May 23, 2005

Tonight I sit under the yellow light of a ceiling fan, my clothes scattered childishly ‘cross the floor, my burgundy blinds shutting out solar/lunar love affairs. I am blocking out the full moon on this May midnight. When I see it I feel love, shock and desire. It is a perfect symbol of unfettered inspiration, fever as life. I’'m in a time, place and body where I daily live an existence aimed at practicality and empty routine; a static existence that replaces feeling and excitement with servitude, fear and insecurity. This ideal full moon taunts me and tells me how I know too much of reality. The full moon reminds me that the nature of my realistic and maturing retardation encourages the ugliest attributes of a modern and aimless humanity to swell into my being. Strife/cheap reward. I try in this world to accept my placement; I’'m paid to smile at the soulless and soulful yet I smile not with sincerity, -I am not convincing enough in this world full of satisfied dead men. Lacking the proper enthusiasm I am left to dream on the full moon, of a glorified world filled with perfect symbols conceived by God, to fall in love with Wessexian heroines that have never breathed this physical air, and to relish artistic conceptions of stillborn art which will never see it's tactile facsimile. And when I am forced to open my eyes I feel degraded by this lone unsympathetic reality. Art and symbol are inspiration, conception, ideal, and pre-existence, they are perfection and perfection is truth. Rarely do I see truth in reality.

superior-pedal

at night without cars I ride my bike home
I pedal with blue fluidity
my knees calm,
legs benefit from
this gift of gentle patterns
upon mine joints and rickety limbs.
I concentrate down the task:
avoiding glass the piss and the glass,
gently, the super-smooth circle,
the perpendicular tibia,
acuminating fibula,
the application of perfect pedalling;
foot feet ankle shins
thigh thigh thigh thigh--
I navy slacks
the right foot
tuck into my new tube sock,
the ugly and practical trend.--
I ignore this crude break in illusion
‘'n try t'
superior-pedal again

Early Morning Epiphany

When you’re sober and quiet, riding your bike towards the pink of an early morning sky, you may become overwhelmed by the incredible scent of purplish apple-blossoms and the innocent song of an unrecognized bird, --- and from this you may come to understand that all metaphor and all comparison seem great injustices to the original articles which lie perfectly beyond the relative; always essential and existing beyond the powers of category and language.

Roxy’s Gist

When she walked, she walked wide in the knees, slow and unsteady.

Was it the explosive heat of foul disease in her scabrous loins? Was it the sordid nature of assorted fingernails and fat-headed cocks punching up that puffy-pouch-vagina? Was it a bit’o’crack delirium or her 60 proof antiseptic?

Says to the johns “Come on honey, let me suck that big dick of yours”, just like I would’ve imagined it. Smacking gum or chewing tongue on the way to his brown car.

Her eyes: black and lacquered. This weakened Blackfoot always meeting magenta latex. So very close to the white john with the dirty hair and wet moustache.

His strong arm on the back side of the next to nearest head-rest--looking up and then down with hot-breath open mouth. &Her mouth flexing and resting; her jaw cramped and muffling sucks and one-sided swallows, hmms and mmms, breathing extra from her twice-broken nose

cum hard and his scraggy jaw juts sideways; his throat and chest wheezing retarded sighs and voices. After the hasty cleaning he threw her the money she loved. &She was pleased because she made it… earned it and made it and made it.

Threatening and Heedful

I think about dying when my Dad died. I think about it all the time. He was forty-five when he went dead and so now I have the feeling it'’s going to go that way for me too. Since I was 14 and seriously bereaved, the idea has persistently occurred to me; dead at 45, or ‘'by'’— --- probably 'at' though.

I certainly don’'t like this sort of dangerous prophesy. “"You’'re not your father"”, "“don'’t be unreasonable”", “"you shouldn'’t think about it",” the advice goes. I know it. But it’'s a gut thing, not a rational thing I'’m trying to concentrate on (except perhaps at this very instance ---—writing). Usually it’'s a ghastly and sporadic feeling that just grows in me and after five minutes or so, that dread turns into actualization: "‘Oh yeah, I’'m gonna die when I’m forty-five’", and after this realization I can walk straight or whatever it is that I wish to do.

I’'m getting older and I often day-dream; sometimes even 'bout the "marriage" topic, not necessarily cuz I want to get married, more like, “"Wow, I’'m getting old, maybe I should get a dog and a house and shit the bed— --- a family."” But then I realize, wait a minute, marriage would be like signing the contract that says I will surely die at 45. I follow my father’s footsteps too closely already as it is (merciless genetics) but to follow it in any other facet would be tentatively scheduling a middle-aged cancer-suicide.

Sometimes I think my father died because he was unhappy, unhappy because he had such a shit life, and the majority of it is directly related to his striving to put up with family demands, whether they'’re financial or parental or romantic; especially at times when his heart told him to fuck everything, stop everything, and find that selfish happiness that is only a heartbreak away. But long ago he signed that matrimonial sheet which rendered his own concerns null and void ---and so he lived, everyday, the way he had to, trying harder some days to please what he could please, and other times feeling more apathetic or aggressive and making mistakes, miserable mistakes. Most of this frustration internalized by and exuding from my Father was from a man who felt trapped and undermined by what he was told must be. Me.

So I can’t help but feel that if I make any sort of contractual agreement that tethers my life to a momentarily compassionate instant(lovey-dovey cock-hard proposal) then I'’ll essentially be agreeing to death at 45 (Not saying that that threatening and heedful agreement is forever out of the question).

A Hot Bath with Carl Jung and my dead Father

Being sick from the rear, tum, and throat, and in need of some instant relief I decided to soak in a hot tub with a textbook. While bathing in the dirty tub I read about Carl Jung, a psychiatrist I’'ve read before and enjoyed before, mostly lectures. This book however was not his own work rather it was a summary of some of his basic ideas and the tenets of his decidedly esoteric psychology.

As I read, I kept feeling a strange sensation of overwhelming appreciation, a freshness of thought, a giddiness that was so awe inspiring I actually wondered if I was sick to the point of delusion. After a few straining moments the awe I felt instantly revealed itself to me, with an absurd specificity, as the awe my deceased father would feel if he had had the gumption in his lifetime to sit down and take in alternate and highly intellectual perspectives (in this case, Jung). I felt as though I was partly my father(literally) and through my eyes he absorbed the information I took in; as though, parts of me, indistinguishable from my father and therefore parts of my father indistinguishable from me melted away the names which defined us as individuals and all that was left was mutual life and shared history. I was beset in the tub with a sense of ‘otherness’ that I have never felt before but immediately recognized as being the essence of my father. I gave in to this sensation and whimsy and after a few moments it disappeared completely.

Since the time of my father’s death in 1991 I’'ve felt his presence in only very weak ways, mostly through wishful thinking, through the childish notion of his haunting omnipotence-- perhaps right after his death in the room of my childhood home where he died, but more often his presence was never felt in any direct way —except for the dysfunctional charm and destructiveness repeatedly playing itself out in my family.

This most recent time in the warm tub though, I felt his presence, not through the sensation of touch, but through the sensation of mind, I felt as though he read through my eyes, the words on the page before us, and his delight became my delight, my delight, his. I’'m not saying my father’'s ghost entered me, in fact that’s not at all what I’'m saying, I am simply saying that through some mysterious factor the definitive quintessence of my father became intermingled with my own essence and for a time it brought my father back to me/through me, —perhaps by genetic likeness, similarity of exact thought/ –the sensation of acquiring knowledge, or the residue of a familiar life once lived and still living through lineage..

found this on the web...I wish I would've taken down the artist's name. Anyway, its great. 

dreaming of Koh Wai... 

Spring and All: William Carlos Williams

(Rhubarb: Young and Old)

Spring and All William Carlos Williams

---

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind.  Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter.  All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens:  clarity, outline of leaf


But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them:  rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken

Emile Cioran

"Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy."
from The Trouble with Being Born
-Emile Cioran


more on Emile Cioran

Sound. And connotation--- communicative emotional responses

Forgive my lack of clarity but I can’t really explain this without be longwinded so instead of writing 3 pages I figured I’d go sloppy and hope you get the message—with the bonus of brevity.

Sound. And connotation--- communicative emotional responses

So for a while I’ve been wondering about sound--- and how it so obviously adds meaning to film and/or situations. What tipped me off on it was Conan O’Brien(maybe Leno) had a not too funny skit where he took suspense or horror clips from movies and replaced the usual dark/brooding music and/or sounds with comedic ones. The subtraction of the original and addition of the comedic audio was indeed slightly humorous, but mostly cuz of the polarity of the sight and sounds.

Anyway, I am wondering if sound and the usual conception is something that is heavily innate or whether it is something that is closely tied to learning? For example, the fast screechy violins in horror flicks are obviously heard-cliché-again-and-again-and-again cuz of the cheap repetition of Hollywood, BUT was there a legitimate reason why that sound actually stimulates us in the manner it does(spook) in the first place? Is there something in the sound itself? Beyond conditioned response(repeated pairing of blood and violins)?

I am suggesting that there probably is, and if there is then that means sound(non-verbal) and especially the musical variety can in-fact add transmittable, transactive, translative meaning when paired with highly connotative visuals to match(and as Conan pointed out, when the opposite meaning is attached as well) But I would say that on its own(without a sensual counterpart) it doesn’t fair very well in communicating, thereby eliciting emotional responses.(listen to the mullholland drive soundtrack without the visuals and the strength of any emotional responses are greatly weakened---yet screechy violins probably could make you feel a lil uneasy on there own, but nowhere nearly as much as when paired with the horrific images)

I was talkling to my brother and he said that he figured that it would be a feral response that could be harkened back to birds and roars; the tweet of birds would be the equivalent of pleasant sounds and the roar of a bear or tiger would be the distressing sounds and that most music/sound (when connotative, added to film or whatnot---perhaps mood music) can be thought of with the tweet-roar analogy in mind…

Could this be true? Would a scarey, minor-keyed, dissonant, cluster of sound’s power lie in the same essential fear inducing audio of a tiger roar or scream from a downed, bout-to-be-eaten, piglet? And that a lovely, major-keyed, Mozart or Beatles deally have some emotional root in the tweet of a bird or coo gurgle laugh of a healthy baby or whispery words from a lover or comfortingmother or friend?

Is there something measurable?

Learned or innate, and to what extent?

Does this make sense?

Child of the grass

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

Child of the grass
by Ezra Pound

Child of the grass
The years pass Above us
Shadows of air All these shall Love us
Winds for our fellows
The browns and the yellows

Of autumn our colors

Now at our life's morn. Be we well sworn
Ne'er to grow older
Our spirits be bolder At meeting
Than e'er before All the old lore
Of the forests & woodways
Shall aid us: Keep we the bond & seal
Ne'er shall we feel

Aught of sorrow

Let light flow about thee

As
a cloak of air

Pretty Calf

Calf. I loved this cow. It's momma can't feed him cuz she dried up. He had a near death experience at birth and was revived in a bath-tub in the house. He played jump and bound, leapand buck kindof tag with me. I thought he was cute and I urge you to never eat him. most specifically and in general

Calf and Alyssa's titty-fingers 

Calf at Alyssa's Farm, near Gwynne, AB, CA 

Sunshine Village, Alberta, Canada

Baker, Douglas, and Alyssa @ Sunshine Village

RJB snow-plowing towards Baker 

on C.L.P.A.C. or

(bed when taipei)

"In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world."
-Henry David Thoreau

A disappointing aspect about the art I conceive is that it remains
overly cryptic to those who mustn't be me. The stutter, the words, the
muted stories I write; the with the the with is that it comes from a
distant and egocentrically absolute perspective, a lone view of the
world that cannot be shared with others.

Say pal, I will notice/choose exhibit-A, trying to describe the various purposes and attributes,
physical traits relatedunrelated, perhaps phonetics, say whimsy, or possibly
curious reverse meanings or static opposites of. And then I
will think exhibit-A to B to 1-2- which reminds me of you back to the
newA3. I would be fool to expect understanding when my use of language
is specific, personal and 4/5ths internally modified. So I don't
expect understanding, but I will not lie, I wish understanding.

The beauty of art, poetry being no exception, is the
beyond-linguistic-truth that it reveals, the essential character and
universality of infallible, precise symbolism, or paradoxically,
reality. But my poetry/conceptions are the opposite of universal and
while they might reveal a certain natural simplicity and revelation to
my own mind, a cathartic clarification, they are not the type of revelations
that are often shared, felt. The color and life that surrounds,
baffles me. I can describe size and strength but I can only use the
referential tool of personal experience to relatively decode or encode
it.

With this selfish mind I create. and with that overwhelmingly
intimate perspective I ruin and puzzle those who attempt to consider,
or less likely, appreciate, my egocentrism. I want to reveal what I
think and feel, not merely what we our us mudsensually reiterate.

NatS pontificates to a spellbound Popiko 

Sonia pontificates