All representational technologies… represent what is not present and confront you with something else you have to deal with… It used to be that you called and, if no one was home, there was no answer. The phone just rang until you gave up, Time would go by. Maybe you would try again. Maybe you would get no answer again – Thomas De Zengotita – Mediated: How the media shapes the world and the way you live in it, 2006 p200
Except for that roommate I had in college who just let it ring and ring and if later he came back to the receiver of the telephone and heard a dial tone – that meant that they had returned and had tried to answer their phone but there was no one there so they had hung up. It saved him the trouble of trying again and again. The most annoying people are the ones that will cause big problems for others (have you been on the other side of a party wall and had to listen to a phone ring and ring) in order to gain small advantages for themselves. The obnoxious bastard – he once saved himself the trouble of walking to the restroom by peeing in a Lavorous mouthwash bottle. A buddy came by and he told him, yes, you can use my mouthwash. He did and spit it out – ‘God’, he said, ‘this taste like piss.’ God – aren’t some people hilarious? He's proabaly a big corproate executive somewhere now.
Beauty for her, was a beginning, / an honest way in. I knew that, / yet still I wanted to say, Give me / what a troubled soul might see, / give me ‘that kind of beauty,’ / but heard the sanctimony in it – Stephen Dunn – What Goes On: selected and new poems, 2009 p168
There is a man in the woods standing in an area in which he has planted hundreds of little orange flags – what are you demarcating, I ask. Phallox, he replied. He was working on a Doctoral dissertation in botany it seemed and this particular plant the one that he was studying (related to the tobacco plant) produced both sexual and asexual flowers (open and closed flowers) and the open flower came in two different forms (with the sexual parts reversed). Highly unusual, I said. There are 120 plants known to produced both open and closed flowers, probably the best known plants prone to this were the violets, but most of them were grasses. I asked a lot of questions. That’s the hypothesis I’m trying to prove, he said. In evolution, hypotheses are not proven, I commented. Some hypothesis make more sense, some are more consistent with the evidence, some are more beautiful, but whether they are true or not can not be proven. But a good hypothesis should be capable of being disproven (and by the way evolution is not a fact, it is not an hypothesis – it is a theory while creative design is a belief for which evidence is irrelevant). Creative design spawns neither good nor beautiful nor valid hypotheses . It is incapale of predicting anything - all evidence is proof of a miracle - how does that help you find oil?
‘I was in town,’ I said. ‘Yes’, she replied. We stood facing each other, waiting for something to happen. A difficult moment at best of times, in my experience, the second meeting… ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Anyway,’ I replied – Michael Frayn – The Trick of It, 1989 p46
A mediated world is a world created just for me.
A medicated world is me re-created for the world
After the power to choose / a man wants the power to erase – Stephen Dunn – What Goes On: selected and new poems, 2009 p195
The breakfast project – Today it is breakfast on the J Line at Church and Day Sts. - Hungary Joe’s Restaurant - five tables and a counter with six stools. There are also two outside tables. The orange stools have been covered with dark orange binding tap to hide their ancient rips and tears. I order a San Francisco Scramble and coffee and an English Muffin. The scramble includes avocado, bacon and cheese. Glossy B and W photos of Marylyn Monroe and Jimmy Dean stare down at me from the wall behind the counter.
Across the street at the Mickey Tom Market a number of meats are prepared to go. Or so the sign proclaims, but I doubted it as the store was vacant and was for rent.
A painting with red blinking lights hangs next to Marylyn’s portrait. It contains two different images of her. One of them is her in that in her pink chiffon from “Seven Year Itch” with Tom Ewelle and a there is an image of James Dean standing between two gas pumps behind his silver Porsche Spyder. It is entitled Destiny’s Highway. A banner at the top reads “Norma Jean’s Roadside Dinner”.
The restaurant is oriental owned and Hispanic operated – Hungry Joe’s not Norma Jean’s. So typically American. The female manager is reading her paper while the males labor. Only she is allowed to handle the money.
Out front a young couple is standing, is embracing, is kissing. Her hand is on his shoulders. They are kissing as if saying good by forever as if he were off to a war after a passionate night's leave. She gets into the passenger side of a blue SUV and there is still more teary eyed parting. He walks around and gets into the driver’s seat. He drives off. So they drive off together. They were not parting? Is he driving her home? Are they a couple or a will be couple or will they ever see one another again. There was still a sense of novelity with each other - last night was diffently their first night.
No amount of justice or love / could have saved him, of course, / though just a little for a little while / must have felt like everything – Stephen Dunn – What Goes On: selected and new poems, 2009 p194
Jethro Fish Farmer Tull - Hey Aqualung Oh Oh Oh Aqualung - Rueben bought a rare poetry book needing re-binding. For really old books use glue, the pages turn beautifully. Dud dud dad enonus - that the stars do shine - duh duh - falsetto - Oh can you feel it. Can you feel it. Duh Duh Duh Can you feel it. CAN YOU FEEL IT - uh - dad dad, uhuda unda doo - Tom Waits - That’s right, you too can be the proud owner…Josh has a problem with Waitts (the CD not the singer). Too bad because it is such a good song he says, but I ran out of space on the CD when I made it.
I fell really bad that I didn’t enter brackets this year but I was really, really buzzed and didn’t realize that the tournament was under way…a six foot server…real lumber jack…bark horse…a Jeckell and Hyde…(A Mister Jeckell and a Dr Hyde, they are regulars too). The regulars are not here today. St Paddy must of tuckered em put. A beer is a beer where I come from. Sitting out on the porch, puking and pissing out. We started at four in the morning. If you didn’t drink I thought there must be something wrong with you. Oh how you old guys like to brag about how much tougher you were. And once you know have all the regulars by name its time to move on
INSTITUTIONS; This way the little banjo / music enters the hotel. // This way the channeled ceiling / luminaries / of the National / Bank of Commerce, / metal-finish crystal ground floor / and small grilled windows / and banking hours – Carl Rokosi – Amulet, 1947 p12
Little Richard - yah - ou ou baby - augh Baby oh ooh baby … oh baby.
Of all the bonds which link us to things, there is not one which fails to slacken and dissolve under the influence of suffering, which frees us from everything except the obsession of ourselves and the sensation of being irrevocably ‘individual’ – E M Cioran – A Short History of Decay, 1975 n p40
To write would be an insipid and superfluous actions if we could weep at will, imitating women and children in their fits of rage… If each time disappointments assail us, we had the possibility to be released from them by tears, all vague maladies and poetry itself would disappear – E M Cioran – A Short History of Decay, 1975 p43
A media frenzy (OJ or 9/11) is an attack of the antibodies reducing a threat to the blob to an indifference – making sure that change does not occur (there will be no rioting in the streets tonight, no one gives a shit).
Like a man on the high diving board I had moved to the edge by a series of acts which I myself had chosen and initiated… I was diving. The prerogative of choice had passed from me. I had become the helpless passenger of events – Michael Frayn – The Trick of It, 1989 p48
East is east
West is west
And yet it’s the same
Sun
The same
One
The philosophers’ originality comes down to inventing terms – E M Cioran – A Short History of Decay, 1975 p48
To memorialize
Is to trivialize
To saturate
Is to desensitize
An odorless, tasteless smog
That obscures reality
Overstimulated, zoned out
Nothing to hold on to
“Destiny”, which may be nothing, is what has “willed” what happens to us – E M Cioran – A Short History of Decay, 1975 p39
An organization cannot win
And it cannot lose only
Individuals can achieve that
But they can be vicious, being
Amoral – vindictive, rapacious
And all consuming
But they cannot love, nor can they hate
Nor laugh, nor procreate
They cannot, they can only destroy
What they are not
They are unreasoning phantoms
Of our imaginations
And they are (next to God) our
Most rational embodiments
The nation, the people, the
Enterprise, the most honorable judiciary
They are single minded and many bodied
And we owe them our lives – these
Our bloody mouthed protectors
Long live the leader, long live democracy
God bless the king
God bless Tiny Tim
Young girls bicycle by / in pairs and plaid shorts. // A wind so soft, / one’s whole / back tingles / with cilia. // A gentle lake – Carl Rokosi – Amulet, 1967 p11
31% of pregnancies fail to come to term. Any estimate of the percentage of early embryos that are lost before production of HCG is very difficult to ascertain as it is HCG that is used to identify the presence of an embryo in the first place. Maybe as many as 50% of embryos fail to make the “Big Dig”
All I’m claiming is that I’m me to me just as she’s me to her, and me = me. I’m the sovereign of ‘my’ universe just as much as she’s the sovereign of hers, and I demand the normal protocol and courtesies that one head of state extends to another! That’s reasonable enough isn’t it? – Michael Frayn – The Trick of It, 1989 p38
The sun wants to shine
The trees want to bear leaves
The snow want to disappear
Friendship blooms quickly in the hothouse atmosphere of travel, within the space of hours, sometimes it’s already full-blown. Then just as suddenly is snapped off short, by the inevitable of the travelers. It seldom survives that separation for long – Cornell Woolrich – I Married a Dead Man, 1948
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