a squirrel was fighting with plastic that had blown into the tree branches. struggling with the plastic sheeting, i watched and recalled dead bodies i saw when i was thirteen, bodies of sea turtles washed up on the shore of montauk, long island; lessons for how your sandwich bags could become weapons for murder.
the squirrel ran off with a bit of the plastic wrapped up, new material for the nest, the home. guess we both forgot how the end of march can be so cold.
Same as it ever was. Gidget is playing on the TV, on mute.
(as she spoke into the sand
a proton was screaming.)
3.27.2005
time is plastic
and in case you didn't notice, i can DJ time online with as much creativity, spin, and rhetoric as the latest "breaking news" bit...
<<missing post::fresh out of the draft mode::now updated/published/alive>>
<<missing post::fresh out of the draft mode::now updated/published/alive>>
3.25.2005
it's been too long since my last trip to vegas
when i was last there, the guggenheim was in new-born swing, O was still the only show worth going to, and the weekend was only five days away...
the desert outside of vegas is the best. henderson emerges out of the rocks and dust like a forgotten mirage of haphazard plans for living. community wasn't forgotten; it was never an issue.
a certain novel came into my life at the most appropriate time, which is always nice, and rare (the pleasure of slow reading). the owner of the vermont bookstore said that reading it before sleeping at night would saturate my dreams with even more glitter and drama than usual... reading the words, the imagination turns the desert rocks you picture into a deeper red than the author depicts. the sun is brighter, and the water more quenching than ever.
i finished that book in an outdoor hot tub on the roof of a hotel i stayed in for the honolulu marathon. it was four thiry in the morning and the moon was barely loud enough to see the pages as they dampened by my wet fingertips. the breeze blew my shorter hair into my eyes, but the paragraphs were clear. the last sentance brought me back to the beginning. i got out of the tub, put on my shoes, and got ready to run.
the desert outside of vegas is the best. henderson emerges out of the rocks and dust like a forgotten mirage of haphazard plans for living. community wasn't forgotten; it was never an issue.
a certain novel came into my life at the most appropriate time, which is always nice, and rare (the pleasure of slow reading). the owner of the vermont bookstore said that reading it before sleeping at night would saturate my dreams with even more glitter and drama than usual... reading the words, the imagination turns the desert rocks you picture into a deeper red than the author depicts. the sun is brighter, and the water more quenching than ever.
i finished that book in an outdoor hot tub on the roof of a hotel i stayed in for the honolulu marathon. it was four thiry in the morning and the moon was barely loud enough to see the pages as they dampened by my wet fingertips. the breeze blew my shorter hair into my eyes, but the paragraphs were clear. the last sentance brought me back to the beginning. i got out of the tub, put on my shoes, and got ready to run.
3.20.2005
not too long ago
i witnessed an event that has plagued my memory with violent washes of pink and yellow, a bright green-yellow glare of color --
two birds were fighting, flapping.
one was obviously the dominant aggressor (always a master/slave struggle).
the little brown birds were vicious. i felt as if i was a voyeur of a history-in-the-making moment within a small world that in its own image is a galaxy (a horton hears a who philosophical camera-trick of perspective). what was the meaning of this struggle? what instigated this mutual attack?
my gut became cold and empty. as the one on top used its beak to clamp own on the other's beak, it dug its claws into feathered flesh of wings and stomach to keep it struggling underneath. then the bird drove its beak into the other bird's left eye. pecking away, my eyes tried to zoom in closer, to witness the wound of the eye in its progression. i wished i had a video-capable phone, or video camera, for that matter. the need to record these injuries, the intensity of this big movement of small bodies at 10:21am on a Tuesday morning seemed a duty to me (why else would I have been given the chance to watch this metaphorical struggle unfold? the passion of action begged to be recorded and re-worked to stand-in for a mini-meta commentary on the relationship of all binaries that fight each other only to define themselves and their place in the world.)
i am telling this now because all the birds i've seen lately have been dead. the two in a recent dream existed in a pseudo-symbiotic relationship, the flesh of the larger bird serving as fuel for the smaller, though both were close to death. walking to the mailbox i came across a small bird on its back, wings spread (of course, you say), a material memory of the symbol of freedom and flight. and today, stopping by the water in the middle of a bike ride, the same species of small brown bird was rocking back and forth, touching the shore then retreating again, and again, riding on the slight wave of the river on this Sunday afternoon. it too, was dead, and i wondered which body would decay first, the water-logged or the land-bound? surf or turf?
two birds were fighting, flapping.
one was obviously the dominant aggressor (always a master/slave struggle).
the little brown birds were vicious. i felt as if i was a voyeur of a history-in-the-making moment within a small world that in its own image is a galaxy (a horton hears a who philosophical camera-trick of perspective). what was the meaning of this struggle? what instigated this mutual attack?
my gut became cold and empty. as the one on top used its beak to clamp own on the other's beak, it dug its claws into feathered flesh of wings and stomach to keep it struggling underneath. then the bird drove its beak into the other bird's left eye. pecking away, my eyes tried to zoom in closer, to witness the wound of the eye in its progression. i wished i had a video-capable phone, or video camera, for that matter. the need to record these injuries, the intensity of this big movement of small bodies at 10:21am on a Tuesday morning seemed a duty to me (why else would I have been given the chance to watch this metaphorical struggle unfold? the passion of action begged to be recorded and re-worked to stand-in for a mini-meta commentary on the relationship of all binaries that fight each other only to define themselves and their place in the world.)
i am telling this now because all the birds i've seen lately have been dead. the two in a recent dream existed in a pseudo-symbiotic relationship, the flesh of the larger bird serving as fuel for the smaller, though both were close to death. walking to the mailbox i came across a small bird on its back, wings spread (of course, you say), a material memory of the symbol of freedom and flight. and today, stopping by the water in the middle of a bike ride, the same species of small brown bird was rocking back and forth, touching the shore then retreating again, and again, riding on the slight wave of the river on this Sunday afternoon. it too, was dead, and i wondered which body would decay first, the water-logged or the land-bound? surf or turf?
3.18.2005
"I am away from the computer right now."
I think it is really interesting to think about the idea of the Instant Messenger "Away" message --- I'm online, but I'm offline. I want you to know I am connected, but I'm just off doing other things right now...brb
Of everyone of my "buddies" on my list, my sister always has the best, most random lines for her away message. Current example:
A quote from Nike, "a woman is often measured by the things she cannot control. she is measured by the way her body curves or doesnt curve, by where she is flat or straight or round. she is measured by 36-24-36 and inches and ages and numbers, by all the outside things that dont ever add up to who she is on the inside. and so if a woman is to be measured, let her be measured by the things she can control, by who she is and who she is trying to become. because as every woman knows, measurements are only statistics. And statistics lie."
pimp my ride. customize my life.
Of everyone of my "buddies" on my list, my sister always has the best, most random lines for her away message. Current example:
A quote from Nike, "a woman is often measured by the things she cannot control. she is measured by the way her body curves or doesnt curve, by where she is flat or straight or round. she is measured by 36-24-36 and inches and ages and numbers, by all the outside things that dont ever add up to who she is on the inside. and so if a woman is to be measured, let her be measured by the things she can control, by who she is and who she is trying to become. because as every woman knows, measurements are only statistics. And statistics lie."
pimp my ride. customize my life.
3.17.2005
Found Writing
(an entirely different different example of "The Case of September 16"
NORMAL
My psychiatrist was reassuringly normal -
Neither Woody Allen nor Doktor Freud -
More like my non-existent elder brother
Explaining things. Sometimes in the waiting room,
I'd see another patient, and then another: they looked so normal
Like busy people in the supermarket
Pushing their trolleys around with tinned food, plastic wrapped paper,
Frozen fruit -
Paying for it all by credit card
At the check-out, where the cashier passes barcodes
Across a scanner. Checking signatures,
She smiles at each one of them, guessing from their shopping items
Which one of them believes she has a soul.
(i can't remember, but i think i wrote this...if i did, it was definitely when i was working at mc donalds in high school. or, worse yet, maybe i copied it from Sassy magazine - remember that one? the "pre" Bust magazine? i don't read Bust, but if i kept up with the whole girl reading thing, i guess i would. there's probably as many answers there as are in some of the dead theory guys i keep myself up late reading, my eyes stroking the words of the decaying minds as they channel from the cold ground the memory of their own nostalgia for a young body like mine...)
NORMAL
My psychiatrist was reassuringly normal -
Neither Woody Allen nor Doktor Freud -
More like my non-existent elder brother
Explaining things. Sometimes in the waiting room,
I'd see another patient, and then another: they looked so normal
Like busy people in the supermarket
Pushing their trolleys around with tinned food, plastic wrapped paper,
Frozen fruit -
Paying for it all by credit card
At the check-out, where the cashier passes barcodes
Across a scanner. Checking signatures,
She smiles at each one of them, guessing from their shopping items
Which one of them believes she has a soul.
(i can't remember, but i think i wrote this...if i did, it was definitely when i was working at mc donalds in high school. or, worse yet, maybe i copied it from Sassy magazine - remember that one? the "pre" Bust magazine? i don't read Bust, but if i kept up with the whole girl reading thing, i guess i would. there's probably as many answers there as are in some of the dead theory guys i keep myself up late reading, my eyes stroking the words of the decaying minds as they channel from the cold ground the memory of their own nostalgia for a young body like mine...)
3.13.2005
i want an open sky
a blank-ness
a do-over
no, just a gray white sky
that says
nothing
not a place to colonize
or paint across,
with what little meaning
that might never matter,
(might never pass
for any thing at all...)
just to breathe in
like running between 5am and 7am
from the top of a mountain
in new york state
chill air not cold
just fresh
wet
dirt no other shoes have hit
pounded by the weight
of feet
escaping miles traveled
before
before this morning
a new moment
always comes,
but is never registered
until it passes
morning haze
obscuring the landscape
quiet. chill. possible.
>>and to lie down in it, is to remember, Lines for Winter...
a do-over
no, just a gray white sky
that says
nothing
not a place to colonize
or paint across,
with what little meaning
that might never matter,
(might never pass
for any thing at all...)
just to breathe in
like running between 5am and 7am
from the top of a mountain
in new york state
chill air not cold
just fresh
wet
dirt no other shoes have hit
pounded by the weight
of feet
escaping miles traveled
before
before this morning
a new moment
always comes,
but is never registered
until it passes
morning haze
obscuring the landscape
quiet. chill. possible.
>>and to lie down in it, is to remember, Lines for Winter...
3.12.2005
two by two by two is eight more than zero
shout-out to kevin and his new website, www.videohippos.tk. anyone wanna ride to his show with japanther this coming Friday?
Also....LONG LONG LONG overdue...
kelly towles | charles steelman | and their Great One-Nighter, bollocks @ david adamson's old space
None of the usual suspects covered this event on their blogsites, so I'll try to fill-in the blanks...
Art openings are performances, performances of everyday life. They are as fleeting as walking down a street. Maybe a particular moment will get tangled up in your blue web of a memory - maybe the face of someone you actually hadn't seen at an opening lately, a friend who's been in hiding. Or perhaps it is actually the image of an art work that managed to paint itself into your mind, long enough to give yourself some credit for getting out the door that night...
Street art, to me, is the beautiful semi-permanent experience of someone else's moment in that very same location: graffiti is cool 'cause it means someone else, besides myself, was there at least once before, and they decided to do something about it, about the "there" and the "being there." Rather than, la la la, this is the same way I walk to work everyday...someone (who? who cares? anonymity is not just a legal protection, it is crucial to the work itself) decided to grab that space of concrete, that bit o block, that tiny moment of physical presence and make it into an expression of their own. Like taking photos with your cell phone's camera, you've appropriated time and space for your own use.
Often the use value isn't just for the fleeting pleasure of painting with a can and stencil; the messages and motivations of street art are often politically charged and, thankfully, give you a visual experience that differs from the space-invading techniques of corporations. UGh - remember Nissan and their "Exercise in Tagging?" Isn't that like a plastic surgeon giving himself liposuction?
Anyway. BORF, featured in this week's City Paper in a little one-paragraph bit, was one of the street artists represented at bollocks. Rightfully so, I was called a "Delinquent" -- I opted to hit the 14th street openings first -- so, I can't comment on the event prior to the auction. Bollocks!
I made it in just as they finished auctioning off one of the four, (all it took was a slip of paper with your name in a box - be in the flesh to win a piece of street art), almost white walls (the walls had loosely been painted over Kelly's figures from his solo show at adamson last December. The heat of the bodies made the sweat feel as welcome as the dirt under your fingernails after hiding in the bushes to tag a sign yourself. It was there, I was there, we were there. The Event was never more eventful than this. My sweat paid off. I got a piece (we all got a piece), of the action, of the art work, memento of a moment, the work of street artists shown in a space typically reserved for ideologies antithetical to the where of why we were there. Appreciation and "being there." A new audience was assembled, and touched.
All I can say, is my own, thank you. Wish you were there...
Also....LONG LONG LONG overdue...
kelly towles | charles steelman | and their Great One-Nighter, bollocks @ david adamson's old space
None of the usual suspects covered this event on their blogsites, so I'll try to fill-in the blanks...
Art openings are performances, performances of everyday life. They are as fleeting as walking down a street. Maybe a particular moment will get tangled up in your blue web of a memory - maybe the face of someone you actually hadn't seen at an opening lately, a friend who's been in hiding. Or perhaps it is actually the image of an art work that managed to paint itself into your mind, long enough to give yourself some credit for getting out the door that night...
Street art, to me, is the beautiful semi-permanent experience of someone else's moment in that very same location: graffiti is cool 'cause it means someone else, besides myself, was there at least once before, and they decided to do something about it, about the "there" and the "being there." Rather than, la la la, this is the same way I walk to work everyday...someone (who? who cares? anonymity is not just a legal protection, it is crucial to the work itself) decided to grab that space of concrete, that bit o block, that tiny moment of physical presence and make it into an expression of their own. Like taking photos with your cell phone's camera, you've appropriated time and space for your own use.
Often the use value isn't just for the fleeting pleasure of painting with a can and stencil; the messages and motivations of street art are often politically charged and, thankfully, give you a visual experience that differs from the space-invading techniques of corporations. UGh - remember Nissan and their "Exercise in Tagging?" Isn't that like a plastic surgeon giving himself liposuction?
Anyway. BORF, featured in this week's City Paper in a little one-paragraph bit, was one of the street artists represented at bollocks. Rightfully so, I was called a "Delinquent" -- I opted to hit the 14th street openings first -- so, I can't comment on the event prior to the auction. Bollocks!
I made it in just as they finished auctioning off one of the four, (all it took was a slip of paper with your name in a box - be in the flesh to win a piece of street art), almost white walls (the walls had loosely been painted over Kelly's figures from his solo show at adamson last December. The heat of the bodies made the sweat feel as welcome as the dirt under your fingernails after hiding in the bushes to tag a sign yourself. It was there, I was there, we were there. The Event was never more eventful than this. My sweat paid off. I got a piece (we all got a piece), of the action, of the art work, memento of a moment, the work of street artists shown in a space typically reserved for ideologies antithetical to the where of why we were there. Appreciation and "being there." A new audience was assembled, and touched.
All I can say, is my own, thank you. Wish you were there...
where have i been?
sleeping with a new blogsite...
...my mind and fingers have carved out a new web-frontier...watch out. coming soon. leave your shoes at the door, if yr comin' in|side...
oh. and Save the Date (and the last drink for me): Friday the 13th of May, something is going to happen. Reserve that night for beautiful strangers and ugly friends.
...my mind and fingers have carved out a new web-frontier...watch out. coming soon. leave your shoes at the door, if yr comin' in|side...
oh. and Save the Date (and the last drink for me): Friday the 13th of May, something is going to happen. Reserve that night for beautiful strangers and ugly friends.
3.09.2005
guest writer: carter
in the words below, carter touches upon a phenomenon on the connection between the rational mind and the body's sensory equipment. how many times has this situation happened to you? where you drink a glass of milk, but you think for a second that it's water and it indeed tastes like water, just for that split second? though carter describes an actual decision to eat cereal with water, the moment of interplay between the tongue and the mind, at the start of consumption, provides a crack in the reality of expectation in the world...one where alternatives start to seep in and suddenly possibility becomes everything possible...
the first time I ate cereal with water instead of milk
it was weird. for a second I thought I was pouring
gasoline on my malt-o-meal as the water lolloped out
of the gallon jug, like someone was playing a trick on
me. fixing it felt the same but looked different.
eating it looked the same but tasted different, like
cereal with water instead of milk. at least the water
was cold.
the first time I ate cereal with water instead of milk
it was weird. for a second I thought I was pouring
gasoline on my malt-o-meal as the water lolloped out
of the gallon jug, like someone was playing a trick on
me. fixing it felt the same but looked different.
eating it looked the same but tasted different, like
cereal with water instead of milk. at least the water
was cold.
3.05.2005
midnight/dawn
we constructed a new topography from the ruins, ashes and indestructible manufactured goods scattered across the landscape like colored candy wrappers, a rainbow of trash haphazardly speckling what was left of the earth, after the fire stopped burning the flesh and the land. little could be said at a time like this. a unanimous vote was issued: language was of no further use and was discarded immediately (the uselessness of a wet paper cup). like all other things not evoked repeatedly over time, language was forgotten, and then became nothing.
no, it became nothing's negation; it was so disused that it was everywhere, trapped in and by its own silence; bits of dirt in crevices of chapped hands, the stuff that clings to discarded dental floss, tiny relics of human bodies mixed into dust bunnies: bits of peeled skin, eyelashes, crusted snot, fallen hair (long and short), the hangnails, toenails, and fingernails.
(time was the reality of the curse.)
voices turned pale from inactivity, becoming albino like the creatures that once lived so deep in the sea, away from the self-righteous light. the sounds of digestion and cracking knees when squatting were louder than a concert of any utterances that had once been made.
temperature became important again, as did the nerves just under the tender outer shell of skin.
we began to feel the cells of our lungs imbibing oxygen for the first time, as they had always done, exhaling as much as possible each time just to see the chest rise again and then again. alive. (how lucky.)
some of us developed the ability to wiggle our ears. a few already could move at least one. this proved to be an advantage as these individuals taught the others, eventually founding a new army of auditory ability.
this corps received the transmission of our sins, hearing the green-blood pain the earth was in, as it rocked itself back and forth, curled up in the fetal position.
the sound, a deep yellow-green monosyllabic tome, was translated into gestures made by bones moving to invisible vibes, dancing without deliberate design, motion projected into the marrow by the dying pulse of the land.
this is how we came to re-learn ourselves. we didn't write the history of what was, nor did we construct a diary of the transition: language got us to this point and it was never to be the conductor of the orchestration of our lives again.
the ticking clock of seasons was lost. but out of it the gain was immeasurable. a shattered sea within the frozen crystals of the previous mind.
no, it became nothing's negation; it was so disused that it was everywhere, trapped in and by its own silence; bits of dirt in crevices of chapped hands, the stuff that clings to discarded dental floss, tiny relics of human bodies mixed into dust bunnies: bits of peeled skin, eyelashes, crusted snot, fallen hair (long and short), the hangnails, toenails, and fingernails.
(time was the reality of the curse.)
voices turned pale from inactivity, becoming albino like the creatures that once lived so deep in the sea, away from the self-righteous light. the sounds of digestion and cracking knees when squatting were louder than a concert of any utterances that had once been made.
temperature became important again, as did the nerves just under the tender outer shell of skin.
we began to feel the cells of our lungs imbibing oxygen for the first time, as they had always done, exhaling as much as possible each time just to see the chest rise again and then again. alive. (how lucky.)
some of us developed the ability to wiggle our ears. a few already could move at least one. this proved to be an advantage as these individuals taught the others, eventually founding a new army of auditory ability.
this corps received the transmission of our sins, hearing the green-blood pain the earth was in, as it rocked itself back and forth, curled up in the fetal position.
the sound, a deep yellow-green monosyllabic tome, was translated into gestures made by bones moving to invisible vibes, dancing without deliberate design, motion projected into the marrow by the dying pulse of the land.
this is how we came to re-learn ourselves. we didn't write the history of what was, nor did we construct a diary of the transition: language got us to this point and it was never to be the conductor of the orchestration of our lives again.
the ticking clock of seasons was lost. but out of it the gain was immeasurable. a shattered sea within the frozen crystals of the previous mind.
3.04.2005
the greatest catastrophe
is not having a theater in which to construct the maps of your sounds, the code to create the alias of/or self. Logic does not structure the flow of fame, only conduits of surface loop together the memory of information, Cool Information, that is rich enough to dance on (as it constructs) the surface itself.
Language, language, language. Blankets of identity. Scarves of warm riddles. rhetoric keeps us softly at the bay of technology behind curtains, hidden. taking cover. relinquishing freestyle action.
>>WARNING>> this was written using words appropriated from Peter Halley's Hypnotext project, a take on dj spooky's rhythm science text<<
Language, language, language. Blankets of identity. Scarves of warm riddles. rhetoric keeps us softly at the bay of technology behind curtains, hidden. taking cover. relinquishing freestyle action.
>>WARNING>> this was written using words appropriated from Peter Halley's Hypnotext project, a take on dj spooky's rhythm science text<<
3.02.2005
when do you know if something is done?
at least if you over-cook a cake the sweet smell eventually is over-powered by the burn. a bunch of yellow tulips are at the foot of the bed. they aren't from you, or any other version of you, but i imagine they could be. scattered. spilled. the petals open too much, too quickly, because of the heat. their eventual decay marks the end of their function.
then an email, a little reply to a little thing i forgot my fingers so quickly typed and shot off into the "maybe you'll read this" abyss of uncertainty and chance. i try not to read too much into it. just a reply, just as quick as my original impluse-driven, get-me-into-trouble-sometimes typing fingertips. too bad the one thing i care about was the content of the reply. too bad an event was suggested, but was an invitation for one, not two.
if asked "how are things" is there really a chance to reply with something that doesn't fit the norm, the expected, the digital form of small talk? too bad your list of things was so small; goes to show how little of me you know now.
and why am i caring to talk about this here? because writers aren't good at knowing how to finish things off, where to close the chapter, when it's time to turn the page. or if a book has become bonfire material only.
so. tell me. was our we actually just half-baked? or would i never adjust to the new taste that time has flavored for you?
then an email, a little reply to a little thing i forgot my fingers so quickly typed and shot off into the "maybe you'll read this" abyss of uncertainty and chance. i try not to read too much into it. just a reply, just as quick as my original impluse-driven, get-me-into-trouble-sometimes typing fingertips. too bad the one thing i care about was the content of the reply. too bad an event was suggested, but was an invitation for one, not two.
if asked "how are things" is there really a chance to reply with something that doesn't fit the norm, the expected, the digital form of small talk? too bad your list of things was so small; goes to show how little of me you know now.
and why am i caring to talk about this here? because writers aren't good at knowing how to finish things off, where to close the chapter, when it's time to turn the page. or if a book has become bonfire material only.
so. tell me. was our we actually just half-baked? or would i never adjust to the new taste that time has flavored for you?
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