the clownsuit melts into a rainbow, and other writings

Christian John Olsen


yester-yesterday, someone rather seriously said to me, "you just need to dumb your writing down. we want to get it, we like how clever it is, but right now, it's just too esoteric" (he didn't say esoteric, he said: too few people really get it) (which is what esoteric means)

today, someone wrote me an email. In it, they said "I enjoy your interpretations of your writings because I like to see the process of things".

I am reminded of a famous argument between 1) Ernest Hemingway and 2) F. Scott Fitzgerald. The former, poorer, man calling the latter, more extravagant man a whore for dumbing down his writing to appeal to the masses. Consequently, we have prob (you know what, who cares?)

So i think for the rest of this post, i'm going to be straight-up.

____- i love undressing women. i love looking at them naked, i love touching: hair, eyelashes, fingertips, ankles, i like to kiss: knees, bellies, eyelids, forhead

____- i want to be a good writer. i think i am a good writer. i think it's a shame i can't be a successful bohemian writer who travels and lives and lives to tell the tale.

____- i cannot manage to write a list of resolutions for this year. Currently, we are still living in late 2006. time seems to have frozen there. when it starts again, i'm going to force myself to commit to some resolutions.

____- i miss electronic music more than anything

____- i really want my suitcase in chicago back now.

____- having recently read the Seven Valleys i am unable to stop thinking of everything in life according to it. for moments at a time i can completely embody one or another of those states of being, but inevitably, i relapse back into some ambivalent ditch besides a tree that means i am in no valley at all, on no search at all, but merely sitting besides a trail, drinking from my canteen and watching the blue sky lick its own skin to black.

____- i walked down the promenade with Monza. a little girl passing me, put her hands up and growled at me. I turned around and errrrrrrrrr!!ed right back. she looked surprised (not as surprised as her mother). She smiled, then laughed. I smiled, then laughed. She walked away. I walked away. I was happier.

____- i have begun watching movies again. i seem to have found it in myself to concentrate on things other than my universe and it's many incongruous components. Since there are to be no drugs, drinking, throwing myself into work, alone time to write, or social distractions, i am simply going to have to numb the pain with film (i am relieved)

____- i am beginning to really really miss my friends in Australia

____- Dear God:
_____i hate to pester, but, this is not really a life.
_____mind if i do something useful for a change?
_____thanks dear god.
_____happy omnipotenting.

____- i suffered a mild-size disappointment two nights ago. it will either serve as a prelude to a much larger disappointment to come, or, as a reminder to appreciate the larger miracle at the end of this.

____- isn't it interesting that i am alive long enough to perfect the art of preparing-to-die?

____- i worry that this life is slowly extinguishing my enchantment with too many things. i am too young to know some of the things i know. if more people knew what i knew, no one would get married, have children, or expect to live happily ever after. i wish i didn't know those things.

____- i cannot seem to care too much about anything anymore. ____not in a depressed way... just in a... well..., whatever way.

____- i need to decide once and for all if i'm going to buy a recording of the Busoni piano concerto or not.

____- i miss dressing nicely, and having occasion to do so.

____- if anyone who reads this lives in LA, and is keen to be my superficial friend, who will use me merely for my wit; random assortment of strange tid-bits of knowledge; physical/sexual gratification; wing man for social/sexual escapades that will inevitably leave all involved feeling lonely, alienated, and absurd; senseless chatter that ends in meaningless giggling; then write me an email. i am looking to be somebody's nobody.

____- the better you know me, the more of my silence you will see. the greatest compliment i am able to give is: when i am with you, i feel alone. I feel this way, right now, with precisely two people. I speak perfectly through breaths, the wind signals i can send when my hand moves to turn the page of a book, the timing and precision of my turning onto my other side. Mar: we really miss you. I really miss you. lots. Also i love you. (also lots). I just felt the need to say that.

____- amongst my favorite things in life: stretching my legs out under the table after i'm done eating. Monz: thanks for being the only person in the universe that is not annoyed by this quirk of mine.

____- My grandfather's brother's wife told me stories today. Another of my favorite things in life: stories elderly people know. About distant cousins being burnt in fires in Lebanon, about angry souls that demand lesser.more.nothing.everything.starshine.moondust.angel wings.dragon's claws, about my grandfather. His moodiness. His depression(s). His laughter. His mistakes. The dreams everyone is having of him now, his head slouched against the wall by the telephone, perfectly dressed in the height of 1970's fashion, young, muscular, i'm exhausted. i am too tired he says in the dream. I am scared. Why do I miss him soo much?, a man I never knew? Why do I feel that no one knows me better? Why do i feel that from his vantage point, he sees me move as a blur of light too bright for others, too near, too human, too made-of-flesh to notice?

____- i am tired of my smudged, meaningless, static-dreams. i am tired of feeling like my time is wasted. i want clairvoyant faculties, i want to travel light-years away and sit on burnt-out stars, once fire-balls, now bone-dry rocks. i want to kick moondust with my foot and watch it rise and rise and rise and drift away like smoke. i cannot. i am trapped in my head all night long. dreams of people bleeding to death. dreams of conversations about nothing, casted entirely by cardboard cutouts of people: not a real soul in sight. i am trapped in this domain. i want sublimity!

____- i have to wait a little longer to see if the mild-disappointment is going to grow into a thing with three-heads, or fizzle out and leave a little baby pheonix for me to hold to my chest and rub my cheek against.

____- i am breathing faster. i hear it works for dogs, manages to cut the timeline down a fair bit.

____- my wit misses you.
_____the world is not the same.
_____(also, i'm giving up sugar. this morning's breakfast- the remaining 4 donuts that were supposed to be yours, for 2 hours put me into a diabetic coma)

____- i am 25 years old. except for the following, i have no real qualifications in life:
_____snow can make me cry; i can speak Female fluently; Bach and Brahms are as much my father as anybody else; i believe prayer can crack skies open, spit on bald-heads, make laughing babies dance, make dancing bears cry, reorganize the atoms in my heart to better accommodate my soul, refashion the universe to accommodate me

____- i prefer public transport and walking to cars. i dislike cars and find them very stressful. also i dislike the act of putting gas in the car. i dislike getting my car serviced. i dislike the noises it makes. i despise looking for parking. i can never seem to recall the process of driving anywhere once i notice i am there- i simply have zoned out the entire time. it is dangerous, and yet, i cannot make my mind stop.

____- Dear Body:
_____i am genuinely sorry about the 8 donuts.

____- Dear readers, Dear art of poetry:
_____no one understands my writing. i am sorry to have failed you both.

____- i used to dance. i used to lose myself in it. i used to numb my body in hopes of feeling my soul. i'd slouch into corners of laserlitclubs, music blaring (unable to distinguish light from sound from flesh), and with eyes half-open.closed, i'd bite my own lips, and rub my hands into one another, rocking off-beat from side to side. i would think: this is my soul! this is my soul! i felt like i had severed my body. i felt light.

____- i am speaking honestly: Dear World,
_____i am sorry to have failed you, i promise it was only 65% my fault.
_____i am trying to fix it... it's proving to be difficult.

____- i am proud to say: i haven't the slightest fear of death. should i die in 20 minutes, here is what i'd be thinking: finally. Monz better remember what i wanted for my epitaph.

I cannot be more clear than i have been.
this is clear as it gets.
this is who i am.
but,
cannot remain.

____iii.

and she said:
do you see me?,
_and if so, why don't you say anything?

and he said:
_everything is invisible but you.

__(and she turned her head and was about to smile)

dreams of the recovering soul

nerves, originally uploaded by Federico Erra.

i refuse to leave my bed.
my soul sits in a corner, arms around knees, and rocks back and forth.

a little earthquake somewhere,
__(like a lizard dashing past in Brisbane)

(i do what i can to drown out the date with
Shostakovich, sleep, fast-paced numbing movies)

i wish i could take her to a piano store.
she likes to hide under the lids.
she once had no body,
she misses the lightness.
once, she sounded like:
__wind __staring senseless into space __train-station-smoke-reeking old women

, now the laborious drone of a voice.
__(i once saw her try and french kiss a cello. i want her tongue she whispered to me)

are we there yet?

now she sits in her corner, waiting for Elysium.
she wants to walk to Arcadia.
she likes to skim rocks off the surface of the Styx,
she sits on the banks, i hear a choir of young boys she tells me.

the mornings can be tough.
the light deceives her,
reminds me... ya know?

yeah. i do.

she doesn't like to be touched much these days.
if i'm on a couch, she lays on the floor, reading Sisyphus, listening to Thomas Tallis.
you're so far away__she stares at me, her eyes still there
__(pomegranates, ambrosia, the blond curly hair of her cherub friends, the giant wings of her friend Gabriel,
__she says to me: the thing i miss most about home, is the feel of the gate. __do you have any idea what it's like to walk on clouds?
__[...]
__she smiles.

she sits in her corner.
rocking.

sweet apparition, please don't be sad...
__(she misses Caravaggio she says)
i nod supportively.
want to hold hands?
(shakes head)

i avoid the sunlight. __the morning hours. __the sound of the summer morning beginning to roast what's left of fall leaves.
i want to let in air,
sometimes she hears stories of trees and beaches and faraway realms that make her smile.

do you know how old i am?
you still look lovely.
(she smiles, my eyes blur a little where her face should be)

she runs a hand through her hair,
exhales (i feel like i've been kissed goodbye)
don't leave, i feel__ lost, if. you ..

(she'd rather live in a Chagall.
i disappoint her)

The Remains of the Day: some concluding thoughts, on a memorable day

., originally uploaded by snjezana..

untitled, snjezana

THREE MIRACLES THAT HAPPENED TODAY: A LIST

1. I knew the cd was scratched. It had been playing up for weeks, and always at my favorite spot. I slid it in anyway. Hope I guess, listened to the first song. The second started, I waited for the scratch, instead, I heard it:
   
   and look at you and me,
   still here, together
   
   it looks so plain on the page, alone like that; I cherish that phrase as much as I love anything from Bach or Brahms. It's perfect. Perfectly expressed. The music exalts the sentiment. Something so banal becomes so important. It worked. The track played through. I didn't know how to thank God.
   
   
2. too-tired-to-put-into-words, I arrived home. Exhausted. Hungry. I had not eaten the microwaved hot-dog. The day had been far to difficult to end it with a hot dog. or an icecream sandwich. Or a burger (again).
   
   "Where are you going?"
   "food."
   "it's nearly 11"
   "i know"
   "nothing's open"
   "i need to walk"
   "how do you have energy to walk?"
   "i have energy for nothing else."
   "oh! stop with the poetry already"
   [shrug]
   "where are you going?"
   "i want japanese. but i'm sure it's closed. i'll just go to the diner"
   "you hate their food"
   "still"
   
   I walked down the street. Mostly the night sleeping behind dark glass, fluorescent night-lights to keep dirty dreams company.
   I stopped. OPEN Mon-Fri 6pm-2am. really?
   
   green tea. chirashi. miso. broiled shitake mushrooms.
   ________a day well ended.
   
   
3. my sister sleeps in her own house. alone.
   perhaps i had to give up my independence for hers. [shrug], whatever. it's a miracle

*__*__*

i love the color of swimming pools at night. like slabs of alien-blue. it's how i imagine infinity must look (if i could ever get close enough to see her face to face).

can i name my daughter Eternity? is that a stripper name? I can't decide.

*__*__*

in the car. 40 more minutes of this and surely i'll be dead. the highway, tired, sways this way and that; the tongue of some long-necked dragon. it's breaths tinting the air yellow. This is the way i'll always remember LA. cemented spines that exhale yellow into the air. twinkles of harsh white and red. little mice in little 4-wheeled cages sitting and sweating it out.

*__*__*

SYMBOLS I HAD PLANNED FOR WHEN I HAD A HOME (THAT I NEVER HAD): A LIST

1. When i finished uni, a white blanket.
   In my home, by my sofa, i wanted a trunk/chest, filled with pillows, and a soft-white blanket. It would be there in case winter chanced by. in case Time was late, and i lay there and read, or watched movies, or made love.
   
   
   [i have never had sex in a swimming pool. (end of thought)]
   
   
   
2. turntables. technics 1200s. in my living room. I would play records, dubs. Beats and a bassline. Run to the piano, improvise chords. it would be heaven in a living room.
   
   
3. shelves. probably white. i wanted all my books at arm's length. i would check things. Words from my two volume World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary. Remember a poem, walk to my shelf, pick one (pick me! pick me! they'd chant) read.
   
   [i think i have lost the concept of home. it has been too long since i fell asleep in a woman's hair. is that what home means to me now?, to fall asleep in a woman's hair? if i add: and she still be there in the morning, years, it's been years. Have i been alive? Can i consider myself to be human, all these nights?]
   
   
4. you. If you were in it, it'd be my home.
   
   
5. ...
   ...___?
   ______(i can't think of anything anymore. it's gone

*__*__*

i walk home wearing a plaid shirt i haven't worn in months. it lost a button in haifa. i think your eyes on it- it got nervous and leaped. sleeves rolled. a mostly unread copy of Foreign Affairs under my arm. (i don't know why i bothered, i knew i was going to stare straight down at my green tea the whole time anyway).

Older Chests by Damien Rice played on. What is life that I should find myself at 11:49pm walking down Santa Monica Rd. on a Wednesday?

*__*__*

after days like today... i wonder how i manage to fit my massive wings under my skin.
i undress and stare at my back in the mirror for an hour.
no trace of them.

(and yet, i still hunch my shoulders when i walk through doorways)


*__*__*

a new world just began.
that's all that ye need to know.

finding the right comma: an approach

4 June 2008, Amy Sahba

SUGGESTED APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING THE WRITING OF (me), A LIST
(thanks for the idea Gol (especially since you sabotaged the last post))

1. Stop thinking. it is no longer required. __Some people's writing requires you think, mine does not- it gets in the way. If you're thinking, you're offtrack. I promise.
   
   SubPoint 1; I WRITE FOR YOUR: (A MINILIST)
   ____ -eyes
   ____ -soul
   ____ -heart
   ____ -fingertips
   ____ -sheets/blankets at 3am when you cannot sleep and read blogs aimlessly
   ____ -imagination
   
   
2. Don't try and understand. __Understanding is rarely achieved by staring at the enigma, you need a different approach. Here's one I think works best:
   
   Subpoint 2; APPROACHES: (A MINILIST)
   ____ -let the images work on you. I know there are many, and they are all varied, and they don't seem to hold together. Think of it as writing in collage, (honestly, I'm attempting kaleidoscope).
   ____ -think of the little phraselettes as brushstrokes. Impressionist painting, the words are brushstrokes, and it's fine to enjoy them, but you won't see any of the 'ideas' till you walk back, further away, away from me, away from you... away from this our world.
   ____ -if you can see it, or empathize with the situation, then you're on the right track- my ideas are feelings not really conceptions.
   
   
3. Float. __Float from image to image. __A dream. __A train of thought. __A mismanaged journey (life). __A mistimed firework (love). __the problem with trying to summarize things, is the soul does not exist in pluralities (eg: i am 12% happy, 14.5% miserable, 0.5% hopeful, 33% turning into a bird, 40% rather be turning into a tree- those are better). The soul exist as one single absolute, since the soul has no need to deconstruct a moment.feeling.hope.aspiration.despair into components.reasons.excuses, it simply accepts the cloud as a cloud, and has a strange facility for the interpretation of clouds. We as half-formed-but-slowly-improving-dust-heaps-called-(wo)men do require this deconstruction of a whole into pluralities (into little bits that we can fathom and understand that work-on (yuk)). So how do i write about absolutes (since that is what my soul is feeling.thinking) and still use dust-heap-words? I try my best. Try and form a cloud out of them, sift myself- combining organs, and unraveling dreams into their spectra. __follow them, but don't look for the steps.reasons.links, just... don't. __just follow (your soul will fill in the gaps with stardust)
   
   
4. SOME SIMPLE RULES
   ____-for words adjoined by periods (.) assume that any or all possible meanings are true, appropriate, and intended. Thus: into components.reasons.excuses means:
   
   ____(a) into components
   
   _____________and/or:
   
   ____(b) into reasons
   
   _____________and/or:
   
   ____(c) into excuses
   
   It has 4 meanings. It has meaning (a), (b), (c) and (a+b+c) (simply because different people will grasp at different words more or less, depending on their own little journeys).
   
   ____-for words.phrases contained in parentheses: these are usually secrets. Things one should know, but without the need to necessarily read 'out loud'. If one is musically inclined: they are the markings on the score that you attempt to make clear as you play, but I play a Rachmaninoff prelude, and miss the syncopated accents (but i know what he meant, even if i can't always manage to express it). (also it's little offshoots. things i might giggle at, but not say out loud- perhaps martha will give me a dirty look, or ashtree will say: not_cool. Q! not_cool! (which means what i said was probably not cool).
   
   
5. The images themselves are too often derived from my own personal memories. I have certain symbols for individuals i've love(d) romantically (notice that i presented that as a secret). I have only ever seen one shooting star; as a child someone threw a green apple at me and hit me in the face and that's the only black eye i've ever had; in africa a black and gold spider the size of my head lived in our backyard and my dad would take me out to look at it; haifa usually = heaven, where i left my soul (as a jacket) and cannot find it again; etc.
   
   
6. THEMES I AM CONCERNED WITH (A LIST):
   
   Eternity; ____love = everything (how?);____ time = i don't know... i grasp at it sometimes, but is made of water and slides away; ____gravity (everything that pulls me and entices me, and i lose to); ____God ( w o w ); ____Redemption; ____the tides of Memory (what i remember, what i forget, why sometimes i can remember something(s) that most of the time i've forgotten, where do they go when they are not with me?; ____self-destruction; ____self-pity; ____how time changes (everything); ____how love changes (everything); ____my dead-grandfather who i suddenly feel close to; ____my sister; ____Music (my soul cannot speak English. s.he (notice it's not a secret, it's a duality) speaks: Brahms, wind, hands-held, hands unheld rubbing themselves to sleep, monotony of trains, rhythm of breaths of beautiful women asleep on my chest, grass in the sun, the silence of snow, Stravinksy lives on in rain, women's bare feet lounging on couches when all i can hear is the sound her book's pages being turned every so often with a slight hmm; ____everything i am sorry i could not be- because i am sorry to not be everything i could be; ____3am is its own universe, everything that i know i learnt then; ____loneliness (Monz, most of it is gone, the only species of it that's left is the one that derives from having no peer or equal who understand what it's like to be 50 years old and have to walk around looking 25. also, no one can know the places i have been, because they are too far into a circumstance's scribbley web); ____infinity (which i cannot understand); ______everything
   
   __________________see?
   
   
7. another explanation is here
   
   
8. all i want is to not be a man.
   to fit neatly on a page.
   sit that still and that silent.
   (and always in palms, where i am not alone)
   
   i am finding...
   ___there are no words
   
   

the Edge of Heaven (a notapoem)

Lina Scheynius, personal-red

i am certain sometimes i can see the outlines of gates when i walk. __(In clouds, certain sweeping angels or swooning lovers,
____brokedown palaces children run in- moving as giggles and footsteps and thrown sunflower faces (round and round and round and all.fall. down) __(stepping across stones worn paper thin by endless footsteps and Time's sore hands,

and i stand on the border of some earthly hour, an afternoon, or a sunset, or a flickering television screen, and feel the weight of an entire Kingdom smiling at me from behind corners, and cherubim footsteps kiss the grass with shadow lips)
______and i peer from behind my face (hands) (ankles) (eyelashes) (black hipster underwear) and see people sleep.dream.love.leave.forgive.hope.commit.collapse.submit.surmount their way through.out.beneath.around.despite _f_l_e_s_h_, and land allsoul unto friend's.lover's.goal's porch, and smile (all smile), where... __here? no!

indeed, under that tree there, the olive tree, God sits and waits, smelling leaves, breaking twigs into smaller pieces, throwing them into the sand, delighting.

here? _no!

____(and somewhere a car passes, a man dances and bops his head; a body in a machine. __a soul in a body(machine) __(Russian dolls) _(when i looked into your eyes, i saw your other eyes looking back, and i smiled at them, and they didn't move or change, but the universe did, and it accommodated my new heart- my dilated soul (its head alone was the moon,
it's body Odysseus's sail flapping in the night wind,

and once, a smaller sailor i, with others- 12 year old adventurers, went crabbing in the rain, and i stared up at milky clouds and couldn't see the rain drops hitting my face, and felt wet, and my soul lives there still,
and lives on a yellow couch i left behind in a desert,
and chases dropped raspberry's down halls laughing the whole while,

occasionally visiting olive trees, and midnight oracles, and my grandfather's newfound ability to poke his fingers through rocks, dismantle presence, hug with his hairy chest circumstance, and somehow, make amends in one world all he'd wished we knew about him in another,
______(I know dad, mom told me... it's ok... it's ok... it's ok... sssshhh, sleep easy old man,

In Haifa i walked past the children's music school.
little cello.hearts beating out of time, violins screeching, and Mozart laughing and shaking his head while Stravinsky nodded yes! yes! (before conducting the rain, Mahler the wind, Bruckner the clouds, Brahms my soul,

here? _no!

soo close.
i can taste the ambrosia, the nectar of the gods (sweet Hermes, i dreamt once I was you and ran through a garden, couldn't stop for nothing, descended a staircase as myself,
______lived to see another day

Life: the limit of the world,
the end of time is soo near!
the end of space: the borders are already coming undone,

i can see the strings of my soul becoming detached,
my skin grows paler by the decade
tonality will be the only thing to follow me,

here, in this bedroom, santa monica, at this mundane hour, this mundane life, i see Heaven's plans descend and freeze, and smile and flap away, leaving feathers and clues,
oh sweetness!
future feet i'll rub before bed, __slam my hands into steering wheels in desperation, __disappear into 3am frenzies: _if i become any more human I'll slip through my skin, through the dirt, between roots of trees, the bellysleeping snores of the earth, through his space-ruffled sheets, __all black, _all silence,

under a star, besides a daffodil, three clarinets will mimic wind to make me feel better,
a bearded man, strong only in utter nothingness, will smile, blue is a color i remember...
how long have you been under this tree?
me?
...
a few springs. a few summers.
the tree gives good shadow?
yes. __remember the last time you were here?
__yes. __i was a nothing, __i was soo beautiful. __i was only a God's dream, the hope of an infinity, the desire of a certitude.
look now my son: faceless face, dreamless soul, forever enshrined in timeless,
forever loved in history,
forever excelled of the flesh, escaped of gravity,

a ghost?

oh no. a soul having crossed an ocean with a whistle.

(here, now... already... _moments, __[gasp] (i'm nearly nothing!

*__*__*

a wave washes a shore

Stories About Stories

(sometimes, I need to write about the things I want to write. Mostly it's a process for me to organize my thoughts and ideas before I sit down to do it... this post will be just this)











Bye Bye LA

Somebody's somebody is leaving in a few days. Back to a home that was thrust upon them rather than chosen (as most of ours are). He said to me: it's ok, she'll only be gone about two months... then she's coming back. The word back seemed heavy. I've made that promise too many times. To: _ _ _ _ _, China, Eman, my grandparents, and Martha, just in the last 6 months alone.

Walking a few hours ago, thinking of people graduating, of people leaving, coming...

on: going.leaving.left___(and being left)

It occurred to me to write a standard. One of those standard plotted things. Person, lost, arrives in place, lives in transition, finds him.herself, promises to return, knowing (sadly, too sadly) they will not. Then, being gone.
____I am counting my own days. Trying to decide if I am leaving, or if I am being left. I've done this for years, 9 month research-project. 30 month medium-term B. 'until you get back on your feet'.

My story is about moments spent in cars. __Slow walks to soothe agitations. __Fixing lives. __Palm trees. __Dreams of blindness. __Untold future creeping upon us, plane-ticket in hand.__ on: going.leaving.left___(and being left) ____on: the land between solar systems____(on being scared)

I won't write it till I'm leaving. Which is soon enough anyway. I can't really understand the tide in the ether that brought me here... all that's happened here... and the why of it, I don't know how to fill a story with a sense of moving-on-ness, when my character still isn't sure about hereness. Which is the point. Which is why people say back at the end of 'i'll be right'. Which is why my entire life I seem to scramble forward, one hand forward fumbling for light switches, the other held out behind me, hoping someone who I was just with will find my fingertips in the dark and hold me close and save me the blind-man's-quest.

Where the fu&* am I?
(if anyone knows... seriously, I can't work it out)

I can't understand if my character will leave victor or not. I can't understand how to measure those quantities anymore. My story has to be the destruction of a person. A complete absolution of self. An abandonment of direction. Perhaps I should turn my person into a leaf at the end.

A story about sitting by the pool besides beautiful women I never once spoke to. A story about too many nights sitting at the kitchen table at 4am writing run Orestes run! into my notebook (and already, there they are, can you hear them? The Erinyes- the Furies... Sartre thought they would sound like hordes of flies. To me, they sound like incessant: water running, people speaking, phones ringing, television, wheelchairs creeping laboriously across carpeted rooms, the banging of doors, the dropping of things, rummaging through handbags looking for pens, my name repeated all day long, keys jingling, tea kettles steaming, the workmen drilling, distant motorcycles.

Perhaps I ought to write the whole thing as a rendition of the myth. I've been meaning to write a version of the Orestia for years now. (I suppose that story depends on the end... to what do we leave to?) (and of course, no one ever knows) (even if they think that they do)


My end draws close.


*__*__*

I suddenly stop and think to myself: what is life that I should find myself walking at 1:11am on a friday morning down Santa Monica Blvd eating string cheese and listening to Russian rock music.

Where the fu&* am I?
(if anyone knows... seriously, I can't work it out)
I cannot win at this.