MAAWG

Pictures from the Toronto MAAWG where I spoke on one of the Sender Sub-Comittee panels...



Panel discussion with Spencer, Greg, myself and Dennis.



We did it, we survived the panel discussion... and there's Dave "Agent" Smith looking very tempermental.



Half way through a very long night, and that's all I'll really say 'bout that one



Ah, the Sultan's tent, Moroccon food in Toronto that served Kenyan beer, how cool is that?

From Toronto

Airport blues

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Don't do this...

Go to a foreign city, drink, drink heavily, party with friends met in other foreign countries, have a good time, discuss old times, tell those tender lies that you're wont to do under the influence, then come back to your hotel room after shots of jaeger, vodka tonics and something they call a Caesar, and delete all the photos you've taken over the last three/four days... then you'll understand misery... FUCK!

I like this photograph...

Adonis and Cuban Art in Toronto

I was hoping to find a snippet of "The Death of New York" by the Syrian poet Adonis, unfortunately no one's put that epic online. In the poem there's a line about bridging the distance between Wall Street and Whitman, and then the more prophetic lines, written back in the 70s that in today's secure homeland seem like an all too foreshadowing warning. The ROM (Royal Ontario Museum, here in Toronto, had a featured exhibit by the Cuban artist, Carlos Garaicoa, who is exploring the "lived in ruin" or "inhabited ruin" that is modern day Havana. Following the 1959 revolution Havana had an exhibition of sorts, to display its beauty and architectural ingenuity in the hybrid of Spanish colonial architecture and island influenced urbana. This is no longer the case, not in the least... As we walked through the exhibit I couldn't help but think of the blight in Brooklyn, the abandoned spaces, buildings, boarded tenements and graffiti scarring the city. Perhaps, at the moment, Toronto is too clean for me. I want something in the middle, some sense of broken and something clean mixing into a place that feels like a well lived in sofa. I'm not at all moved by the architecture here, the city is more plasma screen than interesting brick. Things may be different outside of downtown, but here all the bars and clubs are exclusive and you wait outside as if it was Studio 54 or the Limelight for permission to be among the beautiful. I don't like it at all to be quite honest. I prefer a good saw dust on the floor kind of joint.












Death

We die unless we create the gods.
We die unless we murder the gods.
0, kingdom of the bewildered rock.

-Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said)


And now... to call Stacey Mae of Russia fame... read the blog posts from June if you missed the travels of Waldo in St. Petersburg... ah yes... Stacey...

Toronto 99

It started like a movie when two women kiss and you think this only happens in the movies - A round of jaegers for the house and T- was everyone else that wasn't in the bar. Outside a two homeless drunk argument using 'eh' to mean 'period' and his son's on a murder rap. This isn't a cold you can't stand but it won't turn off and every subway grate is a five star hotel like San-Fran summer in October. Don't call the tower a needle, for your eyes only doesn't mean bond, but it's an international cast of cutaways, velcro ties and undersized teddys. You can piss to the great one's scores or in le hotel there's french lessons when you stare at the wall or at your business. The color of money is always the season you're waiiting for. Kelsey's, JackAssers and outdoor dudes like to think that south of the border means couch bound warriors. I keep waiting to hear how we're welcome, how a french waiter might apologize the fifth time he crushed a toe. Every purgatory's a tonic waiting outside the century room for the fluid spilled on lot 332 where the lonely communist daughter trolls to stiff little fingers. There's a slight comfort in procedurals like CSI is a slice of meatloaf and potato with gravy. I watched the news and learned that it was our war, but their victim.

Jetway

Something dislodged itself when she shook her hair. A faint possibility that grew larger until the moment of introduction; it cascaded into a story about the friend who she should meet back home. This is a lie that's told in retelling the truth in order to make the lie true. Superior in all respects to being honest is being anonymous - and she knew nothing of nonexistence. I lay into my bagel unaware of falling crumbs and she went back to The Economist. All-seeds have this problem, leaving a little piece of themselves in the tracks of oncoming traffic. Squeezed between the truth and a lie I always choose selectively; one more friend without a name, one more jetway to hollow out and greet with cloud. I can see class definitions in reading material. The curtain's always drawn and it's 1 bathroom for the rear of the bus as another woman says "babies are the new handbag, I gotta get me one." She's wearing her hair wrapped up, hiding it too, while telling compunctious stories.

Please don't complain to the general manager

Two hundred some odd geeks, 1 hotel, one conference and one plea... priceless. Openning comments of the conference:

"Please don't complaint to the general manager of the hotel, the terrible connection in your hotel rooms is our fault. We told the hotel to strip out the connections out of the rooms so that we would have enough bandwidth here in the conference room. The hotel brought in a T3 at 1:30 in the morning to accomodate the rest of the guests."

Woooo hooo... assembly of geeks equals a scarcity of resources.

Central Park Dance Skaters or as I call them ROLLER DISCO

Toronto

It's cold and windy. Its not so cold that you feel it in your bones, but I could see the majority of my female friends shivering, while I mearly feel my skin tingle. I'm near the needle, the big huge tower, the one Seattle copied... hotel room is nice, everything is ridiculously clean and you can't smoke in the bars. I miss Montreal... maybe just a little bit, as being my frist Canadian city visited, it still seems like the best, regardless of context or anything rational like that. So I'm tired and need to sleep, a long day of presenting on a panel, covering problems back at the ranch remotely, and passing out business cards, although I think I've seen everyone here before, still, you never know who shows up, or who has moved to which company and is now director or Vee-Pee of what division, its fluid that way, but all too predictable. I hear there's an Art museum near by, hopefully on Friday or Saturday before I leave. In the mean time, a little thing I wrote from someone I saw in the airport, and someone who said I should start a poem like that...

***

Something dislodged itself when she shook her hair. A faint possibility that grew larger until the moment of introduction; it cascaded into a story about the friend who she should meet back home. This is a lie that's told in retelling the truth in order to make the lie true. Superior in all respects to being honest is being anonymous - and she knew nothing of nonexistence. I lay into my bagel unaware of falling crumbs and she went back to The Economist. All-seeds have this problem, leaving a little piece of themselves in the tracks of oncoming traffic.

I'm thinking of that "Wear Sunscreen" song...

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.

Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

But you know here's the thing... I'm torn. Really I am. New York is a great city and embodies everything that you can think of as "city". It has the food, the architecture, the history, yet at the same time it has everything that embodies collapse. Broken bricks, eroding streets, urban decay, and all of this exists right on top of everything else. Yesterday we went to DUMBO, a neighborhood on the river across from Manhattan in Brooklyn, the Fulton-Ferry Park, this is close to the docks and the asphalt here is worn thin and the cobble stones below it are visible. The turn of the century seems to poking its head out and announcing the fact that its a long lasting construct than our modern age. The view of downtown is fantastic from the park. We walked around taking pictures and talking. Eventually, we stopped at a small cafe that made the most wonderful hot chocolate. When I say hot chocolate I'm not referring to a packet of swiss miss, but rather a brick of melted chocolate in your little paper cup. It was, as the menu item said, wicked, complete with chili powder to spice it up. From there it was off to Brighton Beach, for those not in the know, this is "Little Odessa", a predominantly Russian neighborhood where the signs on the stores are in Cyrillic and Russian. We bought some goodies for a party and then stopped at Cafe Kashkar for a nosh. It was almost like being back in St. Pete's, just a more sober version of our trips to Caravan Sarai.

There was a moment there when we stood outside of The Brighton Bazaar, a huge Russian supermarket bustling and bursting at the seems with black leather jackets, animal print clothing and cold stares from behind the deli counters. Mariya and I were waiting outside for Tom to pay. I asked her what she was thinking about, as she seemed a little deep in thought. She said that coming to Brighton always took the wind out of her sails. She went on to say that she didn't like this part of town, as it was a dream gone wrong. People came to this country to have things they couldn't have in Russia, and what they got wasn't something anyone really wanted. I don't know how accurate of a statement that is, people seemed to be enjoying this little transplanted corner of reality, but at the same time, it looked like Russia. Driving down Ocean Parkway I thought we were back on Moskovsky Prospect, but more than that, the immediate area of Brighton is run down, its that peeling brick and broken sidewalk. I don't know it well enough to be able to say if the people are happy, but they seemed content. She did make a good point when I said "this place is preserving some culture", she pointed out that it was just consumerism or materialism, hard to argue with that when you look around and see the shops, the buying and selling, this isn't culture... but there's the language and then there are the attitudes and foods... yes, one aspect of culture but not a defining quality by any stretch of the imagination.

This whole city is strange, the lines are drawn and they don't seem like they move often. Neighborhoods are separated and don't seem to melt with their surroundings yet it takes all these various hoods, from Spanish Harlem, to the polish of Greenpointe where we are now, to create the construct of New York. In derivative, it is an amalgamation of fiefdoms and differences. In reality, I don't think it can be comprehended how this leviathon lives and breathes, yet it does. One of these days I'll spend more than a weekend in the city.

Brazillian Concrete Poem as Representation Poem of a Representation

And this is titled "Square Box"

Something I saw... today

James Nachtwey has been in places that hollywood spends millions of dollars recreating to give movie goers a third hand rush. His photographs tell stories... and if you've a stomach for this kind of visceral stuff, then you should go look at them.



Hutu Death Camp Survivor - photo by James Nachtwey

Erdu Poetry

Ghazal

We all were killed
this our final
triumph

For we did reach the destination
we met your challenge
Beloved Revolution

and returned after dying
Oh victory

...

-Faiz Ahmed Faiz

This, in the search of the perfect lyriv poem as Paul sometimes mentions or refers to lyric poetry, or at the heart of everything is the lyric poem, one that is open, one that you rise up into only for a better view of the depths below, this is a little piece that caught my eye. More as I plough through this and other works... but he remind me of Darwish, and Adonis, maybe its the tone, or the heroism, or maybe the evocation of a haunting scape that seems at once as if it was desert and a vast expanse of ancient culture owned and unreachable, but this tone is a common feature in "middle eastern" or "oriental" poets, to borrow Said's term.

The Wind

So as not to be confused with Julie Christy's melancholy song, The Wind, let me tell you that the wind blowing down Fulton street this evenning is a ghost. It told me so as I was crossing the street, dodging traffic in the setting sun. It's still there if you want to meet it for yourself.

Dance like no one is watching...

A very big thank you to Bert for finding this...

An old translation of Jason Flick's Ms. Atomic Bomb

Three (3) a trios



Were she innocent or lean and lean as cut fine loin
I can’t know her mind she god-essed into higher fortune
he one lover, one comer, one come crazily
so say three bodies (lets not forget Ape-Ollo)
three bodily jargons just ready, ready set go
three bodies in two stories but what’s the third
not knowing who cares but three again three

{Oh-Ryan + Ape-Ollo} jealous lovers zeal
{Oh-Ryan + Art-A-Miss} jealous brothers lovers zealed

and so it goes combine and dine
chop chop dice and slice intrinsic to triad
one jealous man caused the death of another
this much is known, this much can still be seen
overhead randomized regalia star lit she weep it

Love poems are for sissys

Did you say

solipsistic

i love that

word

gently used

reeds and

willows

face me

speaking

about face

condensed

bread crumb

back toward

this way

walk this way

like the walk

of this road

will lead you

back to me.

A convoluted thing poem...

Let’s swim

to the moon, (ah-ha)
Let’s climb through the tide

pretend for a moment that this maze
of rooftop quadrants cradles me

your head a pillow book somewhere
near my breast beating hymns

to smoke; shorter than signal flares
siren wails and red carpets’ glare.

I’ve a thorn in my side
the same in English as in Spanish,

maybe a two tongued janus – jade us
now latch my lips for keeping

in moist and severed gardens
away from bone yard gravity

in the evening’s wound of the sun,
a shameless grammar appears

filching flirts from the underdressed.
Unhook my skin from the night

so that it might drape us over with yellow
stars the color of el camino headlights

pushing wheal barrows of dust into wind
seems possible when we’re left to

Penetrate the evenin’ that the
city sleeps to hide

moontop myths brought the fog
which will appear as it was

if perception went to bed.

...

Radial

I can’t draw a straight line
bodies aren’t lined

yet there’s a course to round
if my hands draw thighs

suggesting the St. Louis Arch
the same Cassiopeia at night as in

the slatted light in your bedroom
egg cartonned a captive grace

enough for expansion
as a road to a mountain

and maybe from obscurity
through the inadequacy of straights

your delicate smile appears.

The Departed

I read that title and I want to say "Dearly Gathered", or maybe I want to pretend I understand the cadence, or rather the origins, of southern baptist churches full of hell fire and brimstone. I want to be able to say that phrase with the lilt and swing and dipthongs of a regular healer in a revival tent locked in summer heat all sweaty and such. But this isn't what I'm talking about right now, no, I'm talkin' about Southie, I'm talkin' about Provedance, I'm talkin' about Scorsese's latest offering, and probably his best since the phenomenal Goodfellahs. Yeah, its mean, the body count is high, the blood letting copious, the swearing absurd and uncaring, no group goes unmaligned, the characters are straight out of a handbook or manual on Boston PD stereotypes complete with bigotry and colorful gestures, yet it all works, brutally so.

To say I was pleased when I left the film isn't doing justice to exactly how pleased I was in the pacing and progress of the 2 1/2 hour train ride through a "Havahd Sqweah" you never want to be caught in. Nicholson's role is like taking the Joker, genetically splicing in Tony Montana, adding in Keasy's mad mad mad hatter from the flight ot he cuckoo, stirring well, shaking, and then amping it up 10 notches. Yeah, Nicholson is a sociopath, a glorious one, with deliciously quotable dialogue. Its a boys film, did ya hear that? It really is. The lovey story is completely disposable, the film will work just as well without it, actually perhaps even better, as it won't have to compromise or seme like it has a hand out for the female movie going audience. No offense ladies, but really, does that makeup up for all the headshots that this film has, over and over again?

So what makes this thing work? The fact that its over the top without letting the joke get old. It keeps reinventing the joke in quirky little ways and builds suspense very well. The story becomes a little preposterous as we get down the road a bit, and even contrived toward the very end, but the one thing I must say, besides the brilliant Jach Nicholson, is a glorious performance by Leonardo Di Caprio. Yeah, I said it here and now, he doesn't suck in this role. Normally I find him tired, and I was ready to write off Scorsese for making his third film with Leo, considering how awful he was in Gangs of New York, and only moderately interesting in The Aviator, but its as if he came of age in this film. He's exciting to watch, interesting, you want to see him on screen, and are at the same time repulsed by Matt Damon who also does a fabulous job, and probably doesn't have to fake the accent. Di Caprio brings with him, finally, a bit of weight (thanks John), to the role, which makes the experience of watching him play a tough guy not only believable, but enjoyable.

Before I end this, let me say, that the film has an absolutely brilliant sound track, that opens with The Rolling Stones Give me Shelter and has a brilliant cover of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb a la Country/Western. I don't know who did the latter, but as soon as I'll find out, I'll post it here... Go watch it... if for no other reason than to see Scorsese do what he does best: paint with a brutal brush.

Guam

You should go and read Craig Perez's blog about Guam's attempts at self determination and their plea to the UN to continue the process of decolonization. As one of 11 places/states that are still considered colonies, it has the uneasy position of being not only the American Spearhead of the pacific, but a staging ground for future campaigns on the Korean Peninsula. Its an interesting read, and an important one for a people who were denied so much, so don't just sit there, go read it!

Well I know

What I'm watching this weekend... The Departed. Could this be? Could this be Scorsese's return? I mean after a stink bomb like Gangs of New York, you almost wonder who snatched the real M. Scorsese and replaced him with Jerry Bruckheimer. I mean, except for D. D. Lewis who was brilliant as always...

Paris, @ 140 mph

On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had ... all » a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris. The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur.

No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit.

The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The footage reveals him running real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up real one-way streets.

Upon showing the film in public for the first time, Lelouch was arrested. He has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground until a DVD release a few years ago

For Eugene Hütz

I have to thank you for the music, for the sacred darlings, and their greencard husbands. All night purples dancing mussolini vs. stalin: how to write nomad chronicles. Let's get radical on the border and claim that we're undestructable, whereas in the old time, in the old time it was not a crime. And since you were a twenty, we were once twenty too. Two fingered revolutions on Ave B., the coin skirt and real dirt. Fuck me! Globally speaking, you indigent punk, nu jenya! shto blat?! klass! Nu vot, and that's how you knew to fly, when the time's right -- Sally's contra-world underdogs strike.

For Aslam Saliyuth

It's a good thing ears give out before pulse. My jaw jacked back and left to right couldn't quite get off the carousel. You discovered yourself in the lights and that you could robot to jungle. Nothing better than marley in the morning except when you realize there's no odd shaped glass and paper umbrella when dawn shoots you dead in the alley. BPM as a measure of excitement; when the drum rolls and the head tolls. Can you stand acid when you're sober? Some sort of departure, knowing what we missed and what went missing. Do you still pretend its a strangers hand when coming your hair with your fingers? The thing about out is that one bleeds into another, promises stale, calendars fail to make clear every fading rumors.

For Benjamin Hollander

How do you know me here? I'm not the Russian hit man from your dreams with coffee. Sitting with your back to the world and your eyes peeled open is tiring. Your pile of debris, hashed marks, a stain from the empty cup you spoon feed froth. The last time it was tradition, we argued about process. The nineteenth century's liberal clap trap couldn't find a place between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Too many buckets to make a category, too few subjects for ontology. Olson didn't creep into the mood; but the territory seemed oddly familiar. The carrot cake is good but I can't dance to it; your gesture is fattening. When you're tired of the laughs think about how soon we'll be taken seriously out of context and smile.

Some Idler Invented The Idea

And some we thought were not the same
as some thought we must be aftermath
to something like we might have made
of ourselves we give our lot and give our game
we play it right away when we wear
the idea of us to find we can’t quite fit
these soiled clothes having grown
into instance when we’re shamed
we wept furiously wrapping our limbs
with what we could find and whittle
into the thing most preciously kept between
our joined sexes we must feel thus so alive
as to die for when we enter eden once more
will you ask me to pick fruit where only
brambles grow like the thorns worn most
easily around the time we parted
heading toward the dawn and the next day
will roads not find us faster from the scarce
calamity we made of not enough air
in our kiss we thought about other lips
we must’ve kvetched out our small smell
with taste we termed it mirth
we are all a pack of saddies in a mist
endlessly picking up new inventions
and since then have been somehow unwell
while we want to heal the sun
and resolve the moon’s adolescence
will it never cease to rain us into
an ocean shorter than we can swim

Oppen to Oppen

Oppen to Oppen

Had it been
water or something
permeating the stone,
which cracked
its own weight,
jerks right, about
face
toward faces

light and the marrow
which more solid
ground appeared
air on the way,
back from knowing
it had to be spring
in the dew,
hung by our eyes

or a momentary ghost
meant it wasn’t
a real abstract
contemplation,
rather incandescent
for a fixture
or furtive gasp;
those words.

On the subject of two...

Kazimir Malevich



Vasily Vereschagin

Two Russian Paintings

This presents significant rubbish when from reading that angels height and mass makes plastic dreams a really scary occurrence the northerners think they're European bold enough to make hanging black squares in white rooms seem mildly patriotic —what would've Lenin thought?

As to be read this must have a conversation? in pieces? what a mess of fingers that never seem to stop bleeding. Under the sky— or if you would prefer "all things steal shadow" still intentionally bludgeoned, uprooting the distinctions, so that we all know Tretyakov beckons us to hang on a meadow of corpses dust for now.

On the subject of two...

Raphael





Masaccio

On the School & Trinity

This is not a gesture or the hand of the world anointed by cloud the finger of heaven recusing the poets wait wait, the rock’s perspective ideal shared a unity to live and die in dialogue lifting the context where the ancient seems new, steers straight up the stairs, while brooding away what's left unwritten

The first shaped invention of the wheel spares purpose the job of getting things done economically but canvas forms and certain orchestrated displays require more allegiance to the compass: when a traingle’s points— points through space build of men’s brittle shoulders befire penitent kneelers were what is to come