Just a little silliness...

Its been quite a while since I decided to boldly strike out and do something with my never ending supply of facial hair. There was a time when I would change it, constantly, not it goes from somewhat smooth shaven, to rough, to corse, to stubbly to downright dangerous and scraggy. I chop it off and it grows back. So, I've decided to have a little fun with it, as its been a while, a short progression or history of my moustache which started as a goatie leading up to and in NYC, and, well just got shorter when I came back...

The Fu Man Chu

The Fu Man Chu a la Gene Simmons

Inspired by the Goombah

Rapier thin... mu ha ha ha

more... more... more... not us...

raise your arms
to speak your mind
raise your arms
and cross the line
raise your arms
and raise them high
raise your arms
prepare to...

"unnumbered" for Not us

promise you won't
tell a soul what's
been told to do
shouldn'tve been
done to anyone

More f[or](rom) PANOPTICON

Readership existed before the work had found adequate spaces. The unfolding of distance became regarded as the annex of space. Tearing up the script he hoped that it might stop the pendulum from swinging, tearing up the script he thought it might acquit him of swinging. His actions seemed just a matter for theoretical principle. He’s hamstrung the poor halfwit still feels possibility is just as possible as event prior to memory. Simple formations of sincere gestures might serve as both the penal colony and the code (of arms) to distinguish the guilty from the already punished. But he faced it like it was foregoing both the blindfold and the cigarette he watched in astonishment as the light passed through.

PANOPTICON

He stepped in a room where the light fell exactly in the same place at the same moment and stopped falling into its own space. The ownership of the light’s space must seem a comical thing: to say it with precision one must preface it with the owning of the owner. Walking circumferentially about the central luminosity he stopped to discover the absence of both color and prismatic possibility. Pondering the separation, by degrees, by a metric system yet to be invented in the west or east, or a by way of directional analysis, pondering it slowly he discovered how it was ennobled appearing spiritualized with so much fear in a shimmering refraction. Insofar as origins: its dangerous to be one’s own accomplice.

Not surprisingly the descending stair case actually was heading up. For years he had sat by the river hoping to write himself into a book; this caused him great anguish and he cried himself to sleep in a waterless bed of smooth rock. Morning came from the smell of something faintly aromatic about the night. One wasn’t suggestive of the other yet he could’ve sworn that something like twenty of each had passed. Being caught unawares was not unlike waking from a dream having lost something you never really had before you went to sleep, curling around the pillow he swore that the face he was kissing was made of more than just feathers and strand. This much is known for certain when the pillow was ripped open with a knife.

(1)

1a

N. would say to C.
that trust grows to inscribe itself
beautifully if not thoroughly
through the whole array of annular cells

1b

Governor is to governed
glaring back from the central phallus
asking a single question
which is called the inequity of thought

1c

The incipient ring
is a thoroughfare closed in on itself
directing the flow of containment
the end crowns a beginning

1d

The smoked reflection of his own face
in the mirror has the same weight
from the surface of the curve
it registers the flaws in the glass

(2)

2a

The whole family can visit on special days
they bring with them a wardrobe
taller than the space in which it stood
filled with globes trimmed shrubs and falling towels

2b

He asks the tower to make itself known
hoping that an ancient inborn art
will chase the light
illuminating the ignorant torpor

2c

Without asking the question
he ascertains invisibility
globally manifesting at once
as a clean impeccably correct webbing

2d

Never a correct little woman
invalidating detail so that only
the form remains the same
when mounting the scaffold together

(3)

3a

Being the only one point
each door is to enter is to exit
is to passage is to C. simply the portal
by mutual consent on certain days

3b

C. looked in to see
if the overexposure were just a
figment of his imagination hoping
that his substance was false

3c

Staring back the same way
with a chalk mark on his shoulder
to clarify if he is who he seems to be
so as to conclude a pact of silence

3d

Inherently knowing that he isn’t held
in by locks or locked against himself
C. prefers the corner vestibule
where matter is weeps and time dozes.

(4)

4a

C. doubted the stride in her steps
before their myopic gaze she stole
his head from his collarbones
and undressed him into dissolution.

4b

She walks making quick steps
on the cold stones freezing each step
this was considered to be the acme
in the diverse realms of modern thought

4c

Halting once by the fireside
to let her shadows play preamble
she makes tight circles forgiving
them from discontinuing to darken

4d

Had the observers seen him enter
or if she had entered and stripped
the walls of myth and fairytales
where people escape from prison

(5)

5a

If the crime had dimension
if it could have been disrobed
as being more than picking flowers
growing in the lesions of the wall

5b

Then it might be said that childhood
pertained to preparing for adulthood
securing nonexistence is a big
leap for existential dummies.

5c

C. was being as he would say
himself being a difference
of opinion between the family man
and that splendid furniture

5d

The others would watch and see
if light passed through C.
leaving a chance reflection
like ornamented and filled copies.

DC to NYC (Rewritten)

This is a kind of apocrypha
traveling by train in the mid afternoon
when the sun can’t decide between two twilights

downed leaves and their trees
in contrast to the west
this is all seasonal

however blurred
every tenement
is really called
a tenement living
apart from itself
in black and white

the sum of knowledge: brick can be stained
iron light posts: limp just off center

a settled wilderness
whispers things
you might hear
among strangers
that one white post
behind the corner of soot

these tracks were never meant to travel
this fast makes me miss something
essential

independence corridor
causes me tension

she wore a peach colored skirt
and white sweater in stifling heat
whatever she hid I could imagine it better

by Philly’s station you cry
missing greener sentiment
mission and child-like ancestry
so much for youth
trees seem to migrate with you

More...

From The Left

A translation of canonical Russian art
(vagrancy)

As to be read
this must have
a conversation? pieces?
what a mess of fingers that can’t
ever seem to stop bleeding.

Under the sky—
or if you would prefer
“all things steel shadow” still
intentionally bludgeoned,
uprooting the disengagement,
so that we all know Tretyakov
becomes us to hang this
a meadow of corpse’s

dust for now.

From The Right
From the illegitimacy of invention
(criticism)

This presents
significant rubbish
when from reading
that angels height and mass
makes plastic dreams

a really scary occurance
the northerners think
they’re European
bold enough to make
hanging black squares
in white rooms
seem mildly patriotic
—what would’ve Lenin
thought?

NYC - In retrospect

If there's a doctor for every malady (as some presume there's a solution even if its simply that non-sequitur "time") then the conversation and comraderie of old friends and new with a large helping of good food was my personal physician.

I started saturday with a trip to the WTC sight. I didn't know what to expect but I had an idea of it. I wondered, as I rode the train, how would Simonides immortalize those two titans? I couldn't help to think that I would only see it as a big hole in the ground, a construction site that was yet to be finished, or even begun for that matter. Unlike the post 9-11 state of mind where everyone became a New Yorker, the twins were never a part of the landscape of my imagination. I remember the photos I took in 99 that caught them like stalagtites in the background. The last image was taken from the back of a cab heading to JFK and you couldn't imagine the skyline without them there. The site is fenced off and people come to see it. I wondered what they were feeling, how the language that all the various individuals spoke helped them make sense of something that was probably removed from their day to day lives. I wondered if the memorial would be sufficient and how thick the mythology would be twisting both the language it uses to be remembered and the manifesto of terms we are now inundated with.

From there it was a trip to St. Mark's Bookstore in the village where I had coffee at the Cloister cafe, overgrown with vines and then it was off to the empire state to climb babel. I bought the express ticket as I was running out of time and was bound to be heading back to Brooklyn sooner than later, for our trip to Brighton Beach. Yes, its a terrible waste of money, but it felt great to walk to the front of every single line and choose the pace of my viewing experience instead of waiting in the snaking lines of humanity. When I reached the top I suddenly remembered that this was now, as it was over 30 years ago, the tallest point in the city (if I'm not mistaken) and sitauted there in the center, king to the heavens. How did G-d find this shinning emblem of art deco(dance)? Was there further confusion to be had in our restless and unending search for the principium individuationis? Who knows, but there was an incredible peace with 25 miles of visibility on an absolutely wonderful wind swept september afternoon that even with the bustling throng 86 stories above reality, it was clear and thick, calm, humbling and just a little jaw dropping.

that ornate antenna

south toward downtown & the statue in the bay

north toward central park & uptown

self portrait looking north photographing south

The Q runs out to Coney Island and somewhere along that bumpy trip that exposed more and more of the stations track before and after to light, and the amassed trash, we found our stop: Brighton Beach (little odessa, or as the signs say, little russia by the sea.) I can't say I love it, but I was amused by the absolute saturation. This is a neighborhood that has been taken over and morphed into something that is now a collective mockery of a place so vastly distant and different that I'm not sure either exists except as a subjective mirror representation of historical gentrification. I've heard that the neighborhood was very poor and run down, not sure about this but I'm sure I'll find out once I do a bit more research. Its an odd place. I can hear my mother tongue here and there, the images of Russian mobsters seem to exist and hang on the very footfalls of every slick haired russkie going to and fro. People stroll the streets as I had sen them do in the nieghborhood of Sokol in Moscow. We walked the three or four blocks to the end of the strip where Cafe Kashkar, small, unassuming, demure even. What lurks in that kitchen is nothing short of Zorba's "God-Devil", the one that makes you made and lifts you up at the same time. I think M- summed it up best at 2 in the morning "I want more, that stuff is addictive!" The food hit the spot, we had a feast of Lagman, Shurpa, Samsa, Eggplant Salad, Glass Noodle Salad, 3 Different kinds of meat in the form of Shashlik, several pots of tea, 3/4 of a liter of vodka, four Baltikas and a leposhka. Yeah, we ate, we stuffed ourselves with onion and lamb and all rocked to the rhythm of Tajik music that seemed fit for belly dancing. It was a pleasure I hadn't had since St. Petersburg and Caravan Saray. I'm ready to go down to LA and see if Uzbekistania on Sunset is any good. Damn, I want more too.

Sated, full of food and drink we sauntered down the street stopping at the gastronoms to fill M-'s backpack and giggle our drunken heads off. This was both the end and the beginning of the night as it found us dancing to Beck, drinking a liter of wine and then a pitcher of beer as we wandered through Park Slope grapsing at the receeding tatters of the night that weighed down by both night and our day to day jobs, makes keeping up the pace of our super human efforts in Russia a near impossibility. Still, it was excellent and I feel richer for the experience despite the hangover the next morning as I rode to JFK.

Thank you NYC and friends...

Tom, Masha, Kristen
post Uzbeki bliss
(waiting for the Q)

NYC - Turn me loose...

I pilfered the title from Heather Hazuka's NYC Turn Me On. I remember stumbling across it in our submission piles when on staff for Fourteen Hills. I argued strongly for its includionin the journal because I found the language, well, provacative; its about a one night stand. I just spent my first night, since the last one back in '99, in NYC. Sleeping at the Carlton was nice, it was nice and sanitary. With the curtains drawn it was like any other room, anywhere else, at any time of the year: non-descript. Last night thought, on Masha's floor, in something of a "hot summer" night, the window open, amidst a symphony of crickets and rustling of leaves, I kind of felt like I was sleeping "in" the NYC that lives in the imagination.

Before drifting off into the wild blue yonder, I stuck my head outside. Night is vastly brighter here, its not a deep thick night like one might hope. No, there's so much light polution in the city that the night has ceased to be itself. It almost feels like someone has found a way to illuminate the white in the clouds and turn the night sky into a Turner like spectacle. Last night at the Guggenheim I saw several paintings that were absolutely marvelous landscapes. One was called The Ninth Wave, and another was simply entitled Night. I can't remember their artists, its in the cataloug I purchased but I don't feel like getting that at this moment, no, but the sky had that strange iradescence that can only happen through the fancy of an artist's eye.

Oh, I've finally figured out the Subway here. I have a sense of direction and know what the "diirection" of the trains means in terms of where I'll wind up. I took the train from our downtown office to Brooklyn, and then eventually back into the city to the Guggenheim in Midtown. The whole Bronx vs. Brooklyn, north to south and the east to westness of the streets vs. the avenues: I get it. I had a slice of pizza on the way back to Brooklyn, it was damn good... damn good... and I'm not the biggest fan of new york style pizza. I've always pictured myself as more of deep dish Chicgao kind of pizza lover...

The museum was amazing. There's a historical exhibit on right now called "Russia!" It starts with early icons and progresses through the centuries up through 20th century and into the present sort of work that features a parodied marlboro sign saying simply: "Malevich Sold Out." I finally made it. I've been dreaming about visiting the Guggenheim for years and years and years. I walked that spiral gallery marveling at the architecture and the art that's completely hidden from view when you stand at the base of the serpent's trail. Its stunning, FLW really hit one out of the park with that building. The Chagal and Kandinsky collections were out, or selections fromthem, and the permanent collection that features Cezanne, Degs and a slew of Picassos that range from just post traditionalist to the 1930s cubism that devolved from earlier forms of into the pure abstract shapes and simple color tones of the final modality of that movement, all were represented.

From there it was back to Brooklyn, say it with me, Broowk-lynn. Oh I had a new york moment: what is that do you ask? It has to do with language and the thick new york accent that I hear all around me. When I walked into the Houston (say it, House-ton, not Hue-ston) street station. I knew I had to take the two train to Brooklyn but all the signs said 1 train. I went down, bought my metro card, went through the turnstile, hoping to find an agent at a booth, but nada and then walked around. I walked to the far end of the platform and then saw the agent. Walked out from the platform and asked him if the 2 passed through and where to catch the train into Brooklyn. He said to transfer at Chambers. He was covered with tattos, had that "nuyorican" look about him and wore some thick chains. I asked if I had to pay to get back onto the platform. He said "didj you jus come from dthere?" "Yeah" I repleid... and then it happened "Just walk through the gates baby." Yeah, with the perfect amount of self assured sass and that accent taht I love, and I passed through just in time ot catch the 2. Perfect.

DC to NYC

This is a kind of apocrypha
traveling by train in the mid afternoon
when the sun can’t decide between the two twilights

down the corridor the leaves and their trees
in contrast to the west this is all seasonal

however blurred you can’t forget
the dispersion of trash
how every tenement is really called
a tenement living apart from itself
breathes in black and white

the sum of knowledge: brick can be stained
iron light posts: limp just off center

while the tracks thread through
a long settled wilderness
whispers and the things you might here
among a caravan of strangers
while you pass that one white post
sitting behind the corner of soot
these tracks were never meant to travel
this fast makes me miss something
essential

independence corridor causes me tension
she wore a peach colored skirt
and white sweater in stifling heat
whatever she hid I could imagine it better

by the Philadelphia station you cry
missing something greener than mock sentiment
lofty in the mission and child like ancestry
so much for youth and the west’s wild and ancient
trees here seem to migrate with you

I’ve been carrying a leave I picked up near Union station
it must’ve been the only one for a thousand miles

and I can’t imagine that light grows brighter
esconced in conrete.

Messages & Cinema

"They call me the lord of war, but I think that may be you."

It was a good weekend cinematically speaking. I was transported to Africa and placed into the thick of the western assumption of what Western Africa is like: a genocidal soup where life has been cheapend to the point of guinnea pigs and or rendered like the parts of animal stock.

My first trip to Africa was friday night int he form of The Constant Gardner based on the John Le Carre novel by the same name. This is a gorgeous film, a treat for the eyes, a study in chiaroscuro, a balance and harmony between the shakiness of the hand held camera shot to the longer contemplative sweep of smooth ariel shots over the sometimes barren and moon-like terrain of Kenya & Sudan.

As for plot, well its a bit threadbare in places, predictable is a better way to think of it. The bad guys are bad and you can tell from he git go which ones will have the ultimate crisis of conscience that will turn the tide of the film a la deus ex machina. Where this film seems to stumble plot wise it slams splash down homeruns through Meirelles' direction and ability to convey emotion through blur. I enjoy a blurred shot now and again, a bit of abstraction, a study in the way that light, like water, penetrates nearly everything that isn't hermetically sealed. Meirelle obscures the detail in his chosen blur shots just enough as to create a mask of the mood or emtion on the face of Fiennes, he's at once that character and the actor playing the character wearing a mask and creating the mask. The subltle moods and gloomy darkness of the Eruopean scenes are balanced with the striking color and eary heat waves that rise from the very earth as if its been super heated to the point of an oven. I loved "watching" this movie. I was at the edge of my seat but not due to suspense, but because I knew what was going to happen and I wanted to see more of Meirelle's Africa. If you go to see this film, don't expect a 'Name of the Rose' mystery but rather a well done film for the eyes. There's nothing to be had, nothing that you haven't seen or known and the bad guy is once again the big corporation. The redemption is the quality of the film and not the script.

But on the flip side of this African coin is Lord of War starring Nicolas Cade and Jared Leto as a couple arms dealing brothers. Cage is wonderful and seems to meld the best of previous roles and having an odd kind of Cusak quirk to a character that finds ways of rationolizing a demonic job. "Lets put it this way, if you find me on your front door step, then you probably did something to bring me there." says Martin Blanc as his ultimate afirmation of righteousness and reason to be a killer for hire. Ian Holme's character, a competing arms dealer reminds the morally depraved Cage that "one has to choose sides." What does become vividly clear from the film is that no matter what side you choose, you're ultimately going to loose. The race is to be the last looser rather than the first.

In many ways, this film is a copy of Blow starring Johnny Depp. Here you have the underdog choosing a path that is somewhat left of middle, becoming rather good at it, and then branching out to near global domination only to suffer a biblical fall. It shows how one can't quite leave in that sense of "everytime I think I'm out they pull me back in." No, there's no escape from global arms dealing. Beyond the bad Russian accents when Cage & Leto recite their creed "Bratya v aruzhya" (Brothers in Arms), this isn't a bad film for most of the two some odd hour course. Nichols has a sense of irony about his direction and his characters. He crafts his shots and even the openning scene. His previous effort, Gattaca, had the same sense of somber atmosphere that one could amost step into. There were enough details omitted, and a sense of style to that world, that helped suspend one's disbelief and in the sense of theatre, create that invisble fourth wall where the audience forgets its sitting in a precenium based viewing house and is a part of the action. This film too had the choicest details of the 80's, the suits, the moods, music, color and hair styles to convince one that we were witnessing a near Oliver North reenactment and that Reagan had just decalred the Soviet Union and anounced that the bombings would commence in five minutes.

But the bombs do fall and the Kalashnikov is the bright shinning star that sometimes outshadows Cage in the form of a Gold Plated model carried by Baptiste's son and heir. If Alexander Kalashnikov hadn't been wounded in WWII this world might have been a vastly different place. Its the prince of all assault rifles, heir-aparent to the sword of gabriel, it is judge jurry and executioner cloaked in wood and steel. This film is as much about its identity and mtyhology as it is about the rampant sales of weapons to every faction in the world by a man that literally believes his own kool-aid when he says "we don't kill, we just sell the guns."

The film begins like a bildungsroman that runs the gamut of black comedy but somewhere about 3/4 of the way through it turns into a little too much off a diatribe for me. The comedy seems to end, and what is left of comedy seems to be a bit dull. The message had been hammered through the satire and then the film feels like it has to try and put those finishing nails in with a serious mallet. No, this is the problem with these kinds of films, they begin well enough as humorous satirical pieces and then become melo-dramas. Why is it that directors feel the need to become dramatists when they were doing such a fine job as comedic tragedians?! This is something Nietzsche would've abhored as he hated the new comedy of Euripedes and exalted in the tragedies of Aeschylus. In much the same way this film borrows from the latter playwright and casts it in the tone of the newer more light hearted comedian. This was a good formual from the beginning of the film to the point where Nichols shifts gears.

I don't have a good answer as to how a film maker can avoid this especially when you consider that our friend cage is disowned by his family, his wife leaves him taking his son, he's jailed and his brother is killed, how do you keep the black humor aspect strong in the face of all that drama?! I don't know, but somewhere before that the film lost me and I lost interest in this character that was doing a fine job of satarizing a grim world that is viewed in the reflection of a brass casing.

XCII

It started

the killing jar

sparring first

honors

the beauty

died over

breakfast or

body counts

the wounds

delayed

answering

de profundis

clamavi ad te

by tea time

cheats

the narrows

rent free

patricide

still stones

stiller than

stoned

and what will

spend

for which

ends now

how spells

meals

basically

this is

not presuming

an apron

enough

to cover

the dead

in this place

each hand

must

cook

then finally

entombed

For Tanesia's Bowl

from the time you landed maybe until you might wake up knowing night was figment the buildings tall sleekness chunk architectures borrowed and built to keep civility in the way that organisms take space and grow from center out stalin marked his mass with blocks older strain is still not from this century but the river’s ice can support the city in time’s of need large trucks rolled across frozen the worst floods are marked with iron quarters were germans got their own high water line russian corners this room and that still painting over twelve languages of graphiti to rosko’s murder happened in a book but the stairs will echo his steps exhaustive walking wears away what can be written into stones zdes ohn napisal prestuplenya e nakazanyaor its not his city in the seems bursting countryside clerks there’s twenty thousand memoires floating in the pages of his story and story and zapiski iz podpolya the thing is its not about hiding if it were not ownership made the flats we used as temporary housing for the jet set elite in soviet times mark this hall with exposed piping set out with brass knobs to look less shoddy shoe repair is tops in small wodden shacks on the street is something missed in every museum you just can’t take in whole stories here rolling on the grass with a chain collar his claws haven’t quite learned how deadly speaking candidly my favorite club was underground they called boonkar on its roof was patio far at street level jenya came back from chicago at twelve she came too back here knowing the language to be made money lips drunken the closer we speak and scream she leaning forward just far enough and tight top low vee-cut back to the subject of literary stigmatas shelves in every pub crawl with books and zoom cafes the check on page thirty sex now mates with lenin and maybe the waitress borrowed her mother’s dress to pioneer the new western freedoms here’s a tv with cherenko walking by and zip to fucking forms in soft core shells landed in spilled blood’s fifth dome knocking down a big chunk o jesus was originally of three domes for father son and holy coat of arms triangulated on their gold crowns until mountain men painted heaven’s glory is layed out on every corner unlike other churches sasha said you have to be dressed prelechnya what you choose to wear is your business but take off the star five points to it and its everywhere like mars field flames to fan it still burns in everything never is forgotten time memorials 1881 at 20:36 someone had to stop the rain which keeps it all still green and the water was high enough to submerge the first floor cellars where the best eats still sink down under the building just far enough for the stray dog to seem filled with smoke and the green fumes of absinth fueled the liberation is a great freedom for the dead like vrubel’s lavender free from linear really to understand this place you have to come to terms with food and the power wielded by grocery stores have now succumb to supermarkets and dixie lies around every corner shops stay open all the time and each one has a state sponsored drunk across from my hotel his name was kolya and looked like he was close to sainthood at twenty three was the solstice and the last bell where they give them the city for their own uses can you tell that things revolve and you can live from celebration to celebratory moods are not advised for foreigners are still niggers and a nigger is a nigger he tried to tell the cop that they were cousins and he was a racist because he was the only black man in the streets are not for making quick work of something that should be kept indoors in the goom’s display cases against the jews why sasha couldn’t understand they died but death isn’t unknowable and he knew that they were dead but still reviled even in death and something like perestroika enduring the longest hatred has got to be a civil duty to serve at eighteen while we were away during those belayi notche vera asked me to go with her and we were followed by body guards ten days of seeing canon’s hand the huge motif of what’s really quite a small head in exaggerated relief aid was something that a people must do for themselves while shostokovich wrote a symphony is always playing in this city even when you can’t stop looking look again at your watch tells you one thing and if it were a clock face you’d wonder where the a and p switched mnm comes up from underground and he’s the worst sort of man that can’t even hold his liquor while you’re sitting on the shitter when the revolution came the aurora glowed on nevya where she rusts to the racket of a nearby caravan of busses in five indo-european peoples we were fucked by the mongols and then took turns being done and doing sweeden was in olden times the worst enemy you can imagine where sometimes you think if they see it somehow reversed like a dove flying through a mirror and every square has been mistranslated into its current form zamak and zamok are spelled the same but mean they have a natural and integral link if you could unlock one to get to the other side of the river isn’t quit the same here in the center of the city you’ll be kept well and hospitable and for fifty bucks she’ll make you orgasm all night long, listen you call me next time you come here as the rain fell I thought back to his job and couldn’t help but chuckle that everyone thinks they’ve been deceived by the cops will leave you be for fifteen hundred is the most expensive piss you’ve ever given that the west doesn’t understand the beauty of birch in the thickest of ancient roman bath houses its purely a russian phenomenon to want something more you ask in metrics drink in english pubs around the world are just as bad outside of england similarly overpriced markets for colorful knick knacks patty whack this old night went rolling into that bronze horse on the whicker rock he rode down and into the dreams seem possible but as you enter the place where five million people dwell and you can’t help but feel that devastation was built into the design of the city

The Skin's Blueish Tattoo

Encased in a chemical suit
sees himself as part of the sea, like everything on land, he's returning
pets the dog, levels the field.
Moving with waves.

And the endless necessity of morse code
gasps through the water as one might call falling.
And for every one stroke out
two needed returns.

... on reading a brodsky poem having come back from a place where only Schopenhauer's primordial oneness might dwell...

A man in a moth-eaten suit
sees a train off, heading, like everything here, for the sea,
smiles at his daughter, leaving for the East.
A whistle blows.

And the endless sky over the tiles
grows bluer as swelling birdsong fills.
And the clearer the song is heard,
the smaller the bird.

--Joseph Brodsky

All beginnings are exercises in humility...

The beginning is always a quiet pandemonium for me.

I spent the night twisting and turning with anxiety even if the journey is brutally short. Yeah, I couldn't sleep again last night. I lay my weary bones down around 11 or a bit thereafter and drifted into something of what I think was a peaceful sleep. I was brutally exhausted. My eyes openned at 2:30, dehydration, I drank my fill and went to bed but without any great success in falling asleep. I twisted until 3:30. I woke and began to work, answering email and plotting world domination. Back to bed around 4:30. I twisted like a reed in the wind for another half hour and then finally gave up the futile exercise and began to put together the bits of gear I would need.

First was the wetsuit. It came out of the closet, off the hanger where its been since before the beginning of summer. I grabbed my old, very smelly messenger bag, and shoved a pair of socks, some ties to fasten the board to the roof of Jason's truck, and two toels in it. I paced quite a bit as I went from room to room trying to fulfill my nature by over doing the gear. Surprisingly, I kept it to a minimum and walked away with a very light bag. Around 10 to 6 I began to think that Jason wouldn't show up. I was positive of it. At five after six my certainty melted in the blaring sound of my front door buzzer. I was simultaneously elated and upset that my ability to fortell the future had slipped; Jason's voice came in over the intercom and I buzzed him in.

I think there's an unconscious bond between all non morning people at six in the morning when embarking on a fool's errand: "WTF?" We must have said it simultaneously and thought it at equal moments even when the door was closed. Still, there was a giddiness about stealing off into the night armed with our fiberglass chariots and doing something that neither of us is very good at it.

A few cups of strong Yunan tea later we strapped my ridiculously oversized 11 foot 6 inch long board onto the top of his truck and headed the six blocks west down Balboa and turned south on the Great Highway hugging the ocean with our eyes to see where the action was. I'm scared of ocean beach. Yeah, you heard it, I'm actually afraid of it. The waves tend to be somewhat violent on this beach and its not the waves, its the riptide that has me worried. Someone drowned there not too long ago, well its been a few months, but not long enough to be an event where you would say "once, sometime ago."

Normally, mornings in the Richmond and Sunset districts of SF are punctuated with a thick heavy layer of pea soup fog that lasts for two to three weeks at a clip with brief respite. The fog was nowhere to be seen but a bloated layer of gray clouds hung on the roof of the sky with an ominous presence. We passed down 35 and back onto Highway 1 and headed for Pacifica. We arrived at the Taco Bell beach to find the waves somewhat smaller and the seas calmer. There were a number of people eyeing the water trying to decide if they wanted to get in or find another beach: "which way will it go?" A beautiful yellow lab with a huge rib cage waddled over to me for a pet and scratch and to show me his happy tail wag and smile. We played while his mom griped about no real waves as she brought her new board out and had just waxed it.

A movie quote comes to mind, "well, we didn't get dressed up for nothing?" (with thick socittish accent.) Yes, that's what we thought, Jason and I, we're here, lets do it. So we suited up and headed out into the unforgiving cold of the Pacific.

First observation: boards need fresh wax, rubberized torsos on suits don't help that much.

Second observation: I hardly remember how to do this, not that i ever did it well by any stretch of the imagination.

Third observation: The feeling of your head connection with a wave, a slap in the face from the hand of poseidon is both a wonderful and a terrible way to start the morning.

Fourth observation: although I have significant upper body strength my shoulders aren't nearly as tough as I would like them to be, and my forearms tire quickly. I lack arobic conditioning in my limbs.

Fifth observation: chest=breath breath+smoke=painful chest chest-smoke=faster returning breath I didn't miss it...

Sixth observation: I think I need a smaller board, this thing is like trying to turn an aircraft carrier at fremont and kearney without nicking the embarcardero center.

Seventh observation: more sleep helps, but I've had a totally surreal day since.

Back to the grindstone.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

I don't know if its this apartment, the pace at which I've been living my life or just some general disagreement within myself but I've really been slipping where the kitchen is concerned. I haven't cooked in a steady manner for a while now and its really starting to bug me. I had layed out my night, something I needed to do, house chores and then cook a bean soup and some white corn on the cob. I did the laundry, picked up a bit, took out the trash, did the dishes (and I'm not saying how long they sat in the sink) and a little work here and there. Somehwere in the middle of folding laundry I decided I needed to see a movie.

The best years of my life always revolved around a movie theatre. From the first neighborhood I can remember, I was walkind distance from a cinematic temple. Here's me dating myself, when I was a wee pup and had just arrived, a double feature cost us $.50. My mother could get rid of all three of us for a measly three dollars. Not a huge amount of money, but to an immigrant who could buy a half liter of kvas for five kopeks just a couple years before then and kilos of meet for just a couple rubles, this was something. I'm glad I don't remember quite that far back. Still, its always near a glowing, silken, silver screen where I find myself feeling at home.

I've been living in this neighborhood for over 8 months now and have never once walked up to the movie theatre. I decided a film, a la oh solo mio, was exactly what the doctor had ordered. I brought the laundry back in, set the basket down still overflowing with my its freshly cleaned cargo, slipped on a pair of shoes, grabbed a jacket and ran off to see an unexpected film.

If you have a chance, and its playing in your neighborhood, go watch it: "Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise", (the original french title), a truly beautiful piece of cinema set in the Phoenix mountains against the Yangtze river and what I think today is called Three Gorges Damn. The film grips you with a certain humble simplicity. The story isn't terribly unique, nor does it strike you with a profound message, but its the kind of film that you can't quite put down even when the credits roll.

I stepped outside feeling as if a part of me was walking just a step behind. I cursed the fact that I've quit smoking. A long draught of tobacco seemed the only way to humble myself into pausing long enough to breathe in the smell of fresh mountain mist that seemed to leap off the screen. Had I had one on me, I would've definately lit up and stood under the glowing marque reading the posters over and over until the smoke was through and I was lighting another one for the stroll home. The path from the theatre to my flat leads down hill, but I would've imagined I was walking up the same ancient stone steps amidst the lush green, yeah, that's what I would've done, that's what I did.

A humble modesty exits in this film that reminds me of two other chinese movies: Ju Dou & Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring. Both of these films rely on an inate ability to tap the visual, auditory and tactile senses in a way that you are a part of the fabric of that passing reality. Real or not, you are in the film and it keeps your attention in subtle ways. The story isn't told in the sense of first or third person narration, but rather the setting and echo of good film making tell the story in the simplest ways: as if you're a voyuer and an integral part of the setting at the same time. Go watch Balzac, you'll dig it...

That's what I kept telling myself as I sauntered home and the wind blasted me off the ocean. I wrote this as I walked, thinking, yeah, a little bloggin and then sleep, but I don't think I'll be sleeping any time soon. I had plotted out an early rise and a bike ride for myself tomorrow morning before I took on the bean soup and corn on the cob, all the while prepping for my Tuesday night class. Not sure what tomorrow ill bring, aside for the Michael Penn concert at Cafe Du Nord. This film is going to stay with me for a little while, I have a similar drunken sensation like the night my brother and I watched "The Summer of 42" and each drank a beer on an empty stomach. Back in the early days when you needed more than your body wanted to get drunk, but on this one night, I remember the buzz of a single beer, it was the first time I can honestly say that I knew the buzz of but a single beer. There've been other one beer buzzes since then, but this one seems the most profound mixing with the black and white celluloid waters of that unrequited love, the alkaline taste of which reminds me of my own youth. I can smile on all of it now, but at the time I think I hung a dire frown on my face and made sure that I was as removed from everyone I knew as I could possibly be. I still need a kind of removal from time to time, a distance in which I can hear my thoughts and the dialgoue of so many borrowed voices. The only difference now is that I'm seldom sad during these brief stints solitude, and sometimes I wish they could be just a tad bit longer, like good cinema...

Inspired by Susanna Kittredge's Lost Tales of Me

Three fragments:


Its just a matter of irony
and wine that when poured
seemed to fill the room
before it filled our glasses
we raised then lowered
mechanically mingling
with what we haven’t quite
yet introduced to ourselves
________

Last week I was inspired
to write a family history
but I couldn’t get past
my grandmother,
she’s rightly the beginning
when she told my mother
“fine, you can stay, but
I’m taking my grandson.”
so mom came too.
________

I’ve met you here before
I said to the woman
borrowing a face
while she wiped away
the reflection from behind the bar
a pair of legs dangled
slowly missing the point
that trapeze never belonged
in a suitcase or a painting.

for not us not them...

effortless wills cry out

loud is the new soft

one act imaginations

mimicking ministers

selling electrocutes

the candid didn't say

why or when it failed

which is something

else before the fact

it knew that falling

gravitates compact

unuseable forces

allied within nature

form's stability first

must shape clay

models collectively

equated to all of

the rest are saying

that's just the lot

a whole lot of them

looks like it was

curtains and cover

up or down the tree

what monkey see

or do or say or have

they begun to act

out of agreement

deeded and sealed

penchants pulse

wild catastrophe

in a sandbox scale

the dunes are small

where will forces

break the mesh of

seen and no-seen

thing can resist

decomposition eggs

the game on to new

newely concealed

pedantries.

LXXIX

When the revolution begins hickory fires’ll paint skin

soil creation below the well

I’ve sinned writing the Koran across your body

with carbon

a taint to flesh

the way your thigh curves

the meander of my mouth

kissing the name of G-d

and somehow I still know the picture

that afternoon holding fast to an old table

the meddle of three chairs

In between a sort of here or now colliding with simple

be-gone-kind-of-stranger defining warrants

far south in details

and gravitas

to hold a hand out of context with the arm

around seldom sought invitations

you as Pericles now—

legislate between thing and revision

into expert perplexity—

no form: a man to mean who wears

the woman of an age—your slip

tied to the mast and the ship

captives form exodus toward generalities

creeping numbers – the bravest metaphysics

Shabat fails the question of soil

June,

no maybe something closer to the beginning

as if spring or a proto-generic thought

that seasons concerned themselves with being

a passage in calendars – the way we held onto beds

seasons remembered to absolve the months

when recalling

the day before

a week in waiting

the latest resolve

sampled and simian

prehistory makes sense

regarding human relationship – a principle defect

in regarding humans and relationships

specifically—

you were born in a drop: the failure of words

spilled across—perpendiculars

the | horizontal | inversion

where the sun steepled the sky

giving voices dies irae as omega vowel

forge day to sequence congenially

the like-minded dialogue

vocoded universals

the listening agrees w/direction

to speak a body

a secret chamber of minor ties

like a governorship of oligarchs

between each other’s secret agenda

when we lay sun drenched lizard style:

[unearthed behemoths in a pool of (an)other]

given tools (you: a mask of Pythagoras)

the many me’s a theorem of safe harbor

toward a discrete remainder

reclining now into vortex

the best way between our points

several angels

plumbed you favorably

the way the world moves to a calypso rhythm

is set down sonnets— already first pagination

again the modifiers to action

disengaging our two bodies from collection.