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.
Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller,
Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day's end.
Sun to his slumber, shadows o'er all the ocean,
Came we then to the bounds of deepest water,
To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities
Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever
With glitter of sun-rays
Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven
Swartest night stretched over wreteched men there.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
"The Not Tale (Funeral)" by Caroline Bergvall.
The great labour of appearance
Served the making of the pyre.
But how
Nor how
How also
How they
Shal nat be toold
Shall not be told.
Nor how the gods
Nor how the beestes and the birds
Nor how the ground agast
Nor how the fire
First with straw
And then with drye
And then with grene
And then with gold
And then
Now how a site is laid like this.
Nor what
Nor how
Nor how
Nor what she spak nor what was her desir
Nor what jewels
When the fire
Nor how some threw their
And some their
And their
And cups full of wine and milk
And blood
Into the fyr
Into the fire.
Nor how three times
And three times with
And three times how.
And how that
Nor how
Nor how
Nor how
Nor who
I cannot tell
Nor can I say
But shortly to the point I turn
And make of my tale an ende.
from Shorter Chaucer Tales.
Served the making of the pyre.
But how
Nor how
How also
How they
Shal nat be toold
Shall not be told.
Nor how the gods
Nor how the beestes and the birds
Nor how the ground agast
Nor how the fire
First with straw
And then with drye
And then with grene
And then with gold
And then
Now how a site is laid like this.
Nor what
Nor how
Nor how
Nor what she spak nor what was her desir
Nor what jewels
When the fire
Nor how some threw their
And some their
And their
And cups full of wine and milk
And blood
Into the fyr
Into the fire.
Nor how three times
And three times with
And three times how.
And how that
Nor how
Nor how
Nor how
Nor who
I cannot tell
Nor can I say
But shortly to the point I turn
And make of my tale an ende.
from Shorter Chaucer Tales.
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Friday, August 7, 2009
"Betwixt" by Mel Nichols.
Here are some things to keep in mind as you get to know your small dog. Your reddish-orange dog.
Dare you go? Need you say this? Ought we go through with this?
How do you know that God didn’t make us evolve?
Nanotubes are created rapidly by squirting a carbon source.
I have a huge collection of frogs, right down to a frog toilet seat in my garden.
a metallic whisper please visit the mirror tortured in the potential space and one heck of a wondertickled verbena smoky sea wrack of excellence and tiger's eye
(look here you! http://thebeginningofbeauty.blogspot.com/)
Dare you go? Need you say this? Ought we go through with this?
How do you know that God didn’t make us evolve?
Nanotubes are created rapidly by squirting a carbon source.
I have a huge collection of frogs, right down to a frog toilet seat in my garden.
a metallic whisper please visit the mirror tortured in the potential space and one heck of a wondertickled verbena smoky sea wrack of excellence and tiger's eye
(look here you! http://thebeginningofbeauty.blogspot.com/)
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
from "Le Sens du Combat" by Michel Houellebecq.
The swallows take their flight, skimming the waves slowly, then fly in a spiral into the warming atmosphere. They do not speak to humans, for the humans remain stuck on the earth.
The swallows are not free. They are conditioned by the geometry of their repeated orbits. They slightly modify the angle of attack of their wings to describe spirals that grow further and further apart in relation to the blueprint of the earth’s surface. In short, there is nothing to be learned from swallows.
Sometimes, we would come back together in the car. Over the immense plain the sunset was enormous and red. Suddenly there was a quick flight of swallows and its surface was sliced. You shuddered, at that moment. Your hands were tight on the snake-skin cover of the wheel. So many things could, at the time, make us part.
The swallows are not free. They are conditioned by the geometry of their repeated orbits. They slightly modify the angle of attack of their wings to describe spirals that grow further and further apart in relation to the blueprint of the earth’s surface. In short, there is nothing to be learned from swallows.
Sometimes, we would come back together in the car. Over the immense plain the sunset was enormous and red. Suddenly there was a quick flight of swallows and its surface was sliced. You shuddered, at that moment. Your hands were tight on the snake-skin cover of the wheel. So many things could, at the time, make us part.
from "Platonic False Teeth" by Francis Picabia.
The regime of the photographic radium screen’s wind rests every day in the effluvia of the sublime family of great vices when the pyre laughs at the pirate world. Blushing gets pretty dangerous if paralyzed King lacks a Queen, and Jesus Christ, crazed with the sorrows of a society violated in public hereditary silence, operates early in the intrigues of the seraglio, vizier of heaven’s administration.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
"Thing Language" by Jack Spicer
This ocean, humiliating in its disguises
Tougher than anything.
No one listens to poetry. The ocean
Does not mean to be listened to. A drop
Or crash of water. It means
nothing.
It
Is bread and butter
Pepper and salt. The death
That young men hope for. Aimlessly
It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals, No
One listens to poetry.
Tougher than anything.
No one listens to poetry. The ocean
Does not mean to be listened to. A drop
Or crash of water. It means
nothing.
It
Is bread and butter
Pepper and salt. The death
That young men hope for. Aimlessly
It pounds the shore. White and aimless signals, No
One listens to poetry.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Train
Several dark stretches passed on the train before any edges could be seen in the rushing trees. Why did you write this he asked. I am surprised that you think this is an insight.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The Baby
He could not imagine the baby peeing in the mouth. That’s not something I should be thinking, he exclaimed but with a small sound. This exclamation did not adjust the tautness. There was no imagined play at rest here, this was for a real something. It is difficult to see the baby. As a metaphor, he remarked to her, but she was too angry to drop the lip into a new shape.
A Stretch
There she sat beside the cabinet, the tooth angling abruptly. An exclamation or yell built up inside her, but it was unreasonable. However, later there were comments such as: I will not miss this tooth. Her hand touched the humid edge of the furniture while she commented. I am a young woman still, so there is plenty of time for more.
The husband’s dog growled attempting to debone. The dog’s teeth were less yellow than a month ago, as new food had been bought. This had been his surprise plan, to change the food. It was unnerving to come home and find a food that was not the normal food; it was now a food that cleaned gums. The cabinet had also been his, some relative unloading old pieces on us, she had said, as a sort of aside. You’ll come to like it here, he assured her, knowing that was not the case. But what love is toothless or silent?
The husband’s dog growled attempting to debone. The dog’s teeth were less yellow than a month ago, as new food had been bought. This had been his surprise plan, to change the food. It was unnerving to come home and find a food that was not the normal food; it was now a food that cleaned gums. The cabinet had also been his, some relative unloading old pieces on us, she had said, as a sort of aside. You’ll come to like it here, he assured her, knowing that was not the case. But what love is toothless or silent?
Thursday, July 9, 2009
The Sunset
What was that she was dragging? The pit was too close for anything good. Her black cap was fringed with sweat; the light did not catch it. We followed on her footsteps. On the counter some errant cardboard rested ahead of its use.
Our hands felt groupings of one or the other, as the room was blackened to honor the defeat. We congratulated ourselves on our economy, so unsure up until this moment.
Our hands felt groupings of one or the other, as the room was blackened to honor the defeat. We congratulated ourselves on our economy, so unsure up until this moment.
Breadth
This part has no one object to its own. This other has a cat, warm and full of imagined feeling. We say ‘imagined’ for the sake of our futures.
So how small could this part make itself, he thought. There was an unconscious person laying there who could tell some things about the way it was made, although they were also barely there. There was, in fact, a fake part to him, more than one even. This part was not broken, but was gilt. Well, in his head it was.
The other woman walked onto the scene and took stock. There were so many parts that she was unable to count them all, although some were sure to prove unreal. The varied pieces came together in an instant. There she heard some sound like pouncing. Oh! How that could be! Which part was it moving with its paw?
So how small could this part make itself, he thought. There was an unconscious person laying there who could tell some things about the way it was made, although they were also barely there. There was, in fact, a fake part to him, more than one even. This part was not broken, but was gilt. Well, in his head it was.
The other woman walked onto the scene and took stock. There were so many parts that she was unable to count them all, although some were sure to prove unreal. The varied pieces came together in an instant. There she heard some sound like pouncing. Oh! How that could be! Which part was it moving with its paw?
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
"White" by Charles Simic.
In the inky forest,
In its maziest,
Murkiest scribble
Of words
And wordless cries,
I went for a glimpse
Of the blossomlike
White erasure
Over a huge,
Furiously crossed-out something.
In its maziest,
Murkiest scribble
Of words
And wordless cries,
I went for a glimpse
Of the blossomlike
White erasure
Over a huge,
Furiously crossed-out something.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
diagonal
There is more complicated
time unspooling in three hours than
most here are willing to admit.
Who is not surprised to
find themselves among 'most'?
But you shift in your chair
unalarmed, so I suppose
I should shift similarly.
My tongue, which I had not
often thought of as clumsy,
or indignant,
thinks out loud of your mouth,
although it -
your mouth -
pursed.
Some mysterious sentence
makes its way onto the table:
What a thing that would be:
to extend that "he" or "she"
to some pronoun more familiar
to us both.
Funny thing
that I remember the diagonal
of your eyelids
equal to
the diagonal of your hips.
time unspooling in three hours than
most here are willing to admit.
Who is not surprised to
find themselves among 'most'?
But you shift in your chair
unalarmed, so I suppose
I should shift similarly.
My tongue, which I had not
often thought of as clumsy,
or indignant,
thinks out loud of your mouth,
although it -
your mouth -
pursed.
Some mysterious sentence
makes its way onto the table:
What a thing that would be:
to extend that "he" or "she"
to some pronoun more familiar
to us both.
Funny thing
that I remember the diagonal
of your eyelids
equal to
the diagonal of your hips.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
from "The Last Man" by Maurice Blanchot
Oh, if it is true that we were alive together—and, really, you were
already a thought—if it is possible that these words flowing between us tell
us something that comes to us from us, at an earlier time wasn’t I always,
near you, this light, avid, insatiable desire to see you and yet, once you were
visible, to transform you further, into something more visible, to draw you,
slowly and darkly, into that point where you couldn’t any longer be anything
but seen, where your face became the nakedness of a face and your mouth
metamorphosed into a mouth? Wasn’t there a moment when you said to me:
“I have the feeling that when you die, I will become completely visible, more
visible than is possible and to the point that I won’t be able to endure it.”
Strange, strange speech. Is it now that you say this? Could it be that he is
dying at this moment? Is it you who always die in him, near him? Could it
be that he wasn’t dead enough, calm enough, strange enough, does he have
to carry desire, memory even further, is that the extremely fine and amazingly
distant point that always slips away and by which, slowly, with authority,
you draw him, you push him back into forgetfulness?
Thought, infinitesimal thought, calm thought, pain.
Later, he asked himself how he had entered the calm. He couldn’t
talk about it with himself. Only joy at feeling he was in harmony with the
words: “Later, he . . .”
already a thought—if it is possible that these words flowing between us tell
us something that comes to us from us, at an earlier time wasn’t I always,
near you, this light, avid, insatiable desire to see you and yet, once you were
visible, to transform you further, into something more visible, to draw you,
slowly and darkly, into that point where you couldn’t any longer be anything
but seen, where your face became the nakedness of a face and your mouth
metamorphosed into a mouth? Wasn’t there a moment when you said to me:
“I have the feeling that when you die, I will become completely visible, more
visible than is possible and to the point that I won’t be able to endure it.”
Strange, strange speech. Is it now that you say this? Could it be that he is
dying at this moment? Is it you who always die in him, near him? Could it
be that he wasn’t dead enough, calm enough, strange enough, does he have
to carry desire, memory even further, is that the extremely fine and amazingly
distant point that always slips away and by which, slowly, with authority,
you draw him, you push him back into forgetfulness?
Thought, infinitesimal thought, calm thought, pain.
Later, he asked himself how he had entered the calm. He couldn’t
talk about it with himself. Only joy at feeling he was in harmony with the
words: “Later, he . . .”
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
02.26
I was unsure what the light
would look like when I arrived
here.
Here, it severed a leg.
There, another head,
run through by
a bright shard.
I watched it
collect against my hand
as a warm volume,
remembering
your cupped palm,
folded and flickering
like a surprising
bird.
would look like when I arrived
here.
Here, it severed a leg.
There, another head,
run through by
a bright shard.
I watched it
collect against my hand
as a warm volume,
remembering
your cupped palm,
folded and flickering
like a surprising
bird.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
02.08
DEAR DRAWING:
So. The world expires at your touch. The touch, cut up, some Burroughs thing - what was it? “I shine at the moment I’m cut.” I’m brought close to something I remember from a past, brushing against my shoulder.
Was that music?
Was that the throne of heaven?
I know for sure that we are, ourselves, against continents. On this island, I’ve found some clunked out landing gear, the throne of heaven’s sound, landing on the top of the palace. The king, sucking his wife’s last breast, the other, a dry scar. Amputated in her body’s war against itself.
Continents are languages. Wholeness at war with parts. Human shields, the light shining through from shrapnel.
There were years when I was not myself, when a double found me, and walked off with my bags. He smelled of potatoes.
There is a machine with me that describes the surface of the vapor-world in ways that I can’t describe to you. The general invisibility of things we love.
One thing is increasingly clear:
I have learned how to hate the non-existent.
H.M.
So. The world expires at your touch. The touch, cut up, some Burroughs thing - what was it? “I shine at the moment I’m cut.” I’m brought close to something I remember from a past, brushing against my shoulder.
Was that music?
Was that the throne of heaven?
I know for sure that we are, ourselves, against continents. On this island, I’ve found some clunked out landing gear, the throne of heaven’s sound, landing on the top of the palace. The king, sucking his wife’s last breast, the other, a dry scar. Amputated in her body’s war against itself.
Continents are languages. Wholeness at war with parts. Human shields, the light shining through from shrapnel.
There were years when I was not myself, when a double found me, and walked off with my bags. He smelled of potatoes.
There is a machine with me that describes the surface of the vapor-world in ways that I can’t describe to you. The general invisibility of things we love.
One thing is increasingly clear:
I have learned how to hate the non-existent.
H.M.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
02.03
Beating hearts
sometimes
beaten,
or beaten back,
hurled at one another
from hands
that became wrenched
in the works
while raising the
theater curtain.
sometimes
beaten,
or beaten back,
hurled at one another
from hands
that became wrenched
in the works
while raising the
theater curtain.
Monday, January 26, 2009
"A Poem Without a Single Bird in It" by Jack Spicer.
What can I say to you, darling,
When you ask me for help?
I do not even know the future
Or even what poetry
We are going to write.
Commit suicide. Go mad. Better people
Than either of us have tried it.
I loved you once but
I do not know the future.
I only know that I love strength in my friends
And greatness
And hate the way their bodies crack when they die
And are eaten by images.
The fun’s over. The picnic’s over.
Go mad. Commit suicide. There will be nothing left
After you die or go mad,
But the calmness of poetry.
When you ask me for help?
I do not even know the future
Or even what poetry
We are going to write.
Commit suicide. Go mad. Better people
Than either of us have tried it.
I loved you once but
I do not know the future.
I only know that I love strength in my friends
And greatness
And hate the way their bodies crack when they die
And are eaten by images.
The fun’s over. The picnic’s over.
Go mad. Commit suicide. There will be nothing left
After you die or go mad,
But the calmness of poetry.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Neighbors
1. The skulls of men are several microns thicker than those of women, as are their bones.
2. They are at essence inverted birds, dense, flightless and clumsy.
3. We could wink at the stupidity and brutality of the object. It is separated from love, and the pains of conjunction. It grasps itself, but slowly.
4. Into the surge of the sea on the rocks, the lizards rush headlong.
5. The clothes are gone at this time of night; there is no material for us to touch. We hope to kill our neighbor, marry his son, eat his cattle, drink his blood, and vomit in the bed of his parents. But we realize only vectors, and are unable to fix any point, only continuous points.
6. Our neighbor's tomato grows on its vine. It has no understanding of any one thing surrounding it, yet it moves into space freely, feelingly. Our neighbor plucks the fruit, moistens his lips and empties his bowels. To his mind, his force is not abstract, or deferential, but open and secure. Our neighbor pictures his daughter, and knows, from this picture, that he possesses her.
8. Our neighbor opens his cupboard, finding it much as he expected it.
2. They are at essence inverted birds, dense, flightless and clumsy.
3. We could wink at the stupidity and brutality of the object. It is separated from love, and the pains of conjunction. It grasps itself, but slowly.
4. Into the surge of the sea on the rocks, the lizards rush headlong.
5. The clothes are gone at this time of night; there is no material for us to touch. We hope to kill our neighbor, marry his son, eat his cattle, drink his blood, and vomit in the bed of his parents. But we realize only vectors, and are unable to fix any point, only continuous points.
6. Our neighbor's tomato grows on its vine. It has no understanding of any one thing surrounding it, yet it moves into space freely, feelingly. Our neighbor plucks the fruit, moistens his lips and empties his bowels. To his mind, his force is not abstract, or deferential, but open and secure. Our neighbor pictures his daughter, and knows, from this picture, that he possesses her.
8. Our neighbor opens his cupboard, finding it much as he expected it.
Monday, September 29, 2008
from "On the Road to What We're Tempted to Call Heaven" by Bernadette Mayer
I'm not being bitten
by heaven or by hell by god
but by the no-god's rain on the world
that my friends the moths hate
& so they stay away
old poets
so few & far between
leave so soon as visitors
without waiting for either the rain
or most of the fun
I go up to my room
if I have one
assuming the feel or sound of the rain
could be heaven
as if there was one
but I'd rather wonder how come
no such perfection
or knowledge of everything
from the beginning of the day
or the beginning of history
or the histories of everyone
beginning to end
or no end could be
by heaven or by hell by god
but by the no-god's rain on the world
that my friends the moths hate
& so they stay away
old poets
so few & far between
leave so soon as visitors
without waiting for either the rain
or most of the fun
I go up to my room
if I have one
assuming the feel or sound of the rain
could be heaven
as if there was one
but I'd rather wonder how come
no such perfection
or knowledge of everything
from the beginning of the day
or the beginning of history
or the histories of everyone
beginning to end
or no end could be
Saturday, September 13, 2008
DFW
"What looks like the cage's exit is actually the bars of the cage" 222
"The encaged and suicidal" 224
"Dealers, sirens of the other, second cage" 224
"Joelle's been in a cage since Y.T.S.D.B." 227
"Set free the encaged rapacious thing inside" 229
"The difference between suicide and homicide consisting [...] in where you think you discern the cage's door" 230
"The blind god of all doorless cages" 231
"[Cocaine] had been not just her encaging god, but her lover" 235
"A foreign academic with an almost Franciscan bald spot has the swirling limp of someone with a prosthesis" 229
Mother-death-cosmology 230
Entropy: fans - 233 "everything falls off the wall sooner or later" 235
"Putting ? after THE END" 235
"Entertainment is blind" 237
"These are facts. This room in this apartment is the sum of very many specific facts and ideas. There is nothing more to it than that" 239 (Wittgenstein)
"The Prize" 239
Iona 273
Morris Code 275
Individual v. Group 82-83
Without a thought 27, 44
- from index to Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. I'm stunned at the sudden loss of this fiercely intelligent and laceratingly funny writer.
"The encaged and suicidal" 224
"Dealers, sirens of the other, second cage" 224
"Joelle's been in a cage since Y.T.S.D.B." 227
"Set free the encaged rapacious thing inside" 229
"The difference between suicide and homicide consisting [...] in where you think you discern the cage's door" 230
"The blind god of all doorless cages" 231
"[Cocaine] had been not just her encaging god, but her lover" 235
"A foreign academic with an almost Franciscan bald spot has the swirling limp of someone with a prosthesis" 229
Mother-death-cosmology 230
Entropy: fans - 233 "everything falls off the wall sooner or later" 235
"Putting ? after THE END" 235
"Entertainment is blind" 237
"These are facts. This room in this apartment is the sum of very many specific facts and ideas. There is nothing more to it than that" 239 (Wittgenstein)
"The Prize" 239
Iona 273
Morris Code 275
Individual v. Group 82-83
Without a thought 27, 44
- from index to Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. I'm stunned at the sudden loss of this fiercely intelligent and laceratingly funny writer.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
from "The School of the Dead" by Helene Cixous
Writing is this complex activity, "this learning to die," that is, not to kill, knowing there is death, not denying it and not proclaiming it...Our crime isn't what we think, it isn't the crime in the newspapers, it's always a bit less and a bit more. In life, as soon as I say my, as soon as I say my daughter, my brother, I am verging on a form of murder, as soon as I forget to unceasingly recognize the other's difference. You may come to know your son, your sister, your daughter well after thirty, forty, or fifty years of life, and yet during those thirty or forty years you haven't known this person who was so close. You kept him or her in the realm of the dead. And the other way around. Then the one who dies kills and the one who doesn't die when the other dies kills as well. Surviving is not what we think...
Monday, September 1, 2008
Field
What was it now? History was a black glass. Time was a black glass. The island was curved, the hand was curved, the middle wasn’t there anymore.
Monday, August 25, 2008
The Kling lobby
If you can imagine a tone, vibrating at a particular rate. This tone spread from the lips of one boy, a solar systemic dust-bunny, settling into the air, freely absorbing every particle caught in the summer sunlight.
The city is vast, and threatens to overwhelm this tone, although it also vibrates in response to it. We won’t call these vibrations harmonies, for that would be too easy a description. No, we will call them sympathetic, although they are, by their nature, ambivalent. Being vibrations, they have, for the longest time, stood outside of the political process.
The city balanced on the edge of vast abyss that stretched over a black lake. So that the buildings of the city, many of which were cloud-shrouded, would not topple into the lake, every building was tethered to the ground with strong cables made of steel. We entered the Kling lobby as it was being destroyed by the tone. Having known of its onset for quite some time (years, in fact), we were surprised only by its forceful insistence. Frankly, we blew it off for a while. And then we were worried; could feel our cells shift, a micron, a pixel, an electron displacement.
The Kling lobby is a series of planes and fabrics. The fabrics include velvets, and others, more space-age and cleanly. The fabrics shuffle against our skin, sloughing off dead cells. The cells collect, shed moisture, consider, then reconsider themselves as mite-food, and squirm at the very thought of it. In short: utter consumption. Instantaneous.
The glass in the Kling lobby is vibrating so as to be invisible.
The structural supports crumbling.
Survival!
Limited from dust clouds.
Overheard against the open mouths: “Cover your eyes!”
Now here’s a funny story; you’ll laugh at this: The body swung itself over the stairwell, swollen to twice its original size. Fat cells reproduced until skin split. Arms growing out of the end places - punctuation. No preciousness here, just survival. The waxed floors shone, and our shoe leather couldn’t get a grip. Abrupt floor covered in something, and then, the usual: bright light, white-flash-what-have-you.
A cashless, armless people move through the streets. The snow falls, like always, on the armed and the armless. The people join in harmonies.
The city is vast, and threatens to overwhelm this tone, although it also vibrates in response to it. We won’t call these vibrations harmonies, for that would be too easy a description. No, we will call them sympathetic, although they are, by their nature, ambivalent. Being vibrations, they have, for the longest time, stood outside of the political process.
The city balanced on the edge of vast abyss that stretched over a black lake. So that the buildings of the city, many of which were cloud-shrouded, would not topple into the lake, every building was tethered to the ground with strong cables made of steel. We entered the Kling lobby as it was being destroyed by the tone. Having known of its onset for quite some time (years, in fact), we were surprised only by its forceful insistence. Frankly, we blew it off for a while. And then we were worried; could feel our cells shift, a micron, a pixel, an electron displacement.
The Kling lobby is a series of planes and fabrics. The fabrics include velvets, and others, more space-age and cleanly. The fabrics shuffle against our skin, sloughing off dead cells. The cells collect, shed moisture, consider, then reconsider themselves as mite-food, and squirm at the very thought of it. In short: utter consumption. Instantaneous.
The glass in the Kling lobby is vibrating so as to be invisible.
The structural supports crumbling.
Survival!
Limited from dust clouds.
Overheard against the open mouths: “Cover your eyes!”
Now here’s a funny story; you’ll laugh at this: The body swung itself over the stairwell, swollen to twice its original size. Fat cells reproduced until skin split. Arms growing out of the end places - punctuation. No preciousness here, just survival. The waxed floors shone, and our shoe leather couldn’t get a grip. Abrupt floor covered in something, and then, the usual: bright light, white-flash-what-have-you.
A cashless, armless people move through the streets. The snow falls, like always, on the armed and the armless. The people join in harmonies.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
"A fat photograph..." by John Wilkinson.
A fat photograph
about to be cropped
where what is incidental
bloats an incident
with light or dead space
The elements will say Ah
drawn close
the moles & needles
drill unpractised flesh
She dies less
for points of their
invention, solid caps
over points of entry
than a quick–to–the–jaw
reasonableness
without waste or
overlapping
idly ripping
incidental blossom
off
-from Proud Flesh.
about to be cropped
where what is incidental
bloats an incident
with light or dead space
The elements will say Ah
drawn close
the moles & needles
drill unpractised flesh
She dies less
for points of their
invention, solid caps
over points of entry
than a quick–to–the–jaw
reasonableness
without waste or
overlapping
idly ripping
incidental blossom
off
-from Proud Flesh.
At a loss
Now,
if only he placed his thumb
salted or
part-knurled
on newsprint next to my ear
I could ink it.
if only he placed his thumb
salted or
part-knurled
on newsprint next to my ear
I could ink it.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Fight
MK Ultra and MK Olsen circle each other warily, sweat beading on the dry parts of their skin, but not on the elbows, which remain dry, and are not formerly dry.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Further excursions
My loves,
This excursion into what they are calling quiet space has been unlike others. The air was duller, maybe the grafts have flattened, the mountains are no longer the kind of music I had grown used to hearing. There are too many folds, and some are blaming the hypoxia in the oceans on demons; I can't help but think of the stupidity of our own recent demonology. I suppose these sort of stratifications are inevitable. I am unable to write much more at this time; both of you should take care not to mention any of this to R_______. He has his ears to the speaker, but is unable to graft from there to there.
Yours,
H.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Habilitation
My Dear Fortune,
I have thought of writing to you for some time now. The evenings on the island have been humid and unpleasant; the curvature of the earth here is such that I have felt like nothing more than a tuning fork for suffering. The only news I have received from the mirrore realm was a very desperate letter from your dear father, and there were no details, only that you were up to your neck in politics, or at least its consequences.
I hoped to avoid the conventional lines, but it seems that those suspect words are all that I have with which to write. Not to evince melodrama, in these crystalline times, but I am very upset by your, and Ljuba's, behavior, that you haven't found time to write a line since our meeting in Vienna. I know, my attitude towards life is increasingly petit-bourgeois, but with that dreadful scare still in my bones, I wonder if it wouldn't have happened had you written. I shall return to the sanatorium this eve, and am hoping against hope that you will be able to join me again. There is a village nearby where the fever has not yet touched; it is no floating-world, but will do for the moment.
Under some duress from the assembled martyrs, I have begun writing again, starting with a portrait of Max Weber (you know his achievements in some forms of quiet space travel). I think often of our past together, your image a song, the grain of your voice with me late in the night. My exile to these hotels and swamps has led me to further consider the difference between the concepts Gelten and Sollen (there may in fact be some useful gesture there). Although, as you know, perhaps better than I, we are each no Leo Naphta, caught deep inside magic mountain.
Although I don't wish to keep you from your studies, please let me know if you have thoughts on the colloquium. P____ has expressed his distaste for my politics, but then again, he was the first to decry quiet space, and that has gotten our cause nowhere. Don't forget about the machines, or the sites of prophecy! Without maintenance they, also, will be lost. Be secure in your feelings towards E_____. Her love affair with that musician is imminent. The three of us are living together, although with physical proximity comes inner separation; the only real solution seems to be a friendly parting after the war. I am suddenly aware of every fold in my skeleton; my own capacity for balance seems to be growing.
I affectionately embrace you.
Until then,
H.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Friday, July 25, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Six Lines
In late capitalism
guilt becomes technology.
Technology agrees with hunger.
Desire is part of being drawn.
Being is difficult to tell.
Speaking is compared to seeing.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Pastoral reprise
The hills were alive with music,
but more like living
with singing.
In the sense of:
that hand is a particle,
this, a
mechanical sound, almost,
but hollow.
In the sense of:
turtles
Being emptied from their shells.
Into the soup
was the rule.
God, he says, we've filled our hills
with this shit.
That's not polite, she returns,
scratching her shoulder against the bark.
Which, then,
unsuprisingly,
fell to the dirt.
That's just not polite.
I can remember discussing Engels,
and certain utopian metaphysicians,
but that was always
beside the point.
Hills, meadows, the like,
were beside the point.
The point was to think like rats.
Not hum
Beethoven.
She gestures:
I like that one that ends with cannons.
but more like living
with singing.
In the sense of:
that hand is a particle,
this, a
mechanical sound, almost,
but hollow.
In the sense of:
turtles
Being emptied from their shells.
Into the soup
was the rule.
God, he says, we've filled our hills
with this shit.
That's not polite, she returns,
scratching her shoulder against the bark.
Which, then,
unsuprisingly,
fell to the dirt.
That's just not polite.
I can remember discussing Engels,
and certain utopian metaphysicians,
but that was always
beside the point.
Hills, meadows, the like,
were beside the point.
The point was to think like rats.
Not hum
Beethoven.
She gestures:
I like that one that ends with cannons.
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