This Oc . . . ean is spread out, like consciousness:

Portrait of Emile Zola, Manet

Imagine razors underneath the expressway, when a dilemma turns into success; then who howls? Blues goes away, but Howlin’ Wolf keeps a-howlin’, or what about the guitar, what about those fingers that strum, (k)not-minding the guitar; what about the 'Thelonius' or the 'Monk' or perhaps a grand piano that has suddenly been shattered, what then of the “grand”? What, then, of the disassemblages of the corrected errors that build up one’s narcissistic pleasurables?

Stop-motion connections. Someone had told me that their wall was corroding th’ oth’ evenin’, turning into powdery-dust, quote on quote. Imagined this evening: staring out at fisherman, or steering out the fish. Either way, I am glaring, raring back, examining people’s lack of concern with many things. Like Chia Pets. Kinescoping the video of my life, playing it back without a soundtrack. Mental-nudity. Nothing is as nude as a homeless person. I was just eaten by a Feed Aggre'gator'.

One’s with fragile attitudes, and when they squeal the loudest, this is when you know you have hit them where it hurts. There are certain melodies and desires that are for hire, and maybe while resting one’s spine made of chicken-wire on the floor while one’s tired, shadows're so gorgeous they become photographic-worcestershire. When walking around in public, I often hold my hands together because I do not know what to do with them, and putting them in my pockets gets rather worn-out. I could, say, put them over my ears, but then of course I would miss out on all of the soundscapes of that which is around. I could put them in rude spots, but that is not my style. I could put them to my chest where my heart used to be, but my hands may get lonely there. Maybe over my eyes. Certainly there will be a tiny voice to lead me around so that I do not bump into people or some metal fixture.

Photographing so close that you can see “thought.” Garbo did it without command of the english language. To be a hurricane, or a poet or artist or playwrite: what is the difference?

Everyday, a star is born. I am in the direction of a whisper . . . everywhere. “If you have a picture of someone in mind and then suddenly you see the person, no more evidence is necessary. (...) I’ll never recover from that first look.” “Conscience is a thousand witnesses.” (Hobbes)—No, no, no. Nunnunno. Thinking of the person that thinks that they have seen someone commit a murder, how would I react? Thinking of being the “heavyweight” feather of being “on the air" without being a DJ, and that really stands for “Divided Jumble.” Thoughts of what Beethoven would have done had he possessed a tape recorder. This thought existed in the 1950s. More on tape-recorders in a few moments. (ting-ting)

—

I am drinking an entity or an entiTEA.

—

A Scenario is “spending the night” in my mind till the morning-light, a rush to the head or a rush ahead towards the cold toilet seat during the winter, could stand on a podium and shout with fingertips what I want to be said, with cat

-shredded hands. What I want is someone to run to me without moving a muscle, like collecting the dots instead of connecting them.

What never appears is what is remembered as what could have been, and “experience” is mountanous: a shaky enterprise, a toppled landscape; this is before abjection, this is about the racket in the foreign room keeping you awake, like a person that stays on your mind, grinds rhythms into your chest, into unstitchable places, the beginning of a mad-rush, like a scream from the sun, an individual voice (or an image) that leaves aimless droppings everywhere you go.

—

Overheard a woman on the telephone: “Jackie . . . are you in my house?” (said in confused tone of voice)

—

Written a bit o’go: The faintest blush, the unexpected elegance of imprints (the sun has dimples), merely immovable expressions, distinguished beyond autumn, ours, ragweed sneezes, yellow blooms, side-of-the-road levitating and there were moments where I would became mute until your every smile made the earth audible, like a rushing noise that suddenly fills a mournful stillness. What am I but conjuring voices from memory, in my mind’s garden, digging up what was remembered? Every day slips by gradually becomes sown with what I have been accustomed to. I am filming us together, in my mind, all the time. I believe in our landscapes, which is more than enough, as if all of this time I have only imagined that you have existed within a flat echo.

“Acai Berry miracle exposed.” — “You have got to keep the horse happy.” —

Some kind of enfant terrible of contemporary music. Or portraiture in painting—:

Many years ago, it had become a kind of romantic metaphor expressed within a painter’s own vision, ex: Leonardo’s smiles, with their onslaughting-labyrinths of meaning; Titian’s tranquil, sumptuous princes; the tragical-dwarfs of Velazquez; the eroded faces of Rembrandt mined from the Amsterdam ghetto, along with the images of himself. At last, in the late 18th c., style called up procession of rococo courtesans, dressed in the latest fashion as Roman vestal virgins and Dianas of the hunt. It was that same rococo that drained the treasuries of the 3 Louises, bringing about revolutions and the modern world.

(...) For their part, many serious paintes after Delacroix gave up all hope of painting the kind of portrait likenesses they now critically labeled “photographic.” These artists tore their subjects and then reassembled the features. They speckled points of pure color over a field of flesh; they dragged their brushes through great clots of paint, then drew faces wobbly with terror or ecstasy, like faces in a dream.

The most fascinating modern portraits of this kind of private, groping study:

Manet’s model, her face blasted by sunlight; Cezanne’s wife; Van Gogh’s own wretched visage, a bandage over the mutilated ear. Picasso and Matisse tortured their likeness even further, into splinters of brown pigment or flat splotches of crimson and green.

In bold, I think of course of Francis Bacon and his mutilations; psychological-demolishings. In the 50s, the same could be said for the kind of “new music” that was aweing the existence of audio-experimenters:

The important point to notice is that any one phrase, or, for that matter, any one single sound can now be located precisely, and, because it is preserved on a piece of ribbon that can be held in the hand, it lends itself to all manner of manipulation. Suppose, for a moment, that we have recorded on the ribbon the sound of a single note that was played originally on the piano. It is the characteristic of the sound of the piano to start with the percussive effect of the hammer striking the string. The tone, or the note itself, then follows, and it dies away quite rapidly. It is because of these two characteristics, among others, that we recognize the sound of the piano and can distinguish it from that of other instruments. Now let us locate on the tape just the spot at which the percussive knock of the hammer is recorded, and, using a pair of scissors, cut it out and splice the tape together again, using a piece of cellophane tape. When we play that tape, we now have a sound that stemmed from the piano, but that could not be produced by a “live” pianist. This is what is meant when we say that the tape recorder has given the composer a means of manipulating or handling sounds in ways that could have been only imagined before.

And, to think, that now, with the click of a few mouses, these very things can be created within seconds, versus 50 years ago, when it took quite a lengthy period of time to create these particular “tricks” and “effects.” Imagine Schaeffer, imagine Stockhausen, imagine Varese, imagine Boulez, imagine Ussachevsky, or Stokowski and the like . . . what they would be doing today.

—

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.”

I listen too closely . . . and determine that I am the ocean.

—

“I’m 27.”
Oh, well you don’t look it.”

—

Albert [Be]CAM[e]US.

—

Plunged into inversion. Cut. The ribbon has been spliced in half.

’ ’ ’ ’

RRaissnia, Traces

A kind of roaring Incroyable, Pensive:

Catholic(k)-damage’d head, tornadic brown, scrimmages of wildlife; the impenetrable way a stare from a stranger seems to energize one’s imagination. As if intimidation is expel’d via anger, via unhappiness, via attempts to overwhelm one with lack of response, or quick-word trinitrotoluene, or hmmphs and ughmphs and I think of Susan Howe: “It is fun to be hidden but horrible not to be found—the question is how to be isolated without being insulated.”

~

What Kamikazes would sing in their commercials: Wait til we get our brains on you.

~

We are all a hop, skip and a jump away, are we not, not that we are not, but I can feel my heartbeat in my mouth, or your heartbeat, like hearing a random conversation, within static, on a land phone. “I would hate to be the mic on this song.” Something in the air tonight, and to take it literally, this: “I am back ON THE AIR.” I would rather be a “byrd” than a “tambourine man.”

From somewhere:

"A mother in London recently described her ten-year old boy's reading behavior: “He'll be reading a (printed) book. He'll put the book down and go to the book's website. Then, he'll check what other readers are writing in the forums, and maybe leave a message himself, then return to the book. He'll put the book down again and google a query that's occurred to him.” I'd like to suggest that we change our description of reading to include the full range of these activities, not just time spent looking at the printed page."

When things go bad, things are always worse somewhere for someone else. Betcha by golly wow, I am where information existed before search engines. What is inside the mind’s cave but a visual poem corked inside of another visual poem inside of a bottomless bottom of bottles that need to be tossed into the imagination’s ocean, later to be found in the nervous gut.

Receiv’d (receiving) peculiar looks, primarily from random males, when learning that I could care less about football; this kind of shockgrimace, eyes opened wider, squinched foreheads, smirks, &c. -- as if my masculinity has suddenly perished, become completely lackluster, because I do not necessarily care for football. There are estrogen-mushrooms sprouting from my eyes, since I was born. Since I was born, fatherless I’ve been since I’ve “been.”

~

ee cummings: “all which isn’t singing is mere talking / and all talking’s talking to oneself / (whether that oneself be sought or seeking / master or disciple sheep or wolf)”

~

This, intriguing spectacle, from JACOB COW THE PIRATE, OR IF WORDS ARE SIGNS by Jean Paulhan:

Jacob Cow, the pirate.

MacOrlan used to tell how having fallen into the hands of Cow, with his sailors and negroes, the pirate made them stand in line on deck. Then he passed from one to the other:
-- What's your name?
-- Dick Smith, from Chicago.
-- Good. Throw him overboard.
They threw Dick Smith overboard. When it was MacOrlan's turn:
-- My name's Cow, he said.
Here, so great was the terror this name inspired, that Jacob Cow himself hastily made for his pirate ship, had his sails unfurled and vanished.
We use words as if Jacob Cow were to flee on each occasion. There are also prohibited words, those that refer to devils and dangerous animals: the French word for weasel (belette from beau) is now a compliment, the original word having become lost. When old maladies re-appear, it is under the guise of new words: some years ago the censorship forbade us to talk of the pest. And young girls with whom one speaks for the first time, refuse to reveal their names (fearing thus to give us some power over them). "I had never been in the doldrums, says Alcidius, before knowing the word." A strange demand, indeed, each moment maintained; we must believe we could no longer bear to speak, if words stoppped for an instant being signs for us, such perfect signs that we are bound to confuse them with the things themselves.
-- But in reality, Cow does not flee. Béril does not let himself be seduced by the rhyme, any more than by the sugar ad: "They are trying to bribe us," he thinks.
Without a doubt; and the reflection of Marcus Auerelius is not such as to allow us to easily refute it. The pun has little standing. By reason of which we would remark that the cases in which we thought we were going to take this confusion of words with things red-handed, were also undoubtedly those where the confusion already threatened ruin: as it its defect alone, and its cleavage, already held our attention.
Our demands, too, in proportion to this defect, will take on a new aspect.

& then:

Poets' defect.

Some genius may separate us from the poet just as time has separated us from ancient latin, or space from the Kikouyou: it would be a delicate task to attempt to analyze too exactly the steps towards this separation. An inventor of language, our poet is doubtless no comparable from every angle to the child, or to the man who tries to speak a foreign language. But at least he is quite as little understood, and for the same reasons.

~

“I have come to ask myself if words are not the thing / least intended for” -- The P Botzarro op. VIII B 225

~

The other orange-pale afternoon, I saw a rather Jane Eyre-lookalikeish white-skinned girl, but nothing of serious paleness, but of which with beautiful porcelain flesh, who had dark brown hair up in a bun (black from a distance, until she turned her head, noticed differently). There was a roaring moment (and this should be thought as silent) when she was staring out of the restaurant window: partial-head turn, wide-eyed, with enormous blue eyes that were beaming on seemingly one object (of which I did not look to see what the possibles could have been, but was more focused on her composition and this unbelievably-hollow-y scene) -- the kind of gazing one does when pondering within a kind of enriched, distant thought. Her lips were eloquently unparted and her face was blank with a motionless-gaze for what seemed like hours, but was only a few moments (perhaps thirty seconds). She resembled certain “classic” women that were painted in the 17th century. I regretted not having my camera. O, I still do.

From The second part, section 1 of Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici:

. . . and I finde they agree with my stomach as well as theirs; I could digest a Sallad gathered in a Church-yard, as well as in a Garden. I cannot start at the presence of a Serpent, Scorpion, Lizard, or Salamander; at the sight of a Toad, or Viper, I finde in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I feele not in my selfe those common antipathies that I can discover in others: Those nationall repugnances doe not touch me, nor doe I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch; but where I finde their actions in ballance with my Countrey-mens, I honour, love, and embrace them in the same degree; I was borne in the eighth Climate, but seeme for to bee framed, and constellated unto all; I am no Plant that will not prosper out of a Garden. All places, all ayres make unto me one Country; I am in England, every where, and under any meridian; I have beene shipwrackt, yet am not enemy with the sea or winds; I can study, play, or sleepe in a tempest.

Pop! Bam! Crash! Kaboom! Old-school Batman and Robin thoughts. Oh, and, from the above gorgeous text: “I could digest a Sallad gathered in a Church-yard, as well as in a Garden” thrills me to the end, without an end, rather. Something tacit. The vice-versa in my own heart shines as this, but who will, or would, ever know? Explanation is like disproportionate numbers; failing Mathematics, errors in numbers, in speech, in inexplicitness.

Neoclassical music, avant-garde silent ballets and ambient electronic noise. Philip Jeck’s Vinyl Coda III.

~

I recall the spooky looks of men never disappearing in places where I had been treated like a snarling hog. The beauty of catastrophe can no longer be dataless, as if it ever was, and the teeth of the Great White pierce the silvery-finned fish-frustration. Let me id

-olize my whereabouts, the pebbles of the softest riverbottom, for my heart was not created to be the torching trashcan flame that it has been, great vigor, bowling

-alley-grit. I feel dandy yet thinking of where the grumpy general public can slur their tongues towards, in the cave

-rn, in a 15th century solitary cell, the king’s orders to flirt with their eventual nod to give them the boot, or to kill with kindness. I thought: Let’s make them all poets! In

-stead. Instead, I think of how beautiful her eyes were, this girl I once knew. These eyes of hers, like swimming pools in the winter.

~

If I had a pet rabbit, I would name it Dagnabbit.

~

Infinitesimal insect on the monitor. This is more than enough.

Chris Burden

Engaged through language, even if wordless:

The Poet, or Half Past Three by Marc Chagall

The other day, at one particular hour, saturated in-between, I had felt overwhelmed, but also felt rather collected and calm (the 2 c’s in this case), like Lewis Hine’s Waiting at the Clinic, Hull House Neighborhood—torn between many things, many subjects (two, to be exact, but who’s counting?) and wishing that I could have connected the pieces together, like some broken Rubik’s cube, scattered about on the ground, but that would have been far too simple. Given my ambivalence (something like Walter Benjamin, perhaps) things had blended together over such time, even when the overhead tracklist that was playing on an apparent loop (which I have since discovered is indeed true). My heart, like Max Richter’s “Old Song.” Something of new debris, each day.

There are times when I have my head against cold metal framework; the smell of cedar in the air, in a dimly-lit backroom, with certain pointy spots where one must be quite careful. In the back of the building, on the outside, there are small pine trees gathered thinly together (balding?) on a slanted hillscape. The way the light must shine on them is perhaps like stars and constellations, creating new presentations from nature to be exposed to (perhaps for me alone; at least in my tranquil and meditative atmosphere). I am thinking of photographing them, perhaps with film, shooting with film, hoping for light-leaks.

I feel thoughts leaking this day, waterfalls from the mind, overthinking like the Pink Panther; not as mysterious, or perhaps so when I am told that I am “unreachable” and “unattainable” and “overwhelming” (flattery, oh)—who knows which banana-peel will be the most slippery? Spoke with a woman in her late-50s about being an introvert and we connected well (one of my “floaters” just made my jump). After the conversation she said, “I know that you’ll make a great husband.” (flattery, oh).

I have graduated from gravitating.

3 year-old girl named Boston giving me an evil “look”—squinched forehead, observant eye! Later, I laughed, snickered at her poignance. She then looked up at me and said curiously, “What?”

Today, fleet-footed, sail away like Enya-clouds, Enya-waves. A little girl kept asking her mother: “Mommy, where’s daddy from? (she said it at least seven or eight times, but the mother wouldn’t answer, almost embarrassed, or perhaps wanting to keep where he was born a secret, or “private.” She then said, “you’re something else today!”—“exactly what, I wonder?” crossed my mind)

Often overwhelmed, I am, by lack of help—lack of action—grins and grunts-galore. Mouth not moving, words come out snapping, dynamite from certain one’s tongues, popping like bubblewrap-sounds, but perhaps powerful explosives wrapped within small constraints. Anger in people’s eyes, sadness within people’s lack of kindness. Oh, if they only knew what my heart speaks, but selfishness is a thin razorblade cutting slowly, delicately; a slow velocity, perhaps, but with a kind of demolition-force. We are all barcoded, numbered like the days, culturally-hungry like the waves. Saturday backwash; people and their vomit-y attitudes. “What kind of animal are you?” Complaints of things being “downsized.”

Earlier, saw two women are on each side of an elderly man holding his hand, walking with him around the cul-de-sac. Feeling so arrested by such unmasked “youth” where age, as a youngster, can be constructed through visuals. I dislike “Ageist Language.”

The history of eternity aches us, aches the cusp of the larvae of the future, and my fingers touch the keys of malfunctioning typewriters as if language itself, being an entity all its own, could usurp the words right from my mind and out through the tips of my fingers, and I am in favor of being kissed by sunlight, no history is as warm, no history could swallow me in its banks; I am constantly ripening like a mudslide giving certain portions of the earth a taste of its own gooey medicine. Tomorrow never leaves. The leaves die in a future tomorrow, today the air is of that future, the leaves have browned in their leisure, or no, not in their leisure, and

I mean to say that there have been instances where I have felt as if I could have been cuddled in the arms of a sweet soul, but there have been instances where another has remained crumbled in their fear, as I had crumbled in the way that I had been steered with different gears, like how a poem must die when it has no place to go, and I could be held like the black cat that John Cage is holding in the photograph that I am looking at. I have often thought, Where is the unremarkable silverlining that certain people choose to subtly shape into me, weaving into my imagination, stirring verociously into my heart? One’s monumental-hopes, one’s breathtaking promises having often made me feel as worthwhile as a wolf in a crowded forest of Little Red Riding Hoods; a world erupting into red, or like a clumsy child on a swingset, swinging too high. I have thought: I am David Copperfield-ing all over this geography without you, dearest. This means that I am not walking carefully. This also means that I could be stepping on the Jurassic shells of our sleeping memory.

Rigid paradigm. Paradise frigid. My plate awaits in the refridgerator. Interesting to note a bit of text via Avital Ronell’s book Stupidity:

Refusal, especially of theory and thinking, takes on many forms, visceral, fantastic, and linguistic. The first two are easily traced as "refusal" manifests itself as "strong reaction," either in tossing or in the fantasy of tossing a theory book or colleague out of a window--the complement to Wittgenstein's "poker." The third form of refusal is much more difficult to locate since it appears or seems to appear as something not there or not understood or not gotten. These "refusals" are "performative contradictions" in speech. Not understanding or, too simply, stupidity follows in this direction insofar as it expresses itself by its incapacity to properly express itself linguistically. "Duh," "er," "um," are instances of this refusal, a refusal of meaning. But is it altogether wrong to refuse meaning? Let's examine "duh." "Duh." It is generally understood to be an extra or para-linguistic symptom of discourse's pause or failure—something akin to Aristotle's "mere voice" or an animal phone. It is not a word per se since it references the "unavailability" of discourse proper, but it is the title of a book, a website, and, now, included in an academic essay, perhaps not the first. "Duh" evokes presence through a feeling of absence, marking that which is unavailable to discourse or that which is obvious. For example, "'Duh' evokes presence through a feeling of absence, marking that which is unavailable to discourse or that which is obvious, duh (or 'no duh')." Since "duh" or even "no duh" is an extra or para-linguistic phenomenon expressing or performing an unavailability of or obviousness within discourse, it has theoretical consequences and, more precisely, consequences for the future of theory. "Duh," as a pause or failure or refusal, has been and remains the response to theory. This is easily testable by saying "différance" in a departmental meeting. The testable "duh" transforms into the detestable "duh" as the pause or failure turns to "duh" as the expression or performance of the obvious--"duh (or duuuh), that's theory," a revving up or a coming to realization of some awareness, however minimal or previously unavailable discourse. "Duh" is not all bad, however. "Duh" has a significant place in the discursive practices surrounding academic, sometimes intellectual, discourse. "Duh" is evocative, calling up, as it were, stupidity's rich tradition and within this tradition "duh" stands the ground of refusal. Refusing "duh" means resisting stupidity and its double, a "refusing duh," conjures up a break between discourse and world. This duality of "duh," the evocation of stupidity and its refusal, also elicits a response from knowing, stupidity's reciprocal and necessary condition.

“No duh.” Ugh, or “uh.” Cat just made her presence known, entered the door, licking lips. Jon Schmidt’s “Morning Light” just finished entrancing me. Now, Myleene Klass. Spoke with an elderly couple from Orange County, California that are fans of Groucho Marx and Red Skelton. The wife said, “When we were living in California, we once went by Red Skelton’s house. He had many cars, oh, he loved cars. He had them everywhere; garages full of them! Well, as typically known, most celebrity homes are closed-in with large walls and gates, but Red Skelton’s house wasn’t so, and we parked, got out and walked up towards the house and began taking pictures. Suddenly the maid came out of the house and began screaming to us, 'No pictures! No pictures!' and then she asked us what we were doing there, and we said that we were just fans that wanted a few pictures. The maid then calmed down a bit and said, 'Oh, take my picture then!'”

I wish you could see the glow of the sunlight through the trees at this moment. “The fern in the corner / is one part of this feeling.” Thomas Carlyle: “It is all a Tree.” And I say, “calling all trees, calling all trees!”

Ring-ring. Go “figure.”

A Scene from my favorite Adventures of Superman episode
titled, Lady in Black (1954)

Vilhelm Hammershøi

Musical Oblongata --

Painting by Ilya Repin

The surface of the earth is musical; I noticed this earlier when a painterly woman that was sitting on a bench wearing red high heels looked back at me, or maybe that was my beating heart that erupted into the surface of the earth—a tiny earthquake. I will keep telling myself this, keep shaking hands with miracles. Ponderings: “Chess is a game of understanding, and not of memory.” Brings to mind “STOP RACKING YOUR BRAINS // nobody reads poetry nowadays // it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad” (Nicanor Parra). This is almost as silly (a most delicately-horrible term to use in this case, perhaps) as Hitler’s madness in thinking that he was a Christian. There is a delay in our heroic contendors, Andante by Shostakovich, anti-monumental sounds. Today, could’ve danced with Yogini, pressed into the wool of my sweater, tethered into “excuse me, like to dance?”-contemplation. Freeze Frame. “Potential” freezes. Out of sight, your love (“whom do you speak of?” , never to return to the surface. My pea

-ce, hints of relics, “I’d like to touch it first.” Thumb and index fingers together, afterwards. Walking through a hallway, the light indicated surveillance equipment. Some days I feel like I am shrinking to the size of a keyhole. Thinking of many-colored centuries. My camera laughed at me today. It said: “I would like to become what I was created to do, but my DNA is in knots. Why do you grin like that?”

While discussing my photographic experimentation to V. a few weeks ago, she listened intently, but my theatrical-tongue is always in knots whenever I speak to people, uncertain if they actually care to know, or if they are merely humoring me, and maybe this is mental-math for over-observation, but she sd, “Derrick, have you ever thought of modeling?” Moi: “Oh, please! . . . I hope you are just humoring me. The only modeling I do is with claythings and Play-doh and whatever else I can bend.”

Found this: “You can cut the bread off their sandwich, write critical appreciations and walk their mother’s dog and they’re still gonna treat you like “the hired help.” ” Not sure where. It’s like going through battle and the only thing left is an axe-handle. (Yi-Fu Tuan: “Strange to think that the question “Who am I?” can be answered by a landscape.” )

The word for echo is Pockadunkquaywayle. O, pitter-patter!—

(“[4] It was unusual for the woods to be so distant from the shore, and there was quite an echo from them, but when I was shouting in order to awake it, the Indian reminded me that I should scare the moose, which he was looking out for, and which we all wanted to see. The word for echo was Pockadunkquaywayle.” [from The Maine Woods, by Henry Thoreau, 1864])

There is a “poofy” bush somewhere out there that looks like a damaged sandwich. I met a girl named Abby the other day at Starbucks. We spoke of many things. She has been searching for a trench coat. She said: “I’ve been looking for a trench coat. Something extremely obnoxious.”

A thought arose last night: Vegetarians have beef with beef.

Night, oh, covers me, seemingly circumvently.

Two Newer Photos, Two Older Photos:

B}a}c}k}b}o}n}e:

Picasso, Bust (1970) [This, yes, how I feel sometimes.]

I feel as though I could slip through the cracks of people as they look at me looking at them walking by. The bottom of dirty feet, like oily seas. How would I look in the fog? Something whispering: Come and find out.

(from?) The Kφpfe (a bit mysterious to me, but nonetheless, very interesting):

The saving effect of writing always resides in the secret of language . . . In eliminating the unutterable of language, in making it pure like a crystal, one obtains a truly neuter and sober style of writing . . . This style and writing, neuter and at the same time highly political, aim to lead to what is refused to speech . . . The intense orientation of speech in the nucleus of the most profound silence results alone in the effect.

Jealousy is such a vile, rotten thing. Ruins so many things. Including the mind. It does not take much to be happy for someone. “Puff of Word” (Nobukazu Takemura) telling me all that I need to know. Very Verily, Verily-very, some days Oh I feel like an ornament. I find it remarkable, or not (remarkably-sad?), that people “experiment” with “friendliness.” It could be compared to portable rain.

Experimental friendliness? Children do not perform these feats, or attempt to do so. The secret of true, genuine lovablity exists within the combined virtues derived from this mutual pattern of exchange. Every human being retains a childlike core in our natures. We are consistently searching for substitutes to replace the good parents of our infancy in our dealings with other human beings throughout our lives. (reminds me of “The man seemed young”). We will find these substitutes in many different entities, including employers, associates (those that help provide us with our “livelihood”); in a wife or husband who gives us love, comfort and protection; in heroic leaders who inspire us with courage and faith (at least, some of them). And, then, we find them in patient teachers and in companionable (and genuinely caring) friendships; those ones that lift us out of ignorance and loneliness through their sympathetic understanding of our needs (or when there is something in the air, blacker than Daffy Duck!).

In knots. Knotted. In knots. (Q: So there’s no knot equivalent of negative numbers? A: No, there’s not. But it’s more accurate to think in terms of reciprocals: If you take the number 2, then its reciprocal is 1/2, and if you multiply 2 and 1/2 together, you get 1. The knot equivalent of 1 is the trivial knot, or what is also called the “unknot.” But you can never cancel out any knot and get back to the unknot by adding it to another knot. There is no such thing as knot reciprocals.)

I remember the tears in her eyes; the kind that wouldn’t fall, just filled and filled until the eyes were completely pooled. I can often better understand the meaning of a stare.

The colassal jungle of a stare, like Holbein. Trading places with the surf.

Thomas Cromwell Holbein, by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1532-33

Photographs by Sophie Calle

Trusty Wiki: “Sophie Calle (born 1953) is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle’s work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines identity and intimacy. She is recognized for her detective-like ability to follow strangers and investigate their private lives. Her photographic work often includes panels of text of her own writing.”

More Here, Here, Here.

Strolls: the bones of my arms, waving, in the sunlight:

Such a glorious day. Bought film, took a stroll through the forest, felt like an eloquent phantom amidst the sunlight, bedecked by the endless charms of nature. Two yellow butterflies followed me around the entire time (as I predicted would occur). While in the forest, came across an enormous mushroom, lying on its side, was catching the light in a glimmer of gold; so many words polishing my esophagus.

Yesterday, spoke with a 60-year old-ish woman. In the late sixtees, she said that she once stood on a street corner looking at all of the hippies parading around. I asked if she were a hippy, and she said (laughing), “I was too busy having babies!” She said, “I stood there, thinking, My goodness, what in THE WORLD is going on?! But then, about ten years later, I was yoohoo’ing all over the place, just like one of them!”

Breezy-blowing wind through trees, through the window with which comprehension increases. Feeling Oscar “Wilde” and wowed today. I sometimes feel the urge to apologize to certain people for who I am, for what I am interested in, and it is like the essence of something contained within itself, and the only way to find out what it is is by becoming what it isn’t, therefore contradicting its contradictions and finding out what is sacred and less commonplace. A revolt in a whisper.

In my “spam email” inbox, the sponsored links are providing me with Spam recipe links.

Squeezed like a squid.

(Note to self: The texture of this day, like flaunting fruit towards a hungry mouth.) Cannot remember who, but this flips me: “Sometimes I misread people’s behavior if I’m having a bad day or feeling vulnerable and then later am gratified to find my vision was distorted or skewed.”

Back to my stroll: Sometimes my careless attempts have glimpses of truth intertwined in them in a way that makes photography seem like some “abominable satisfaction,” and some would see it selfish to find that one wants to “invent” the future, but the future is already existing; we are just consistently creeping towards it, second by second (some people, as I have noticed, live in inappreciable moments of time) with nary underbrushes of thought (like how, when venturing about the HOT October 8th road with my camera earlier this afternoon, I found myself commanding the attention of everything surrounding me, in ways that perhaps would have not been the case were it not for my Object d’art. It is like certain listening skills, certain lacks and gains, and the eyes “search out” something to photograph; intense observation, like Christopher Colombus in his prime, the “fat” of the land like a goldmine (gold-mind) to those explorers)—and I have a love-affair with nature each day, like some John Keats and Fanny Brawne sunshine (Keats to Brawne: “My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet - You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist: and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more - the pain would be too great - My Love is selfish - I cannot breathe without you.”—and I, Derrick Tyson [Patty once said to me in late 2007: “You should start using D.H. Tyson like D.H. Lawrence” . . . how flatteringly-embarrassing, I thought—I think of our emails, how lengthy and divine they often were, how expressively-poetic, how she printed them all out, had our stacked-correspondence in one enormous box—wondering what became of it, if she still has it all]) cannot breathe without nature (poetically, and lyrically and, well . . . literally).

Truth is, I have stop being so lazy with art, but “moods” are like moon-phases; I feel gagged on questionings and objectivism, but in a serene way; nothing violent. Felicia said to me after I told her that I am happy and content with my life: “How do you know that you are this way?” I said: “I just know. One just knows.” She said: “But, if you have never known the differences with sharing happiness with someone, how do you know that you are fully happy?” and I responded: “I have known the differences, which is the reason why, and how, I know. I know what to expect, what not to expect . . .”

I tend to stay silent for the most part—murmuring to myself, almost forcefully—always standing transfixed.

Back to photography: Recently, I am loving nature photography (why does that sound so . . . strange to say?). “Nature photography”—what is the nature of that phrase? Sounds so barbarious in a way, and I thought, “Every picture that I take is . . . a self-portrait. It has to be.” I ponder to-and-fro, restlessly, at times, the unavoidable noise in my mind clankering around, giving me speech-candy to taste on. Why should I apologize for my ways? This would be absurd. I was perhaps mentally-heavier as a child. Photography is dangerous in the right proportions—a wide semi-circle, a gap here and there, an empty space (fill-in-the-blank). Helps to make good friends, good conversations, but I cannot conceal what I don’t have, like some unbearable weight oppressed to one’s breast—a glance back in the dusk of day, before disappearing completely.

Revolving words. Thoughts. It is time to eat! (I’m staggering forward).

Sun Yat Sen Garden

THE PHYSIOGNOMY OF TRADE:

The Entomologist

Hattier

Laboureur

Fireworks Tradesman

Larmessier Habit de Meunier

A list of flops and flips, daily thoughts, other things

By Lucy Skaer

Today, had an ear-conversation w/ a deaf fellow; initial glances, outer words spoken, he clung to himself, thinking that he was merely ignoring me, until I learned of his disability in which he let me know by slightly-shouting and pointing at his ear. Moments such as this make me feel more appreciative with a kind of overwhelming industrial power, feeling more blessed than ever. My mind keeps rushing around all over the place like angry Christmas shoppers. Watched a group of women speaking in a foreign language—babies squealing like little piglets (one of them dressed in pink)—feeling so foreign like Alvin Curran’s “Wonder Bread”—feeling so foreign in certain places (she once said to me: “It is like we’re foreigners in this city”—we’d been in a certain city, unknown and wide-eyed with comprehension in our highest interest).

A particular man (seemingly unhappy; looks as if he probably snores) told me about his problems, how his son passed away—the german shepherd would stay in his room, would inform his son of when the alarm would go off for time to arise, but one morning the alarm went off, the dog was even suspicious this day, and his son never arose. He said, “I thought he may have just did not get up—being lazy—but he never did. I went upstairs, turned him over, his face had already turned blue.” His wife, passed away not long ago, as well, and he said, “I don’t know why, either. It’s crazy. Certain people in the hospital are NUTS, man; I think there is a cult going on in there. I knew someone that knew of certain nurses that would laugh at the way people were dying.” He went on, “To this day, I don’t know how she died. I didn’t have an autopsy done on her.” He had just had an operation, had been out of work for four months, had three to go, but they want him to come in to work now. “The ends of my fingers are really numb...” Later, he said, “...and I just had my truck fixed up, and now I’m looking for pots and pans, because my old ones are worn out. Everything is so cheap these days, and isn’t worth a crap. I hate glass tops on my pots and pans; they have to be metal.” The only thing left is he and his dog. He was grumpy, unhappy, foul-mouthed, and had a stick-it-to-you type of attitude, which, I thought, may be the primary reason for all of the problems and disappointments. I tend to always hold my tongue in these instances and just listen . . . and just, glisten. Grumbling, unhappy people? Be kind to them.

Something about the seashore, as a child, was like a “seasnore.” Anyhow, thoughts from work: this October-warmth feels like a tease; soon the freeze will chapmark every ground—one’s tongue, like a weapon, shall never prosper. Attitudes-aplenty around every surrounding ground, like gulping on rotten things, pulp of life unappreciated, so tragic, so dewy and “fooey”—chewy loosened teeth, corroded buildings taunt—Lesley once sent me photographs of the wounds on her legs—“I think of you in all types of weather,” she says, and last night the thunder woke me up with a dash, thoughts like “need to unplug the juice to the computer”—never got up, drifted dreamily, unremembered—woke up in a pool of language.

I stick to myself, taking that literally, as if my body were velcro on one side—a kind of yin and yang, or not really. A curious trail of something positioning itself around me?

People putting their trust in planets is silly, as if planets will somehow have some cosmic effect on one’s energy and life. It’s like trying to set in screws and wheels towards something that is unapplicable.

Sarah Mclachlan’s music depresses me, not to mention people’s toilet-mouths, the kind that go “kerplunk” and needing “fixing.” Maybe,

just maybe, I should have been a clock builder, making time go slower (reminding me of a particular “The Prisoner” episode, Patrick McGoohan-style). Imagining living outside of time, like God (soon to come).

Making “no bones about it.” Making muscles be about “it.” A wireless fantasy, like some Ussachevsky composition. Ah, then there is Luc Ferrari. Musique concrete delights. He once described his work as being like “electroacoustic nature photographs.” Ooo. I often thought, often pondered, thinking and wishing how I could've seen Arthur Rubenstein play Chopin. Time, time, it never, never settles, it never settles but it constantly changes, re-arranges, and projects itself all around like dust particles. I realized not long ago that the reason why I love avant-garde/concrete music so in-depthly is because it represents, for the most part, what is going on in my mind.

I chew gum when I am nervous. I also shake my right leg uncontrollably if I am sitting down while nervous. “Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.” Guy Debord (was bored?).

Robin sd: “You know, you remind me of my son’s friend." I sd: “Do I?” She sd: “Y-yeah, you, you do, and I know that I have told you this before, but you totally do.” I sd: “Ah, well that’s okay...” She sd: “You look like one of those hip ... hipster-type guys.” I laughed, sd: “Do I? In what way?" She sd: “Oh, you just do ... my son’s friend is kind of the same way. The glasses, everything.”

When I was 13, I was really into ninjas, and one year dressed up as one for Halloween (but I ran from people—My ninja-ness was like a soaking rag). Some people do not understand poets because poetry does not exist inside of them. It tries to enter into them, but it just exits, flees quickly. It has to be “wanted.” Recently ran across (or it ran to me?) Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwan. This, from 1987 from Afterwards, titled “Let Me Make This Perfectly Clear”:

Let me make this perfectly clear.
I have never written anything because it is a Poem.
This is a mistake you always make about me,
A dangerous mistake. I promise you
I am not writing this because it is a Poem.

You suspect this is a posture or an act
I am sorry to tell you it is not an act.

You actually think I care if this
Poem gets off the ground or not. Well
I don't care if this poem gets off the ground or not
And neither should you.
All I have every cared about
And all you should ever care about
Is what happens when you lift your eyes from this page.

Do not think for one minute it is the Poem that matters.
Is is not the Poem that matters.
You can shove the Poem.
What matters is what is out there in the large dark
and in the long light,
Breathing.

How delightful.

The U.S. dollar isn't so “almighty” anymore. Congress cannot stop the death of the American dollar because congress doesn’t control its destiny. “Every peregrine has a toothlike projection on each side of its upper mandible that enables it to dislocate the vertebrae at the base of its victim’s cranium.” This, like a perfected-metaphor for our government; certain politicians are like frollicky peregrines.

No apparent notice in such tsk-tsking!

Sleepy. Looked in the mirror earlier, noticed that my head looks like Sinead O’Connor’s. “Nothing Compares” (or compared, in this case) to this evening’s light. I will most likely repeat this tomorrow.

(found): N40570321072

Thoughts, like Bombs

He meant: “H” as in “Hello” (No “Hello” Bombs)

Today, the mist of rain began with cold-flux of wind, arising from the “great white north”; ice-spots collide in my blood, dancing birds dance no longer, hide in their nests, the seasons are like shifting sands, but they linger, lasting throughout the elongated days; white and brown (collect ideas, never frail, like loosened leaves), my elbows ache when I bend to write about the oncoming winter, but the swift, delicate, pillowy-heart of mine sighs with the deepest relief as winter approaches calmly to collect me up into its luxurio

-us air. “Us air.” We are the air. Walking lungs, walking in gaping spaces. O such relief from warmth (crystal clear skies and the sunshine feels “treated” somehow, with change like a bouquet of spice dancing upon our skin. Each day passes, winter greeting dinnerware of clouds and windsongs. My fingers pinken, as do my ears, my cheeks, my my, my, my. Such sweet validity. The end-of-day sunset, like damask stripes of coordinating patterns. I sd: “You think I’m weird, don’t you?” and Ashley A. sd (with her wonderful Californian accent):

“No, I don’t think you’re weird. You’re just different.” Feeling overly-modest, always. At work, thought of cyborg technology, thought of how knowledge “grows” like biology if one keeps an open-mind, if one listens. I have learned that listening to someone that is much older can really deepen the canyons of the mind. Anyhow, if I had a nickel for every rude look I have received from someone, I would be rolling in mountains of mula, or mula-meadows, something like a hulahoop, my veins flow quicker when the ticker of the clock gets nearer to the “freedom” destination. Dry throat and a tongue as stale

as hour-chewed bubblegum (the color pink! again! come to mind). I feel surrounded by women in the nursing field, raised within estrogen, with our without it, and when I think of poetry, I think of women, like how felines always remind me of females (even male cats are feminine-like). Winter is boiling autumn in its fiesty pot. An old man was staring at me today in Applebee’s. I saw another man at the bar frictionize his hands together before grabbing a hold of his enormously-large glass of foaming beer. I tend to . . . feel . . . in-between . . . emotions this day;

expectations and hopes that tend to exceed my own barriers, but of which clngs to my heart and mind (not like some offthewall love story, like Keats or Chopin-like love, but a kind of exploding of the solar-plexus; my brain sitting atop an enormous “stake” as Vlad The Impaler snickers from below while eating his supper), but thinking of how blessed I am to be so top-sided at times; perhaps unintentionally lopsided. My heart flutters for my dear Lord, flooded smorgasbord, flurry of boredom at work, or lackthereof. And then comes

THE ECHO

O

O

o

o

.

John Wieners: “When the echo falls / one will dismiss it. / When it calls again, / one will miss / it, falling in love with the present, / while one is able of it. / When the shadows enlarge, will one / enter it, or stay where / he is now. What will one do, how” . . . The mind, often like an echo, is in a state of trepidation from the slightest noise (like the slamming of a cabinent or a door), and skin, what is flesh, what is skin? What is it but odd typeset, long sequences of earthly-dust, eruptions of knuckles and fingertips . . . smaller patches of “showy” vesicles “containing a white serum, burning” . . . burning worse than anti-illuminati symbolism; something of a libido. The Gaping Mind. The soiled roots are expanding.

The Army National Guard: “We can read your minds.” (Spam-mail).

“Abandoning bravery.”

Received Flickrmail today. He sd: “I like your work because it Speaks. I don’t like your work because of what it is saying.” Hm, so if what the images are saying creates dislikes, then what are the images speaking that creates likeness? The images expel speaking, but they are saying two different things to him, I suppose. Well, as long as they do not sound like Pee Wee Herman playing in a Fun House, then all is a warm fireplace.

I used to think that it was I that made the ocean blue, but it was all because of you. I don’t need light for sight, because I have eyes within. An appendage of the fantastic. The waves take each breath we take, hides them in oysters. This, the true manifestion of pearls. “...and they say everybody steals somebody’s heart away.” This is quite true, except that sometimes they only take a small portion, while leaving the remains gasping in solitude and bafflement.

“If I were a swan / I’d be gone”

The man who really was Jekyll and Hyde --

DOUBLE TROUBLE!: Deacon Brodie with the
dice and cards that lead to his downfall

William Brodie was a well-respected man in Edinburg in the mid-18 c., and he shone as a model of “civil sobriety” in a straitlaced-type city. He was the son of a prosperous cabin-maker and was a deacon of the masons’ guild, as well as a city councillor (featherless fellow, perhaps, but well-gestured, distinguished and meant a great deal to the “big wigs” in the area). However, Mr. Brodie was also the model of one of English literature’s most horrifying characters, Robert Louis Stevenson’s schizophrenic scientic, Dr. Jekyll. For Brodie, like the gentle doctor, had a secret life behind his mask of virtue. By day, he was a businessman, but by the time the night-gulp crushed itself into the aura like stepping on dark-purple grapes, he was a mighty gambler (perhaps irritably?) and a vicious thief (very irritably). Bizarrely-enough, these “self-involved” secrets were unknown by anyone, not even known by his two mistresses (who had given birth to his five children). In fact, they did not even know about each other (not exactly Dostoievskyan!).

William Brodie was 27 years old when he turned to crime. In August of 1768 he made copies of the keys to a city bank and robbed it of 800 pounds (about $4,000). But as he went on to burgle scores of buildings over the following 18 years, no hint of suspicion from anyone ever fell upon him.

__________________

Getaway and Capture
__________________

The beginning of the end, however, came in 1786, when he joined forces with three petty thieves. Together, this thieving-conglomeration planned Brodie’s most daring “raid.” The head of the Scottish Customs and Excise. The gang was surprised by an employee, and even though Brodie escaped the chaos, one of the thieves, John Brown, turned king’s evidence to escape deportation for other crimes he had committed in England.

Brodie fled to Amsterdam, hoping to escape to America. But on the eve of his departure, the police caught up with him. Brodie was extradited and put on trial in Edinburgh. The evidence was damning; the police found the proof of his double identity: false keys, pistols, and a burglar’s black suit (reminding me of a particular Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode). Brodie was condemned to death, but on the night before his execution, he wired his clothes all MacGyver-like from neck-to-ankle to lessen the jerk of the rope and lodged a silver tube in his throat to cheat the noose. Unfortunately for him, neither trick worked. On October 1, 1788, he died on the Edinburgh gallows.

Nearly a century later, R.L. Stevenson and William Henley wrote a play based on Brodie’s exploits, which was titled Deacon Brodie, or The Double Life. The play was first produced at the Prince’s Theatre in London in 1884. In the play, the burglar explains the freedom he finds in his nocturnal life of crime. Two years later, Stevenson turned the theme into The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which of course was his memorable short story about the darker side of mankind. In the story, Dr. Jekyll discovers, through experiments with a drug (and in the book, Stevenson provided the concoction [recipe] for what he was drinking), that “man is not truly one, but truly two,” and describes how “I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man.” He goes on to explain the fascination with the experiment:

If each, I told myself, could but be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way, delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.

In this way, Stevenson explained the way in which the evil inherent in man took its hold on the good Deacon Brodie.

Deacon Brodie’s Tavern, Edinburgh

The Curious Cures of Dr. Graham

Natural public speaker: Dr. James Graham lecturing
from a podium, to a crowd of ladies and gentlemen.

In 1781, childless London couples were invited to cure their unfortunate state by spending a night together in the Celestial Bed (for fees up to £500). The proprieter of this remarkable device was Dr. John Graham, who was an Edinburgh, Scotland physician, who had created a fashionable cult of cures by magnetism and electricity.

His bizarre treatments became the rage of fashionable London, and he opened a Temple of Health in the Royal Terrace of the Adelphi. There, attended by Negro servants, he administered special baths, sat his gullible patients on “magnetic thrones,” or gave them mild shocks in an electric chair.

At the Temple of Health, his chief assistant was none other than the beautiful Emma Hart, who later became Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson’s mistress. Dressed in scanty robes, she entertained the patients as “The Rosy Goddess of Health.”

Of all of Graham’s equipment, the Celestial Bed was the most splendidly-gorgeous. An ornate couch standing on eight brass pillars, it owed its curative powers, he said in his advertisements, to “about 15 cwt of compound magnets . . . continually pouring forth in an everlasting circle.”

The treatment does not appear to have worked, for he was obliged to return to Edinburgh, where he was sent to prison as a lunatic.

Dr. James Graham’s “Celestial Bed”