unwriter blocked

between the hours of 1 and 4 of the am of this morning, i wrote a semi-not-too-terrible story. Only when i just reread it, it's probably not a story yet, as much as the feel, movement, language, and basic skeleton of a story. in any case, i'm happy to have finally written something, even if it was only because i couldn't sleep, and was bored, and grew a bit nervous listening to my heart beat unnecessarily hard in my chest. to distract myself... (or, as I wrote in the novel

____i could not sleep
____and felt guilty
____and so wrote.
______________)

In any case. Hopefully in the next few days it will become apparent to me how to ameliorate it, and help her to stand on her two feet.

i suppose then you are welcome to have a read of it if such a thing should be interesting to you.

in other news, i cannot bring myself to do anything but sit at my piano and play scales. i cannot understand what might be so interesting about that... but it seems to be a way for me to sit and not have to think and not have to listen and not have to be and not have to go and not have to know and not have to do and not have to have and not have to decide and not have to face and not have to be brave and not have to analyze and not have to measure and not have to apologize and not have to calm myself and not have to worry and not have grow sad and not have to feel worried that i'm sad and not have to talk rubbish and not have to do anything but press the next white or black key in a sequence of tones and semitones and form structures we call the musical scales and which for whatever reason, once have made their way into your hands, more or less play themselves, and i (me) and free to float aimlessly into the quietest parts of myself where there is no need to know who me is or what or what to do with or all the things i fear i have already ruined thrice over with nothing but the best intentions to achieve.

nevermind.

perhaps a shower is order.

don't ask me anything, i don't know.

being and nothingness

i am not really in the mood to write. it's because my hands smell funny. i don't know what's wrong with the soap, but i don't like this smell. also the light; skylights frustrate me. something mock-divine about them, the filtered milky white light- apparently coming from nowhere. one expects to find a prophet standing behind them with His prophetic hand on their shoulder, and say things like my son my daughter and look calm. I suppose listening to the Brahms requiem doesn't help things much either. the wholly holy mood. (i crack me up. no, not really)

i haven't eaten. in a while.
the air must be divine- i'm living off of it.

funny thing, used to be that nights were unbearable for me- i'd look forward to mornings. then it shifted, night was fine- only i was terrified of facing morning. then it changed again, and now again. Night's unbearable.

(Brahms makes it sound so good- heaven that is) (i find myself soo much calmer when i hear this, like really it were angels that were singing to me, having climbed down from vines to hide under my couch and in the cave of my piano and between the books on the bookshelf, singing, with their bright blue eyes and curly hair, sometimes you see the air stir- it's someone's wing involuntarily flapping (it does happen), and once or twice i've found little feathers here and there when they left) hi angels. welcome. it's not much, but it's what it is. come sit, give me some advice: shall i buy a car? 1.8 or 1.6 liter engine? (i'll trade you my soul for some wings to fly away with)

where to?

for now, i should run. it's good for somethings. my heart thinks it can play up whenever it wants, start beating all fast and out of time- sometimes it's good to just put her in her place, show her when it's appropriate to work up, plus burn some energy, that way when she's expected to maintain composure she can. keeps me up all night with her quaking like that. feels like my body's stalling in the middle of 2am... it's good to show her who's boss.

also it's a little hard to write about nothing and nothingness. it looks, sounds, reads like this:








see? there's not really much to it. Also, it's fiendishly difficult to express it. Mostly, i think it's one of those things that really resists description. like most of the things i want to say today. also i don't want this to end, because if i stop doing this then i have to think about what's next, and that's not something i want to do either.

my grandparents have been on my case to video myself playing something. my fingers are still pretty rusty, and the revolutionary etude sounds a mess. Bach fares worse. Mozart is annoying. Chopin preludes bore me, and are too short. So here's what they got, a hesitant Kabalevsky prelude (g# minor) on an out-of-tune piano.

what's next?
what's next?

52 images of the tree in the grass next to McDonald's

17 August, 2008, Amy Sahba
Courtesy of every morn and eve

1. is it green or yellow?
2. quiet. but behind glass everything is quieter. (colder). farther away. harder to reach.
   
3. like airplane windows. (cold) (father away now). harder to reach. (i'm here)
4. well rooted. it owns that spot. that spot belongs to him.her
5. she's smiling.
   
6. (a car drives past)__(she trembles)__(she can hear everything) __hi? (she can't hear me)
7. wrong language. she is beyond semantics. meaning means something else.
8. at Flinders Uni, there was a tree like her (her brother). under it i first read Prufrock. Dante. Schopenhauer. a girl asked me out. - what are you listening to?
   - the Mozart requiem
   - i sing that!
   - really?
   - yeah. i'm this choir... we sing __that. __the requiem. __Mozart. [nervous smile]
   (she's standing, i'm sitting)
   - cool.
   - yeah.
   - [smile. awkward silence]
   - wanna hang out sometime?
   - really?
   - sure. __why not, could be fun.
   - will you sing for me?
   - [genuine laugh] you're serious?
   - sure. why not. could be fun.
   - [shakes head] sure, why not, could be fun.
   
   we never went though
   
   
9. another car. motion. stillness. motion. stillness. motion. stillness. the tree doesn't mind. she's happy where she is in life.
   
10. get one shot to pick that spot. you better get it right. (i'm scared) tree responds: i was too
    
11. she hears me.
    
12. she nods.
    
13. her leaves, some of them have fallen at her feet, some still on her trunk. she has a dress of yellow leaves. she holds a yellow bouquet. marry me?
14. she laughs. (you're too young for me)
15. larger than most trees. but so decidedly feminine. i can smell her through the glass. jasmine. sandstone. deserts. hamseen (dust storms). the soil after it rains. tshirts women i love(d) slept in. piano stores. hot chocolate. women's hair.
    
16. wind. her leaves quiver. (she's flirting, throws her hair back like that for me) tease.
    
17. she giggles. covers her mouth.
    
18. another thing in life that doesn't need me.
    if you don't need me we can be silent together.
    i'm not silent.
    
19. her fingertips could be violins if they wanted to.
    her trunk is a double bass
20. somewhere, an oak edges an inch a year closer to her. somewhere, he loves her. (she doesn't respond)
21. she stands alone. only one tree, on grass. roads on either side.
    
22. she redeems the glass, she makes the glass necessary.
    
23. she redeems my eyes. she makes eyes necessary.
    
24. she redeems my vision. she makes vision unnecessary.
    
25. she redeems my dirty thoughts. she makes thought unnecessary.
    
26. how can we speak?
    by not thinking
27. by the tree at Flinders University, a young woman named Kate. I was copying the MATH101 homework
    - how was your weekend?
    - pretty good.
    - you?
    - great. had copious amounts of sex. (that was her phrase, I'll never forget it: copious)
    - [i feel sick i want to throw up]
    - [why? everyone does it]
    - [i know. i want to too]
    - [then do]
    - [i can't]
    - [why not?]
    - [i'm having a theophilosophical conundrum]
    - [what does that mean?]
    - [puberty i guess]
    - [hahah]
    - [i'm too young to be here]
    - [you're too young to be here]
    - [i'm going to go read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and find an answer]
    - [see you when you know]
    - thanks for the homework
    - no worries! see ya mate
28. this tree remembers all that. this tree is memory incarnate. if you snap a twig, you'll see, a purple cloud will flow out. on it, a miniature unicorn walks besides my sister (she walks). they speak to one another. Where you going Sahar?
    Shopping duuhh. i laugh. she laughs. they're all in there. every single one.
    
29. upside down (if i move my tray to another table, then recline with my back on the table, my legs flailing in the air for balance away, my head- now upsidedown closest to the glass) you look like you are falling. like you are holding the earth with everything you have in you. that your roots are muscular and that you are stressed.
    
30. rightside up: you defy gravity. you are slowly floating away. you are turning into a ghost. you are all soul and no body. one time, i'll wink, and when i open my eyes, you'll be floating away. a yellow/orange balloon with a brown string
31. i'll race you. first to ghost wins!
32. she sings Debussy's second arabesque to me
33. trees always sound like pianos to me
34. a car parks besides her. now i can't see her trunk. she is growing through the car. she is versatile.
    
35. a pimply teenager walks to the car. throws his backpack into the backseat. sits in the passenger seat up front. doesn't say a word. the car drives away.
    
36. the tree adjusts herself back into the ground. i have full view. again.
37. (my mother cries softly: you were too young. we should never have let you skip those grades. it's my fault)
38. the tree doesn't believe in fault.
    
39. nor statistics. nor error. nor statistical error.
    
40. stained-glass mirror
41. a painting by Pissaro i saw in LA
42. a dream i have sometimes. under this tree, i met a white-bearded man. twice. once before this life. Once after. He smiled both times. (His eyes too). He likes this tree. He told me that first time: He'd wait for me here.
    I'll be right back I said.
    He nodded
    
43. i don't know how you look in the rain. perhaps the color of spinach.
    
44. if i squint: a flower. a daffodil with honey for petals.
45. like a perfectly organized collection of red-bricks scattered besides a tall fireplace
46. like a family of almost still fireflies
47. like the point where autumn was born.
    
48. like the soul of autumn (it's winter now she tells me) __(the soul lives on in autumn)
49. the scarf mona gave me was this color. grey and a stripe of orange. it was autumn then. we walked up a hill. then back down the hill after dinner. the tree knows that. that's why i'm comfortable with her. she knows everything- i don't have any more excuses for why i'm the way i am. it's all my fault (the tree smiles, knowing that means nothing. gibberish). you're the sort of thing i want to sleep next to everynight. (some wind, she reaches out for me- i'll give you a hug, but you must be off babyboy)
50. i walk out. i can hear better now. see better. i purposefully pass beneath her. 28 paces out of my way, the two shorter sides of Pythagoras's triangle)
51. under her- she is the sky. she is the whole sky. there is no other sky.
    
52. by parallax: i am a shooting star, not yet extinguished. not falling, floating, flying, free, far, farsighted, phenomenal, phenomena, fast, facticity, fraidy-cat, formulaic, . __not__ f
    ___________________________________a
    ____________________________________l
    _____________________________________l
    ______________________________________i
    _______________________________________n
    ________________________________________g

morning song

: of the parallax of parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.

______Joyce (Ulysses)






after me comes the flood, lizzy stewart
courtesy of: my love for you is a stampede of horses



i had a dream i remember; this is not necessarily a common phenomena (shame too, because i often regurgitate dreams when i: write, idly sit around daydreaming, speak in parables, fulfill tragi.self-prophecies). Again, at 5am, for no apparent reason, either i dreamed of a presunrise, or i woke up so that i could see my room, my blankets, the skin on my hands colored blue

the isolated tread of an early wayfarer, the visible diffusion of the light of an invisible luminous body...

perhaps there is a beautiful woman who jogs every morning at that hour- and the patter of whose feet rouses that part of my-self (sitting in my hair i imagine) that sits awake and keeps watch for these sorts of things,
____and once again, the presunrise, loitering outside my drawn curtains whispered her day's ambitions, as though of all half-asleep-dreamers, i was the most fluent in her language of hues and tones. and i don't know if it was before during or after the blue kiss of dawn that at my grandmother's house you were there, and i was there and avoided one another, and i took your bags for you to the airport and sat there and waited for you, and while i waited i disappeared and at the halfway point to the max elevation of a greenbeastmountain i drank an icetea. you appeared at the airport, where seated outside with a large suitcase i saw you come, stood. nodded, and walked away.

(and awoke feeling literally sick. three times to the bathroom, and even sitting here cramping inside me. guts and tendons and can feel the sinew in my neck twist itself around hoping to suffocate)


(like Joyce, i fear "the big words which make us so unhappy")

and we awake.
all of us
facing something.
(ourselves sometimes)
and we shrug,
and dream
and walk, mope, moan, matriculate, masticate morning breakfasts

determine in the odyssey of our day
so small
tiny
momentary
everything a god might have wanted us to know:
(about sitting in front of heaters still cold
and the milky white light of tuesday mornings,
and two lonely hands holding each other, linking yourself back to yourself,
_like a big circle of skin. a flesh-donut.
(turning around really really fast so you get dizzy
about memories of dancing,
soo long ago-
in a dark drawer in my head somewhere

____anyway.

my hair is longer.

i awake everyday at 5am like a chronograph machine. i am the sun's alarm. my waking stirs her to rise. she rises. i fall back asleep. only i don't know if i ever was awake. if it was her dream that leaked into my head (because outside my window she was whispering, smoking) (and because i believe if two people lie besides one another entangled, and dream individually, they can leak into one another in a blurry way that's kind of like lovemaking- but with your soul. so that in your sleep i can kiss the inside of your eyelids and sit in the darkness of your chest and keep you company because sleep is so lonely a thing- to be lost inside yourself for so long like that. (i won't leave you baby) (and if that's true, then maybe, for alonepeople, the sun sits by our windows and dips a finger in every so often, just push us past certain faces, certain airports, certain grandmother's houses, certain painted toes we've kissed, certain milkywhitelight afternoons we can't forget, push us past so as to not get entangled in too dark nights for too long, alone)
(or to wake to them in the morning)

(but to wake to nothing)

hi.
dear world,
dear everything,
hi.
dear me,
dear yesterday,
hi.
dear love(d)(s)
dear pandemonium
hi.
dear dear life:

__*
_ ^
_**

(a little nothing leans forward to kiss you.
and be infected by you into existence.
once again.
if you want)

STATUS: writer's block

THINGS I'VE DONE TO OVERCOME (SAID) WRITER'S BLOCK, A LIST:

1. listen to an entire Calla cd
2. take a long walk wearing heavy scarf and pea-coat
3. sit in a coffee shop for hours, alone, scribbling in notebook
4. listen to Portishead's Third album in its entirety.
   
5. is it winter? (yes it is)
6. contemplate how i came to be here
7. contemplate how i don't know how to escape here
8. wrote the following inspirational slogans into (said) notebook:
   ____- Run Orestes, Run!
   ____- Bye Bye LA
   ____- Problems I Had While Trying to Write the Short-Story Bye Bye LA, A Short-Story About Not Being Able to Write a (Different) Short-Story (Also: A Tale of Two, and More, Cities)
   ____- no bears were harmed in the making of TOMS shoes!
   ____- Christ returns!... (when 200 million people wear TOMS shoes)
9. drank hot chocolate
10. read previous of my own writings that i do not hate (and one i actually really liked)
11. avoided reading Ulysses (it makes me feel dumb and small)

POSSIBLE REASONS I CANNOT WRITE, A LIST:

1. Ulysses makes me feel dumb and small. Also, it's heavy and i'm tired of carrying it around everywhere. I must get through the remaining 96 pages quickly!
2. i am too busy thinking up possible TOMS slogans and giggling to myself
3. i am neither in love nor depressed. i write best when i am in love, or depressed. (can someone please bewitch/seduce/or infatuate me, or alternatively, please send all correspondence indicating things i ought to be depressed about to the email at the bottom of the screen
4. i am trying too hard to 'get it out'. it is a shy rabbit
5. i am not enough alone- despite my occasional attempts at it
6. i have not done anything 'exciting', 'raw', or supremely disappointing in nearly four years
7. maybe i just need a break... just to let everything that's happened settle. i always write best retrospectively anyway
8. i do not have any books (except Ulysses) near me. I, like Shohleh, and like Virgina Woolf and Sylvia Plath before us, are most inspired by other people's writing
9. i am too busy scheming how to be a notaloser, which requires much time

WAYS YOU CAN HELP ME OVERCOME (SAID) WRITER'S BLOCK, A LIST:

1. make me fall in love with you (preferred)
2. make me depressed (not really preferred)
   
3. email or comment me silly, absurd, meaningful, interesting things that you think would tickle my literary bone
4. email or comment questions, topics, random nonsense you'd like to see me work with (write about, do variations on, ponder

i can't even listograph anymore.

freak_ing ANnoying. (typographical artsy-fartsyness to represent my actual pronunciation of (said) curse)


PERSON(S) I MISSED THE MOST TODAY:
Ashtree, Mona

PERSON(S) I MISSED THE MOST YESTERDAY:
Liam, Mar

PERSON(S) I MISSED THE MOST THE DAY BEFORE THAT:
Ashtree, Mar, Mona

PERSON(S) I MISSED THE MOST THE DAY BEFORE THE DAY BEFORE THAT:
Emerson, Liam

.
.
.
.
&c


CLAUSE: list compiled includes only the people i would see regularly in a social fashion, or at least speak to soo regularly that it may as well have been seeing in a regular and social fashion, and does not take anything away from many many (many) other people whom i miss equally much but have not seen regularly (so as to be considered in "a regular and social fashion") over the last most recent bracket of near-history which has now completed. Had those people been considered for the above (said) list, it would have been much longer. (much longer) (much longer).
CONFESSION: now i feel bad that i might offend people by not having put them on said list.
COUNTER-CONFESSION: i'm slightly too tired to care right now. (also, kind of still annoyed from not having had anything to write about, so, forgive me this one occasion)

whatever. bye.
(haha)

fragments

She followed not at all, a part of the whole, gave attention with interest, comprehended with surprise, with care repeated, with greater difficulty remembered, forgot with ease, with misgiving remembered, repeated with error.

__________Joyce (Ulysses)






ItKills, Mike Cole

um, what do i write about?

at present, i am a little apprehensive about writing emotional things. it might be because i don't feel particularly emotional. i'm not feeling particularly thoughtful either- which kind of means i can't write thoughtfully. so. what are we left with? memory? fantasy? (blah & blah)

NONENTICAL (a made up word, read: NONENTITY-LIKE) POINTS, A LIST:

- i watched Persepolis last night. it made me simultaneously want to write/abandon my idea for the novel. Write: because an entire universe existed before i was born that culturally, geographically, emotionally, physically, inadvertently, religiously, directly affects who i am (where i am) (what i'm doing) (where i'm going) (what i am)
Abandon: it's too big. these stories are too intimate. i'm scared of them. i'm scared of my stories. i don't know my stories. i'm ashamed not too. (but i'm scared to learn) i don't know how to put my feet on those streets. i'm worried i won't see it with the same eyes. i don't have time to learn. (these are excuses not reasons).

- mostly, i could not really sleep last night. i awoke a few times (but since i could not distinguish dream from sunrise, i don't know which was which) and thought more and more about going to Sydney... like right now. Or as Monz said to me last night: you need to expand. you need more space. you always function in little microcosms. little spaces, populated with a few close friends. with a few intimate activities. mostly books. stop reading! find yourself a larger space, encompass it. you'll find yourself larger than you thought too. (not you Monz, Adelaide-Monz. I'll have to think of a new name to sort this nomenclature irregularity out).
i kinda agree.
i need newness. (even if it's temporary)

- i've been a little lonely lately. Not too bad, certainly more manageable than it has been in the past. Joyce is hilarious and makes me giggle in bed (with the electric blanket on). Mozart frustrates me- my somethingofagoal in life is to at least play it as well as the four Korean 5-year-olds on youtube.

- things i don't really believe in:
____- apocalyptic doom's-day predictions of our future
____- we are too much in control of anything
____- that my sister cannot be perfectly responsible for her own life, and that this transition hasn't been anything short of revolutionary for her, her sense of self, her sense of meness.
____(mostly i miss my sister. i want to do monkey dances with her, and say rude jokes, and watch southpark and giggle with her saying to me: you're soo rude Go-dus! (i'm sorry baby. don't tell mom) No way!, I love it!! Say something else! (you're a little bastard you know that) LOL! SEE!, you're soo funny (looking that is) that's what i meant! LOL
____- a divinely karmically recompensatory God. what i mean is: i do not believe in the line of thought that goes: you do good deeds, God rewards good deeds. (at least i don't believe in it in the superficial sense. and by 'superficial sense' i mean any sense that is bound by our (limited) conception of space, time, justice, growth, malice, strength, infinity, redemption, reward, or bounty.

DIGRESSION:
it is a tempting line of thought to think that virtue, or, a seemly character will attract God's mercy (which i believe it does). The problem with the temptation is that, we cannot fathom what God is.might be.looks like.even is. So if we cannot assume what a God looks like, we really really cannot assume what a God might function like. Thus, we have absolutely no basis for a conception of what God's mercy looks like. We just do not know what God's mercy means. Similarly, we do not know what God's bounty means. Other than we believe in it (without really knowing what it (mercy, bounty, grace, etc. is).

So, we act in accordance with some (self-chosen, dogmatically preached, misguided, adopted, or otherwise) sense of ethics, and believe that in a dynamic, real-time way whatever-God-is is interacting with us. Reacting to us. Responding to us. Adjusting the rules of the games to accommodate us. Nudging borders left and right to account for our growth. Forgiving us. Slowly winking for us to take a step left or right. When it rains giving us a coat__then sending us into a typhoon with it. (and mostly: laughing with us)
The problem is the measures of these quantities. Whatever-God-is tells us some basic rules, but who knows what our games really are. Who knows if we win.lose.tie, who knows anything.

So the point is: anything can happen. To say that there's no conceivable reason why that should be, is not the same as saying: there is no reason. Only that it is not perceivable.

____- cards with pre-written messages. (my own words are all i've got when my hands are too far away to reach someone)

DIGRESSION:
i suddenly have this sudden urge to hug, shirtless, an African man. I'm curious, if i let my eyes drift out of focus what the pattern of black and brown mixed will look like.

- These things have become my current preoccupations: place, a sense of placeness, of being from (having) a place, home, homeness, wayfaring as beautiful, wayfaring as cursed, what i can control through effort, love (if i am ready for another episode), love (with whom to engage in such an episode), love (if it can be disassembled so that we can enjoy parts of it when we don't have.can't have.don't know where to find the whole). love (i think i'd rather have the whole). love (for some reason in my head, i've linked love with my sense of nonplaceness- so that i am feeling like it can't shouldn't happen unless i'm in America. now, where'd that silly idea come from?)

- i can't dance. in the sense that i don't really know how. I admit, sometimes, when i'm walking into the showed, mostly undressed, i'll clench up all my muscles and jump up and down in a fit that resembles epilepsy, madness, or love. i'm not entirely sure why i do this. on one hand i think seeing muscles clenched is a beautiful thing in itself. on the other, i like to expel some physical energy from time to time. on a third, i think it is a reaction to the emptiness of air, and the emptiness (but calmness) of silence (which i still love, and will always love). possibly it's a very perverted, raw version of dance. maybe it's what my body thinks is dancing (if hairs and nipples and abdominals could decide for themself what dance was.is.should look like)

finally,
i think i finally hear the future yawning; finally waking up. soon i'm really going to have to write up my list of new year's resolutions. it's a task i take very seriously, and which i try to do realistically so, 'be always happy and become everything you want to be' will not suffice for me. since neither of those two things are... in anyway helpful. One of mine from 2006 was: 'never eat 2 minute noodles again'. (and again only really means for that year. which i've been loyal to. Craving 2 minute noodles, one can usually find a half-decent ramen store anyway).

more finally,
do these random thoughts actually amuse anyone? they certainly don't amuse me. but Mozart's annoying, i'm too lazy to run today. and what i really want to do is to catch the bus into the city, go to the art gallery and see if anything's changed. then find a coffee shop to sit in and read Ulysses and maybe even pen something with my own name under it that doesn't terribly suck so that when submissions open again in September, i have a decent short story to offer them.

more more finally,
go away.
i'm tired of you.
(i mean me)

fine bye
(i mean me)

fine.
(i mean me)

bye
(i mean me)

fragments

27, wrzzz

- when it rains parts of me somersault.
- i have the capacity to bend, like the opposite of certain flowers, towards nighttime,
__shifting into dreamforms and unreality.
- in the shower i think too much.
- i believe that when a man and woman first meet, they look like this:

__*________*
_^^^______^^^
__*________**

- later, unconcerned with time, or future, or history (with time), i'm going to discover how it is to be me.
(- i know you all love it when i write about love... but i only do it when i'm lonely... so if you see me do it, i've been sadish)

*__*__*

overcome with beauty, i sometimes find it hard to manage. overcome with the beauty of: second third chances, long red hair, 6 year olds telling me about their birthday plans, lying by heaters staring without thought, that i am something that exists- in a universe that is made up largely of inanimation, being the last person awake in silent rooms, silent rooms, silence, i walked out it had just stopped raining, that i live in my own world, distance,

and dream my way into towns i'll probably never

breaking through barriers of my own making (or otherwise) (in any case real), leaving tracks

sentences marking points in and out of time, just floating

(i wrote in a short-story submission today to the editors, that i was not so concerned with typical elements of a story (plots, characterizations, etc) and find them limiting. What i end up with are fragments of stories, the parts that are most important. the parts that memory clings to;_ so that my stories aren't stories at all- they're what's left of stories, after the stories have long since ended. the memory of stories, affected by time's blurring, and romance's coloring, dream's dreaming. My stories are the blurry rainbows, the meaningful phrases, the lingering last kisses, the yellow sweaters, the palm-creases, the crooked eyes, the blue cars, the midnight basketball games, the shapes outlines colors,

___________________)

(unkissed, i can only grow one way.
(into the ground, like a root.
__where it is dark,

Love, a Bilingual Handbook

____Keep my feet on ground and my head in the clouds.
__________Matisyahu

Henry Clark, 1952, referenced from: this is glamorous

i am relentless in my search for bliss.
i have glimpsed it... (also you, because you make me happy...
_____________ _which is important not because you make me happy, but because with you
_____________ _there is nothing worth being unhappy about,
_____________ _and i'm saddest when i hear about you crying (with of course you can handle
_____________ _just fine on your own) (but because i believe i know a spot to kiss, a shortcut
_____________ _to making it all better, which you know how to do for me lipless, mouthless,
_____________ _alone just your soul (but i am not so strong like that. so soulful as you). (but i have lips
_____________ _that know how to find the right patch of skin. clavicles are too often ignored,
_____________ _kissing bones i feel so close to you. knees too. ankles.)

i have glimpsed it... (but cannot understand the relentless machinery of hindsight that colors:
_____________ _trees, houses (now homes), cars, the patchy discolorations of people's skin
_____________ _rainbows now (that i don't remember seeing then), vibrations in the air between
_____________ _breaths (kissing is like being underwater/too far in the clouds)- earthquakes,
_____________ _trembling, falling... Mona picked me up from the airport when i first came
_____________ _to LA. she drove me home. next night took me out for my birthday. i'm glad.
_____________ _she's the right face for a thing like that. (must be the freckles, i'm nuts about them)

i have glimpsed it... (if i close my eyes, does that count?, is that real too? if i close my eyes, then
_____________ _i see bookshelves, and trees and women's bodies (which almost spell happiness
_____________ _all by themselves), and pianos, and the color black that only exists on the
_____________ _skin of pianos, and the way my fingertips feel (along keys and women's
_____________ _skin (which is the same thing anyway)), and i cannot dance, but see in black's
_____________ _closed-eye rendering, how beautiful my body sways and moves to music
_____________ _when i inhale sound and trapped in my lungs it tightens my muscles, and
_____________ _delays my eyes and transports my knees (am i writing about love making
_____________ _or dancing?... is there a difference?)

i have glimpsed it... (space. dreams. the sadness of childhood... the thrill of it. the excitement,
_____________ _the brilliance of miracles, the sweat of hard-work, the brutality of failure,
_____________ _the fear of everything (afterall, i'm still a child too), the brilliance of everything
_____________ _(afterall, i'm still a child too)

i have glimpsed it... (all the places i'd rather be. all the people i'd rather be with. (all the versions
_____________ _of myself that have to die so that all the other versions can be born...
_____________ _and mostly, i am happy.sad (together, wed, simultaneously) in a huge, married
_____________ _way that i cannot describe. cannot understand. cannot grasp, but am...
_____________ _and pant, breathless, from the burden of such steeps,
_____________ _and really want nothing more at 12:10am than to:

____________a glass of cranberry juice in a heavy glass tumbler, dim reggae in the background,
____________in front of the heater i stand to warm my legs (up to my knees), but stare at
____________my bookshelf, swaying and bopping lightly to the music, delighted to see
____________them all in once place- a reconciled family. hey, come dance with me.
what?
____________come dance with me.
now?
____________yeah [smiles]
[laughs softly] are you trying to win me with that silly smile of yours?
____________worked once.
(once upon a time!)
____________whatever, come here
Q, ! i'm in my PJs, I'm tired, my feet are cold, let's go to bed
____________we will! we will, come here
you're not even dancing, you're just standing there... bopping
____________like something floating off in the ocean at sunset?
save the poetry for your girlfriends.
____________you're my girlfriend
[reluctantly she walks towards him. he hands her his glass, she takes it and lifts it to her lips. He puts his arms around her- both arms around her neck, pulling her head into his chest. Having finished the last sip she makes a few muffled noises. He releases partially so she can put the glass down on the shelf. He closes her in again. He moves slowly left to right. She goes with it. She pretends to sulk. He pretends not to know she secretly won't go to bed without such a gesture. He kisses her forehead, feels her tremble. She has her arms around his waist. She lifts her head up, her chin still on his chest]
____________up for air?
sshhh.
____________[nod]
[she puckers her lips. It means kiss me. He looks at her a little while first. then does. Some music is heard, it's dark.
____it's perfect]

i have glimpsed it... (a life other than this one. This same one- but a better one. kinder. softer.
_____________ _quieter. and since i have glimpsed it... i'll just have to find it again.

(Amelia, if you read this, the answers to your questions are:

1. yes
2. older. he has lines on his face. he has a calm way about him. he likes to touch his son on the back of the head (on his neck). he pretends not to notice all eyes on him. he has short hair. he's not so tall. )

Goodnight Wednesday. you have been wonderful.


________Come, my friends,
________'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
____________Tennyson (Ulysses)

all those funky peopletestall those funky places

untitled, shesaskeleton

i am feeling like poetry is bothersome. too... dainty. also colors, i am uninterested. Today i'm going to write in black-and-white photography. Straight-up. Just a plain old chat, like the old days, not sure who was around for Entropy Pieces, but like that. Mine eyes to your eyes, nothing to connect us whatsoever. floating people. floating.

Hi Liam. Hi Emerson.
I've been thinking alot about you two.

Do you ever feel... [unable to describe the feeling].
probably you do.
everyone knows that one.

*__*__*

NOTAPOEM

i am in this house.
this house is in winter.
this winter is someone's closed eyes.

alternatively, i could say:

(we've kicked the rocks of our home towns,
we've cursed the names of our homes towns,
we've crushed the stars of our home towns,
we've ran out the dreams of our home towns,
we've dreamed the ends of our home towns,
we've burnt the bridges of our home towns,
we've lost the eyes of our home towns,

we've lost our home towns)

*__*__*

Schubert has a rather famous concert piece, the Wanderer Fantasy in C Major. I dislike it. He had no idea.

There is no reason to feel sad today.

I am making an effort to go out. To call people. To stand at the bars of clubs and look around and attempt to not feel left out. To feel my own age. To discover the wonder that such an event used to have for me. (and usually fail on all counts)

*__*__*

- Adelaide's an awesome city, where'd you rather be?
- Melbourne __Haifa __Los Angeles __Shanghai __the hills of Kyoto __Paris (Paris) (Paris) __Vienna (but i can't do that alone again) __Prague __Chicago __definitely Seattle __London __at very least Tel Aviv __Hamburg in the snow __Venice when it rains
- You actually been all those places?
- [nods sadly. keeps looking at the floor]
- wanna dance? you can warm me up on the dance floor
- [looks up. blue dress. too much cleavage] na. it's alright. i'm gonna go home.
- wait 20 minutes and you can drop me off? (wanna crash at mine?
- sorry.

*__*__*

i run along the streets. look down. can't lose myself in thoughts or anything. dislike the names of the streets. can't find anything worth finding. sit around hoping the phone won't ring. play Mozart on the piano. hate playing Mozart on the piano. play it again, urging my fingers to get it right so i won't have to play it again. (get it wrong). sigh. try reading Joyce before bed, fall asleep. sleep too long. dream of old decrepit houses. dream of walking along miniature eroded valleys. dream of missing busses. dream of too many bags of luggage sitting at airports. wake up feeling lost. find bags scattered around my room. feel lost again. stare at my phone, numbers from Australia, Israel, America, Europe, Japan, China... none more than the others. Where am I?
(there's no air in this house. the heater rules)
i should run. along the streets. the leaves haven't fallen yet. won't fall. autumn has passed now. three times i had autumn last year, once in Australia, once in China, once in Japan, managing to escape winter till I landed in Haifa. again, it's autumn now. almost there. a full year. if you ask me what time it is all my clocks are still stuck at December 12, 2006. i can't find a new thing to hang around my neck.
(do some scales. b minor didn't go so well yesterday. maybe the chromatic scale on the major 6th, you hate that one)
dear future, you mother fu&^ing bastard.
(sorry had to get it off my chest)

(tomorrow you should catch the bus. go somewhere. write. read. forgive. forget. forgo.
or not.
just being is enough)

*__*__*

i listen to french music i don't understand,
and dance like a fiend at an OD funeral.

Experiments Towards the Destruction of Language

- Originally uploaded by copyright depuis 1965

the first thing i had to unknow was that to fall sometimes feels like you're rising, followed secondly by winter all around me like a frosted-glass world, which sometimes (the cold) creeps in through the cracks of your skin and your bones huddle together
__and back to that first unknow, i wanted to say: sometimes when you're rising, it's really just falling head-first (which i'm told is the fastest way- with the exception of falling heart-first (love), which is the heaviest of the million different kids of falling, and the landing is variable from clouds to stardust to empty coarse-grained beaches that hurt your soles (souls)

and to rattle off a few words that i also learned to unlearn(unknow)(detach)(excommunicate):
- defense is the best way to mistrust life is the best way to lose all sense of hope is the best way to turn grey and lesshuman than boards of wood left out in the backyard too long so that they're soggy on the inside and still can see the lines of snails running on their splitting skin (is the best way to forget that rainbows are made of nothing but dancing invisible raindrops that are actually not falling because it's magic
- now how to forget construct(re) reply reform(ate) act(re) (as in react) (as in: to re do (again) all that was done/lost/re(done) -> re(lost) (re)fell off a god-damned tree perched somewhere on a small hill in a desert and the limestone still hurts my elbows . recapitulate life like a freaking robot mumbling ayyyygain, ayyyyygain, ayyyygain a-gain (as in once again, as in the opposite of gain as in to not-gain as in to perhaps be moribund-me (moribund = stagnant, stale, decrepit, on its way to almost nearly there at extinction, also sounds somewhat like morbid- which it perhaps is to lay up inside your own skin and wait for it to stop beating and __and ___and, __and, __and then i really don't know what and
- blabber words for no reason other than they're all there unorganized in jumbled masses in my head from unwritten letters unwritten stories unwritten novels unwritten essays unwritten futures overwritten plans over(maxed)heated hopes (that swell like giant pears inside of a cranium which rocks full of words that unstrung like pearls fall off unfigurative trees and undecoratively scatter on pages in such wise that the average lay (which is never a good idea) reader can't decipher hope(less) from hope (please one more shot)(shoot)(shoot now!) from all that i left behind to be this person without his left-behind-bags/boxes/luggage full of himself so that transparent (kicks fruit.words.limbs as he walks) walks across city-to-city-to-shining-sea (see?) where he sees cloudy looking clouds creep across cloudy looking skies, scraping their cheeks against cloudy looking seas straining cheek-to-cheek to find lip to put to lip to take life and fu&* it back into existing again and i'm ever soo alive as when i'm:

naked ____falling over ____bleeding at the fingertips courtesy of the scale of b-flat minor which never goes the way it's planned to ____making-being-falling (into, towards, awayfrom, into(like a well, at the bottom of which we lie, you and i, only us who see at the top one light worth seeing and at night kiss in the dark and shiver from cold and merge skin to skin (see to shiny see in the nightlight breasts and stars shine the same way) LOVE, as in: making-being-falling(into, towards, awayfrom) into LOVE ____eating sashimi ____crying (though i didn't know it could happen, and if it was anyone but Mar (or Monz) who heard it i'd have crawled into the trunk of a tree and taken up patience as a profession)

and sunday grows biceps and claws and wraps its arms around my neck whispering wwiinntteerr in my too-long-unkissed earlobe (who responds i ccaann see! and smiles in its soft fleshy way) while the future waiting for all of us in the future licks its greasy lips and plans who wears tiaras who wears genocides

Dear Shostakovich: though we never met (officially) i believe you. i believe you. i believe you.

____and the pawns storm off the chest board and my bishop giggles, and the queen lifts her skirt too show everyone she's worth the trouble and the king sleeps peacefully behind a wall of bushes having taken one step right (one step left to be alone

who knows why we write __dream __cannot sleep __fall __grow up to be leviathans (angels, rosy cheeked, giants, titanic wo(men)) __play b-flat minor over and over without listening.looking.hearing or seeing, but doing it anyway, like the answer to some forgotten question that would have made everything ok starting 1993 is in the cracks somewhere here just another round or two (three octaves back and forth)
(three more)
(three more)
(three more)

and after all this is done and settled and forgotten, i'll have to re-read this again (and again) and take the words that were meant to fit into the essay category and put them there, and the story words go back there, and the novel words give me the finger because it grows faster than i am so that themes spawn themes till i realize i can't write about all of life simultaneously while contemporaneously living (some of it anyway) and then die (so that my papers will grow (with time, patience and due humidity) the color of my skin,

this is the voice of a man who is neither tired nor untired, has energy enough to self-combust (into star or canyon who ever knows:

the little boy, perhaps 7, walks fully attired not to resemble but be Darth Vader, into the Coffee Bean, exhales steam, speaks slowly and monotonously: I am the Lord of Darkness. I would like a Chai Latte. If you can distill the blood of unfair math teachers, Bobby Hawkins who kicked me in the shins at recess, and movie-ticket-checking-martinets-who-won't-let-me-take-this-delicious-warm-beverage-into-the-matinée-screening-of-the Dark Knight, into the drink, I would be most generous with your fate when doomsday is to come upon you.
Taking his drink and walking face-first into the door on the way out from impaired vision or a misjudgment of the strength of his plastic and latex armor.

All language shakes in her tracks, seeing me coming.
Distorting words, licking ungrace into eloquence, shaking meaning out of everything, kicking over a bucket of adjectives and hurling them into every sentence they don't belong in so that clouds are screaming and baboons are pondering and Futures (plural) are fornicating past and present history into bundles of bliss, ecstasy and unfathomable confused miserable wanderings that lead to wooden boxes, urns, choirs of angels and my unborn children- who i hope will like me enough to take a moment every now and then to remember that once there was this boy.man.

this is my spasm.
this is my anger.
this is my bliss.
my faith(ful)(less)ness.
my greed, hunger, joy, fury,
mostly, this is my orgasm. this is my groaning, this is my nothing, this is my everything

i don't know what i'm saying doing being

this is my everynothing.
i am my own everynothing.
everything is nothing
and every nothing is everything.

(i cannot tell swivel chair from divine retribution
i am lost

and smiling gratefully all the way to nowhere.

ICONOCLASMtest(fragments)

____So must we learn in world made as this one
____Man can never attain his greatest desire,
____[But must pray for what good fortune Fate holdeth,
____ Never unmindful.]
____________Sappho








Dakota (hair) 2004, Ryan McGinley

i am (cannot) relax.
i feel pretty (un)good (not too bad actually)
i know exactly where i'm (not) going (how can i know?)
if faith is something that swells, like tides and inflammation, mine has ebbed, and left in its place a bare white knuckle of shiny sand, brutal as cartilage.
i haven't laughed so genuinely in months. i miss seeing my humor reciprocated, amplified...

returning to a place like this, as much as i feel like an unhereperson, notsupposedtobehereperson, an apple in a pickle jar, and so on, it's impossible not to walk past Adelaide High School, the Palace-Nova cinema, the train station, there are streetlights now on this patch of road in the city by the golf-course that never had lights and we'd park there and makeout, CIBO coffee, and not feel historically inside myself... kind of like licking the sediment out of a fossil of your own face, then putting your face into the mold like a mask and feeling how well it fits even though you can't breathe... and now you're not sure what to do anymore.

it's so wonderful to know all the things i am not. (even though that's doesn't tell me what - i - do - am - going - might - once - happen - fall - chance - into - spot - where - kiss-me am.

i am struggling (once again)(it was taken from me)(i gave it away)(i miss it?)(maybe.)(cannot manage it) with the concept of home(less/ful)ness. __homeness.

*__*__*

a table for six. two couples occupy the longer lengths of the rectangular table. Two mochas on one side, two lates on the other. i sit at the head. (tea). we laugh. the number 5 and the word wheel roll through my head.

________ ________SOMEONE: when are you going to find a wife q?
_________________ ___ __ Q: you guys aren't married.
SOMEONE'S ALMOST HUSBAND: might as well be.
___________________ _ _ALL: goodpoint.
______________ _ ___ _ __ Q: i concede. (fine)
_____ _______SOMEONE ELSE: you better hurry up. Actually! NO! don't. You can probably make a mint if you hang around and just wait for us all to have babies, then you can open a little day-care.
[ED: My historical.still best friends number 4. including spouses/partners/significant others, that means on occasion i am the 9th wheel]
_SOMEONE ELSE'S BOYFRIEND: no way I'm letting you look after my kids.
____________________ _ALL: what! why?
_SOMEONE ELSE'S BOYFRIEND: I don't want my kids coming home going daddy what does concede mean?... or what else did you say tonight? adjunct?
________________SOMEONE: he said mellifluous as well
SOMEONE ELSE'S BOYFRIEND: make me look stupid infront of my own kid.
THAT SOMEONE'S GIRLFRIEND: you don't need help darling.
SOMEONE ELSE'S BOYFRIEND: exactly. let me look stupid my own way.
____________________ _ALL: [laugh]

*__*__*

you gonna be around a while this time?
__yeah
don't sound too enthusiastic.
__[shrug]
you gotta plan?
__yeah
of course you do. you always do.
__yeah [nods][looks down]

*__*__*

i have it mind to write an essay. it's the one i spoke about in the last post. it's to be called EXILE AND THE KINGDOM (which is a reference to a collection of 6 moderately.notshort short-stories by Camus). you can preview the essay in the last post. But since it's a sort of 'creative-fiction meets critical-analysis' of Ulysses, and the Ulysses posts are always the least popular (which is fair since i don't actually know of anyone that has read Ulysses cover-to-cover)(by the way I'm about 140 pages away!) i guess it won't be too much of a concern for you guys. but i'm excited about it.

OTHER PROJECTS I AM.WAS.WAITING.STILL EXCITED ABOUT (THAT HAVEN'T HAPPENED), A (SHORT) LIST:

____- the (second) novel
____- Bye Bye LA
____- Exile and the Kingdom

*__*__*

people awake.
can't write anymore.
maybe that's why i can't write.
need_more_ALONE time.

Fragments/WRITER'S BLOCK/Morning Glory

__ Little remains: but every hour is saved
__ From that eternal silence, something more,
__ A bringer of new things; and vile it were
__ For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
__ And this grey spirit yearning in desire
__ To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
__ Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

________Tennyson, Ulysses






feel, .:*ghost*:.

it rains.
to make certain of it, since eyes can be deceiving and the ear often confuses the patter of 10 million tiny gnomes running through city streets as rain, i smell. no. it is. that's rain.

*__*__*

that fragment is from one of my favorite poems, Ulysses by Tennyson. I am thinking perhaps of writing several pieces to different parts of it that i love mostest. I could start now, and in fact, am trying to, if it weren't for a somewhat debilitating writer's block thing that it seems everyone kinda has at the moment.

*__*__*

I am planning on writing an essay. The problem is, if I don't begin at the beginning, if I just start writing, it all seems to come out. If I sit and determine to structure it, I cannot. Watch, I'll show you:

Not so much houseless, but more homeless... Stephen (Telemachus), (me) starts the day trying to win back the key to our front door, and Bloom (Odysseus), (still me) collapses into his wedding-bed at 2am, after a day of prancing and pushing and masturbating and thinking and drinking and dreaming and hating and forgiving, never once managing to cross from one border to another, loves his wife and cannot cross three words to tell her. and languishes in a house that is his and rocks at the foundation due to men's silence

and perhaps silence got me here too. This confined world which at every turn we try and push out- like being trapped in some massive balloon whose frontiers we discover as run forward, hands ahead...__ more red plastic. And continue to run and push: from dusty Shanghai streets, to poor.rich drug-dealers in Watts who say to me you wanna go to Compton Blvd?! ____You sure?! and I laugh and say with a stupid smile yes!, and he smiles and says alright then (all the while listening to Brown Eyed Girl), to the familiar streets of a rainy winter Adelaide day... thrice we crossed two oceans and manage only to turn what-was-once into once-what-was, and that is to say: we deconstruct ourselves and sell organ and soul to memory, leaving behind ghosts in castles, and beaches, and at Ashley's house watching SYTYCD, and carry on as Tennyson's grey spirit, as Joyce's Leopold Bloom, dark-eyed, confined to a massive universe of a few small streets, the pub down the road, a few rocks here, a public library there, where we stare at too many books and dusty faces that house them, the beach, our idle loneliness which sometimes we outrun... and sometimes outruns us and waits in our bed with out wife at 2am.

and all the while, Bloom in Adelaide, Q in Dublin, Odysseus hiding out in Ithaca, ____such that in his own housetown he searches for his home, and along known streets he tries to exceed the familiar and discover the intimate
______in short, in his bedroom he feels unwelcome and cannot reconcile the edifice of bricks (or names and history (or as Joyce laments: O Leopold! Name and memory solace thee not) and experience and dwelling) with a feeling of belonging or meness, and so, lost amongst the streets of Dublin (Osaka, Haifa, Troy, Los Angeles, Adelaide) a pale-too dark(ed) man-boy seeks reconciliation with a memory long since striven towards but rarely ever glimpsed:

home.

home.

______and with the passing of timelessness, memory, with its faculty to adjunct anything, takes Los Angeles, and turns it into a dance I watched on a television screen, and a song titled Hometown Glory, and the elderly lady who in the airport looked at me and said:

____she: i'm from israel... though we still call it palestine. it's there, but the rocks have different names now.
____me: [...]
____she: of course i love australia.
____me: [nod]

____(and she looks away, and in her mind, beyond the utmost bound of human thought, she grasps at a thing... once held, and so precious, and so fragile, and that grows, and lives, and sprouts branches, and... flowers that wilt, and then a whole room smells as sweet, and the wind pushes a petal out a door, and we follow to retrieve, and the scent flows outside, and we follow to retrieve, and...

Odysseus sits on the sandy bank, the waves breaking in his lap, and he slams his fists and watches the water bounce... jeux du, ____and cries. and cries. (until Calypso tells him to come in again)

and Bloom, in his own house, lays in his bed and stares Penelope...
and cannot put the scent into words

and q...
follows scraps he left behind, slips, and falls
behind the horizon like a sinking star.