3 days ago
Friday, December 11, 2009
Monday, December 7, 2009
outliers.
The withering sky looms a gray, purple glaze.
It's going to rain, I mumble. I turn around from the front door, back into my closet.
Proper precautions must be made. Shoes, no sandals. Jacket. Garbage bags, wrapped over messenger bag, yesterday's newspaper, it goes under my butt--the sandy, oily street always gets kicked up from my bicycle wheels--I look like a fool, a dry fool, notwithstanding...Bike tires. They're pumped, tight air, compacted. This is necessary...one small flinch of my toes on the pedals, I'm flying ten feet now, airborne, suspended in flight. Moment of inertia. Angular momentum. Fair dice. Semi-infinite intervals--I've always wondered about this moment, complete surrender...but then back down from the heavenly air, and into a defined, grimy ground, a sand-papery smash, chaffing my arms, my forehead trickles lukewarm blood--this is serious, someone call a doctor--or better yet, just leave me here, it's over--no, I can make it; I'll ride like this to class.
I'll owe it to something, like a knife fight with a homeless man, or a dog chased me down, thinking I was the paperboy...yeah, the girls will go nuts. They'll sit there all intently, with eyes fixed to my now crusty, cardinal red cuts. Perfect. I've got them right where I want them. All the other guys in class, so jealous. I've got these scars now, but hell, what fantastic fables got me here! So worth the subterfuge.
So I jet out into the road, outward into oblivion, a greyhound leaving its confines, I am a fucking freed man, who needs shelter, look at all this space!
No helmet. Ever. I'm so roguish. And such an idiot. There's a myriad of recent cycling instances wherein I've narrowly escaped an accident, that, if they had indeed occured, may have been averted by a simple half dome of extraordinarily lightweight, jet white Styrofoam, held together by a spiderweb of nylon straps and balancing barely on such the pinhead of mine.
This axiom of being the only precaution necessary under the law--that and a set of red and white reflectors on op-ends of the cycle, dim little things, really going to matter, a hulk of an SUV comes roaring down 4th Ave in some fucking hurry, and are my baby lights going to somehow emit enough electrical currents to potentially blind the driver--in that split second where both of our universes, that otherwise would never have interlaced, respectfully--so that he makes a quick effort to swivel to the right or left of me, in a half infinite sign fashion, or maybe a concave swivel, or in some alternate universe may very well be able to actually leap over my half-terrified, half-accepting-death body, and I'd just go on my merry way, no harm done, have a nice day sir, we're both at fault here, no need to worry, no need.
It's the helmet hair though; I can't bring myself to class looking like that. So much time in front of the mirror. A little globule of hair paste, it looks tangerine inside, the feel, it's thick--what is it, not sure--I take a fingertip's worth and it's clear. Magic. Or, deceit. Maybe I bought it from a magic store, from an underscored mind, overshadowed by other more ubiquitous inventors, like Edison, or Franklin...what about...Nikola Tesla, yeah, that was it, I bought it from him, I remember he was amid electrical currents, time-space continuums and his notebooks, et al., as he painstakingly conjured up some sort of hair gel that changes color in the 0.3 seconds I will slip my finger in and out of the tube of gooey hair management and then out in the open air, where I am deceived; yet I pay homage to the great Tesla and his invention by slicking my hands through the backside of my cranium, so only the rear hairs stick up like I've been electrocuted, and the front into something more subtle and tame, parted over the sides, just like the master himself.
This look of mine, this reverence--I would not like to ruin it with a helmet.
So I leave the helmet to rust on the top of the back refrigerator, it's consigned to posterity, or it will wither to dust and die, and one day maybe someone will come by the ruins of this old house and pick it up, examine it, maybe take it back to their labs and put on white lab coats and clear plastic lab goggles, for contamination purposes, of course, and maybe they won't have white lab coats and clear, plastic goggles in the future...but we all want to perceive the future as something more familiar, yet our calculations so far have been sub par, like the matching Jetsons family garb, or Marty McFly's hover board. Yes, I want all these things. But it looks like it won't happen in my lifetime--such tragedy. And these future lab technicians, or future anthropologists, or maybe we'll just have aluminum robot hands doing all of this work for us--surgeries, babysitting, film directing, etc., they'll all be done by someone with a Nintendo remote controller from no less than 53 miles away, sitting on a recliner, one of those fold out kind, with the sparkly plastic linings, color options of course, and with a few toggles every once in a while they'll manage to complete some crazy feat, like spinal surgery or successfully land a rover on Pluto (even though we don't care about that planet anymore...moment of reflection...); and that God of Wonderful Feats--fondling a gray, plastic controller with multicolored buttons and joystick that gets stuck if you eat Doritos, or something akin to its sticky qualities--when you lick your fingertips to get all those salty, cheesy crumbs right off there--that's when you really control this situation of yours, like it's a boss level of a video game, all this practice, not for nothing!-- they won't care if they make a mistake because sure enough there will be space/time continuum options available, or maybe they'll just call them "Re-dos"--for short, of course--because you may actually lose that tangible here/now time while fumbling with those three rather spacious words, and you'd just say "Re-do!" and be back in action like this mistake didn't even happen.
...So the rain didn't come. It never comes--things we prepare for, I guess, never come.
And when you don't, you know, brace for some unfortunate set of quandaries that could, in all potentiality, send you flying into a wall of sheet metal, or a quarter-inch thick glass, or any and all possible items that whisk by us on our routine glide to class, there's room for outliers. Transient malfunctions. Data transmission errors. Fraudulent behavior.
The sky turns on a dimmer guise now. Could be a staunch cold tonight.
It's going to rain, I mumble. I turn around from the front door, back into my closet.
Proper precautions must be made. Shoes, no sandals. Jacket. Garbage bags, wrapped over messenger bag, yesterday's newspaper, it goes under my butt--the sandy, oily street always gets kicked up from my bicycle wheels--I look like a fool, a dry fool, notwithstanding...Bike tires. They're pumped, tight air, compacted. This is necessary...one small flinch of my toes on the pedals, I'm flying ten feet now, airborne, suspended in flight. Moment of inertia. Angular momentum. Fair dice. Semi-infinite intervals--I've always wondered about this moment, complete surrender...but then back down from the heavenly air, and into a defined, grimy ground, a sand-papery smash, chaffing my arms, my forehead trickles lukewarm blood--this is serious, someone call a doctor--or better yet, just leave me here, it's over--no, I can make it; I'll ride like this to class.
I'll owe it to something, like a knife fight with a homeless man, or a dog chased me down, thinking I was the paperboy...yeah, the girls will go nuts. They'll sit there all intently, with eyes fixed to my now crusty, cardinal red cuts. Perfect. I've got them right where I want them. All the other guys in class, so jealous. I've got these scars now, but hell, what fantastic fables got me here! So worth the subterfuge.
So I jet out into the road, outward into oblivion, a greyhound leaving its confines, I am a fucking freed man, who needs shelter, look at all this space!
No helmet. Ever. I'm so roguish. And such an idiot. There's a myriad of recent cycling instances wherein I've narrowly escaped an accident, that, if they had indeed occured, may have been averted by a simple half dome of extraordinarily lightweight, jet white Styrofoam, held together by a spiderweb of nylon straps and balancing barely on such the pinhead of mine.
This axiom of being the only precaution necessary under the law--that and a set of red and white reflectors on op-ends of the cycle, dim little things, really going to matter, a hulk of an SUV comes roaring down 4th Ave in some fucking hurry, and are my baby lights going to somehow emit enough electrical currents to potentially blind the driver--in that split second where both of our universes, that otherwise would never have interlaced, respectfully--so that he makes a quick effort to swivel to the right or left of me, in a half infinite sign fashion, or maybe a concave swivel, or in some alternate universe may very well be able to actually leap over my half-terrified, half-accepting-death body, and I'd just go on my merry way, no harm done, have a nice day sir, we're both at fault here, no need to worry, no need.
It's the helmet hair though; I can't bring myself to class looking like that. So much time in front of the mirror. A little globule of hair paste, it looks tangerine inside, the feel, it's thick--what is it, not sure--I take a fingertip's worth and it's clear. Magic. Or, deceit. Maybe I bought it from a magic store, from an underscored mind, overshadowed by other more ubiquitous inventors, like Edison, or Franklin...what about...Nikola Tesla, yeah, that was it, I bought it from him, I remember he was amid electrical currents, time-space continuums and his notebooks, et al., as he painstakingly conjured up some sort of hair gel that changes color in the 0.3 seconds I will slip my finger in and out of the tube of gooey hair management and then out in the open air, where I am deceived; yet I pay homage to the great Tesla and his invention by slicking my hands through the backside of my cranium, so only the rear hairs stick up like I've been electrocuted, and the front into something more subtle and tame, parted over the sides, just like the master himself.
This look of mine, this reverence--I would not like to ruin it with a helmet.
So I leave the helmet to rust on the top of the back refrigerator, it's consigned to posterity, or it will wither to dust and die, and one day maybe someone will come by the ruins of this old house and pick it up, examine it, maybe take it back to their labs and put on white lab coats and clear plastic lab goggles, for contamination purposes, of course, and maybe they won't have white lab coats and clear, plastic goggles in the future...but we all want to perceive the future as something more familiar, yet our calculations so far have been sub par, like the matching Jetsons family garb, or Marty McFly's hover board. Yes, I want all these things. But it looks like it won't happen in my lifetime--such tragedy. And these future lab technicians, or future anthropologists, or maybe we'll just have aluminum robot hands doing all of this work for us--surgeries, babysitting, film directing, etc., they'll all be done by someone with a Nintendo remote controller from no less than 53 miles away, sitting on a recliner, one of those fold out kind, with the sparkly plastic linings, color options of course, and with a few toggles every once in a while they'll manage to complete some crazy feat, like spinal surgery or successfully land a rover on Pluto (even though we don't care about that planet anymore...moment of reflection...); and that God of Wonderful Feats--fondling a gray, plastic controller with multicolored buttons and joystick that gets stuck if you eat Doritos, or something akin to its sticky qualities--when you lick your fingertips to get all those salty, cheesy crumbs right off there--that's when you really control this situation of yours, like it's a boss level of a video game, all this practice, not for nothing!-- they won't care if they make a mistake because sure enough there will be space/time continuum options available, or maybe they'll just call them "Re-dos"--for short, of course--because you may actually lose that tangible here/now time while fumbling with those three rather spacious words, and you'd just say "Re-do!" and be back in action like this mistake didn't even happen.
...So the rain didn't come. It never comes--things we prepare for, I guess, never come.
And when you don't, you know, brace for some unfortunate set of quandaries that could, in all potentiality, send you flying into a wall of sheet metal, or a quarter-inch thick glass, or any and all possible items that whisk by us on our routine glide to class, there's room for outliers. Transient malfunctions. Data transmission errors. Fraudulent behavior.
The sky turns on a dimmer guise now. Could be a staunch cold tonight.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
vitruvian man.
"I don't know, you just look ... different?"
My sister was unusually critical of my appearance during this holiday break. She hadn't seen me in four and a half months.
"I mean, don't take it the wrong way. It works."
"What works?" You're so fucking enigmatic lately. You know, I'm a big boy now. It won't hurt my feelings.
"You know, you just have, like, a different approach to everything now. It's nice."
I look at her eyes. Pretty deep.
Now I'm less than three years old. Not sure. I think it was around that time.
I'm in my play pen. Baby blue. Four by four. Nothing too gaudy. Just gray mesh walls and a few stuffed animals. Piglet. Pooh. And Eeyore. He was the best.
This is it, I remember. The moment of truth. I can do it, fuck, everyone has to do it some time or other.
Words of encouragement from the crowd now, blithesome:
"Oooo, c'mon!"
"Whose a big boy, Davey?!"
"My big man!"
"Ah, ahhhh. Awww."
This doesn't help. They can't hear me. If only they could hear me. I'd tell them I need more practice. The cooing is making me more nervous now. Trepidation. I'm not sure of myself. I'm never sure of myself. I didn't think my calf and groin muscles were fully developed for this sort of feat. This leap of faith. Jesus, just do it already.
Everyone's watching. Mom. Dad. Heather. She sits in the corner of the house by Dad's record player. She's not happy. Two years older and she can't believe all of the attention I'm getting.
I clasp the mesh wall. Small hands. More fat. Less bone. It's slippery. My hands are butter. How am I supposed to do this. Fuck.Stop looking. And quiet down. Consider this a diving meet. Or a Spielberg set.
No tape recordings at least. Dad never had time. Always at the office. Fighting crime. Maybe he was Batman, I thought. The human with no powers, and a boatload of money to spend. He had an alias: Christopher Knight. The former being his middle name. The latter, well, maybe he wielded a sword then. Should I call him Sir? So then my mom took only a few Polaroids and the like. Our scrapbooks are slim. My memories are odd and equivocal.
Fuck! This is tough. I look around at these giants with their gaunt limbs and their hundred-yard strides. It can't be too hard. Just baby steps. Right.
I hope I also develop a less hackneyed sense of humor.
It's Thanksgiving Day. We're watching the Macy's Day parade on the tube. My cousins' Harry and Stacey's home, a block away from Aunt Diane and Uncle Scotty's. They're getting older now. Aunt Diane had a stroke a few years back. Slower now. Very slow. She's frustrated. So my cousins thought they should live close.
Heather's down by the duck pond with Paul. Boyfriend of one year and three months. I'm on the porch. I read Michael Chabon's latest work. He's a Pulitzer Prize winner. Should be good, right?
I have a few inside jokes with her boyfriend already. I call him Sir Paul. Get it? Well he got it, anyway, and I didn't think he thought it was too creative.
They walk back down the street to the house. I watch them. Their long strides up the driveway. The air is coarse and cold. Paul, his hands in his jean pockets. Heather, one arm snugged close under his left arm. It reminds me of Dylan's Freewheelin' album cover.
This is a picture. I make two guns out my thumbs and index fingers. Fingertips connect. A frame. Centered. Snap. They are now cut out of time. I scribble a pantomimed pen in the air, a magic wand, moreover. I sign and date it: Righteousness Innocence, Carry Me. November 25, 2009.
But don't think twice...you know the rest.
Heather's still in the corner, playing with the plastic covering of Dad's Nitty Gritty Dirt Band LP. Good choice. She gives me the stink eye. Listen, I didn't ask to come here. Somehow my soul just wandered up Mom's, you know, and took hold of this physical self, that can't even get a stupid leg up -- fuck! I grasp the top of the pen, you're so weak right now. This is terrible. How embarrassing.
Body is aflutter. I squeeze the bar again. Fuck! This hurts. I can't bear. I start crying. This isn't that hard, I know it, so stubborn, just wait another day -- baby, fucking, steps -- you fool, they won't care, but I will, I know it, who am I proving, just myself.
I am livid now. My skin turns green. No, I'm Hercules now. So mortal, so flawed. No. I'm a fucking God. They'll see.
And then I planted one. It was perfect. Was it the anger? Pervading indignation that made me attain greatness? The perfect stance? Wondrous evolution of species?
I stand there gaping, a fool. I am an ape. Corner of my mouth is dry, uncontrollable; I drool a bit. It hits the floor, echoes. I'm the top of the tallest building on the planet. If you drop a penny from this height, it could kill someone! SMACK, right on their bald, baby heads. I didn't want that. I'm just enjoying the view.
Mount Olympus. What height! What wonder!
Heather takes small strides over to the pen. Her hair is curly. And thin. We thought she was bald at one point, my father felt terrible. His genes, his problem.
There's a faint, weary smile. It's a guise. Nothing I can do. I saw this coming.
You're not that interesting.
She feigns holding my hands. I know this trick. There's fire there, way back there, but there nonetheless. Her eyes are molten now.
She unclasps my fingers. Too stubby, I lose control. Swaying a bit, I'm on a balance beam. Man on wire. Such height. God-damn fingers aren't developed. She knows this. I rolled back on my ankles. Teetering. Tottering. Now my toes. Some of them crunch. They couldn't hold the pressure. Hey, hey cut it out. I know I'm new here. Hey, hey! Cut it out! Her grip is tighter, her fingers like icicles.
The crowd goes wild:
Aww, ahhh, awwwww!
So precious.
They are perfect.
Where's the camera. Oh, no film.
Ooooh. Little Davey has a friend.
I expected to fall. Down and down. I shriek, but not a loud , more like an abrupt yelp, the kind a wolf might make. Down and down. The wind is stale. Is there service on this flight? Oh well, should have eaten before I got on the plane. This is it, where's my rip cord? I can't breath. Back toward the ground, arms outstretched. Total embrace. I am humbled. I look up at God. The light is fluorescent and ugly.
Flash! Burst!
He's not there. Too busy, I reckon.
The glass on the edges of the building, make me look fat. I curse the reflection. Passing the copy room now, interns; they're such suckers. Someone makes another pot of coffee, hazelnut I think. Ten floors a second. This isn't good.
I look back up. Cosmos, infinity. I don't understand. It's nighttime now. I've been on this downward flight too, too long. Well, there's the moon, way up there out of reach, but so close, it's uncanny. I want to throw a lasso up there, right on the cusp. It's A Wonderful Life, where's James Stewart when I need him the most. He's been gone for a while now. I'll never understand.
The Moon begins to split. An diploid cell. Evolution. It was bound to happen sooner or later. It's amorphous, it retracts, splits the sky, wait, I'm not sure, I may have blinked. I close my eyes. This is bad. Really bad.
Open wide, baby boy.
An empty sky, no stars. There are two moons, splotched and tortured, floating ominously, red, tiny bits of black canyon. A Rorschach. I can't be too sure. The gorges begin to shift like ants, out from the mound, looking for leaves, now coming back in for the night, bringing the day's work to the home front--they swivel and swirl.
Jim Morrison's The End reels through speakers throughout the city. He screams.
Mother...I want to...WAAAAAA
C'mon baby,--------- No "take a chance with us
A singular dot, one on each red face. These are eyes now. Hollow pupils, perfect. They stare at my weightless corpse. A Vitruvian Man.
You fucking fuck! This is my family. Not yours! Take your fucking soul back downstream, and out from Mom's, you know, and don't ever come back. But don't forget Eeyore on the way out, I know you like that one. But listen, fuck you! -- Piglet and Pooh are mine. They were hand-me-downs. Asshole.
I get back up. Two feet. Fuck you too. I am on high. I can see the whole city from up here.
It's cold. It's been cold for a while now. I step outside my porch. Stage left. An unoccupied white rocking chair, white ashes on the ground, two cartons of cigarettes. Foreign inscriptions. Stage right. An empty bird feeder, red, clear. The mockingbird kind.
Walking down the steps, I notice a piece of firewood on the ground. I left it there last night. How careless. It's raining outside, the wood won't be good for another few weeks. We may freeze, the house gets ten degrees cooler for some reason. Science, I think, I'll just leave it to science.
I'm feeling groggy today. Guilty too. I missed my early class. It's the only class I care about, the one that you feel bad even if you're three seconds late walking in. I open my umbrella, it's way too big for me, a half dome, it disturbs the nature of things. Fingertips sting. The nerve ends on fire.
Ephemeral seasons. And so goes our temperaments. This thought goes along perfect with my maudlin disposition of late. I can't help it, it's the time of the year. The order of things, I think, yeah, just the order of things. Natural Selection. The emergence of new species. I hear that we won't have pinky toes in one hundred years. This is awfully staggering to me.
My sister was unusually critical of my appearance during this holiday break. She hadn't seen me in four and a half months.
"I mean, don't take it the wrong way. It works."
"What works?" You're so fucking enigmatic lately. You know, I'm a big boy now. It won't hurt my feelings.
"You know, you just have, like, a different approach to everything now. It's nice."
I look at her eyes. Pretty deep.
Now I'm less than three years old. Not sure. I think it was around that time.
I'm in my play pen. Baby blue. Four by four. Nothing too gaudy. Just gray mesh walls and a few stuffed animals. Piglet. Pooh. And Eeyore. He was the best.
This is it, I remember. The moment of truth. I can do it, fuck, everyone has to do it some time or other.
Words of encouragement from the crowd now, blithesome:
"Oooo, c'mon!"
"Whose a big boy, Davey?!"
"My big man!"
"Ah, ahhhh. Awww."
This doesn't help. They can't hear me. If only they could hear me. I'd tell them I need more practice. The cooing is making me more nervous now. Trepidation. I'm not sure of myself. I'm never sure of myself. I didn't think my calf and groin muscles were fully developed for this sort of feat. This leap of faith. Jesus, just do it already.
Everyone's watching. Mom. Dad. Heather. She sits in the corner of the house by Dad's record player. She's not happy. Two years older and she can't believe all of the attention I'm getting.
I clasp the mesh wall. Small hands. More fat. Less bone. It's slippery. My hands are butter. How am I supposed to do this. Fuck.Stop looking. And quiet down. Consider this a diving meet. Or a Spielberg set.
No tape recordings at least. Dad never had time. Always at the office. Fighting crime. Maybe he was Batman, I thought. The human with no powers, and a boatload of money to spend. He had an alias: Christopher Knight. The former being his middle name. The latter, well, maybe he wielded a sword then. Should I call him Sir? So then my mom took only a few Polaroids and the like. Our scrapbooks are slim. My memories are odd and equivocal.
Fuck! This is tough. I look around at these giants with their gaunt limbs and their hundred-yard strides. It can't be too hard. Just baby steps. Right.
I hope I also develop a less hackneyed sense of humor.
It's Thanksgiving Day. We're watching the Macy's Day parade on the tube. My cousins' Harry and Stacey's home, a block away from Aunt Diane and Uncle Scotty's. They're getting older now. Aunt Diane had a stroke a few years back. Slower now. Very slow. She's frustrated. So my cousins thought they should live close.
Heather's down by the duck pond with Paul. Boyfriend of one year and three months. I'm on the porch. I read Michael Chabon's latest work. He's a Pulitzer Prize winner. Should be good, right?
I have a few inside jokes with her boyfriend already. I call him Sir Paul. Get it? Well he got it, anyway, and I didn't think he thought it was too creative.
They walk back down the street to the house. I watch them. Their long strides up the driveway. The air is coarse and cold. Paul, his hands in his jean pockets. Heather, one arm snugged close under his left arm. It reminds me of Dylan's Freewheelin' album cover.
This is a picture. I make two guns out my thumbs and index fingers. Fingertips connect. A frame. Centered. Snap. They are now cut out of time. I scribble a pantomimed pen in the air, a magic wand, moreover. I sign and date it: Righteousness Innocence, Carry Me. November 25, 2009.
But don't think twice...you know the rest.
Heather's still in the corner, playing with the plastic covering of Dad's Nitty Gritty Dirt Band LP. Good choice. She gives me the stink eye. Listen, I didn't ask to come here. Somehow my soul just wandered up Mom's, you know, and took hold of this physical self, that can't even get a stupid leg up -- fuck! I grasp the top of the pen, you're so weak right now. This is terrible. How embarrassing.
Body is aflutter. I squeeze the bar again. Fuck! This hurts. I can't bear. I start crying. This isn't that hard, I know it, so stubborn, just wait another day -- baby, fucking, steps -- you fool, they won't care, but I will, I know it, who am I proving, just myself.
I am livid now. My skin turns green. No, I'm Hercules now. So mortal, so flawed. No. I'm a fucking God. They'll see.
And then I planted one. It was perfect. Was it the anger? Pervading indignation that made me attain greatness? The perfect stance? Wondrous evolution of species?
I stand there gaping, a fool. I am an ape. Corner of my mouth is dry, uncontrollable; I drool a bit. It hits the floor, echoes. I'm the top of the tallest building on the planet. If you drop a penny from this height, it could kill someone! SMACK, right on their bald, baby heads. I didn't want that. I'm just enjoying the view.
Mount Olympus. What height! What wonder!
Heather takes small strides over to the pen. Her hair is curly. And thin. We thought she was bald at one point, my father felt terrible. His genes, his problem.
There's a faint, weary smile. It's a guise. Nothing I can do. I saw this coming.
You're not that interesting.
She feigns holding my hands. I know this trick. There's fire there, way back there, but there nonetheless. Her eyes are molten now.
She unclasps my fingers. Too stubby, I lose control. Swaying a bit, I'm on a balance beam. Man on wire. Such height. God-damn fingers aren't developed. She knows this. I rolled back on my ankles. Teetering. Tottering. Now my toes. Some of them crunch. They couldn't hold the pressure. Hey, hey cut it out. I know I'm new here. Hey, hey! Cut it out! Her grip is tighter, her fingers like icicles.
The crowd goes wild:
Aww, ahhh, awwwww!
So precious.
They are perfect.
Where's the camera. Oh, no film.
Ooooh. Little Davey has a friend.
I expected to fall. Down and down. I shriek, but not a loud , more like an abrupt yelp, the kind a wolf might make. Down and down. The wind is stale. Is there service on this flight? Oh well, should have eaten before I got on the plane. This is it, where's my rip cord? I can't breath. Back toward the ground, arms outstretched. Total embrace. I am humbled. I look up at God. The light is fluorescent and ugly.
Flash! Burst!
He's not there. Too busy, I reckon.
The glass on the edges of the building, make me look fat. I curse the reflection. Passing the copy room now, interns; they're such suckers. Someone makes another pot of coffee, hazelnut I think. Ten floors a second. This isn't good.
I look back up. Cosmos, infinity. I don't understand. It's nighttime now. I've been on this downward flight too, too long. Well, there's the moon, way up there out of reach, but so close, it's uncanny. I want to throw a lasso up there, right on the cusp. It's A Wonderful Life, where's James Stewart when I need him the most. He's been gone for a while now. I'll never understand.
The Moon begins to split. An diploid cell. Evolution. It was bound to happen sooner or later. It's amorphous, it retracts, splits the sky, wait, I'm not sure, I may have blinked. I close my eyes. This is bad. Really bad.
Open wide, baby boy.
An empty sky, no stars. There are two moons, splotched and tortured, floating ominously, red, tiny bits of black canyon. A Rorschach. I can't be too sure. The gorges begin to shift like ants, out from the mound, looking for leaves, now coming back in for the night, bringing the day's work to the home front--they swivel and swirl.
Jim Morrison's The End reels through speakers throughout the city. He screams.
Mother...I want to...WAAAAAA
C'mon baby,--------- No "take a chance with us
A singular dot, one on each red face. These are eyes now. Hollow pupils, perfect. They stare at my weightless corpse. A Vitruvian Man.
You fucking fuck! This is my family. Not yours! Take your fucking soul back downstream, and out from Mom's, you know, and don't ever come back. But don't forget Eeyore on the way out, I know you like that one. But listen, fuck you! -- Piglet and Pooh are mine. They were hand-me-downs. Asshole.
I get back up. Two feet. Fuck you too. I am on high. I can see the whole city from up here.
It's cold. It's been cold for a while now. I step outside my porch. Stage left. An unoccupied white rocking chair, white ashes on the ground, two cartons of cigarettes. Foreign inscriptions. Stage right. An empty bird feeder, red, clear. The mockingbird kind.
Walking down the steps, I notice a piece of firewood on the ground. I left it there last night. How careless. It's raining outside, the wood won't be good for another few weeks. We may freeze, the house gets ten degrees cooler for some reason. Science, I think, I'll just leave it to science.
I'm feeling groggy today. Guilty too. I missed my early class. It's the only class I care about, the one that you feel bad even if you're three seconds late walking in. I open my umbrella, it's way too big for me, a half dome, it disturbs the nature of things. Fingertips sting. The nerve ends on fire.
Ephemeral seasons. And so goes our temperaments. This thought goes along perfect with my maudlin disposition of late. I can't help it, it's the time of the year. The order of things, I think, yeah, just the order of things. Natural Selection. The emergence of new species. I hear that we won't have pinky toes in one hundred years. This is awfully staggering to me.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
I did it for the pickles.
Now, some of you may take that as some sort of convoluted, homoerotic message. Others a non sequitur that has no bearing whatsoever on what I’m about to divulge into on this series of pixilated prose. You know, it has nothing to do with neither me, nor my preference for all things pickled and not in their prime. This has to do with something far superior, something we are about to embark on, an voyage, of sorts, masked by complete and complex nostalgia, yet utter and staggering harmony. We’re in it, my friends – this is it. Don’t get seasick, because, well, at this point, were almost there. I can see land, and I’m already drunk from whiskey and wine or whatever in those barrels, because that’s what we drink in now, on these ships, as we are downwind and soaring. There’s no worries, mate, nothing to worry about at all, because you let the wind take care of you at that point and just fly three sheets to the wind, my friend, three sheets to the wind. And you may be thinking, okay man, I don’t drink, how can you compare apples to giraffes here, when I don’t know that feeling, that buzz you get when the sour nectar streams through you, seeping into cavities and caverns and all corners of the brain and the neural connections get fizzed and the synapses say, hey, it’s time to take five, and your drunken brain tells the limbs to loosen up, do a little fox-trot man, dig it, that’s it, let loose, you feel like puddin’ now, don’t you? – oh, don’t fight it, do not fight it, or else I may not be able to handle myself, and myself being me, the brain, which is telling you to fucking let go, just leave your limbs to me, consider me a babysitter of sorts, just call me when you get back from the movies, or “the movies,” and I’ll be sure to tuck theses bones into bed before midnight. (Wink)
And so that’s sort of how it is, you know, like, sans hyperbolic rant, but you see – there it is again, a rant, an extension of reality; we all just want to add some essence to our banal existence, some kind of heady afterthought. But don’t stray too far, it’s nothing to be scared of, no, no, just add a little poetry to your order at the pizza counter – you know, something like, hi, how are you – good, good, now, before I was about to order, I had noticed your tattoo, that brilliant little thing poking through those two tank top straps like field goal posts, a punt leading straight to the heart. But it’s ironic. I get it, a tattoo of a heart outside of your actual essential organ, fantastic, just incredibly fantastic of you, well, what’s my name? Well aren’t you the acute observer, you see what I’m doing, don’t you? – I’m slowing things down here, halting the mundane order of things, just about twenty-five more seconds, that’s all I’ll take. Can we all just pause, and see this, here? You know? – What? Oh, okay, I was just seeing if the – very well penned – calligraphy, right there, over your true heart, and arching over the painted heart like Apollo's arrows...No, I mean, I realize that you’re a woman, okay, so Artemis then, she still flung those things around, right? – I’m just trying to make a pretty image for you here, but I honestly think mythology is up for interpretation, right? – like Jesus presumably being black; okay, I digress. Your tattoo that reads – “If I die, take this, please.” – how transparent we are – ha, no, I’m kidding, but I like it, it goes with the whole unconcerned disposition I get every time I come here. But I just wanted to say hello, and I appreciate the extra rolls you give me when I order a salad, and the half wink I see that may, mistakenly, or whatever, come my way. It hurts, you know, when girls do that, such silly games we play. I think Bret Easton Ellis wrote something about that, yeah. I know. I was born that year. But regardless, I read it, and disagreed with some of his convictions, like my generation’s death of romance, or the lethargic state of The Party. You know, my friends have thrown a few good Parties over the years, and I still open the door for dates of mine. C’mon, you’re forcing me to embody Cassandra here. And fuck, I know, she was a girl, just go along with me here. We could be great, you and me, I’d twirl the pizza dough up in the air in the back while you keep the patrons in line, and you’re so nonchalant, I love it. Like, I know it’s not ideal, we’d have to take out another mortgage and you know, I’d have my softball games with the guys every Wednesday night, and then we go out to the bar after, you know that. Fuck, okay, I understand, I’m getting ahead of myself. But this isn’t Troy; this is real shit here, the city won’t be destroyed any time soon; we still have time. I can’t say this for everyone, but I appreciate your time and consideration here. Goodbye, Apollo, and good luck with your heart.
There was some sort of, like, freak exodus of about thirty some odd teenage-looking boys and girls (they look younger and younger nowadays, are they getting enough Calcium? Wheaties, my friends, and a half cup of low-fat milk every morning). Well they were traipsing up across 3rd St. downtown at the ungodly hour when people have to decide where they are going to stake out for the night. It’s a tough decision; we usually choose the wrong place, get dragged to some dreary Party where your own sex clearly outweighs the opposite, and you’re stuck, because your brain hasn’t tucked you in yet and Jesus, ten blocks is a long way from home to walk. So you indulge. You need to calm your brain. It’s ordered too many Pay-Per-View movies on our TV and now we’re home and you just can’t tear yourself away, c’mon brain, it’s time to go home. And then it hits you. Yes! There’s only one place in town that you can be assured of respectable dining, a place where the cashiers are working out the last few words of a crossword puzzle, and you come to the counter in just the right moment to swoop in and take a peek at the chicken-scratched checkerboard of words and realize – “fuck, I know that one, what’s a four-letter word for the Greek god of love, fuck! I know this. It’s … it’s … Eros! Yes, Eros! Fuck, Eros!”– and you’ve blow your cover but the cashier blurts out – “fuck yes! – immediately after your original “Fuck, Eros!” – like some sort of call-and-response mantra, and then screams “I finished the Friday crossword, you all are mother fuckers!” – to which you are congratulatory and know that you aided in the effort to undermine the crossword guru Rich Norris. And just then the cashier rings you up and – no fucking way – it’s about four bucks off the price tag of my meal. I ponder this for a moment, maybe her fingers are sticky or she forgot a decimal or something, but shit yeah, I’ll sacrifice eternal-Friday-crossword-finisher glory in exchange for ghostwriter status and a significantly less costly midnight munchies.
And don’t think I won’t leave without telling you how sweet these pickles are. No, don’t get all Freudian on me – I’m talking about the most well composed piece of art, the most fantastic component of the night; I’m talking, of course, about the Flacos sandwich shop. Nothing outstanding out front, really, just a corner sandwich shop, the kind of place you’d go on a whim. But because you went out sailing again, halfway through the week (again) – because you deemed it necessary to take a few swigs from the barrel before you hit land, before you are set free to explore your new soil – fresh, but foreign new world. You need this small token of lucidness, something to remind you of your divine dwelling, the place you came from, the constant you take with you every time you set out. This fucking ... stupid ... sandwich. Yeah, I know, it’s small – really small, like a picture of your wife to clasp during war, or that videotape your wife sent you of your baby girl’s first steps, that you replay over and over, before you are sent out into the desert; and fuck does it get lonely out here, out at sea I mean, but it’s the same thing – way, way far out here. And just then you hear rings in your ear, it brings you back down. And they register as faint twangs, perfectly spaced with other familiar arrangements – yes, banjo strings I think, Key of G, as usual. And then the voices come reeling in, and they spin around inside your head like vultures that feed off memories of youth and all that was decent at one time. Yes, that’s our hometown boy Claytor again, see him there, through the crowds, right there! – on the mic, on the banjo, with five plastic picks dancing across tiny bronze and silver fibers – they resonate in and out of your heart that you’d tear out in an instant to go back.
And so that’s sort of how it is, you know, like, sans hyperbolic rant, but you see – there it is again, a rant, an extension of reality; we all just want to add some essence to our banal existence, some kind of heady afterthought. But don’t stray too far, it’s nothing to be scared of, no, no, just add a little poetry to your order at the pizza counter – you know, something like, hi, how are you – good, good, now, before I was about to order, I had noticed your tattoo, that brilliant little thing poking through those two tank top straps like field goal posts, a punt leading straight to the heart. But it’s ironic. I get it, a tattoo of a heart outside of your actual essential organ, fantastic, just incredibly fantastic of you, well, what’s my name? Well aren’t you the acute observer, you see what I’m doing, don’t you? – I’m slowing things down here, halting the mundane order of things, just about twenty-five more seconds, that’s all I’ll take. Can we all just pause, and see this, here? You know? – What? Oh, okay, I was just seeing if the – very well penned – calligraphy, right there, over your true heart, and arching over the painted heart like Apollo's arrows...No, I mean, I realize that you’re a woman, okay, so Artemis then, she still flung those things around, right? – I’m just trying to make a pretty image for you here, but I honestly think mythology is up for interpretation, right? – like Jesus presumably being black; okay, I digress. Your tattoo that reads – “If I die, take this, please.” – how transparent we are – ha, no, I’m kidding, but I like it, it goes with the whole unconcerned disposition I get every time I come here. But I just wanted to say hello, and I appreciate the extra rolls you give me when I order a salad, and the half wink I see that may, mistakenly, or whatever, come my way. It hurts, you know, when girls do that, such silly games we play. I think Bret Easton Ellis wrote something about that, yeah. I know. I was born that year. But regardless, I read it, and disagreed with some of his convictions, like my generation’s death of romance, or the lethargic state of The Party. You know, my friends have thrown a few good Parties over the years, and I still open the door for dates of mine. C’mon, you’re forcing me to embody Cassandra here. And fuck, I know, she was a girl, just go along with me here. We could be great, you and me, I’d twirl the pizza dough up in the air in the back while you keep the patrons in line, and you’re so nonchalant, I love it. Like, I know it’s not ideal, we’d have to take out another mortgage and you know, I’d have my softball games with the guys every Wednesday night, and then we go out to the bar after, you know that. Fuck, okay, I understand, I’m getting ahead of myself. But this isn’t Troy; this is real shit here, the city won’t be destroyed any time soon; we still have time. I can’t say this for everyone, but I appreciate your time and consideration here. Goodbye, Apollo, and good luck with your heart.
There was some sort of, like, freak exodus of about thirty some odd teenage-looking boys and girls (they look younger and younger nowadays, are they getting enough Calcium? Wheaties, my friends, and a half cup of low-fat milk every morning). Well they were traipsing up across 3rd St. downtown at the ungodly hour when people have to decide where they are going to stake out for the night. It’s a tough decision; we usually choose the wrong place, get dragged to some dreary Party where your own sex clearly outweighs the opposite, and you’re stuck, because your brain hasn’t tucked you in yet and Jesus, ten blocks is a long way from home to walk. So you indulge. You need to calm your brain. It’s ordered too many Pay-Per-View movies on our TV and now we’re home and you just can’t tear yourself away, c’mon brain, it’s time to go home. And then it hits you. Yes! There’s only one place in town that you can be assured of respectable dining, a place where the cashiers are working out the last few words of a crossword puzzle, and you come to the counter in just the right moment to swoop in and take a peek at the chicken-scratched checkerboard of words and realize – “fuck, I know that one, what’s a four-letter word for the Greek god of love, fuck! I know this. It’s … it’s … Eros! Yes, Eros! Fuck, Eros!”– and you’ve blow your cover but the cashier blurts out – “fuck yes! – immediately after your original “Fuck, Eros!” – like some sort of call-and-response mantra, and then screams “I finished the Friday crossword, you all are mother fuckers!” – to which you are congratulatory and know that you aided in the effort to undermine the crossword guru Rich Norris. And just then the cashier rings you up and – no fucking way – it’s about four bucks off the price tag of my meal. I ponder this for a moment, maybe her fingers are sticky or she forgot a decimal or something, but shit yeah, I’ll sacrifice eternal-Friday-crossword-finisher glory in exchange for ghostwriter status and a significantly less costly midnight munchies.
And don’t think I won’t leave without telling you how sweet these pickles are. No, don’t get all Freudian on me – I’m talking about the most well composed piece of art, the most fantastic component of the night; I’m talking, of course, about the Flacos sandwich shop. Nothing outstanding out front, really, just a corner sandwich shop, the kind of place you’d go on a whim. But because you went out sailing again, halfway through the week (again) – because you deemed it necessary to take a few swigs from the barrel before you hit land, before you are set free to explore your new soil – fresh, but foreign new world. You need this small token of lucidness, something to remind you of your divine dwelling, the place you came from, the constant you take with you every time you set out. This fucking ... stupid ... sandwich. Yeah, I know, it’s small – really small, like a picture of your wife to clasp during war, or that videotape your wife sent you of your baby girl’s first steps, that you replay over and over, before you are sent out into the desert; and fuck does it get lonely out here, out at sea I mean, but it’s the same thing – way, way far out here. And just then you hear rings in your ear, it brings you back down. And they register as faint twangs, perfectly spaced with other familiar arrangements – yes, banjo strings I think, Key of G, as usual. And then the voices come reeling in, and they spin around inside your head like vultures that feed off memories of youth and all that was decent at one time. Yes, that’s our hometown boy Claytor again, see him there, through the crowds, right there! – on the mic, on the banjo, with five plastic picks dancing across tiny bronze and silver fibers – they resonate in and out of your heart that you’d tear out in an instant to go back.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
sandorkraut
wild fermentation and the revolution will not be microwaved author, Sandor Ellix Katz, will be in Gainesville Jan 8th and 9th for Fermentation Workshops at CMC and the Message School.
I dream of seeing this guru so i highly recommend putting it in your calendars now. there are going to be many crazy nights, and all-nighters till then.
http://www.wildfermentation.com/events.php?id=158
I cannot believe he is coming to gainesville!!!!
peace, love and lactobacilliéd foods
xoxo
I dream of seeing this guru so i highly recommend putting it in your calendars now. there are going to be many crazy nights, and all-nighters till then.
http://www.wildfermentation.com/events.php?id=158
I cannot believe he is coming to gainesville!!!!
peace, love and lactobacilliéd foods
xoxo
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