the love song of j alfred pennyguy

[a question for wrote a thousand letters]


where will we go, you & i
since this evening has missed its mark,
missed the sky,

and hurt, lies as a patient etherised

while above, perhaps below,
we have restless nights for breakfast
grow obese on time,
lifting and dropping it on our plate

and wait for inchoate tomorrows
to sing their song to us
till we fall, dreamlessly, to sleep.

from this proposition it will follow ... that 1 + 1 = 2; or; how to select a book (& other thoughfragments)

theorem 54.43 from Principia Mathematica; Bertrand Russell & Alan North Whitehead


i'm feeling light lately. i get this thing in my head sometimes, when i think of the discontented in the world - those of us who have no real reason to fear or lament or... dwell but do anyway - sometimes i think it's the tail-end of memories we don't remember but miss the feeling of. those of us who remember being angels, or being fantasies in the minds of our mothers, or dew drops that entertained some god who thought it fit to pass a lightbeam through us, fragment it into colours, tie the red part into a heart, kiss the blue twice for eyes, enlarge enlarge enlarge, voila.

poetry aside, i think it's humility. i'm feeling very life-sized right now. not too smart, not too fit. not too talented, not too extraordinary. just...

___and i think, this humility, this sense of perception, where you see right-side-up-proportions, and think yourself very good at the things you're good at and very good at being bad at the things you're bad at and in all cases very good at tumbling along and doing your best when you're good at doing your best and very good at not doing your best when you're good at doing not your best, makes everything seem a little quieter.
___and i think, maybe humility is a sense of satisfaction with one's affairs in the sense that, one's wardrobe and test results and driving ability feel very natural. it's a sense of absorption, to absorb the this's and thats of life. i am this. fine, sure.

if it wasn't for all the dichotomy and duality you find in nature and science i'd find the whole essence of humility rather odd. thankfully, it fits right in - that humility, so often seen as a weakness, is in fact, so great a strength. anybody who's met a sincerely humble person will know what i mean.


*___*___*

BOOKS YOU CHOOSE BECAUSE YOU OUGHT TO
this is different for different people. because you might hear something thrown around and not flinch, or you might hear Homer mentioned twice and think must work that out. you do, and you come to know about the Odyssey, Iliyad. you might come to know about Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious by Jung or the Language of the Eye by Kandinsky or the Seven Valleys by Bahá'u'lláh.

you read these things because, in a sense, you ought to. because you, as a person alive right now, has the weight of Socrates and Plutarch and Marx and Tolstoy holding you up. it is an inheritance, and you owe it to your grandfathers Nabokov and Shakespeare and Kant and to your grandmothers Sappho and Woolf and the always charming Austen to share a cup of tea with them and listen to the things they need to tell you.


BOOKS YOU CHOOSE BECAUSE YOU WANT TO
this can be broken down into subcategories. for example topical interest. i'm presently very curious about the use of language to persuade others. this is related to an ongoing interest in body language, the dynamics of courtship, and 'reading people'. this might be because i'm not naturally the most perceptive individual - so it fascinates me. so i read a book on persuasion. on negotiation tactics. on mechanisms that entice people one way or the other, and why particular phrases should hold more appeal for us than others.
___about a year ago i was fascinated by the GFC and was reading about stock markets and global economic trends. maybe you're presently curious about Truman Capote, which my GF is, and she's gobbling him up.

there are things you want to read not because they're topical, but because they're an ongoing concern of yours. a particular interest in a topic (Archaic Athens), personage you have an affinity for (Winston Churchill), or a writer who fascinates you (Kafka, Hesse, Woolf).


BOOKS THAT MYSTERIOUSLY HOOK YOU
fear and trembling - don't ask me why that title continues to... entrap me. i must know what it's about, what's in it. a few months ago it was Civilization and Its Discontents. before that it was this little tiny book called the abridged pocket book of lightning which thrilled me enough to find extremely loud and incredibly close.

it's the same with poetry i think. lots of times you read something, it makes no sense to you. not really anyway. it's just some words, but... they appeal to you. it's like seeing someone you have a little crushy-crushy on from the other side of the room. who knows why. you just think i want to speak to him(er.


*___*___*

when semester starts, ___& these pills are its horsemen,
speeds and ___s l o w s

___and i drift , ___and think in very clear lines ___(except for when i can't

and am fooled into believing
i :___am silence , ___a vital organ of this room ___, a gravitational anomaly
who: ___speaks as moonlight, ___as dreamscape ___as background

who: orbits who knows what ___housed inside a book somewhere

and am fooled into (forgetting)?(misplacing)?(displacing)?(misjudging)?(miscalculating)?
______things i no longer know the names of. _(
______and could not know i'd lost
______but for the hissss of their ghosts


_________when i wake up
_________i'll call Winter 'Spring'
_________and ask if i'm older or new
_________since i'm starting from scratch.

___

lists are for people who like lists

THINGS I READ IN MY SEMESTER BREAK, A LIST:

- The Spectacle of the Scaffold - Michel Foucault
- Of the Abuse of Words - John Locke
- Disgrace - JM Coetzee
- YES! 50 Secrets from the Science of Persuasion - blah blah
- Shakespearean Tragedy (Lectures) - AC Bradley
- End Game (A Play in One Act) - Samuel Beckett
- Understanding End Game - Theodor Adorno (which was way more difficult than the play)


THINGS I DIDN'T GET A CHANCE TO READ IN MY SEMESTER BREAK, A LIST:

- Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
- Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami
- The Seducer's Diary - Soren Kierkegaard
- Fear and Trembling - Soren Kierkegaard


REASONS I AM LISTENING TO THE LADY GAGA ALBUM RIGHT NOW, A LIST:

- because my GF exclaimed in disbelief when (after much what the hell are you talking about?s) we realized her reference to 'paparazzi' was a song and not to the annoying dickheads who follow you around with cameras
- paparazzi turned out to be an annoyingly catchy song
- she fascinates me
- i confess i'm kinda dancing behind my desk - back off haterz

things we want to hear & (hopefully) believe; a listpoem

i have saved these things for you: this dream, this spot next to me in this empty photo, this infinity

___it will be ok, it will be ok, it will be ok, it will be, it will be, it will be, it will be,

of course i remember you, how are you?

___one left, just in your size, you're in luck!

it's not that i love you, it's a kind of love that knows only you, only you, only you, only

___(how strange the sound)

you deserve another chance, no problem, take all the time you need,

___ssshhh, baby, sleep now, sleep

when you say my name, i am a new person, your person

___see the shooting star? ___happy birthday!

YES. Yes. ___of course. ___sure. ___yeah. ___YES. why not

___and!, it's actually good for you.

that's a great colour.fit on you

___in my dream we kissed, held hands which grew into one another like ivy, our hair merged, our bodies froze in a hug like a tree, it was the most perfect stillness

___congratulations.

thankyou for ... application ... competition was fierce this ... pleased to offer you a position ...

___have been successful

i saved you the last one

___i'm not going without you

a unidentified masked crusader in a latex outfit managed to save the day: superheros exist

___want anything on my way home?

the Dow Jones has successfully recovered

___it won't leave a scar

i don't want to be your friend, i want to get naked and touch you inappropriately

___unfortunately we've made a mistake in the seating today; i guess we'll just have to upgrade you

Honor's Roll, ___Dean's List, ___First-Class, ___cum lada,

___i'm proud of you

anything you say babs.

i'll remember this moment forever. when i die, i'll get trapped in this single minute, and live it and live it and live it until i've memorized every breath word blade of grass reflection of sunlight for all eternity i'll stay right here and become the god of this minute

___nobody else. i promise.

is that your normal size?, seems a bit large i'll get a smaller one

___dance with me!

thankyou.

___i'll call you right back.

i've known this man my whole life, and i'm standing right here besides him.

___you're right dear.

it's raining! it's snowing! it's summer! it's spring! it's soo clear! it's soo beautiful here.

___it was worth it, it really was.

if you failed at being human, it's only because you're not. you're a soul having a human experience, a moment that in the timelessness of your reality is a flicker of discomfort until you return to the weightless dreamscape that is your real home,

___welcome home.

h o m e .

___

the meaning of life: an motivational-speech-epiphany to commemorate my dad giving me an awesome pep-talk

hell is empty and all the devils are here
___the Tempest










untitled, nobutyes


i'm not good at this world. i mean that. i've met people who have a certain... gracefulness; their lives i mean. not soo much me. i'm like a sweaty pianist, even if it sounds nice, you look at me all you see is toil. there's a laboriousness to my decisions, motions, dreams, incapacities. a sort of perpetual deadlock. my soul has a knot in it. no you don't son. but you can't let your brain run rampant; how is it your brain can take your soul and run it into despair over nothing? thoughts shouldn't be soo powerful they overwhelm your very being. thoughts are... use them to think sure, but not to feel.

success, failure... ___: i'm always saying life isn't a game of win or lose. it's true. it's also not a game. it couldn't be a game, games have rules. set normative standards you could consider consistent. do X work, receive Y recompense - that kind of thing. yet, what you find is not that. outcomes aren't governed by... by anything I control. sure, i can work hard. proceed with good intent. check, double check, triple check. confirm. organize. assert. appeal. demand. persuade. at the last, it's the man with the red pen who decides. chance. who runs a red light and who doesn't. whether your boss receives the phone call on time or not. if FedEx got it there. who you met at a busstop and whether the bus showed up at all. who hates you because you're black. because you speak funny. who refuses to give you a chance because of your religion, your sex. or ignores your merits because they dislike your tie colour; exercises of discretion. valuations. ----> success?/failure?
___: but that's exactly it, you can only control the process. you can't control outcomes. do you know how many times i've been screwed over in life? he proceeds to recount a few anecdotes. what would you do in that situation? [i'd kill him] seriously Q. [i'd kill him]. you can't kill everyone who screws you over kiddo. ___& that solves that i guess. outcomes are irrelevant? arbitrary?, the only possible meaning to be attached to them being moralistic (if one chooses to adopt such an approach)?
so what's the lesson dad?
___the lesson?
yessir.
___do whatchyou gotta do. bring the fire. handle your business. sleep soundly, you get what you get.
what's the point of working so hard if the results are so... indeterminate?
___wrong question really. the question ought to be: what result are you really after?
what does that mean?
___is a grade what you're really after?, that's it? just... a grade? you're in school to get a grade or an education?

which makes good sense actually.
lately i find my mind frequently to thinking about the Iranian Bahai's currently imprisoned because they bothered to wake up in the morning. because they decided that 1+3 = 4 instead of 2+2. i find my mind thinking about generations of African Americans walking around with eyes lowered chanting yessir/yesmaam; about an entire generation of Jews, some of the most brilliant minds of all time, pianists and quantum physicists and architects aboard crammed trains off to find a swastika-less world - did they fail to achieve their 'goals' or did the world fail them?

my dad reminds me of my own heritage (and i think again whether my undeservedly poor grade is anything compared to men and women whose lives are in jeopardy; which is the greater injustice?), every Iranian Baha'i family living outside of Iran, having left to avoid the persecutions already mentioned, has an uncle, a cousin who was once a surgeon, an engineer, who's been driving a cab for 20 years, working in a rug shop, or selling figs and dates behind a counter (and scribbling Green's theorem on napkins when they take their smoke-break out back behind the Toyota dealership).

THE EPIPHANY, if anything, is that the grade is not the purpose. it can't be - it's an outcome. i can't control those. teachers good and bad, fair and retarded do. paychecks? google GFC and have a chat to some people living out the back of their cars. ask some honest folk who invested in Enron. your whole damn career? surely you can control that?, no? Nazi's can. governments. car accidents. unexpected illness. ___the epiphany, if anything, strips me of everything outside of myself. and leaves with a process. the process. everything i, solely, individually, independently am responsible for.

in other words, there's this big rat race maze thingee called life. it sucks ass and we're stuck with it because no one's really found a viable alternative yet that didn't involve a one-way ticket to an overdose. through this lifelong course in mortality, i have precisely one asset.

__________________one.

the depth and maturity of my wisdom. the sincerity of my eyes. the generosity of my time. the humility of my soul... ___: ___i'm speaking of character. i'm speaking of the invincibility of my character and the perfection of my virtue. that determines my gait from sunrise to sunset. and whether i get sideswiped by a drunk-driver coming home from work and can never compete in the olympics, or fail an exam because some bee-atch didn't like my handwriting or fail every single goal i ever set myself is simply beyond me. my best efforts can't guarantee a result. but my character is perfectly determinate. it's a 'result' i can actually control. in fact, i am the only person/place/thing that can.

isn't that a perfect opportunity to adopt a pessimistic nihilism?
___what? no! ___it's a perfect opportunity to re-evaluate your sense of worth.
to not be so goal orientated?
___be goal orientated if you want - just don't be goal fixated. be... engaged with the process, detached from the result.
sounds easy. it's not.
___[shrug]
___you didn't do badly because you didn't work hard. you did badly because it's about time you learnt to manage your brain. and reassessed your attitude to so-called 'failure'. you can't cower in a cave everytime you don't finish where you want.

the problem is faith maybe. trusting the process. since 'the process' is really code-language for getting kicked repeatedly in the balls while already down so that when you stand you're invincible. calm in adversity. brave in uncertainty. decisive in havoc. ___
___since character is not a thing that's developed in isolation. life is needed. events are needed. experiences. troubles and woes. humiliations and obstacles and moments were you sit in the car in the carpark of the supermarket thinking f*ckf*ckf*ckf*ck what am i gonna do? __adventures.

anyway. goodbye semester 1.

ok. great.

dear god, i've worked it all out.
you can kill me now.

___

i now have a tumblr!

in case you don't get enough of me and need more stuff, join me as i... uhm... tumble.

http://byspeakingflower.tumblr.com/

epic

if we're to sleep in the beds we've made for ourselves, pray someone offers a couch.

men are too men to admit when they're ashamed.

what will we do with your sadness? she wants to know
only when i smile to make her feel better, silhouettes of bats and ravens fly across the brown of my eye, and startled she jumps back.

when i pray it is never to thwart the tragedy, but to have legs (and will) enough to outrun it.
perhaps that says everything right there.

our mothers and fathers held hands and put rainbows into one another's bodies to start our engines. and we grew like vines and soft-spoken pandemonium, till we were born and wrapped in blankets, delicate handfuls of lily petals altogether the size of loaves of bread, and our fathers nursed our crying hellos and named us Bobs and Bills and Sarahs and Janes and maybe even kicked around a birthday or two before eventually heading off to remember us once again on a couch or long distance drive or nursing home death-bed many moons hence.
___and like all solemnity we grew and shed identities like snake-skins until at 27, 35, 42
___the inevitability of normalcy eventually crystallizes when one morning we sing the songs
___the radio dictates on our way to our whatever-job whatever-operation whatever-cause of death.

when i grow up i'm going to be a prophet,
they will mock me and curse me, but i will say my piece:

i will sneak around at night and chant flying dinosaurs back into the ears of once-were dreamers and declare it time for lovers to give each other ultimatums: so that we meet halfway between your heart and mine, and we find words enough to last us a dinner and we f*ck hard enough to sweat or by Jove, we drag the failure out the front of our suburbanite homes and bludgeon them to death with the blunt end of a spatula,
___i'll grab heads and slam them into the walls till they remember posters of Ferrari's and jets and muscle-cars that once breathed life into their bedrooms, one morning, where the occasionally bloodied body of failed spouses leak their bloodied sorrys down the gutters, thousands of 4-door sedans will go up in blazes, when over-weight mothers of two named Darlene and Sharon and Rosary flick matches into front seats soaked with gasoline and filled with beauty magazines and old VHS pornos and their sons' good-enough-to-be-average B+s and 81%s and stand back finally smoking the joint and sipping the rum they've forcefully avoided for decades.

children will rebuild the carousels and slides and swings that gangs and law-suit-fearing councils removed.

ordinary teens will open their pill bottles and notice for once and maybe even (cross-your-fingers) finally that the little fairies within their chemicals have long since died and these two fossils i take twice a day with water are the dead crusts and rough teeth of magic that alchemy denied us.

and mad and depressed and unmedicated and violent and drunk and plastered and enraged and horny and confused and lost and with voices in our heads and electricity in our brains we'll storm the streets and burn khaki pants and mid-season sales and standardized tests and prenuptial agreements where we find them. the midgets will find giants to dress as their jesters and the nerds will sport leather jackets and teach the jocks to pronounce Aeschylus while they drop acid and have threesomes and while the jocks will divine a new geometry.

as for hopes:
those our parents entrusted to us,
those we woke up after 3 hours sleep and with raw eyes and tirelessly faught for,

those whose hearts stopped in wars and car accidents
and discretionary marking and job reviews

those that arson gave back to the soil behind our backs,
those that we realized were beyond us:
___barred by inadequate minds
___start-up capital
___height and weight restrictions

those that arson gave back to apathy within our chests,
and charred and spitting ash we called our mothers to say we're fine mom and smiled to avoid questions from our wives and children, (while smoke signals drift out our noses, and our lips are ashed)

a rage, a plague, a torment upon such will be my religion.
and like Prometheus they will bind me and tie me to the top of a car and leave me like a cockroach pinned to a wall for the summer heat to molest.

and like Prometheus i'll be sorry i tried to defend this life.

and our mothers will smell the blankets we were born in for the scent of lily our skin once had.
then they'll knock on our doors and find us lying under our coffee tables with the lights off. staring at nothing and lacking energy to dream and quoting Beckett in response to every question, holding pens the way one holds chopsticks and using chopsticks to draw lines in the sand we know mean nothing by tomorrow morning.

goodnight.
and
good

luck___:

since god knows nothing else has the might to play chess with fortune.

sing me my pavanne,

i do not know how many of Milton's paradises have become lost for me.

___

16 mikrokosmos

I wish you were here
beside me, I'd talk until you were dizzy.

___from After Laforgue by John Tranter








untitled, by batak


___1.
'take two more.'
fitting words for drunks, addicts, hungry deserters
and unsupervised children.


___2.
'it was a fitting end'.
yes. __well. , even Orestes
___when paused his marathon to catch his breath
found a funeral prepared and an impatient procession
ready to bump him into the hole.


___3.
the child asks his mother to explain her mood to him.
wherefore she sits him upon her lap,
in utter silence, occasionally lightly blowing some air
over his ear ; so that he shivered with something not quite fright.
but not quite anything else either.


___4.
do you have a coffee table in your room? yes. and lamps? yes.
anything else? yes. it must be very festive, could you describe it?
visualize the moon.


___5.
_but he eventually found a solution.
he'd sit in a tree. a long while.
eventually he'd snap out of his trance and
accidentally go to step out from his perch.


___6.
laid out on the cold kitchen tiles
still.
right hand holding a bottle of soda on his belly,
upright and half full.
___'the refrigerator claims to be the return of 2007'
he says eventually.
still staring at the ceiling. (or behindyond


___7.
do you really wish i was there? what would you say to make me dizzy?
__

___8.
after sunset, they found three shopping carts at the edge of the parking lot,
filled them with incendiaries: books of old, gasoline, remembrances of things lost(found)
__
and laughed until the sun became too embarrassed to compete.

and danced,

_________breathing in fumes and spitting ashes.


___9.
do you really wish i was besides you? what would you say to make me dizzy?


___10.
'this is wrong, the queen of hearts is a duck,
and the heart is green'
___but he kept smoking and didn't look up at her


___11.
where are your glasses?
they must be wherever i left my eyes.


___12.
in this other world, where we're not allergic to cats and kisses aren't about infections,[1]
it snows for breakfast and we waltz on trains and sleep at night.
we fold up papers we don't like, kiss one corner, and attach them back onto trees -
so that our bank debts and breakups go from being lifelessly pale to engorged in nectar and their featureless expressions remember their ridges and folds ; in autumn they dream in red otherwise in green, and when the wind comes they remember to waive.
___in this other world, there is a seat besides me on every bus, reserved for you.


___13.
what would you say to make me dizzy?
___that love is time's child.
___hold my cold hand longer, maybe the lines on its palm point to you.


___14.
what would you say to make me dizzy?
___that i have failed at being a man because i have hidden the feathers of my wings in my socks.


___15.
when her teacher became worried she was speaking nonsense, they called in an expert.
'what do you mean little girl' she asked?
'these are brutal times. the fault-line revolution continues : this week's natural disaster is brought to you by Peru. Haiti. Vesuvius.
the women are beat. the men are poor.
the oil in the water is the blood of lambs and the silent stories even Oprah hasn't heard'.


___16.
in this other world

everybody's got to be somewhere

to make you dizzy i'd kiss your eyelid and exhale a blue breath you could save to remember me by in the blue Jupiter of your blue eye, and in your sleep i'd draw connecting lines between your freckles - in the evening the cosmos of the nightsky would smile at you as though a mirror, and then i'd jump up and down like when i'm excited and you'd hold my shoulders down until i'd demand the jetpacks we were promised and i'd blast off to

Everybody's got to be somewhere.

Save the last chance for me. [2]


*___*___*
[1] Where the Boys Are, John Tranter
[2] Sign Under Test, Charles Bernstein
__

GF Chronicles

The scratchy record by Casals,
inscribed on bakelite,
is still so far the best of Bach.

Play it late, say 3 a.m.,
and like some wild, forgotten child
you'll run all night the empty stairwells

flowering in the dark.

___from The Cello Sonatas of J.S. Bach, Geoff Page




it's sunny, but not enough to make you crazy. i lift her up, ostensibly to throw her into the water, she yelps and kicks. as i hold her i realise the throw-into-water idea may not be the best i've ever had. i put her down instead and say bye and run off. __not really. __i run 5 paces and then stop and turn around, by which time she's caught up. didn't get far she says and i say just far enough to make a statement. she nods and laughs (because she's thought-up her comeback: what's that?, that you're a fatso? (she continues laughing). ey! respect by authoritaa. [which is a southpark allusion, so, if there're any militant feminists out there reading this, you may save your harangue for another time, Ed]


*___*___*

__- what the eff is wrong with you, why do you keep freaking out?
__- ok, mental note for GF: do not lunge at my crotch, do not make any sudden movements, don't...
__- you_have_got_to_be -
__- ________________- do i look like i'm kidding you're freaking me out!
__- ok. so, what's your problem?
__- my, 'problem', lame-face, is you aren't well-trained.
__- trained? ____________[you can probably commence harangue now]
__- yup. all domesticated GF's know better than to make sudden movements towards a man's 'special' place.
__- firstly freakshow, this is the first i'm ever hearing about 'sudden movements', this isn't 'foreplay with miss daisy' ok? man-up or find the Lord and go team Celibate. secondly: your special place is the reserve section of the law library, or the 4 for $4 donuts counter at the 7/11, your penile-onium is not a special place.
__- i understand. i guess i'm going to have to make this simple for you. i'm issuing an ordinance
__- you can't,
__- ______i can and am
__- no, you can't! all ordinances, essential contractual terms or non-essential stipulations had to be made at time of BF-GF negotiations, for discussion and approval at such time. the time's up. you can't alter the agreement.
__- this is a matter of genital-security. genital security is like the defence budget, it knows no electoral promises. if a band of ruffian terrorist limbs, peripheries or enameled teeth make unprovoked attacks on it, special measures are called for.
__- fine. out of curiosity, i will allow you (and partially because i can't wait to embarrass you in front of your friends with this newest episode of buffoonery) to expound your ordinance.
__- oh. thankyou. so, may i proceed your GF-ness?
__- you may.
__- may it please the GF, i present for second reading and debate, the BILL entitled:

______GUIDE FOR APPROACHING MY CROTCH
________(1) give adequate warning/notice
________(2) move slowly
________(3) take an indirect route

__- __...
__- ____...
__- ______...
__- ________well?
__- BahahahHahahahHahahahahahahaha BA hahahHAHAHahahahHAhahah [con ad infinitum]


*___*___*

__- shutup. i'm having a fat day.
__- no. it's my turn to have a fat day i'm having a fat day!
__- too bad.
__- dude. look at me, i'm wearing my fat-day pants. i have to have my fat day today!
__- we can't both have fat days. and i'm having mine today.
__- goddamit, it's like dating Mussolini up in dis muah-fu'er


*___*___*

___GF: he beats me.
Friend: who? Q?
___BF: who, me?
___GF: yes! last night! you freaking battered-wifed me in your sleep.
___BF: excuse me, in my sleep, how much does that not count!
Friend: was he really asleep?
___GF: yes, he was scratching me with his toenails, he was like... shaking or something
___BF: thus we enter the realm of too-much-info
Friend: possibly, but continue,
___GF: so i put my hand on his shoulder because he's mumbling to himself in his dream of whatever
Friend: rright
___GF: and he jumps, when i touch him, i mean jumps up in bed shouting whatwhat! arms waving around smacking me what! what is that? who?
___BF: oh! i did not!
___GF: did you jump up in bed?
___BF: yes.
___GF: did you mumble something you don't remember?
___BF: yes.
___GF: right. and i'm telling you what you said.
___BF: i was having a bad dream! it's different. it's totally not battery.
Friend: what was the dream about?
___GF: so what was it?
___BF: automatism is a defense!
___GF: oh, that's soo much better. you automatically batter me in your sleep.
Friend: seriously, what was the dream about?
___BF: what.
___GF: this is the best part. tell him what the dream was about
___BF: ok, i have to put this in context
Friend: just say it!
___GF: he's allergic to cats
___BF: right. but i love them.
___GF: and he wishes he could have a cat so he could name it Hercules or something ridiculous
___BF: not Hercules! that's too obvious.
___GF: excuse me, Pericles.
___BF: yes. or Euclid. or Archimedes.
Friend: [laughing]
___GF: this is actually an improvement. until a week ago he wanted two dogs named Ratio & Obiter
Friend: what?
___GF: law-joke. don't worry. just imagine the geekiest thing every thought-up by man anywhere
Friend: so you were dreaming about a cat?
___BF: i thought it leapt up to scratch me!
___GF: [whiny voice] poor Q-bear. the little pussy jumped up to scratch him
Friend: [laughing]
___BF: [to Friend] eff you dolphin [to GF] eff you whale ...
___GF: w h a t .
___BF: that came out wrong.really.it did.you're the dolphin.definitely dolphin.yes dolphin [nodding rapidly]
___

text messages & their responses

found function 8 by nikki graziano


Him:
Ok im planning to be at yours around 10am. Gonna make this ish happen.

Me:
Sounds good. Exam results come out tomoorow. I may be unbearably chirpy or inconsolably glum; either way, I'll be off-balance

Him:
what's new?

Conclusion:
eff you dolphin, eff you whale


*___*___*

Me:
is it just me or is 'rock out with your flock out' a great name for a Christian youth rock concert? Omg. I'm onto something

Her:
You = genius. Please let me inappripriately touch you sometime because you are so genius. But 'jam out with your clam out' wins = electro pop group maybe?

Conclusion:
she's right. she wins.


*___*___*

Me:
The Valley = yuuuuuuuhhhm. Sunday sounds fine.

Her:
lined up at Spoon this very moment. Yum is not even the word.

Me:
What about kapow? I feel that any deficiency in yum's ability to express the valley is absent in kapow - making it a fitting description

Conclusion:
Q needs better vocabulary

__

a perfectly ordinary rainbow

There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petals from blown roses on the grass,
____from Song of the Lotos-Eaters, Tennyson








the ones we left behind by iNeedChemicalX


a perfectly ordinary rainbow, __yes, indeed.
__commonplace miracles now, mind your feet, there's one passing any given tuesday

these are clumsy times to fail ; it's a heavy price to pay to be caught-out watching balloons drifting away -
____you there, hey, you, yes youyouyou - we don't pay you to daydream
____what? whatever, that then, we don't pay you to imagine cloud-faces and taste autumn breezes
________(whatever that means)

more important you have medals and awards and certification to show for your brown eyes,
bruises on your hand and well-worn library cards are the work of hobbyists.
________(best call it quits right away if you think there's room for those on this boat)


*___*___*

__'but you know, i can't shake the future-fear'
__'in what sense?'
__'like... that i won't ever get a decent job. make ends. be... ya know, adultish'
__'oh right
__'you get that?'
__'no, not like that, but i get it'
__'you get it?'
__'yah. baby-clock. with women it's always love, marriage, babies, saggy boobs, that's our ticking clock. with men, paychecks and mercedes'
__'at least you get it.'
__'sure. __you'll be fine you know.'
__'sure i know it. __but believing it maybe...


*___*___*

[Q, a self-portrait]

the idea makes sense, but you were never really prepared to pay full-price for it.
sometimes you have to though.
all i'm saying is you're like a religion you only sometimes subscribe to;
__other times shifting uncomfortably in your chair when spoken about, or
__hustle for more pamphlets to prove the validity of.

decent enough, sure;sure, but when no one's looking you grow heavy like a paper-weight,
put down roots and mate with a coffee table so you're three quarters inanimate object,
a minor, man-shaped black hole in a bedroom in a house in a suburbanite night whatever after night
__despite the self-accreditation issues, you still hold out for the big miracle, thinking sooner
__maybe later, Stephen Hawking might come rolling in with a flashlight to mete out
__a string of equations to describe the luminosity of your internal organs sucking in through
__their own heavy gravity the breath they might have emitted.
__you want to solve the riddle of the secrets your lungs keep from you.

man-shaped black silhouette sitting on a couch drinking your tea, disappearing into, absorbed beyond some precipice, a boundary between knowable and human.

someone asks you your name you respond _nocturne. __liebestraum. __de profundis.
what should your tombstone read? 'the abuse of words: what's left (of/in 1 Act)'

when they leave you alone you read in silence. think in silence. dream in silence of what silence must sound like in dreams.

____the mirrors dance at you when you walk past.
____sometimes you notice it,
____other times... not.

last month you drank four energy drinks, several litres of green tea, popped a bunch of little white pills and stood on a vast lawn trying to explain to passer-byers that light was emanating from objects everywhere, escaping from skin and blades of grass and cement roads and traveling to a common goal only light knew why called the sun where they (freed from the constraints of us) ran amok and kissed with blazed tongues and lay on inferno lined couches and told their luminous stories in shaded languages; __awaking later with a migraine and your mother telling you to take the trash out.


sometimes you have to though,
__time's up despite the 30day money back,
__damn video's due back at the store if only you could find the case
____(and the soil chuckles at my ankles, licking its lips to swallow:
______just a lightly haired sack, like the skin of a kiwi, or a peach, filled to the brim with
________organelles and mismanaged possibility,

where've you been?, we haven't seen you in months she says
waits for your response, oh, you know, here and there, here and there
she keeps waiting... here and there, here and there, white rooms here or there.

it seems like a promising proposition.
but when you get the package home, you never had the confidence to take off the tags,
and it sat for 27 years wrapped (though occasionally poked at, sometimes even partially used)
your not being sure if you'd keep it.

____your mother says she loves you
____which you believe, but never quite understood.
____(just like your mother believed she loved you but could never quite understand how
______anybody else might)

all of which you avoid by sucking another frozen-iced-soda, watching repeats of Southpark and giggling yourself to some long-lost utopia of politically subversive wit ;

from a vantage point you watch yourself watch clocks, waiting the calender out.

in a notebook somewhere it's written that you'd like to take a year off, is that true?
yes.
and what would you do?
when?
during your year off.
oh. __collect flower petals, make gifts of them to people i loved. so people who smiled at me on trains, i could sit besides them when they eventually dozed-off and rub a petal across their cheeks and nose, and they would dream of being kissed by angels with satin lips and imagine walking across the moon where snow soft as baby fingers was stroking them; __people i knew better, my friends, i'd bathe them in ivory tubs of petals, for a little while they'd feel as though they were swimming across a lake in Olympus, or had stumbled back into their mother or were a bird's back being tickled mid-flight through the maze of cherry tree branches; __it could be a sort of gyro, a mechanism to translate the morse code of the heart to sensations transmitted through skin.
i see.
hmm. [nodding]

Exam Etiquette, a tragicomedy

untitled, batak


sure it's stressful. it's stressful for all of us. especially the girl who walks in wearing a blanket. throughout you see one pale hand, thin and attached to an elbow by a naked arm that hovers like a streak of halo atop the dark navy blanket-backdrop.

___three rows to her right and four desks in front of her, sits an exchange student. presumably from India; that is, if it is pee_see to presume. it's not. you can't say that someone 'looks' like they're from India. the dark skin, the accent, don' mean a thang. he sits (non-presumably from anywhere) with 14 writing utensils before him. a fluorescent yellow highlighter, one in green, one in pink. a red pen, 4 blue pens (2 bics and 2 gel fancy-pancy expensive $6 a pen thingees), 4 black (as before) and two pencils (one mechanical pacer; one 'pencil'-pencil). when he first sat down the boy besides him had said: yo, Picasso, are you here to write an exam or capture the essence in the room for all posterity in an enduring work of art? the (non-presumably) Indian shook his head in disgust.

___my GF laughs when the girl sitting in seat K-12 walks in; carrying three separate energy drinks and two digital clocks. one's just to count down and the other one i reset before i start each question she explains. my GF nods, then says in passing this exam's 2 hours long. there are 2 questions. so, you're right, keeping track must be difficult digital alarm girl doesn't notice because she's busy setting up her well-caffeinated command center.

___Rudolph shakes his leg neurotically for the first 34 minutes of the exam, until a moderator informs him the sound of the rattling is well past unbearable now. he shakes his head, apologizes genuinely. he continues to nod at a moderate speed for the remaining 86 minutes; the moderators leave him be because at least this compulsion is silent.

___the students sitting in seats L-24 and M-08 walk in with six A4 pages of notes. attached to these six single-sided pages are exactly 120 tabs, protruding from every edge of the six pages in a multitude of colours. so much time and fastidious care has gone into the preparation of these six pages of notes and their diligent annotations and tabulations, that the students sitting in seats L-24 and M-08 couldn't remember the title of the class they were commencing an examination for. Corporations law the students to their (respective) rights inform them. oh. i thought it had a more... specialized name. the students to their (respective) rights say nope, just corps law. you might wanna add a tab to remind you; though the wit is lost on the hapless duo who will spend the majority of the 120 minutes flipping through the six pages in an endless cycle of searching, still unable to find the case names, section numbers or summary of principles because despite the exquisite presentation of their six tabulated, annotated pages, they continue to know absolutely nothing about the material contained on those pages.

___Rachel Black is popular with the student body. she'll spend exactly 15 minutes of her exam staring at what people are wearing. Marcus D. will expend the duration of his perusal period arguing against his being forced to remove a baseball cap from off his head. he will lose the argument, but will reconvene the matter 2 hours and 8 minutes later, after having handed in his paper, gone to the restroom to pee, wash hands and face, and replaced his cap on his head. after a further 17 minutes of arguing with the head moderator and two of his deputies, Marcus declares the trio to be autocratic despots on a pathetic power trip, adding to the two gentlemen of the trio, that viagra may assist with their sexual dysfunction, but not with their predilection for catamites (a matter that will later be reported to the school board, but will not be enthusiastically pursued on account of the school board chair agreeing with Marcus - at least to the extent of 'autocratic despots on a pathetic power trip').

___Michael's S and B, Michelle Rudney, Mich Dartcourt, Micky B. and Mikella R. will all leave their exams early because they know to a certainty they'll fail. At least in the case of Mikella, her father will huff and puff, but when she cries and feigns depression will forgive her and allow her to spend her vacation sunbathing on a beach 4 hours from home to 'settle her djinns'. Mich Dartcourt just met a girl he'll marry three years from today so he couldn't give a' capital eff about the exam (as he put it).

___seat F-27 is empty because the would-be occupant was having her breasts massaged by her (on-again) boyfriend. after an unfortunate mishap erased all her semester's notes from off her computer, she methodically cried on 9 separate occasions over a period of 8 days in 7 separate offices to 6 separate faculty members and signed 5 different declarations of good faith to defer all 4 of her exams. at the time of writing she continues to engage in the on-again portion of a destructive-romance-melodrama that will eventually see her becoming a depressed 3-gins-before-breakfast housewife, regular Gucci patron and in-the-closet poster-girl for upmarket battered-wife syndrome (the consequent black eyes of which will be concealed by various pairs of $350 sunglasses).

___Cornelius masturbates before every exam, so he strides in calmly, takes his seat, writes a decent exam in legible handwriting, and maintains a solid credit average.
___Cordelia is still a virgin, and has the sweetness to prove it; she doesn't have a clue in hell what she's missing, so she strides in just as calmly, takes her seat, writes a more than decent exam in exemplary handwriting, and maintains a solid distinction average. a few hours after the exam Cordelia and Cornelius will meet in the uni tavern, share a few drinks, half a dozen coffee & movie sessions over the period of their semester break, and fall madly deeply and sincerely in love. they will live a largely secure and fulfilling life and most of their friends will be two-faced jealousy-infected brats who will hate them to death (but who smile when they come into a room, and will continue to invite them to occasional BBQs). Cornelius and Cordelia will not really care either way, being happy enough handling their own bizniz.

___i walk into every exam wearing more-or-less whatever i've been wearing since my last shower. usually this means a grandfather cardigan i wear around the house which comforts me and a tshirt. had it not been for an off-putting first-semester encounter with a tiny blonde who sat her mid-afternoon chemistry exam in full-pyjamas (with a cow pattern) i'd likely also come wearing pyjama bottoms. as it stands, i have discontinued that, meaning, i usually do change my pants, replacing my pyjama bottoms with whatever pair of jeans is lying on the floor (and has been lying on the floor since i took them off after antecedent exam(s)) and will continue to lie on the floor after this (present) exam until the next exam. i carry in my hands a water bottle and my glasses case. in my classes case are three pens. two black, 0.5mm micro uniballs (at a price of $6 each) and one blue. i will complete my examination using only one pen. in case of the pen's ink being depleted, spontaneous deconstruction, space-time evacuation or leakage, i will then put the damaged (martyred) (mourn not for those who go in the Lord) pen aside, and continue with one of the replacements. in my right front jean pocket is a small plastic pill case. it usually contains 4-6 small white tablets which i use to offset irrational bouts of paranoia; panic/anxiety attack induced feelings of impending doom, certain abject failure or vomit; reasonable fatigue from having slept an average of 3.7 hours over the preceding 3 weeks (leading logically to: vertigo, tremors, cold sweats and a hazy fuzz of static meaningless white confused mayhem blahblahblah in my head, from which formulation of grammatically functional sentences will be impossible. usually, after having sat down in my seat i will approximate the necessary dosage to off-set aforementioned effects (side, front and behind effects) and effect ingestion. as a consequence of ingestion (of approximated necessary dosage of), by the 23rd minute of my administrative law exam i will be unable to feel my peripheries (including lips). similarly, during my wills & estates exam i completely lose track of all my surroundings and write in lieu of an exam answer, a first-person narrative from the perspective of the chief Master of the Court of Chancery (circa 1600 AD), detailing not only the rationale for various legal precedents, statements of policy within their historical context, and so forth, but also the sadness he felt in putting down his horse Gunsynd, his preference for dark to light rum, and various brief amorous trysts. by the time my Evidence exam comes around i am baffled to be in the midst of a completely unprecedented case of incontinence such that i maintain a trickle of urination for the better part of a (continuous) three hours pre-exam. with an uncomfortable wet patch and inexplicable physiological meltdown, i decide to approximate necessary dosage to the max biatch, and complete my examination in a transcendent amphetamine spiritual nirvana from which i awake some 48 hours later on my couch with a bad-ass headache. i am later told that my (entirely medicine-induced) attempts to express my answer to question 1 part b of the exam paper as a barefoot interpretive dance in the examination hall was not unanimously approved of; and in light of this nonacceptance, i am informed there is some possibility a disparaging letter of notice may accompany my final results.

___Supportive, balanced, centered, yoga-going, part-time-working, socially accepted Suzie will still top every class she is in (and go on to be a good-spirited High Court Justice).

___