I awoke to find that all signs point to "yes"
I awoke with hair on my chest and blood in my stool
A vicious coif and morning breath
I also awoke to find that the number of artists in my itunes has reached "1337." I fear to add more. This is a sign of some kind.
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Sunday, May 22, 2005
My Fever Dream
When I sleep in pain
I dream I am in love
with the unlikliest people
and, dangerously, I awake believing
it's all possible
I dream I am in love
with the unlikliest people
and, dangerously, I awake believing
it's all possible
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Friday, May 13, 2005
I have done it
I finished my thesis yesterday. Throw yourselves upon me, all ye virgins and hot babies or I will make the volcano erupt.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Make Bereev
Go ahead. Make believe you don't think this is the best Weezer since Pinkerton. Rivers is Hollering and belting shit out again. This shit is in earnest.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
In the Juvescence of the year came Christ the Tiger
Watched Derrida today. A passage that was quoted in the narrator's voiceover as Derrida toured the prison in South Africa where Mandela was held prisoner reminded me of Eliot's Gerontion. The passage was regarding the origin and the consequence of the self- that the self is the origin of violence, that it perpetuates violence always in its demarcation of itself from the other from whom it must defend. And Eliot popped into my head with his "In the juvescence of the year came Christ the Tiger," a line that's hung with me but has never found a meaning for me. Here something seemed to connect, though, with the idea that Christ, (I regard Christianity and its stories the same as I regard the myths of the Greeks or the sutras of the Buddha or any other stories popularly regarded as digestible repositories of complex thought alone, I am not a Christian of any stripe) in his role as the perpetual and familiar foe of Christians, entrenched the self by being the spectacular foe of so many. As a spectacular Other, the tortured death he endures in the story is the crowd's affirmation of itself as opposed to its otherness. The torture they inflict on him is a violence necessitated by the reaffirmation of the Separate othernesses of the crowd and of Christ. In a funny turn, the incomprehensible axiom "Christ died for our sins" takes on a new meaning, signifying that his execution allowed the perpetuation of sin, allowed the perpetuation of selves, and thereby allowed and necessitated the perpetuation of violence. This simultaneously gives a nod to the fact that the self was allowed in this single symbolic act (among many such acts perpetrated daily) to continue with no end in sight and that in the act, with such perpetual life of the self guaranteed, guaranteeing constant devouring and destruction of the Other. Hence Christ the tiger.
That was the connection I made.
That was the connection I made.
Saturday, May 07, 2005
Male-Valence
A friend confided to me recently that he believed that life was not simply illusory, but was deceptive, dishonest, mendacious, malevolent. Not simply constructed and confusing in a nearly zen buddhist sort of way, but actively obsfuscative. I don't know if I can agree with him. There is a strong binary construct at the heart of the argument- the construct of victim versus villain, life versus the individual. There is a veil separating the two, creating a relationship that necessitates strife and confusion to reproduce itself. As agent of thought, as one who gestates thought, who carries ideas, is spoken by language, is expressed by opportunity to react, the individual is married to this multi-valent approach. When he expresses it he gives life to it. He reinforces it, or the possibility that it is true, by being its agent and by not being that which oppresses him. It is a malevolent multi-valence- a male-valence. It is a tautological stance that guarantees its own outcome. Certainly life can be unfortunate, but malevolence requires interpretation and anthropomorphic qualities. If you are unable to find happiness within an interrelationship of various positve/negative binaries with the outcome being a positive or negative reading termed happy/unhappy, perhaps one should adjust or abandon one of those dualities, or abandon the happy/unhappy duality altogether.
Where does one begin to draw the line between a self that is distant enough from the total reaction to that self's actions or for whom the totality of other reactions originated by the selves of others is a completely overwhelming force to such an extent that it appears that there is an outside pressing inside? Is it even possible to take possession of actions or reaction within a milieu that existed presumably prior to your participation- after all you are the result of a coupling, which was the result of other couplings and other social arrangements before that. And, at such a point, does not the interpretation of such an invasion (though invasion already be charged with a value) constitute a new action that demands its progeny? It would seem that the very act of possessing a point of view can function to make true almost anything at all at the basic level of reality.
As such, the point of view purports to construct in abstract permanence in the memory of its holder an absolute notion of any given moment. This memory is never again accessible to the possessor of the point of view, nor is it ever accessible to any others- the self changes and interpretations change and, after all, we are never fully here and now but always becoming and living in some other fragments of improved memories. Our memories are never free from interpretation and the shortfalls of recall. They are always a shorthand that leaves out the totality of an experience for the sake of easy recall, so that it is not necessary to live the whole moment again, so one does not have a map of the united states the size of the united states.
As the possessor of a point of view, however, one has the certain confidence that, though these memories are never again accessible to the possessor in perfection, nor are the experiences ever in any form communicable to another, for the concrete self certain things happened in history, that there is somewhere a real and permanent mark of action that took place and a continuity within which the self is functioning. This space is narrative, private, and historical. That all have access to such a space that is their own, or rather is there in relative mimesis of others' histories and narrative conventions functioning to place the self historically yet sealed off from the apparently common histories of others means that there is a conceptual location within which one can say, "Life is deceptive" or "Life is honest." This space is only a notion, marked only by the confidence that it is there and that it contains a story. It is never written, nor is it ever visible to anyone, including the self that is its proprietor, for the events on which it is predicated can never be revisited and can never be seen except from the point of view of one's own eyes or the point of view of how one imagines the eyes of others would see.
Inside this space, or by referring to this space one can say, "I am put upon." One can say "I am blessed." "I am happy." "I am unhappy."
Outside of this space there is a breakdown, there is no narrative and one can merely pose the question. "Am I happy?" "Am I unhappy?" It becomes impossible to value one's experience.
No one exists purely in one of these spaces or another- that is, the experiential and the narrative, rather there is a constant interchange and inter-referentiality to experience, a reinforcement of experience and action that creates continuity and the apparent existence of succession or descendance from one thing to another, as there is the perception of some form of repetition of what has come before in every moment.
So, in the end, I cannot agree that life is dishonest. To do so I would have to agree that there is an answer or an outcome to the question or story of what life is answering in an attempt to become finite- I would have to agree that there is a true end to all things. I would have to believe in finite and universal answers- products of subscription to a system of authority that do not require understanding. Answers are clerical. To rely on a foregone conclusion, a clerical technicality, is only to plug a hole in the story of one's understanding of, in this instance, the motivations of the abstracted life. Since all narratives occur in a private space, one eventually has to admit that one is providing oneself with the premise. Consequently, if one is to provide oneself with that premise and not admit to it, one fulfills the premise- one is dishonest and one lives that way.
I cannot agree that life is dishonest because I am incapable of knowing if that is true.
Where does one begin to draw the line between a self that is distant enough from the total reaction to that self's actions or for whom the totality of other reactions originated by the selves of others is a completely overwhelming force to such an extent that it appears that there is an outside pressing inside? Is it even possible to take possession of actions or reaction within a milieu that existed presumably prior to your participation- after all you are the result of a coupling, which was the result of other couplings and other social arrangements before that. And, at such a point, does not the interpretation of such an invasion (though invasion already be charged with a value) constitute a new action that demands its progeny? It would seem that the very act of possessing a point of view can function to make true almost anything at all at the basic level of reality.
As such, the point of view purports to construct in abstract permanence in the memory of its holder an absolute notion of any given moment. This memory is never again accessible to the possessor of the point of view, nor is it ever accessible to any others- the self changes and interpretations change and, after all, we are never fully here and now but always becoming and living in some other fragments of improved memories. Our memories are never free from interpretation and the shortfalls of recall. They are always a shorthand that leaves out the totality of an experience for the sake of easy recall, so that it is not necessary to live the whole moment again, so one does not have a map of the united states the size of the united states.
As the possessor of a point of view, however, one has the certain confidence that, though these memories are never again accessible to the possessor in perfection, nor are the experiences ever in any form communicable to another, for the concrete self certain things happened in history, that there is somewhere a real and permanent mark of action that took place and a continuity within which the self is functioning. This space is narrative, private, and historical. That all have access to such a space that is their own, or rather is there in relative mimesis of others' histories and narrative conventions functioning to place the self historically yet sealed off from the apparently common histories of others means that there is a conceptual location within which one can say, "Life is deceptive" or "Life is honest." This space is only a notion, marked only by the confidence that it is there and that it contains a story. It is never written, nor is it ever visible to anyone, including the self that is its proprietor, for the events on which it is predicated can never be revisited and can never be seen except from the point of view of one's own eyes or the point of view of how one imagines the eyes of others would see.
Inside this space, or by referring to this space one can say, "I am put upon." One can say "I am blessed." "I am happy." "I am unhappy."
Outside of this space there is a breakdown, there is no narrative and one can merely pose the question. "Am I happy?" "Am I unhappy?" It becomes impossible to value one's experience.
No one exists purely in one of these spaces or another- that is, the experiential and the narrative, rather there is a constant interchange and inter-referentiality to experience, a reinforcement of experience and action that creates continuity and the apparent existence of succession or descendance from one thing to another, as there is the perception of some form of repetition of what has come before in every moment.
So, in the end, I cannot agree that life is dishonest. To do so I would have to agree that there is an answer or an outcome to the question or story of what life is answering in an attempt to become finite- I would have to agree that there is a true end to all things. I would have to believe in finite and universal answers- products of subscription to a system of authority that do not require understanding. Answers are clerical. To rely on a foregone conclusion, a clerical technicality, is only to plug a hole in the story of one's understanding of, in this instance, the motivations of the abstracted life. Since all narratives occur in a private space, one eventually has to admit that one is providing oneself with the premise. Consequently, if one is to provide oneself with that premise and not admit to it, one fulfills the premise- one is dishonest and one lives that way.
I cannot agree that life is dishonest because I am incapable of knowing if that is true.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Are you in New York? Can you drink? So can I! I'll show you!
Check out the link in the sidebar and buy Igor a drink, mateys. He could use one!
-the management.
-the management.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
A Night that Does Not Bear Repeating Repeated in the Image
This night was stunning visually, apparently. I was unable to rouse for the entirety of the following day, poisoned by the high living, the hail of punches and the search for Koreatown Jenny. Koreatown Jenny we did not find. Repentence paid a somber visit to our bedsides. I lay in frightened repose at the courtesy.
That's The Tim making upset and me making my Jonah Hex face.
That's The Tim making upset and me making my Jonah Hex face.
Plasma Clear
Rhyming practice now.
Dropping words like turds in fourths and thirds
and all this time you thought it was going to be easy
Did you have time to blink? A spot to think?
Been watching novels fly by my mind's eye and gypsies wobble by the payphones by a conversion van that just died. They wobble vicious drunk and answer cell phones and sip from thin brown bags and drip spit foam.
Been turning music into digits and then back again.
I've been wobbling myself and craving oxygen. Craving a catalyst, reading Craigslist. I've been contrived at being trite and being sincere. I've been desperate and affable as a willing ear. I've been laughing off the end of the year.
I've been going thin with projects that I run from to other talents and I've been spitting out the butt-ends of half finished comments. I've made headlong slips into merriment and I've been deliberate. I've done the hokey pokey and put only one foot in it.
and all this time you thought it was going to be easy.
I have a few friends and I've had a few beers and all the same, caught in a leer, it's never easy, not even when it's plasma clear.
Want to see someone get past the end of world nights if that's even what she's having, talking herself down until she finds a place worth landing.
Had a meeting with black beetle written glyphs on his back just under skin
we go we light small fire, we meet them there we make small thunder
we play at going louder we dress up like gunpowder with a swagger and a shatter or a hairline fracture on the champagne flute at the party where they let us in
we make strong magic we wobble on legs of aspic and put the strong smile big teeth up in front
to take the heat
Like Dr. John, we walk on gilded splinter
full of shit, sir
indeed.
We hope, we try, to grow on you like a weed.
Dropping words like turds in fourths and thirds
and all this time you thought it was going to be easy
Did you have time to blink? A spot to think?
Been watching novels fly by my mind's eye and gypsies wobble by the payphones by a conversion van that just died. They wobble vicious drunk and answer cell phones and sip from thin brown bags and drip spit foam.
Been turning music into digits and then back again.
I've been wobbling myself and craving oxygen. Craving a catalyst, reading Craigslist. I've been contrived at being trite and being sincere. I've been desperate and affable as a willing ear. I've been laughing off the end of the year.
I've been going thin with projects that I run from to other talents and I've been spitting out the butt-ends of half finished comments. I've made headlong slips into merriment and I've been deliberate. I've done the hokey pokey and put only one foot in it.
and all this time you thought it was going to be easy.
I have a few friends and I've had a few beers and all the same, caught in a leer, it's never easy, not even when it's plasma clear.
Want to see someone get past the end of world nights if that's even what she's having, talking herself down until she finds a place worth landing.
Had a meeting with black beetle written glyphs on his back just under skin
we go we light small fire, we meet them there we make small thunder
we play at going louder we dress up like gunpowder with a swagger and a shatter or a hairline fracture on the champagne flute at the party where they let us in
we make strong magic we wobble on legs of aspic and put the strong smile big teeth up in front
to take the heat
Like Dr. John, we walk on gilded splinter
full of shit, sir
indeed.
We hope, we try, to grow on you like a weed.
Tim's new friend
Tim has a great job. Yesterday he got to make friends with veteran smart guy Cornel West.
Check the pictorial evidence.
(After you've gone through all his other great pics, it's at the bottom left of the page)
Check the pictorial evidence.
(After you've gone through all his other great pics, it's at the bottom left of the page)
Hush Money
It was a compromise, and I hate compromises, but that's America for you. "Next time you will be able to do as you please" - That's the song. It's a dastardly lie, but to palliate it you are given hush money.
Henry Miller, p. 15 The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
Henry Miller, p. 15 The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Monday, May 02, 2005
Electronic Trinket
Last night I went overboard and now my insides are like a chimney coated with fat and creosote. It's a muddy tinderbox inside my heart!
I won an iPod shuffle in a raffle at the NYU computer store.
The e-mail I sent out to my department at school follows:
Electronic trinket for sale- 1 unopened 512 MB Apple iPod Shuffle (C), 99
USD retail value
Features include:
-Learn to accept those things you cannot change and master your stress!
Surrender to chaotic forces unleashed by ruthlessly minimal and highly
significant Apple design by way of absolute uncertainty as to what song
will play next. Song 1 or song 125? Don't these songs have names? The
Shuffle (C) cares not! You and your nostalgia are insignificant!
-You will have the opportunity to smell the iPod Shuffle (C) at any time
it is in your possession.
-This thing can be worn about the neck if you hang it there. Other
hanging possibilities include:
hanging from a doorknob, hanging from a lamp, hanging from a hat-rack,
hanging from a hook, all made possible by 17th century lanyard (TM) naval
technology and gravity.
-Obstruct the passage of visible spectrum light, hide things that are
smaller than the iPod Shuffle (C) from view!
-Place it anywhere
-Can be lost in seconds
-Learn what "near cd quality" means to Apple and condition yourself not to
mind it!
-Maintain the appearance of minimum necessary consumption levels, cash in
on heightened social capital
-Provides hours of valuable gadget operation experience
-lack of display lets you learn what it's like to listen to music in the
dark
I came to own this thing by entering a raffle at the NYU Computer Store.
If you would like to own it, you are welcome to contact me and arrange to
give me 80 of your United States Dollars, transforming them into my United
States Dollars and transforming my iPod Shuffle (C) into your iPod Shuffle
(C). If you would like, I can give it a much fancier name, thereby
increasing its value and rarity. In such an event you may give me 100
United States Dollars to claim ownership of it. This will probably never
happen to you again.
Prof A. raised 2 very good points:
1) is it unethical to profit from raffle winnings?
2) Can I live with the guilt of being the arbiter of a greater likelihood of victimization by thieves an iPod conveys to its possessor?
1) I think I can profit from raffle winnings as long as I do not seek to make more than the item is worth and people know that I came by the item(s) free. This places the buyer in an empowered position to make a decision without coercion and aids in validating the sale contract.
2)iPod is strong magic- People should know this. Caveat Emptor! Other things that one should hesitate to buy are:
monkey's paw, gift of magi, radium, diamond bridgework, unholy reliquary collections, controlled substances, spear of destiny, Brooklyn Bridge, old sushi
It is only with such a caveat attached that I sell this item.
I won an iPod shuffle in a raffle at the NYU computer store.
The e-mail I sent out to my department at school follows:
Electronic trinket for sale- 1 unopened 512 MB Apple iPod Shuffle (C), 99
USD retail value
Features include:
-Learn to accept those things you cannot change and master your stress!
Surrender to chaotic forces unleashed by ruthlessly minimal and highly
significant Apple design by way of absolute uncertainty as to what song
will play next. Song 1 or song 125? Don't these songs have names? The
Shuffle (C) cares not! You and your nostalgia are insignificant!
-You will have the opportunity to smell the iPod Shuffle (C) at any time
it is in your possession.
-This thing can be worn about the neck if you hang it there. Other
hanging possibilities include:
hanging from a doorknob, hanging from a lamp, hanging from a hat-rack,
hanging from a hook, all made possible by 17th century lanyard (TM) naval
technology and gravity.
-Obstruct the passage of visible spectrum light, hide things that are
smaller than the iPod Shuffle (C) from view!
-Place it anywhere
-Can be lost in seconds
-Learn what "near cd quality" means to Apple and condition yourself not to
mind it!
-Maintain the appearance of minimum necessary consumption levels, cash in
on heightened social capital
-Provides hours of valuable gadget operation experience
-lack of display lets you learn what it's like to listen to music in the
dark
I came to own this thing by entering a raffle at the NYU Computer Store.
If you would like to own it, you are welcome to contact me and arrange to
give me 80 of your United States Dollars, transforming them into my United
States Dollars and transforming my iPod Shuffle (C) into your iPod Shuffle
(C). If you would like, I can give it a much fancier name, thereby
increasing its value and rarity. In such an event you may give me 100
United States Dollars to claim ownership of it. This will probably never
happen to you again.
Prof A. raised 2 very good points:
1) is it unethical to profit from raffle winnings?
2) Can I live with the guilt of being the arbiter of a greater likelihood of victimization by thieves an iPod conveys to its possessor?
1) I think I can profit from raffle winnings as long as I do not seek to make more than the item is worth and people know that I came by the item(s) free. This places the buyer in an empowered position to make a decision without coercion and aids in validating the sale contract.
2)iPod is strong magic- People should know this. Caveat Emptor! Other things that one should hesitate to buy are:
monkey's paw, gift of magi, radium, diamond bridgework, unholy reliquary collections, controlled substances, spear of destiny, Brooklyn Bridge, old sushi
It is only with such a caveat attached that I sell this item.
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