Onietzsche: Droppin Knowledge

Effigy (Andrew Bird)

2011-05-28T23:12:00.000-07:00

If you come to find me affable
And build a replica for me
Would the idea to you be laughable
Of a pale facsimile

I don't want a replica. And, I surely don't want an effigy. If you come to find me affable, I am not even sure it's memories I am after. No, if you come to find me affable, then let's not think about it. Let's not reflect about what it means or why you do so. If we come to find ourselves mutually affable, well, let's let it be--let's let the affability carry on unnoticed and untheorized. What do you say? If you find me affable, don't think about it, just stay in it with me and don't worry about the rest.

So when you come to burn an effigy
It should keep the flies away
When you learn to burn this effigy
It should be
For the hours that slip away

I'm serious. No effigies and no hours. Let the flies gather, and don't even think twice. I am sure the memories will be good, and the pictures will make you cry from time to time, and there will be days where you remember. But, please no effigies. The flies are your last worry. I want to love you in a way that means you'll never have to worry about keeping flies away from me. I want to love you in a way that you are able to care about other things. Okay?

It could be you, it could be me
Working the door, drinking for free
Carrying on with your conspiracies
Filling the room with a sense of unease
Fake conversations on a nonexistent telephone
Like the words of a man who's spent a little too much time alone
When one has spent too much time alone...

I know, it could be either of us. I know it could be either of us. But, I'm telling you, the last thing I want is an effigy, and that includes a non-existent telephone that reaches nowhere. Don't spend the time caring for someone who isn't at the end of a receiver that doesn't exist. Unease is one thing--one good thing--but not when it is about longing and wishing. Unease is the good thing when it is about actively surrendering to the onslaught of moments that wound, but never exist.

I'm going to love you in a way that there is no effigy, understand? I'm going to love you in a way that there is no way you can be represented now or ever, okay? I am going to accept that it isn't possible, and isn't worthwhile. I'm going to love you in a way that means I don't know you, and don't want to.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop: Sacred Stakes

2010-03-22T23:51:00.000-07:00

I think what scared me the most was being dead. I mean, dying while still breathing, maybe like being buried alive or something. I was so scared of making a decision that would last forever—one that would mean that I can never, ever change.

I was so scared that nothing more would be at stake. I mean, I complain a lot about us not having the same stakes—the same things at stake, but if I am honest, it was more than that. It felt like that if she was the One—if I chose One again—made another one the One—began to believe and hope and believe in a One—well, nothing at all would be at stake. I mean what is at stake when the decision has been made? What is at stake when everything is settled—when the most important, intimate things have been paid up? What can possibly still be at stake when the question of who I am and how I will be and if I am loved and if I loved is decided? It feels like death. It feels like dying.

I couldn't handle the idea that I would never arrive again, at least not for a new person. I know that I would, could arrive for her a million different times. I know that she would see me show up—see me arrive—be born on top of her again and again—and then disappear, again and again. I know each time, or most times, or some times, it would reaffirm our oath to one another; it would revitalize our connection; it would re-sign our contract.

But, that was the problem. How do you re-sign time and time again without resigning? How do you re-sign without resigning?

I want to resign—want to be able to commit time and time—to give myself—lose myself—over and over. I want to sign that signature and then keeping signing it in every moment, every hour, every day.

However, I don't know how to do that without resigning myself to death. I don't know how that works without resigning myself to being a dead person—a person for whom nothing more is at stake.I feel like re-signing the oath over and over . . . even in the ecstatic moments of the little death . . . at the height of frenzy . . . it feels like resigning myself to pounding my stakes into something—into a surface and a ground—a foundation and a place—that is permanently fixed.

When your stakes are forever—when they aren't at risk—when they don't move—when they are decided; when your stakes are buried and covered over—when they don't get looked at or thought of—when you don't have to think about moving them, mulling, pulling, pounding, sounding, or resounding them—they aren't stakes anymore. They are boards—floor boards—foundation boards—building boards. When you bore something—when you participate in the act of boring—twisting, turning, and fixing in order to harness for good—well you are on the road to boredom. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to die by having my stakes—her stakes--bored through me so that I was so bored I was dead. I didn't want to die while still living.

I mean, you realize that about love, don't you? It is supposed to be forever.

That is a huge difference between anything else we do. We all have something at stake. All day every day we are involved, committed, thrown, into situations, and circumstances, and places where we have something at stake. We don't get to choose to have something at stake—every time you take a fucking breath something is already at stake—you just have to deal with that fact, sorry.

And, so, we have to figure out what is worth it—who, or what, or how, is worth pounding your stake into something in order to erect at tent—a temporary dwelling where you make life, make love, make people happy, or make the world better. Some people use tents to hide from other people; some use tents to hide from themselves; some make tents—pound their stakes over and over and over—in hopes that just once someone else might notice and join them in the tent. But, when we pound stakes it is always temporary—even the stakes we pound for survival's sake are temporary—they aren't meant to last forever; they are meant to last long enough for one or more than one to survive the night or the winter or the storm.

You see, the only stakes meant to built permanent dwellings—ones that last forever—ones that last beyond the personal forever into eternity—into the Infinite—are Holy Places: churches, temples, pyramids, mosques, and so on. The only stakes used forever are the ones that build places of worship.

What about one's home? What about the need to create shelter for a family or a pack or a tribe being thrown about by nature's cruel, fickle feelings? I tell you what, creating a hut or a teepee or a fucking track home with a view of a golf course is never about forever—at its most rudimentary and bare levels, it is about survival.

Homes are for living; churches are for dealing with both death and the dead.

Love has never, ever been about survival—not one time.

Love has always—from forever—for forever—been about death. It is a matter of a very human need to somehow die while remaining alive. What do we say about love? “She takes my breath away . . . With her, I am lost . . . I am blind in love . . . I was lost in love . . . I couldn't see—I was blind—for love's power . . . I didn't know what I was doing because of love . . .”

Don't talk to me about surviving with love. Don't talk to me about needing love to go on—we all can get up in the morning and find some food in the forest, in the desert, or the cupboard. Survival never depended on love.

No. Love is about pounding stakes that turn into relics. Love is about pounding stakes somewhere where once they are in the ground they are sacred—they are sanctificed—holy--and thus, not to be touched. Love is about pounding stakes that become altars, idols, minorets, and minorahs. Love is about killing its builders so the spirits can live. We pound stakes all day everyday because we have to. But the only time we pound stakes that kill us are when love is involved.

I didn't want to die. I didn't want to sanctify the building of another One—I hadn't believe in Ones for a long time, and honestly, the thought of it scared me to death.

Encounters (redux)

2010-03-22T22:51:00.000-07:00

At the bottom of all our hopes lies a yearning for encounter. -Ivan Klima

What depressed me were certainly not doubts about the rightness of my choice, but the knowledge that I'd made a decision once and for all. I suspected that for me the most blissful prospect was not so much having the person I loved permanently by my side as a need, from time to time, to reach out to emptiness, to let longing intensify within me to the point of agony, to alternate the pain of separation with the relief of renewed coming together, the chance of escape and return, of glimpsing before me a will-o'-the-wisp, the hope that the real encounter was still awaiting me. -Ivan Klima

At the bottom of all hope--that endless circle, the one like all circles--without beginning and without end--is the desire for an encounter. It is the desire to know an-Other, and more importantly, to be known by an-Other. What is strange about this desire is its whence--its originless origin. We fight, scratch, claw, paradoxically, even to the death, to be recognized as an irreplaceable, singular one. Without one's irreplaceability, they are as good as dead--a subhuman entity incapable of true living. Without one's singluarity we are just a machine carrying out meaningless functions within a mechanical world. "NO!" Even the non-believing souls cry this--bellow it from a hidden place--"I am more."

This desire--the one for an encounter--is born out of this fierce defense of singularity and irreplaceability. It is that singular, non-replaceable infinity that longs to be found. It is like an egg waiting to be pierced by that one--one in a million--one of trillions--swimming head--to be punctured so as to give birth to life. We believe--in a place so secret not even we have access to it, from a past we were not privileged with experiencing, in a present we did not choose, in a future we will never see--that if we can have one encounter--if even one eternal moment --that life will be born; life will be experienced; we will become what we supposed to be all along.

But, what is paradoxical, excruciatingly paradoxical, about this desire--this circle--is that it is its spinning that makes life possible. If the circle doesn't spin there is no desire for encounter simply because there is no "is". If the circle stops moving the conditions for any encounter are vanquished. Yet, as long as the circle spins--as long as that desire burns within one's soul--searing scabs and scars along the outer membrane of the secret space--the place where an encounter might take place--it will long to be understood, to express, to try to explain the secret that has no words.

Escape and return. Longing and fulfillment. Yearning and rest. This is the circle. This is the pendulum in which desire swings.

To choose once and for all? To claim I've had an encounter? What kind of fool would I be to make such a claim?

A greater fool for never trying? A greater loss for never trying to somehow lead another down the winding, impossibly hidden, spaceless space of the infinity in which I reside?

I can't answer that. Can you?

Thus, it is no coincidence that eros and revelation are two sides of the same coin. Revelation--the Word being communicated. Eros--communicating something so secret--so precious--so vulnerably personal--without words. Both involve the uncovering of the Infinite. Both claim to lead to an encounter--to a meeting that couldn't, wouldn't otherwise be possible. Revealing the Word with special words, and revealing one's self with no words. Revealing--physically and not. All of it is in hope for an encounter. And, both spawn words--writing. Which is itself the only way to life--the immortal kind, that is.

When I can't write anymore I'll die. But I'll die loving. -Ivan Klima

Lately

2010-03-22T22:32:00.000-07:00

Lately, i don’t think you of you at all
Or wonder what you’re up to or how you’re getting on
I never think of calling you or how things could have been
Or wonder where you sleep at night or whose arms you wake in

I mean, this is pretty true. I don't. I haven't, not for a while now. I mean, I don't really care. I am sure you are fine, sure you are more than fine. But, yes, if I am honest, it isn't all true. You probably knew that; others probably knew that, too. I'd say it was mostly true, and kind of not true.

I’m living alone living alone i don’t need you anymore
Living alone living alone i don’t need you anymore
Lately,

I mean, this isn't really true. I don't feel like I am living alone. There is plenty of love, of all sorts, in my life. There are plenty of people, of all sorts, in my world. I don't need you; I never needed you. That is all true--all true.

I don’t get lost in daydreams
I never lay awake at night staring in my bed
And i don’t think about your face or anything you’ve said
And i don’t think twice when someone says your name

I mean, I don't anymore. I did a while ago, about this time . . . on numerous occasions . . . well, yeah, I did. I did for various reasons, too. I would lay awake quite often, sometimes with you next to me, and most times with you not. But, lately, I don't--I don't lie, don't lie awake, don't think of your face, or even your name.

Or wonder when the day will break or when the tides will turn
And i don’t break down when someone says your name
Or twist my mind in circles wondering which of us to blame

I mean, the day broke a long time ago. And, then it broke again. The day keeps breaking, over and over. The day turns to night, and then to day again. You know? I don't love the dark as much as some people think.

I’m living alone living alone i don’t need you anymore
Living alone living alone i don’t need you anymore.
Lately, i don’t think you of you at all.
Lately, lately, oh lately.

Lately . . . for the first time in a while, I have thought of you . . if I am honest. I thought of you and what it would be like to meet again, not for any reason or expectation beyond a meeting. But, I have wondered. I wondered enough to think old thoughts, ones I had fooled myself into thinking were no longer inside my head. I have thought long enough to even read old words--yes, word I truly thought were no longer there--ones I had erased, but not erased good enough. And, man oh man, . . . lately, oh lately . . . those words stung once again. I found words there I am not sure I even registered the first time I was supposed to have read them. "I'm his." Man, a night after . . . hours after . . . the pain . . . the hurt . . .

Now? Now, all the intrigue--the rosy feelings--the ideas of steadily meeting for an encounter--the vague, undeveloped, unacknowledged thoughts of friendship . . . well, I think the lately will now turn to . . . too late? Too late?

Now that is the question, right? If we are going to bring thoughts and wonders and cares . . .

Well, who was too late? It was always supposed to be me, but in reality . . . man, the revelations, the remembrances, the admissions, the guilt . . . all too late.

Man, oh man . . . lately, oh lately . . . I have stayed up wondering about if it is too late to even see--meet--shake--one more time, just for fun or to close or to leave it warmer than the last time--and now, oh now, it is too much.

Rally

2010-02-28T23:18:00.000-08:00

Hook up with me, meet at the rally
Follow the shouting, I am longing for you Hook up with me, meet at the rally I waited so long, I couldn't find a cause Tired or wasted I think you're decent I waited so long, there'll be no decency no

Meet? Shall we meet? Come on, tonight--let's meet. I waited--have waited--am waited--weighted--waiting. I waited for the decency to disappear--for the decency to evaporate so we could meet--encounter one another. Come on, tonight?

(don't you give me those)
Shifty eyes pay attention
Dirty talk talk talk quiet
Just as long as you're gone
It won't happen at all

No, not those. Don't look at me. Don't shift yourself back in forth in front of me. Come and meet me--let the dirty talk transpose us into a silence wherein neither of us speaks and neither of us listens. Let's go somewhere me and you don't exist, so we can meet. I know it won't happen . . . but, tonight? Come on, tonight?

Remember the time we talked about everlastings?
Don't you know we'll both fall to pieces too?
April 22nd at the Avalon, you teased me
Hook up with me, meet at the rally

Yes, always the talk about everlastings--about infinite and it all. Yes, after a couple of bottles and a nice long look at the stars or the ocean . . . talking about the everlasting . . . You want everlasting without falling to pieces? I don't know about any of that. I've tried it before, with an embarrassing amount of success. Come on, no more of this--of this everlasting business--just meet me. Come on, tonight? You and I into a we? Where? Shall we rally?

Don't go away we're so near
Look around, you see
There is nothing to say but the things I know I got nothing to say but the things I know

Look, there is nothing else? Nowhere else to be? Nowhere else to take you to the nowhere. There is nothing to say--I don't want to talk anymore, clarify anymore, ruminate anymore, try anymmore--I know there is nothing to say but nothing. All I can say is what I know and I know nothing.

Standing in line, I think you're pretty
Lying on your bed, I think you're pretty too Young girl curl your hair at night Hook up with me, meet at the rally

Standing in line . . . always standing in line . . . one of us is always in line . . . waiting . . . waiting for our turn . . . waiting for the time . . . waiting for the time to come when we meet . . . standing in line, still, you are so pretty--so majestically pretty--come on, tonight? Curl your hair, put on your shoes, and a grab a hat for the cold--let's rally--let's meet.

Moments; always moments; only moments

2010-02-28T22:50:00.000-08:00

Stopping and listening to both of us breathe, I wish this moment wasn't a moment. I feel it—so do you—I know you do—that point where we are indistinguishable—where I am mixed with you and you with me—where neither of us knows where the other begins and where the “me” stops. There is no “me” here; there is only a both of us. Feeling that space where the indiscretion of us both equals an infinity unstrapped by the dimensions of time; where the infinite shatters the temporal inside our convulsing bodies--where the infinite melds somewhere into the nowhere. Stopping, feeling the moment pass—feeling the blanket of eros that hid us from the world evaporate into the ceiling above us—and sighing in the intimacy and loneliness of time.

Changing Inside

2010-01-26T00:10:00.000-08:00

Through my window you can see a patch of green
In between the gaps in the blocks of flats
Sitting here thinking to myself
It’s funny what you notice when you start to relax
So many days I’ve been on the floor
Since the light of my life turned me from your door
Where all that happened was about as clever
As missing something that’s gone forever

Yes, I see a patch of green. I see green amidst the gray--the jagged concrete--the hard, hurtful floor. I see green in the laughter of friends, and the camaraderie of a dance circle, and the smile of an-other on the occasion of a good joke. I see green in the words, the sea, and the art. I see green in the beautiful, the mundane, the sacred, and the profane. It is funny what happens--when you relax into something new--something from the perspective of light shone all the way to the floor--where I was left.

Down the stairway on the floor below
Madame Valerie hits the bottle when things take a dive
Still it’s reassuring for me to know
She’s been living here for years and she’s still alive
I talk to her when lost in memory
Her story’s one of faded glory but she still has some clout
Woke up this morning with this melody
And the realization that we can all help each other out

Oh the Madame, or the Madame's. They are present, too, I suppose. The Madames beckon laughter, as well as screams. They are full of surprises--at least before they take a dive. I like talking to them, though. I like it when memories get intertwined into balls of forgetfulness late at night, amidst bottles and cold beverages, and open, bellowing laughter. The Madames--of course.

These days I’m walking the road alone
Returning once again to my only real home
Waking up early, staying up late
Reading a book I borrowed from my friend the heavy weight
Finding a new way to begin
Living without but living within
My eyes are opening to what might appear
As waking up to the simple fact that I’m here

It's good--the road. I like it. Staying up late--of course. The momentous only happens when you've stayed up later than is useful--when the expenditure exceeds the usefulness of day, and is wasted in the antics of the night. Waking up early--of course. I have to deal with the words before the sun steals them--before the sun makes me temporarily think it is isn't worth it--before the sun silences the words with its piercing rays and ubiquitous giving.

Living without? That is an interesting one, isn't it? I like living without--living without why and without a thought. I like living on the outside--external--with laughter and charm--with libations and encounters. Living without? Of course--I don't need you--don't want you. Living without? Of course--it's nice to see the things I see when you aren't in my way.

Further down on the street below
I rise above my state of inner sorrow
The fishmonger’s wife she knows about life
Says if you can’t pay today you can pay tomorrow
Think I’d be alright if I could see you tonight
But I’m wondering if that’s really me that’s talking
Lovers or friends it all depends
Think I better let my feet just keep on walking

Further down on the street--the one below me--I walk. It is nice to make headway on this path--to progress somewhere. Seeing you tonight? The thought has crossed my mind, I won't fib. But, it isn't me talking. I know it isn't. Lovers or friends? How about neither? I'd rather be friends with the road--with my feet--with the without. You know? Lovers or friends? No thanks. I'd rather see the patch of green--see the things I see between the gray and the questions; the aches and the bellows. I will walk--continue to walk--and well . . .

Changing inside letting go of the past
Don’t worry
Sometimes we all have to see the light

Yep, the without has changed the withing. It is a good thing. Don't worry--not about me--I'm that one--the one among many ones--but one nonetheless whom it is hard to forget--hard to replace--hard to explain. I try to see the light--everyday, I do. But, not in the rays--no, in the green that absorbs them--in the green that turns them into something different.

The Crazy

2010-01-25T23:35:00.000-08:00

When the crazy hits the page, it is cathartic. It feels like all the swirling--all the chaos--the muddled ooze of atoms and breached barriers--torn jetties--fragmented souls--all the fucked, fecal remains of sweat, adrenaline, and cum--all the battered levys and harried canals--are somehow organized into semi-coherent sentences, complete with colons, semi-colons, commas, and periods. It feels like the crazy is forced to confess itself in an organized manner--to testify to its existence--to tell the world that it exists--to witness to what I have been saying this whole time.

When the crazy hits the page, it is cathartic somehow. It doesn't make it worth it. I don't really know if that is possible. I don't think even God could do that--justify the breaching required for the crazy to tear up the little pink cepallic enter of my self--the virgin space criss-crossed by the lines--tears--violations--of breaching.

No, when the crazy hits the page it isn't about making it worth it. Making it worth it is a tired cause--it is a non-issue that doesn't even deserve a response at this point. It is never about making it worth it. No, when the crazy hits the pages the cathartic part is that I can see it--read it--and force it into grammatical servitude. At that point, the crazy is spewed forth--vomited--into categories, syntax, and grammar. At that point, it is real. It exists. It is an entity; a being.

It's real. That's the cathartic part. I don't have to persuade any longer--I don't have to cajole. No. When the crazy hits the page, I might be dead--but the swirling dervish of pain, trying, hope, idiocracy, and meaninglessness is immortal--it is its own at that point.

When the crazy hits the page I smile a wide smile--I grin from ear to ear--and laugh. When the crazy hits the page, I grab my belly and shrill from the inside out. When the crazy hits the page, I know it won't stop--but I at least know I know it is out--real--for everyone to see. When the crazy hits the page, I know that the criss-crossed lines of my pink center are born out--laid bare--and singular--no one has my lines--no one has my ridges--my canals--my marks--I might be dead, but my breaches--the breaches that make me possible--testify to the crazy that made me possible.

Remembering to Forget

2010-01-20T02:19:00.001-08:00

Trying to forget is remembering, and that is the bastard of it. I guess I'll forget when I stop remembering, and I'll stop remembering when I forget. Until then, you'll be in my psyche--in places I like to think are evaporating--in places I don't really like to go. The pictures are gone, and the words too.

I guess you could be smug about it--smug that you are still there. I guess you could be hurt--hurt that I am trying to excise that set of rooms from my brain. I don't really care. At least I tell myself that anyway. I probably do--I probably care in the same places the memories are hidden--maybe the caring is what keeps them from evaporating.

It is funny how it all works out in the end. You told me a story the first time we talked and then repeated that story, and that is the thing we spoke of the last time we talked. Now we will never talk again. I know my stories--one of them, or many--got stuck in there too--in between--but, that one story--the pattern on that old shirt you wore the first time we kissed--well, it was the one, wasn't it? The one that stood at the beginning and the end. Oh well, I should have known better--about me, and about you. I should have trusted the doubts instead of the laughter. I should have remembered then--instead of consciously forgetting--the story--the story you told me at the beginning. If I had, maybe the end would have been different.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

2009-12-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

That encounter--that very embarrassing encounter--well, it made me realize something. It was the first time I wasn't in . . . I was just someone. It was the first time I was a one, and not the One. I guess that may not be strictly true. I guess that had probably happened before--I am sure there had been rejections and semi-rejections and what not. I don't know. But for some reason, that encounter stuck out.

It stuck to me--or maybe pierced me--like a stake. Yes, amidst all of the investing and divesting of stakes that were happening at that point--this was one was definitive somehow. Somehow it lit up a bubble in my brain. Somehow, it made sense of some of the stakes.

Life is about stakes. It is about piercing things--places--souls--in order to erect something--make something. God pierced the Bride in the Song of Songs thousands of years ago--God--the Bridegroom in this story--pierced her with his wounding, seducing arrow. God, the Divine Seducer, drew her into a movement--a dance of presence and absence--that included separate and simultaneous instances of anguish and ecstasy. God held that soul captive with the promise of fulfillment--of a penetration--that would fill so deeply, so unnervingly, so interior within her--that she herself would dissolve in a moment of ecstatic disappearance.

Life is about stakes. About digging under layers in order to make a home out of wounds--welcome wounds--risky wounds--desirable wounds.

Yes, we make tents all day everyday--professionally, politically, religiously, and erotically. In love, in living, we erect places to make temporary spaces in order to clear a temporary tent in the forest--the dark, but beautiful forest of breathing--of smoke--of tears--of hunger--mortality--and desire.

That event was a shattering stake--an illuminating stake.

That event showed me that my tent was based on stakes--a perpetually moving, shifting, contingent set of stakes. That event showed me that my tent was always moving in different directions and different ways in order to make space for everyone. I wanted to be able to pierce and be pierced--to be God and the Bride--the object and subject--the Seducer and the wounded, captive Lover--all at once. I wanted to convince that I could erect spaces.

But, it meant my stakes--my personal stakes--my attempt at congealing the chaos of my little world--of forming a coherent mass in my little psyche--the day by day, moment by moment job of running a motor rather than a firework in my head; of running good set of irrigation pipes throughout the flowing circuits in my pink, cephallic center--of letting the water of desire and voices keep within the banks of the canals I had dug--were heavily dependent upon the refracted pieces that were returned to me in the desire--the compliments--the appreciation of those--the others--the ones.

I realized the tents I was making were based on an empty center. I realized that I had been running on the basis of an absence--one that I would fill at a moment's notic in order to receive and dispense with piercing, convincing stakes--ones that would result in melting and liquified insides.

My center--the empty, absent center--the space that was only a space because nothing was there--was not only the site where those stakes were dispensed from, but also the place wherein a new tent could be erected in a matter of moments, days, encounters.

I could construct an open space out of the returned, refracted fragements returned to me from the other.

My tent was nothing. My tent was contingent.

My tent was dependent upon me knowing that I had pierced--that I had crossed--in ways that are and were liquifying.

Without the liquid, I would spill no liquid. Without the crossing, I wouldn't and couldn't be crossed.

I miss that Old Man. I miss his grumpiness. I miss his moods. I miss the questions he would ask me about his crossword puzzles and how he never thought I was right. I miss how he would try to flirt with Sage and the other semi-hippy women at the shop; how his swagger carried him through even the most awkward moments. But, mostly I missed his otherness. I missed him sitting across from me--outside of me--without a care in the world as to my stakes and what I was trying to accomplish. He didn't care about being pierced. He didn't care about melting. He just sat there--and let the tent build itself. He just sat there and let the tent between us--between he and whomever he encountered--built itself each time they met. He was always happy to see you--any you--and you always knew it. How did he do that?

I still talk to him most days. I still talk to him when I walk in the Shop, or go for a walk on the boardwalk. I tell him about my day, or the girl I am seeing, or what I am reading about. I don't know where he is--I don't know how he exists in my psyche still--within the circuits that are always threatening to become jumbled and the overflowing canals--but he is. He is there. And he is still other--still foreign. It somehow reminds me--or gives me hope at least--that someday I will figure out how to not let my tent be so contingent; so wrapped up in other peoples returns.

The Best Book Ever Written in the English Language

2009-12-03T15:40:00.000-08:00

So, Louise (mainly), Kevin, and Brad wrote this book. You can order it on Amazon and wait until they get it in stock, or get it here http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=1589797488&searchurl=an%3Dlouise%2Bnelstrop%26sts%3Dt%26x%3D0%26y%3D0
.

If you buy a copy, I will wash your car. If you buy two, I will wash your car with my shirt off.

A Song for You

2009-12-03T08:07:00.000-08:00

So today I wrote a song for you
Cause a day can get so long
And I know its hard to make it through
When you say there's something wrong

So, today I wrote down some words for you. I wrote them in my brain. I wrote some of them on a page, too (but not all of them). I wrote because a day can get very long--you can forget who you are, what you are, and what you are doing, all in a day. Yes, a day can get long and life can too. Life treads on--always in the interim--in the in-between--but the poles on one side get longer and longer, and the inexpressible one on the other remains there--measureless. You would think this squishing of life between these two would make it short--at least one day. But, for whatever reason, it does not.

So Im trying to put it right
Cause I want to love you with my heart
All this trying has made me tight
And I dont know even where to start

Maybe thats a start

The words that I wrote--that I am constantly writing--I want them to be right. How do you make write right? How do you press words into disciplined, rigorous service? It does make me tight. I don't even know where to start with you--really. I guess you could say that, in that way, you make me speechless? I don't know. But, yes, I don't know where to start. Is that a start? I don't know. I have started before and ended too. I have begun and not finished. I want to finish this song--this poem--this story--this narrative. I want to insert the definitive plot line that will lead to the climax and the finish. You know? But, I'm tight. I'm tight trying to get the write right.

Cause you know its a simple game
That you play filling up your head with rain
And you know you are hiding from your pain
In the way, in the way you say your name

It is a simple game. We have played alot of games, you and I. They have not all had simple rules--but they all have had a simple purpose. Why do they end with rain--with heads full of rain precipitating coiled up words? Rain isn't bad. I like the rain. But, rain isn't good if it means denial or running.

And you're so tired you don't sleep at night
As your heart is trying to mend
You keep it quiet but you think you might
Disappear before the end

I know you sleep. I know you mend. I know you sleep in different places for different reasons. I know you sometimes keep it incredibly quiet--but not always. I know you won't disappear before the end--not you. But, I don't know how to mend the two ends. I don't know how to mend your end with mine. Oh well. In the interim, int the perpetual in-between, I'll keep writing songs for you. People like that, don't they?

2009-12-02T22:50:00.000-08:00

I talked to an old, ex-friend today. She said, "Thanks for writing about me, I am flattered."

"What?"

"You know, your story and your electronic diary. You wrote about me. I am the character in your little story. I means some of it is confusing, but I am flattered to be written about."

I was dumbfounded.

"I think you missed the point of the story and stories in general. I also think you missed the point of the flickering ones and zeroes. Neither of them, the story or the numbers, were ever about identification. If you look for you in them--look to identify fully and wholeheartedly--well, you missed the point of fiction. Yes, fiction. Yes, stories--with narrators--are fiction. If you want to be--be--a character in a story, you will only be frustrated. Stories are not about being something. Stories about pieces and fragments and thoughts and events that happen in and through us. Some of them in the far past; some of them in the near past--but all of them portray an amalgamation that can never be explained through identification. You are not here. I am not here. Do you understand?"

By the time my rant was over, she had turned her attention to another friend. Oh well.

2009-11-29T22:14:00.001-08:00

She said, "What's next?" I was feeling lyrical: "Darlin, I am going to take a stinging toke, rustle in the restless smoke, and hopefully deliver the punch line to my psychic joke."

Writing is breaching. --Derrida

Writing is breaching--a crossing inside that is not only unplanned, but unable to be remedied. It is an explosion beyond the border of safety that leaves one paralyzed with trauma. Life is about breaching--about the moments of crossing--where there is something inside of you that leaves you helpless. Life is about breaching--about one--another--something--crossing a border and leaving you traumatized in a speechless paralysis.

When it is love--we call it beautiful. When it is a lover, we call it by screaming its name. When it is not--we call it death--or something like it. We call it worse than death because it traumatized in a way that means we are still here to experience it.

Yes, life is breaching--about moments of decision that scare the shit out of us because it means letting something pass beyond the border where we are able to defend ourselves. Life begins with a breach and never stops being constituted by them. Life is about the space--the decision-between who and what can breach the borders of our personal sacred space.

Breaching--eruption--can result in anger.

Writing is anger.

Writing is the being-sick of the trauma of a breaching that is not love, but death. Writing is spewing-forth something that appears to be a congealed, coherent substance of sick resulting from the trauma of an unexpected breach.

Writing is anger congealed--the fabrication of chaos congealed--the chaos of death congealed.

Writing is life. Breaching is life.

Flake

2009-11-23T21:08:00.000-08:00

All flakes are different, right? Snow flakes are never the same. I suppose dandruff flakes are unique, too. Flakes come in different--and sometimes alluring--sizes.

I know she said it's alright
But you can make it up next time
I know she knows it's not right
There ain't no use in lying
Maybe she thinks I know something
Maybe maybe she thinks its fine
Maybe she knows something I don't
I'm so, I'm so tired, I'm so tired of trying

It's alright? Actually, it is not. It is not alright, it is not right, and it shall never be again. She knows--kind of. She knows only because she was reminded--probed--investigated. She knows, but not really. She knows, but she isn't willing to know too deeply. She knows something I don't? Actually, no. She doesn't even know the things she should know, much less what I do. Yes, now, at this point, I am tired. I am tired of trying--trying to forget; of trying to stop trying to exert energy forgetting. Why is it so easy to remember and so impossible to consciously--intentionally--forget?

I know she loves the sunrise
No longer sees it with her sleeping eyes
And I know that when she said she's gonna try
Well it might not work because of other ties and
I know she usually has some other ties
And I wouldn't want to break 'em, nah, I wouldn't want to break 'em
Maybe she'll help me to untie this but
Until then well, I'm gonna have to lie to you.

She loves the sunrise, the sunset . . . well, the sun in general. Under that sun--the sun being maybe the only one who knows all the things we are speaking of here--she had/has a few ties. I kind of knew this. I was kind of in the same boat. And, actually, I did want to break them. I wanted to break the ties--to be the only tie there was. I thought untying both of our respective knots might result in a story--a line--that led somewhere down the road--somewhere new--somewhere where we knew without lying. But, the knots were more tangled than we knew. The new could not emerge because, among other things, she knew not what she should have. What a flake.

It seems to me that maybe
It pretty much always means no
So don't tell me you might just let it go
And often times we're lazy
It seems to stand in my way
Cause no one no not no one
Likes to be let down
It seems to me that maybe
It pretty much always means no
So don't tell me you might just let it go

It may not always mean no, but most times--overwhelmingly so--it does mean disappointment. No one likes to be let down. Her ties and her unwillingngess to know herself--these let me down. Her knots--and her inability to realize her knottiness--are disappointing. You are not a memory. You are a an attempted-forgotten. See the difference? So, don't tell me to let it go. Don't tell me to let it go so we can be friends. Don't tell me to let it go so we can be nice. It's useless. You don't even have the capacity to know--to try to know--so what's the point? Disappointing; altogether disappointing. You are an attempted-forgotten disappointment flake--one melting into the landscape at the hands of the sunrise. When the sun gets high enough, you shall blend back into nothing--into a nothing of which I know nothing.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop: Your Stake was not Worth It

2009-11-18T10:22:00.000-08:00

Yes, life is about stakes. The problem? Stakes are made to pierce--to open--to violently cross erected boundaries. We pound stakes into the ground in order to setup a temporary dwellings--to make homes, always temporary, in order to work, sleep, and rest.

Stakes open.

Stakes violate one border in order to make it possible for there to be a place--a temporary home. We make tents all day everyday.

Life is about this--this piercing, wounding, transgressing opening--crossing borders in order to erect the kinds of places--spaces--in which we want to dwell.

Yes, life is about stakes. Life is about deciding where and when to hammer--to break a boundary in order to try to make a home; to destroy a border in order to make a space; to try--through violence--to make something new, special, unique, different.

How could it not hurt when the stakes are divested--when the home collapses--the space evaporates--the trying is no more?

Of course it hurts. Piercing is one thing, but dealing with the trauma of a breached boundary--with the fact that someone's stake has crossed your border and then for one reason or another been taken out again--this hurts. This stings.

Life is about stakes. Most times, at least it seems for now, the borders we cross--the places we dig and let dig into us--are not worth it. Most times, they are overwhelmingly disappointing. The soil, the foundation, the consistency of the place you stake--the dull, indescribable pain of a stake being pulled from layer after layer of the space beneath your breached border--well, it hurts. It hurts because you are closing a wound. It hurts worse if the wound involves disappointment--not being rejected, but realizing the place you staked--the place you stuck yourself--was never worth it in the beginning.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop: Words and their Stakes

2009-11-14T18:38:00.000-08:00

Life is about stakes. What is at stake? There is always something at stake. Always. No matter how hard we try, everyone of us is always already committed--entrenched--circulating--within a world of significations, meanings, and networks. On top of that, we are always responsible for our stakes--our stake.

A man Heidegger taught me that. He was a Nazi.

Disappointment comes from staking in something that didn't want your stake, or wasn't worth it. Sometimes we are sad because the one--the thing--the something--doesn't want us. Other times, we are sad because what we thought was worth our stake is actually not worth our stake.

The Old Man was shaking his head and looking out the window. I don't know what was on his mind, but something was on his mind. His crossword puzzle was on his lap in front of him, but it was just a poor disguise for his pensive involvements.

I think stakes were the problem between myself and the semi-hippy woman. I don't know where her stakes were--or are. I don't think she thinks of that too consciously.

The Old Man got up to take a piss. He almost walked into the women's bathroom despite having been in the shop everyday for months.

Nothing changes when there is nothing at stake. For her, fucking held no stakes. It was fun. It was amazing. She loved it—I know she did. But, she wasn't looking for anything there—those encounters weren't a place where she expected to find something, discover something, hear something. Those times weren't a place she expected to dig deep at the limits of our possibilities—to fucking defy all our bodily limits in order to stretch into some other realm; to be taken elsewhere somehow.

I guess I can't blame her. I guess for most people fucking is fucking—some people love it, some people love it and are horrible at it, some people think it is nice once in a while, or a good way to feel close to someone, or nice way to show someone they love them. That all sounds great. That all sounds ordinary. It is ordinary—it accepts the fact that fucking is nothing more—nothing beyond—nothing extraordinary; like our bodies don't have secrets pent up in hidden, seemingly inaccessible places that can't be unlocked by words. It accepts that fucking is controlled by words just like every other aspect of life. We talk while we wait for the bus. We text each other at every goddamn minute of the day. We update our personal pages to tell everyone when we are eating dinner, changing clothes, and taking a shit. We talk during dinner. We talk at work.

Even those times we don't speak—when we listen—the words are in charge. Films talk to us. Music speaks to us.

Words. Words. Words. Words. Words.

The words are ubiquitous.

Words. Words. Words. Words. Words.

Always words.

Even silence is just a momentary ignoring of words—it doesn't cancel them, surpass them, or provide anythig more than the opposite (and thus the same) as the words. It is a band-aid, not an elixir.

We are born into words. We are born into a situation in which words have been developed into a languge that has labeled the vast network of things we encounter in the world—from trees to traffic signs to the moon—with a signficance. The network is already mapped out—we just jump into it—or are thrown into it. The world already exists, and each and every fucker here showed up without a choice in the matter. If we are to manuever the crossing, complex networks of the human world—well, we have to use the fucking words. Words are the lifeblood. Words are the only way you can think. You can't think without words—you don't have the means. Words are us. We are words. floating—moving--changing--being pushed and pulled perpetually by the flows of words—signifiers—meanings--apellations--nominations--accusations. You are not, apart from words.

I have always felt them following me. I have always loved words and hated them. I know life is meaningless. I know life is a random grouping molecules thrown into fucking deep fryer. I know life is a balmy, unforgiving trek through time's hell. And, the words are time's foreman—the SS Officer standing at the top of the tower watching over the camp.

I know that politics, or good deeds, or humanitarian acts are all useful. But, they are also all meaningless. Most of the time, I accept it. I don't want to sit around thinking about this bullshit. Do you? Nietzsche did and he ended up fucking a horse in the street and going mad (at least, that's what someone told me). That sounds terrible. I don't want to cut my ear off, or commit suicide, or even worse, start a revolution. No, I don't. I like people. I enjoy things at times. But I have no grand illusions. They all collapsed long ago in a heap of adolescence and optimism.

She just didn't get it. Fucking is a chance to escape the words--even for seconds, or a second. Fucking is one of the few realms where there is a chance that for a minute the words will disappear—the world will disappear—time will stop. There aren't many chances in this world to experience something—sometime--when your stream of consciousness is literally halted by a wave of overwhelming darts to your self. There are not many times when you literally cannot think because your body won't let you. There are not many times when the world—when the context of all of it—the bed, and the nightstand, and the house, and the sweat, the tits, the legs, ass, feet, toes, fingers, forearms, shoulders, quadriceps, hamstrings, eyebrows; when the breathing, the glancing, the uttering, the showing, the trying, the performing; the wondering, hating, worrying; when the time and the space disappear into an abyss of nothingness and you exist nowhwere. There are not many times you can be nowhere. It is like trying to forget something, it just doesn't work. There are not many times, you see, when you can be dead without dying.

I'm not a freak. I know there are times you fuck before bed, enjoy it, and then say goodnight. I know there are times you fool around a little on a Saturday morning and then go make breakfast. I don't want to spend my life at swinger parties or sex clubs. I'm just saying, there is more at stake in fucking than a hobby. Fucking is a more existential phenomenon than darts, gin rummy, knitting, flying kites, kayaking, or your local book club.

There is a chance to communicate with another—to communicate in a way that doesn't require words. There is a chance to strip down to nothing—to bodies—to sensations—to let the secret part of yourself—the part you are most embarrassed about because you don't know it—haven't dealt with it—be seen, touched, and explored. There is a chance to let the forbidden space that you don't know how to access be revealed to another person. There is a chance to explore the concealed depths of mortality. There is a chance to surpass the words in order to communicate in a way that is not normal.

And, yes, that is what I want. I want to communicate. Yes, I want to communicate so well that I do not exist, and you do not either. I want to communicate so well that there is an in-distinguish-ability that renders our normal way of being mute. I want to communicate so well that you and I are mute. That is my goal. That is what my desire hinges upon.

How to do that? Well, it seems not with the words. The words can't help us here. Words are for this world. Words denote the everyday. We need the words, but here, we need something different. The way I want to communicate won't work with the words.

Yes, I want to communicate apart from the words--with means--in channels--via pathways--and inacessible secrets--in places unseen and unmentioned--spaces surrounded by fear and taboo--rings of filth mixed with a pain that is pleasurable--where the cut of time has incised unforgettably, but not ineluctably--where I don't know, but you can find--where you won't go, but will let me explore--where there are no words . . . where there is a deep, insatiable reach for continuity--for union--for the ability to transform, tweak, and distort bodies and words and thoughts and feelings and perceptions and images. I want to disappear from the world into a place that does not exist. I want to leave the world for a non-place untouched by space and time.

Of course, of course--this requires risk. It requires vulnerability. And most of all, it requires obscenity.

If we are communicate ourselves into silence, there will have to be some discomfort and some risk. Stripping naked can be a bit tenuous. For some, it is no big deal; they want to speak the silent words we are speaking of here. I don't know if they know the secrets pent up in the criss-crossed channels that lead from their pores to the endless space that makes up the little room where the words come from in the first place. I know, I know. Not all nakedness is about this quest to find the silent words. I know that it is not always about communicating without speaking; I know we can't always render the words mute through a meeting--an encounter--that dispossesses us. But, shouldn't it be most of the time? Sometimes? Is it unreasonable to search for the sacred in the obscene? To find something--something extraordinary--in the terror and vulnerability of nakedness? Or have we given up on that idea, amidst the plethora of stretched, augmented, and displayed bodies in our space and cyberspace? Have we let that go in lieu of the commodified ease of voyerurism? Have we given up on obscenity--sacred obscenity--in order to feed ourselves a constant diet of spectacle, shine, technique, gossip, and mechanics?

Dancing is easier than this. Dancing is safer than nakedness. You can fuck and dance at the same time. You can fuck and dance with your clothes on and off. Yes, back to the dancing. There is always dancing in these instances--it is an easy way to try halfheartedly. Let's move. Let's shake. But, no, let's not dare strip naked--let's not dare show ourselves into the ugly, awful, nauseating, limitless soup of atoms that constitute the space behind the words--the place that is untouched--the place where separation gives way to the rupture of the nameless disquiet.

We are one flesh--for moments or seconds or hours or days--but, I know, I know . . . . . . . I am naive . . . endlessly naive . . . always stars--always separate--always discontinuous.

I know. You don't have to tell me. I know the quest--this one of communication, silence, and nakedness--is impossible--I know it leads nowhere but to a frustrating, fatal cliff--I know it ends in the world re-appearing--with us re-appearing in the palce where we are visible, temporal, and slaves to the words. But, it's worth a try. Sometimes at least. It's not even that she didn't want to try. She didn't have the capacity to understand any of this in order to try.

The Old Man returned from the bathroom with a small, but noticeable wetspot on his cotton, cream-colored old man shorts.

"What you lookin at?"

"Nothing, nothing at all. You okay?"

Evenings on the Porch with the Ohana

2009-11-14T00:51:00.000-08:00

Smoke fills the cold air from the cigar in the left hand. As the port is sipped gently in a singular movement of the right hand to the mouth and then down the throat, distant thoughts are lured to the foreground--thoughts lodged somewhere between sub-consciousness, recognized consciousness and the chaos of existence.

The thoughts filter out through the comfortable breath of exhale as the left hand brings the cigar to the mouth resulting in a surplus of breath, mixing with the mystical smoke, which then evaporates into the darkness of night. Within seconds, the strange conglomerate of smoke and breath are gone--not only to never be seen again, but also never to exist in the unique combination of flow, movement and ease in which they were excreted. The seconds of their existence wisped away without meaning or signficance. No crowd is present on the porch, in the void of the night to see the hybrid of elements disappear into the air. No recording takes record of their existence. No one applauds. No one cares.

But, for a moment the awe and wonder of the weightless gas, the combination of thought, reflection, interaction, absurdity and meaninglessness which pervade the exhaled breath are suspended in mid-stream. Weightless, bodiless, and formless the suspended moment of exhale remains long enough for the eye to catch the mystery which they contain.

And, this is why we sit on porches, sipping port and smoking cigars. This is why we breath each day--breathe in the no's, the chaos, the hurt, the tears--because we have caught a glimpse before--a glimpse of the mystery within the evaporating exhale and it is just enough to keep us breathing in each moment. The moments which seem impossible--the marriage of breath and smoke hanging in front of nothing--contain the glimpses of creativity and wonder which somehow constitute the breath of life.

It's all in Genesis 1 . . .

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

2009-11-12T12:40:00.000-08:00

She said, "What is all this about the words?"

The semi-hippy woman wanted to know about my nonsense. She wanted to figure out my little misfiring brain and all its idiocracy.

"I don't know. The way I see it, the words are anger and chaos congealed. They are anger and chaos formed into a fabricated ball of incoherent coherence. The words are anger and chaos mortally immortalized--made immortal by a mortal who is already dead. They are a hopeless chance to live forever--to form a life that is immortal out of chaotic events and stinging anger. Writing is anger. Writing is fabricating chaos."

"Huh."

"Let's get another beer and listen to the music. This shit is depressing."

You and Me and Words (more words)

2009-11-11T18:36:00.000-08:00

Was it you who spoke the words that things would happen but not to me
Oh things are gonna happen naturally
Oh taking your advice I'm looking on the bright side
And balancing the whole thing
But often times those words get tangled up in lines
And the bright lights turn to night
Until the dawn it brings
Another day to sing about the magic that was you and me

Things will happen. Things are happening. And, yes, naturally--they have to happen this way. What's natural about the situation? I don't know. I don't know. Looking on the bright side? Yes. I think so. At the moment, the bright side is that there are words--lots of them. The words spew forth, yes, naturally. It's like there is no creating involved anymore; it is a matter of emanation, not trying. They are there, always. Dawn? I don't think the words will bring the dawn--I think the words keep the hope of dawn alive. There is a difference, an important difference.

Cause you and I both loved
What you and I spoke of
And others just read of
Others only read of the love, the love that I love.

Yes, we loved--both of us. But, we didn't speak of it. We didn't speak of it and that's the reason that we can't read about it, just like everyone else. Others try to read the words--the natural ones--that flow from what we both loved--from the non-thing that gives rise to all these words. They try to read about it because the words try to describe it. If we had spoken about it, it woudln't exist. If we had spoken of it, others wouldn't have to try read about it; but more importantly, it wouldn't be ours--it would be something altogether different. It wouldn't be love--it would be something worldly; something wordy.

See I'm all about them words
Over numbers, unencumbered numbered words
Hundreds of pages, pages, pages forwards
More words then I had ever heard and I feel so alive

Yes, the words are unencumbered. They come without burden or restriction. In fact, the words are the burden. The words are the burden of every day, every second. The words plague me. I have to work to crack myself open--to puncture every hidden space to bring those words to light--to let them breathe--to make them earn their existence. The words are coming, and the words are the burden. Almost out? No. Not even close. The words seem endless. And, thus, so does the burden.

You and I, you and I
Not so little you and I anymore
And with this silence brings a moral story
More importantly evolving is the glory of a boy

The silence? Don't get it confused. There are words. There will always be words. The silence doesn't signify the absence of words. No, the silence signifies the inability--my inability--despite the endless burden--to speak of what we loved. In this way, the silence is the reason for the words. The words are the silence.

Cause you and I both loved
What you and I spoke of
And others just dream of
And if you could see me now
Well I'm almost finally out of
I'm finally out of
Finally deedeedeedee
Well I'm almost finally, finally
Well I'm free, oh, I'm free

Others dream of it, but I am not so sure I don't either. But, don't worry, make no mistake, I'm not free. The words are free. The words come with ease. But, if the words are free, I am the opposite. Freedom isn't a matter of power--freedom is a matter of having a space in which to describe the love--the non-thing--that can't be described. In that sense, I am free. In that sense, the burden is a free one.

And it's okay if you have go away
Oh just remember the telephone works both ways
And if I never ever hear them ring
If nothing else I'll think the bells inside
Have finally found you someone else and that's okay
Cause I'll remember everything you sang

I know, it has to happen naturally. I know. I know that the silence--even if it doesn't mean the absence of words--might mean the absence of ringing, and even singing. I know the bells will sound for you again--you know how to sing too well, to call too well, and to play all too well. But, that doesn't mean the words will stop. It doesn't mean a double silence. No, the words will always come--keep coming--gush forth onto the page. With those words--with every letter--comes the hope of inseminating the page--the hope that someday the page will give birth to what we sang of--what we loved. Couldn't it, just once? Couldn't the unspeakable come to fore on the page? The revelation of love reveal itself on pages, in time, and, yes, in words? It is why the words exist, isn't it? I know, I know, it is admittedly a hope against hope. But, like I have explained, even if the words are free, I am the opposite. The words have me--possess me--so they'll keep coming, into a dawn that is nowhere--no how--in sight. And, if we aren't willing to hope against hope--at least once in a while--occasionally--well, is life--the breathing that makes both the speakable words and the unspeakable love--worth it?

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop: Me and St. Augustine

2009-10-27T19:00:00.000-07:00

I saw St. Augustine today. He always drinks cold drinks during the day--you know, adult cold drinks. Anyway, I'm not judging--but every time I have seen him in the shop he has been drinking an adult cold beverage. Who knows.

He is old, probably as old as the Old Man. But, he doesn't take care of himself nearly as well. He never wears shoes into the Shop, and he is always unshaven. Sometimes his beard is so thick he looks like a hobo. And, he is certainly fragrant.

I walked past and said hello.

"Good to see you son, why don't you sit down?"

I sat. He seemed to know something was wrong.

"Well, what's the problem? Love, isn't it? It is always love."

I tell you, that St. Augustine is always going on about love. He loves love. It is all he talks about. And when he does, he always has a bit of a sketchy look in his eye.

"With all apologies, I don't want to talk about it."

"No problem."

"I do want to ask you a question, though. What is the greatest sin?"

He wasn't at all taken aback. He just flowed right into his answer like someone being interviewed on a topic about which they knew very much.

"Well, son, you remember all those confessions I did? I wrote those down because I was obsessed with myself. I wanted to know who I was and what I was supposed to be. I also wanted to be happy. I thought, "If I can just know myself--who and what I am at my core--I'll be happy someday. I emptied me out--I confessed it all and realized two things: God was inside me in a place I can't describe or locate. I don't know how he got there, and I don't know how I found him. But, it was then that I realized that self-knowledge--self-awareness--is the key to life and happiness. Without that, you are committing the greatest sin. You know why? Because you are ignoring the gift you have been given--what makes you you--you are ignoring the image of the highest inside you--your true capacity and your true self. If you never stop to consider who you are, what you are, and how you should be--if you never examine--incise--tear--open--build--re-build--gather--explore--assess--yourself, well then you are ignoring the highest, and committing the worst."

He looked at me with a deep grin at this point.

"You know about self-examination?"

"I do," I replied. "It is hard work."

I was about to take my hot drink elsewhere to read, but he stopped me.

"Wait, that is only half the story. The second part of it is your will. Once you are there--once you examine--find--and realize that there is Love--there is Love around you--well, you have to have the will--the commitment to go for it. You have to leave everything--including yourself--to become yourself. It is scary. It is risky. But, it is how it is. You know about that?"

"Kind of."

With that, I left. Augustine kept drinking cold drinks well into the afternoon.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

2009-10-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

"I can't believe you. It's like something has misfired in that little squishy egg inside your head. I think you should check into getting rewired or something. Do you have good insurance?"

The Old Man was lecturing me. His moral outrage was part old-fashion and part his right as an old person. I mean I think there were moral sensibilities built into him that caused these sorts of sermons. But, I also think he just thought this was how he was supposed to speak to me--like he had earned it and even though he didn't want the free drink that comes with the meal of age, he was going to refill it as often as possible just to make it all worth it.

"I know. What do you want me to say? I told you, I agree with you."

God created it. What God created was quickly divided--the chaos that came from nothing was quickly classified--organized--and partitioned. Here, within the creation, the chaos was ordered and then disordered all too quickly. Whether that poor decision involving a reptile and some produce was planned or not, we shall never know. The point is that the disorder caused the partition--the primal partition--the original cubicle. We are now sat in a 3 sided space, with a desk that faces a temporary wall. Sitting, we face a wall mixed with appointment reminders, calendar items, extension numbers, account listings, a few pictures from last year's vacation, and a screen--a flickering, luminescent screen that is a portal into a world of sinful ones and zeroes.

"Why do you think you can do shit like this? I mean, who acts this way?"

"I don't know."

He was incensed. He stood up and paced to the counter of the Shop and back.

Well, that partition can't be crossed by either of us. Not by the Nothing that created the Nothing--to do so would be a compromise of the grandest proportions. And as good a conflict resoluter God is, he just can't bring himself to it. And not by us, either--the door to the boss's office is closed. We are here--in the swirling nothing, organized into a sham of institution, language, and other mortal economies. We are here. He is there. That is the important part.

From here, it is all a matter of intimacy. It is all this paradoxical, stupid try to get as close as we can to another--to somehow bridge that unbridgeable gap without dissolving ourselves into the other.

IT has all gone from nothing to chaos to a garden, and now to this paradox. Life is about getting as close as possible to one--to One or one--whatever you prefer, or can believe in, or see, or find. Some of us find the One. Some of us find one. Some of us find more than one, over and over again. Regardless, it comes to intimacy--to having an encounter in a place that is locked. It comes to having some-one (some-One) unlock the door that lies so deep that you can't get to it by yourself.

Let's get close, or pretend we don't want to. Let's meet--dance--speak--move--around, through, over, behind, and backwards. Let's use each other for intimacy and then move on. Let's believe in dual myths of the One that lead to the spiritual Bridegroom and a heavenly wedding. Let's stride--pace--and fight to get as close as possible . . . to pull the two sides of the strings--the ones fabricated from the chaos--so that they touch, even if it is just for one second at one point. Let's stretch the bungy chords of forgotten souls as far as they will go with the goal of hooking them up at the end.

Let's get close. Let's touch. Let's touch--show me the way to the most intimate part--I'll unlock it, believe me. Show me the way to the hidden valley--I'll put you at ease, peel the layers of chaotic sedimentation, and traverse the terra that is untrammeled and unseen. Let it out--let the place that is not a place out into the open--let's touch--let's see what we find . . .

The One? No, no. I'm not the One. Did you think? Oh goodness, this is a mix-up. My secret? My layers? No, no. I'm not going to do that. Did you think? Oh my, we are really on different planes here. Well, this is awkward. Maybe I should . . . well . . goodness.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"I don't know."

"You are a horrible human being."

"Thank you. That helps."

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

2009-10-05T21:11:00.000-07:00

At this point, I didn't know why I inevitably let myself create chaos. It was swirling--terrorizing--and inspiring all at the same time. Why is that? Why is the chaotic enthralling and terrifying at the same time? Why is chaos always a spectacle?

I sipped. He sat. We didn't speak for a while, but I knew he was trying to figure what to say to me. The Old Man could be a careful listener when he wanted to, and now he was figuring out if he had anything to say about it all.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

God created it. God created it out of nothing. I guess that's the first step? Creating--at least in this story--begins with nothing. It seems like that nothing comes from somewhere both unexpected and familiar. My suspicion about God is that the nothing was something both surprising and near--something he called forth, but something that came forth from inside somewhere.

God created it and it was chaos. There was a surface--some material--some swirling, terrifying mess of nihil--a swirling dervish of potential--atoms--pieces--entities--particles--sand granules--folicles--molecules--and little, tiny, black souls. The chaos didn't last long. It seems that with creating the nothing goes to chaos and then the real creating begins. I guess the first step is impressive, but the second is definitive. If the chaos would have remained, well it would have been a spectacle, but there would have been no witnesses--no eyes--no admiration, praise, terror, or movement. And what fun is chaos if no one gets to see the result?

"You are an idiot."

"I know. Thank you."

He sat back and looked the other way.

So, is this a God problem? Is the problem wanting to be God? I don't think so. Maybe. No. I don't think so. Well . . . I think it is a creative one. I think it comes from a desire to want to create--to make--to fabricate--and yes, to do so with/for witnesses. It comes from a desire to show something--let an-other see what has come to be. In that sense, I need the chaos.

I need the chaos. I need to let the waters of the surface--the deep--run over my head like a powerful, fatally cold waterfall of blades--cutting, grabbing, piercing, opening. That's right, let the chaos flood--let the waterfall of incisions open a flow from within--one that flows from nothing to nothing--from the utter wordlessness of having your face stomped into pavement as a circle swoops around in ferocity and laughter; as I run wild in a revelry that is decadent--exuberant--use-less--expending energy on things that have no return--laughing--crying--running into situations--into mire--into the baseless deep of the night as it turns into morning. Let the flow move as we stay up past the time of the horizon in order to inhale the smoke that sputters into an atmosphere that means its spuriousness will be forgotten in the morning; let us breathe in the air that expands into the void within our lungs causing just enough breath to keep my eyes fluttering and my mouth moving, my tongue laughing and my eyes open to the onslaught of moments that come without welcome and deliver more air--more faceless deep--than is healthy or helpful or useful or usable. Let's drench ourselves in an attempt to laugh deeper than we hurt and scream over the silence of a deep beyond that cannot--will not--be fabricated--molded--into an order that let's the children sleep soundly and the parents sigh a breathe of relief--one in which the moments are held at bay and the deep made shallow with 90 degree angles, pythagorean theorems, and the equation for presence.

Let's create the chaos--advance where we are not welcome--spit words that are awkward, inappropriate, and unable to be swallowed once beckoned. Let's lay face down in the mud of a field in the middle of trees--wind--fire--let it cover us--envelope us--let's run through the rain as the sun hides under the moon and the grown-ups turn their backs. Let's eat candy for dinner and stay up past our bedtime; spoil our appetites for productivity and oversleep the alarm for labor, organization, and manners.

And yes, when exhaustion sets in, when fatigue means the breathing of smoke--the imbibing of drink--the movements of eros and thanatos--the dance of aphrodite in front of a full moon--the skinny dipping at midnight--when it is time to sit--when the music stops--the laughter falls mute--the dancing stills--when my expanse falls expended--well then, let's take that fucking surface--let's take that fucking deep well of nausea--let's take the unbounding chance of the molecules, atoms, elements, and consciousness--bound it into 6 days of creating and one to sleep; 6 to spew it forth--let the words swell over in the hope of speaking a Word, and then one to rest and think about all that has happened. Let's take 6 to fabri-create and one to put our head under the cover and not look. Let's take 6 to crate and one to be embarrassed by it all. Let's take one to build and one to be sorry for it all--to not look--to wish that . . .

To wish the nothing that comes forth wasn't the nothing that is familiar; to wish the void that erupted hadn't left an open wound wherein the guts and insides and intestines had spilled out into a pile of fecal fecundity. Let's wish we didn't have to look. Above all, let's wish there weren't witnesses.

And after that 7th day--well, we'll peek our head out--and hope for the 8th--hope for the new one--the time to do it again--to re-surfac-rrect the void into something else. And when it is time--when the Father says to hand over the keys; to stop playing in the dark streets; to stop creating forts out of old wood in the backyard, or from the pillows on a rainy day; or from the pencils and paper left in my childhood cabinet; or from the words left scattered from the death--the annihilation--the shattering--of his Word--well then, we'll lie down and be embarrassed no longer. We'll hand the keys to the Kingdom to someone else and take a deep rest.

Then, we'll let the chaos settle into a nothing that is not ours.

"Tell me the story again, I want to get it straight."

The Old Man is senile. I get so tired of repeating myself.

2009-09-29T23:47:00.000-07:00

I got nothing. Not now. Not for now. It's over. See you later.

A Girl I Met

2009-09-23T23:26:00.001-07:00

I met a girl today.

She ordered a gin and tonic from the bar. I ordered a Black Velvet.

She said, "Why did you order that?"

I said, "Because that was my nickname in high school."

She looked at me funny, forced a laugh, and said, "You are weird."

She then got real serious on me, real quick.

"So, I know you. I mean, I like you, don't get me wrong. But, I know you claimed to have been dating the 'words' before you started dating me. Or at least that is what people told me. I mean, what is all that about? That isn't normal, you know. I dated a guy who was bi once, but never anything like this."

I said, "Yeah."

. . . . . . . . . . .

She said, "Well?"

I said, "Well, you know. The words are unpredictable. You know? They weren't a faithful lover--or a kind one. But, I could tell them anything. I could tell them anything. I mean, it got old after a bit. It was more about who could hurt the other one more, rather than about anything constructive. It was about me hurting the words and them wording the hurt. After a while, there is only so much you can take."

She said, "Yeah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . you want to go somewhere else after this drink? There is a live band down the street."

I said, "Yeah."

Broken Afternoon

2009-09-23T22:59:00.000-07:00

sometimes you feel like a shame or like a ruse
a half cooked idea or a trick to be used
then sometimes you feel so lowly haunted and stark
waving in the wind like a flag that's torn apart
but we all walk blindly when we stagger and we strut
and we're all dealt the hands with the cards of our luck
and we all bow down silent and the words are awe struck
by the shameless light of the broken afternoon

Yes, we all doubt ourselves, don't we? If you don't, your life isn't worth it. I mean it. You feel ashamed or a fool or like a bottled up joke that deserves laughter . . . like you have shown something of yourself--something you may not have even known you had--much less knew how to show--reveal-give--and now, well, now the whole class has seen you come to school in your underpants--yes, everyone can see the secret you should have kept hidden (the one you didn't even know you had) and they are laughing. Their laughter isn't a grumble or a chuckle--not it is a bellowing roar that comes deep from their desire to see one--another--fall into indignity--into nothing. . . . well you get the idea.

And yes, even when we have regrouped, regained our shaky confidence, and venture out--strut--we walk blindly over an abyss. Even when we strut, we do so without any justification as to why.

Then it happens: the ubiquitous afternoon sun beats down, rendering the hollow meanings we had superimposed on the morning into collapse-able tents of nausea. I don't think the words are awestruck at that point--no, they are just empty.

i went walking in the night all alone
darkness seeping slowly in my flesh and in my bone
and the solitary biting at the thoughts inside my head
and the words came slowly and the unborn dream said
that we all lose the path to the black and the blue
but we are come back slackly to the tried and the true
we'll all come together, though it's never too soon
we'll all see the light, of the broken afternoon

I have walked alot lately. The darkness is mine, I realize. And so are the flesh and bone. The thoughts--the words--the dreams--well, they are mine and not.

i used to be young but i'm not old now
the shimmering passing of you scotty pal?
the path to now or never is paved with ambition plain
as a sail in the wind or an empty garden space
and we all till and toil in the slowly rising dawn
and we're all fit to fail til the future's finally won
yeah we're all faintly waiting for the young bride to bloom
in the shuttering light of the broken afternoon

I am not young. But, I am old.
The path to now or never--it seems there have been plenty of these over time and the never never seems to come. That said, I have dreams of toiling--of trying--of a dawn that is a long time in coming. I have dreams of the broken afternoon giving way to a fresh, crisp morning--not one that will stay morning forever, but at least one that will come long before the next broken afternoon. I have dreams of blooming and a new kind of light--one that doesn't lead to the solitary darkness, but one that does involve quite a bit of flesh and bone.

At the moment, the ubiquitous sunlight of the afternoon has rendered everything to pieces--fragments of sense that hurt when touched. I don't want to unify the pieces--I want to transport them into something the darkness has birthed, but not touched.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop: Shelly's Friend

2009-09-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

I was a bit depressed after the Old Man's funeral, I am not sure why. His brother really irritated me for some reason—maybe it was his lack of respect, or his cocky grin, I wasn't sure. Nonetheless, all I wanted was some cold drinks at the Coffee Shop and to be left alone.

After precipitating my confusion with a handful of Jack and Cokes, a loud group of semi-cougars came in along with the Handsome Young Professor. I couldn't have imagined worse timing for such a crowd. Stumbling and drunk, he sent them to the bar and then meandered over to me.

“Hey man, I am glad you are here. I got a group of raunchy ones here, and ever since your little escapade at Shelly's, you are quite the legend with some of them.”

“Escapade?”

“Oh don't play dumb about it. You are one sick fuck, but these are the types that love it. Well, at least one in particular.”

Caught off guard, and not exactly sure what he was referring to, I told him I just didn't want to play.

“I am really not in the mood for this bullshit.”

“Okay son, but don't say I didn't warn your perverted ass.”
More confused now, I went back to my precipitation and tried to ignore there raucous, drunken laughter.

Its funny. When you are sitting alone in a place, feeling a bit lonely, but not wanting company, a group of revelers has a strange effect. Their very presence somehow makes your more lonely, but not in a way that makes you want their company. It's like you resent them for being there—for presenting the possibility of company—even though it is the last thing you want. It's like you resent the universe for making you one of many. At those moments you wish there was only One. I wish the ones were enveloped into the ubiquity and dominance of One that is Nothing. I wish there was no movement to and fro—no going close, far, between, near, or behind. One means movement. It means having an identity based on other ones. At that moment, I didn't want other ones and didn't want them wanting me. I didn't want to pretend to be happy. I didn't want to make small talk. I didn't want to pretend to care about people's names, or what they are interested in, or that their talk was anything less than meaningless. But, I did.

When I had just about tuned them out, I looked up and one of them was standing over my little round table, hands on her hips, with a big grin on her face.
“Hey you, I have heard about you.”
She wasn't unattractive, but she wasn't a stunner either. Her hair and makeup were all fixed up for a 'night out,' but her natural features just wouldn't cooperate with her cosmetics to make her beautiful.

“Oh yeah, well I hope it was good.”

“It wasn't good, but I wouldn't be standing here if it was? You are a kinky perverted motherfucker, aren't you? I heard what you are into, we all know about your stunt at Shelly's. She's a bit tame for that kind of thing, but me, well . . . you fucking animal.”

She was looking at me and agitating her own face in a way that was supposed to be sensual. Her face's muscles looked like they were convulsing.

I wasn't sure what she was talking about, and I was getting a bit annoyed, but it is always nice to be the center of intrigue.

“Why don't you come over here and join us?”

She wasn't sexy, this woman. No. There was something awkward about her. It was like she was trying to be sexy and seductive and shiny and smooth, but it just wasn't natural. It's like those rare occasions you hear a woman talk about going to the bathroom—like “making an accomplishment”--if you know what I mean. There is just something about it that we are taught is not to be mentioned. It is embarrassing for you and for her. It is like all the mystery and aura is swept away in the realization that at some point she was sitting down, pants and underwear around her ankles, toilet paper in hand, and making a huge smelly accomplishment. Or, maybe it is like when you go to a disco and see a woman who just can't dance. Dancing—at least well enough to fit in—is easy for women. As long as they move a little bit and don't force it, they are fine. Most men have to work much harder just to make it look acceptable. But, if you see a woman who is trying too hard—flailing—working--moving in a way that makes it look like her arms and legs are trying to vomit—it is embarrassing for both of you. It is like the mystery that is supposed to stand at the center of her is filled in with some bland, skin colored pigmentation that reveals dry, rotting skin. It is like the hole—the abyss—the place where you convince yourself that there is something in the world that is incalculable and unceasingly moving—is filled in with sharp, unforgiving gravel that spills out, disclosing the abyss to be a hard, scraping surface that portrudes into a space it shouldn't.

That is what this woman was like, standing in front of me, trying to be a seductress. Her forced attempts to be shiny betrayed her—swept all the confidence out from under her shaky psyche—and launched her into a place that was anything but fitting.

“No thanks, I would rather not tonight, but thank you.”
“Please . . .”
At this, she started rubbing her breasts in a strange way. I wasn't sure if she was adjusting her bra or trying to be alluring.
“I'll make it worth your while. I am a lot of fun, you know.”
I looked away, out on the beach. I looked at the waves crashing on the shore, a perpetual source of noise and activity.
“No thanks, really not in the mood.” I said without turning towards her.

“Okay,” she said in a deep voice.

As I looked back she was actually licking one of her tits. This was strange. She kept licking and tried to talk at the same time, “Surrr, yuu dawwnt wont tt cme over?”

What a sight. A grown woman, in semi-tacky cocktail dress and even semi-tackier heels, shiny earrings, and a huge handbag standing in front of my table, drunk, with one tit in her hand, trying to talk as she licked her own nipple in an attempt at seduction.
I guess whatever Shelly told her about me had led her to think I would enjoy this type of act.
“Okay,” I said curtly, “I am going to go, see you soon.”

As I walked home, the waves kept making noise and the activity didn't stop. Not for one moment.

Hubert

2009-09-14T23:16:00.000-07:00

I met a friend today called Hubert.

Hubert told me he went on a date with a woman called Margaret.

I said, "Hubert, how was your date with Margaret?"

He said, "Not so good."

"Why?"

"Well, she asked about me. You, know what I am good at. I said, 'baby, you know me, as a poet, I'm straight specific; as a lover, overwhelmingly salvific; and, as an author, impossibly prolific.'"

"So?"

"She said she believed in a woman's right to choose. Then she left."

Hubert is a good guy with bad luck when it comes to women. He'll figure it out someday.

Communicating

2009-09-14T21:32:00.000-07:00

Striping naked is the decisive action. Nakedness offers a contrast to self-possession, to discontinuous existence, in other words. It is a a state of communication revealing a quest for possible continuance of being beyond the confines of the self. Bodies open out to a state of continuity through secret channels that give us a feeling of obscenity. --Bataille

Yes, I want to communicate. Yes, I want to communicate so well that I do not exist, and you do not either. I want to communicate so well that there is an in-distinguish-ability that renders our normal way of being mute. I want to communicate so well that you and I are mute. That is my goal. That is what my desire hinges upon.

How to do that? Well, it seems not with the words. The words can't help us here. Words are for this world. Words denote the everyday. We need the words, but here, we need something different. The way I want to communicate won't work with the words.

Yes, I want to communicate apart from the words--with means--in channels--via pathways--and inacessible secrets--in places unseen and unmentioned--spaces surrounded by fear and taboo--rings of filth mixed with a pain that is pleasurable--where the cut of time has incised unforgettably, but not ineluctably--where I don't know, but you can find--where you won't go, but will let me explore--where there are no words . . . where there is a deep, insatiable reach for continuity--for union--for the ability to transform, tweak, and distort bodies and words and thoughts and feelings and perceptions and images. I want to disappear from the world into a place that does not exist. I want to leave the world for a non-place untouched by space and time.

Of course, of course--this requires risk. It requires vulnerability. And most of all, it requires obscenity.

Obscenity is our name for the uneasiness which upsets the physical state associated with self-possession, with the possession of a recognized and stable individuality. -Bataille

If we are communicate ourselves into silence, there will have to be some discomfort and some risk. Stripping naked can be a bit tenuous. For some, it is no big deal. I don't think they want to speak the silent words we are speaking of here. I don't know if they know the secrets pent up in the criss-crossed channels that lead from their pores to the endless space that makes up the little room where the words come from in the first place. I know, I know. Not all nakedness is about this quest to find the silent words. I know that it is not always about communicating without speaking; I know we can't always render the words mute through a meeting--an encounter--that dispossesses us. But, shouldn't it be most of the time? Sometimes? Is it unreasonable to search for the sacred in the obscene? To find something--something extraordinary--in the terror and vulnerability of nakedness? Or have we given up on that idea, amidst the plethora of stretched, augmented, and displayed bodies in our space and cyberspace? Have we let that go in lieu of the commodified ease of voyerurism? Have we given up on obscenity--sacred obscenity--in order to feed ourselves a constant diet of spectacle, shine, technique, gossip, and mechanics?

We are dancing in the hollow of the cup of nothingness. We are of one flesh, but separated like stars. --Henry Miller

Yes, back to the dancing. There is always dancing in these instances--it is an easy way to try halfheartedly. Let's move. Let's shake. But, no, let's not dare strip naked--let's not dare show ourselves into the ugly, awful, nauseating, limitless soup of atoms that constitute the space behind the words--the place that is untouched--the place where separation gives way to the rupture of the nameless disquiet.

We are one flesh--for moments or seconds or hours or days--but, I know, I know . . . . . . . I am naive . . . endlessly naive . . . always stars--always separate--always discontinuous.

I know. You don't have to tell me. I know the quest--this one of communication, silence, and nakedness--is impossible--I know it leads nowhere but to a frustrating, fatal cliff--I know it ends in the world re-appearing--with us re-appearing in the palce where we are visible, temporal, and yes . . . stars.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop: Swallowing

2009-09-11T18:09:00.000-07:00

I didn't see the Old Man for a couple of days.

On the third day, I had a doctor's appointment that took up most of the time, but I ended up in the Smoke-Filled Coffee shop that evening. Well after dark the Old Man sauntered into the shop. He was obviously tipsy, and louder than normal.
“Well, funny finding you here! Oh wait, I forgot you have nothing better to do than masturbate intellectually in here all day every day. What's going on?”

He waved and began to make his way over to me. On the way he became distracted by Sage's presence at the bar.

“Hey, darling. How are you tonight? These boys bothering you?” he asked, looking around the room. She smiled in forbearance and told him everyone was being nice.
“Well, you let me know if they give you any trouble. You hear me?”
“Okay.”
At that he turned around and headed back toward me.
“Seems like you have had an eventful night Old Man.”
“Shut your mouth. You have no idea what I have been up to. I've been dancing—women everywhere—one on my left, one on my right. More than I could handle. Your mom even said to tell you hello.”
He sat down, but didn't have a drink. I waited for more insults or jokes or questions. But, he just sat. He didn't even look out the window. He kind of just sat there in a drunken haze. He slouched in his chair, his old fisherman's hat half-crooked on his head. The right leg of his tattered brown slacks was tucked into his orange sock. One too many buttons of his white button up shirt was undone. He just looked a bit scruffy, even for an old man. In the stillness time's wearing emerged. You could see how it had been so cruel to him—just like it is to all of us. He was once a vivacious, strong young man. Time hadn't crawled all over his hand and legs--leavings its wrinkles as a reminder of its dominance. At one point, he was fresh. But, not now. I saw the red spots on his nearly bald scalp, the wrinkles crossing up and down all over his face, the scar on his arm, and the bunched veins on his legs behind the tattoos. By all accounts, he was a brittle, feeble creature. The raucousness had evaporated into what appeared to be existential reflection.

After a few moments the Old Man actually started to sob. I didn't know if it was the boos or what, but he was crying audibly. His face turned red. His nose leaked. Tears ran down both cheeks. He didn't even bother to wipe them away—they just trickled down his leathery skin, riding in the crevices of the wrinkles which now characterized what was once his buoyant, ruddy countenance.
I sat there.
What was I to say?

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

After an eternity, he got himself under control. He wiped his nose and eyes, and tried to calm his breathing.

“I got a secret to tell you.”

“Okay.” I was curious, but not yet worried.

“Come here,” he said, “come close and listen." I moved my chair closer to his, and leaned in close. As I moved my ear near his now whispering mouth, I could smell the Jim Beam on his breath. The Old Man was leaning on one knee in order to position himself close enough to whisper in my ear. The combination of old man smell with the cheap whiskey was a bit overwhelming. It occurred to me that this was the closest I had ever been to the Old Man--right here, right now.

"Here's the secret. Wake up each day--don't worry how you feel, how tired, how exhausted, how happy--wake. That is the first step. Then, walk to the shore and watch the sunrise. Don't go with anyone. Don't speak. Just watch. But, don't watch as if you are watching a screen. No, watch as if you are in the screen. And then, when the sun is just over the horizon, the signs of a new day fully bloomed and the people beginning to scurry about, then go down to the water. Let shock of the immersion set in for just a second. Then, bend down and swallow it--the ocean; all of it. And, this is the key--don't drown. Feel the heaviness, allow yourself to be overwhelmed, get to the point until you almost can't stand the absence of breathe--and don't drown. Drowning is bad. After, walk home silently and start the day. This the key son, swallowing the ocean every day without drowning."

With a smug smile, he took a sip of his cold drink and sat back in his chair. His little revelation had apparently cured whatever sadness had plagued him only a minute beforehand.

I won't lie, I was caught off guard a bit. I responded in an irreverent tone. . .

I told him he was drunk, nostalgic, and deserved to die alone.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop: Trousers and Embarrassment

2009-09-09T23:33:00.000-07:00

Later that same day, just as I was about ready to leave the Shop, two middle-aged men came in bickering about something or other. As they approached the bar one stopped and looked up at the menu while the other kept on talking. The first one then held his hand out so as to say, “Stop for a minute, what hot beverage do you want to imbibe?” The second one, who I might say was very rotund, told the semi-hippy girl what he wanted. He wasn’t fat. He was rotund. He was kind of short, with baldness (With baldness?). He wore a forgettable red sweater with a tan collar and khaki trousers. His friend was lean for that age, with a little mustache. He wore khaki trousers as well, with loafers, a pink button up and brown jacket. For him life seemed much more casual than for the other. Anyway, they ordered and went to sit at the bar, but as the rotund one moved his belt caught the end of table and snapped. Almost instantly one end of his belt stayed knotted to the table, the other slipped out of his rapidly falling khakis and he began to sweat even more than before.
“Harold, help me.”
“What shall I do?”
“Pull up my trousers.”
By this time they were around his ankles, his belt still impaled on the counter, and his over-sized, stained boxer shorts glimmered under the neon glow of the bar lights. Harold looked at him in disbelief trying to figure out if he really wanted to pull up the Rotund One’s trousers. He looked at him, paused, and then silently walked out the door. Stunned, the Rotund One stood there embarrassed. However, instead of stopping and pulling up his trousers, he made a fateful mistake: Looking up frantically for help and finding none, he tried to walk out quickly—to just escape. Well, being rotund and having his trousers around his ankles, he couldn't really walk. He took one step and tripped. As he fell, his face hit the floor and his nose burst with a flow of blood. Escaping isn't easy when your trousers are around your ankles, someone should have taught him that long before his poor belt snapped. At this point, a shiny woman walked in with her two young children and screamed. The children started crying as the Rotund One tried to get himself off the floor. This was all a bit much.

I laughed out loud a bit. I didn’t laugh at the Rotund One. I don’t think so at least. I think I was just laughing at the whole incident—the helplessness and helpfulness and the unexpected, unpredictable part of the whole thing. Trousers, boxer shorts, hot drinks—all of this was comical. I didn’t laugh because he was less or worse; only because such a situation was possible at all. I mean he was trying his best, just like all of us. Most of the time trying means embarrassment. Living is embarrassing. This fat fucker didn't know what to do. He really was just doing his best. Breathing means trying everyday to do things you have no idea how to do. It means not letting the fact that you had no choice about showing up here and no choice about when or how you will leave get to you. It means hoping others don't see that most of the time you have absolutely no idea what you are doing. Living is embarrassing, because living is a circular race none of us wins. It made me thankful for the chance to remain mired in smoke and text. No one asked for reports; there were no staff meetings; I had no appointments to make, or people to please. I hope that rotund old man feels good about himself somehow. I hope he is good at darts or bowling or fucking his wife—you know? I hope he goes to bed thinking about something else than being embarrassed for breathing. He probably doesn't. He probably falls asleep on the couch to some reality show, or to re-runs of the Simpsons. Whatever. When I saw him, he was just doing his best like all of us.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop: The Old Man's Bullshit

2009-09-07T22:42:00.000-07:00

"You know what's funny. When I was young I never asked that, I didn't care. I got up and went out to that damn sea every day. I woke up energized, ready to conquer, to swim, to catch. I woke up ready to give it my best. Janice was at home and I went to work everyday. We had kids and that meant putting food on the table. There isn't much time for bullshit when you have mouths to feed and a wife to keep happy. You know?
After the little ones grew into adults, things changed. I began to wonder. I began to see a horizon that never moved. I began to understand myself as trapped under that horizon--held there--and no matter where or how or what I did, there was no escaping. The horizon was my prison. In that prison everything melted into the same--all of it could fit into the same frame. Good food, good boos, good company--it all felt, tasted and looked the same. Because, I knew the next day that horizon would remain and no matter how far I went or how deep I plundered, there was no way out.”

"So how did you keep going all those years? Sheer determination? Duty? What?"

He said, "The secret is not duty, not its not guilt, or even any lofty goals of grandeur. Pretty soon son, I'll be dead and so will you. The universe will go on without a hitch--it didn't care before and it won't care then. You and I will dissolve back into the dust we came from and that will be that. All the dreams, all the trying, the accumulating, the success--every fish I caught--will melt into the sea's indifference. You know how you keep going? You don't move the horizon, no, you find something in this same which gives you a hint or an idea or a glimmer--a portal--into the somewhere else. You see, once you find something within the horizon that can't be held by the horizon--well, nothing else matters. Its funny, you could meet a girl in the bar tonight--see in her face, in her eyes, in her smile--something that can't be reduced to patterns, or molecules, or informational codes. You'll see right through the horizon into another world and it will make those days not unquestioned, but more than bearable and even exciting. You'll remain under the horizon's gaze for sure, but there will be something in the world that can't be contained by it, something that goes on forever."

I really liked that Old Man, but he sure talked alot of bullshit. We talked a bit more. He told me about getting sores on his hands from fishing all day. He told me what it was like to wrestle with a fish that weighs more than you do. He told me what it was like to live alone now that his wife was gone.
We walked back to the Shop and nestled back into our respective seats. If nothing else, our little excursion had helped to stop the race going on in my veins—the semi-hippy woman had left for the day and I sat in the corner as the sun went down, reading about love and laughter.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

2009-09-07T01:18:00.001-07:00

The Old Man seemed to be in quite a serious mood. I wasn't sure if he was just being grumpy, or if he was going to get strange on me and start talking about his life coming to an end, or his greatest regrets, or some other old person talk.
We walked out the door and took the sharp right toward the boardwalk and the beach. People whizzed past us as we got close to the boardwalk—skimming by on rollerblades, on bicycles, and everything in between. One guy rolled past on a unicycle.
“Does that look fun to you? Why doesn't he just ride a bike?”
The Old Man didn't answer, he just kept waiting for a break in the action so we could cross to the sandy side of the boardwalk.
Once we past the boardwalk, we hit the soft, warm sand. It wasn't hot outside, but it was warm enough to make the sand nice to walk on. I took my sandals off and enjoyed the feeling between my toes. The Old Man didn't take his sandals off because they were the kind that strapped on to your feet with velcro.

“Where we going?”
“Just thought it would be nice to take an afternoon walk—get outside for a bit.”
He looked at me and I was glad to see his expression was a bit lighter than it had been before. However, when he glanced over, the Old Man failed to see a rock in front of him, tripped, and fell to the sand.
It was strange. He went from a grumpy old man—one that I tolerated—respected--and somehow admired—to a fragile, brittle little creature, in the matter of 10 seconds. The image of God that hovered over my table moments before was transformed into something akin to Jesus' last moments on the Cross. All the divinity and royalty had been sucked from him in an instant. Now he just looked weak. He lay face down in the sand after falling awkwardly over himself. His aura evaporated. He was a skeleton—caught between living-death and death. There was sand all over his face and on his cotton shorts. He appeared helpless.
“You okay?”
He didn't answer.
I looked on, the awkwardness congealing on my arms and legs—settling there as it projected itself outward from the circumstances onto by body.
“You okay?”
“I'm fine, you little bastard. Help me up.”
“Okay.”
I grabbed one arm and held onto him as he picked himself up from the warm sand, coughing all the way. Once erect, he wiped the sand from all over his clothes. After a moment we continued walking toward the water.

It took him a while to catch his breath. I watched the waves break on the shore as they do each moment of each day. The afternoon winds made a mess of the surface—it was uninviting, choppy water with no illusion of order or any care for it. There were some tourist kids trying their best to ride a couple of cheap foam boards in the whitewash. With each wave came a new obstacle and a fun moment. I could see a fisherman out on the jetty that was to our left. He just stood there with his pole in the water.

After a while the Old Man was ready to talk. We sat on the shore talking about the sea. He told me about fishing and about his "lost generation".
"So, why did you keep going out there every day? How did you face something--the sea--so vast, so incomprehensible and so threatening? How did you grow to love it so dearly? How did you balance fear with enjoyment, anxiety with the presence to smile?"
He took a long time to answer.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop: Cells and Platelets

2009-09-03T12:28:00.000-07:00

In the morning I offered her coffee and stuff. She said,
“No, I have to go serve hot drinks.”
I said, “Okay.”
It was nice, but all a bit awkward. Mornings are awkward. Her breath smelled. Then she left.

After she left, I went into the kitchen to fetch my German-English dictionary. My housemate was there (he is a little shorter, with a shaved head, and perpetual beard stubble). As usual, he was wearing old checkered boxer shorts and an argyle sweater, and no shoes. He walked around the house like this most days until about 10am; until he had to go someplace. This guy was a professional academic. He was probably the most intellectually capable person in my universe, but, as to be expected, his ability to render social cues was a bit tilted. He wasn't ill equipped when it came to social situations, he was just tuned to a different frequency than everyone else. This wasn't your absent minded professor, more someone who understood the world through a slightly strange lens. And, when he drank cold beverages he suffered from loud episodes of a cursing disease, which was embarrassing at times in bars and stuff since he wasn't used to controlling it all the time.
“Did that girl ride the bus last night?”
He said to me, sitting and sipping his coffee, scratching himself with his feet stretched out on the table in the kitchen, his face lit up with a mischievous smile.
“What bus? We walked home from . . .”
“You know what I am talking about. The pigskin bus. Did she ride the pigskin bus to tuna town?”
“Ahh. Got it,” I said. “No, not this time.”
He sipped his coffee loudly and scooped his scrambled eggs into a bowl with ketchup and some cold pieces of lunch meat.
“You think she is interested in experiencing an Eiffel Tower?” He said laughing.
“Maybe, but I don't think I will ask.”
He took a bite of his breakfast and let out his customary barrage of orgasmic noises,
“Oh God, yes, that is good, hmmmmmmm, sooo good.”
He did this any time he ate anything. I am not sure if it was a deliberate exaggeration or due to a mild case of a different kind of disease. Nonetheless, it continued as I walked out of the kitchen,
“Ohhhhhh, God, soo good, sooo good, yes, yes.”

I won't lie, that day when I saw the semi-hippy woman at the Shop my blood felt like it was racing through my veins—like all the platelets and cells involved thought there was a race to win, but that no one had clued them into the fact that they were racing in a circle. I saw her as I walked in and for some reason didn't know if I should say hello or walk by and let her attend to her work or something else altogether. So many things change in life—time takes them from us cruelly, heartlessly—our bodies change, or good friends move away, or you get in a car accident with some metal and a government. But, as I passed the semi-hippy woman in the Shop that day, the blood cells and platelets raced round and round the circular track of my body just like they had after the first time I kissed Lauren Olson in 6th grade at lunch time and then saw her in class afterwards. Am I just naïve? Shouldn't time have hardened me to this sort of childish excitement? Shouldn't time have taught me that one night—one couch and some dying bears—isn't a big deal? Shouldn't I just grow up? Did she think it was a big deal? Were here platelets racing or did they know there was nothing to win? Had she somehow clued them into this fact? I won't lie, I was frustrated myself for not having learned how to control or tame the cells and platelets any better than when I was in sixth grade; but I was thankful for the inexplainable, unexpected feelings of excitement, giddiness, wonder, and expectation.

After Brett had given me my hot drink, I sat down in the corner and tried to read some Flannery O'Connor, but none of it sank in to my brain. I think the blood race inside me meant that my brain was not able to do anything but think about the race—who would win? Is there a winner? How would I know who won? I guess technically they were my blood cells and my platelets, so I would win no matter what happened. But, I didn't have any control of them at that point, and thus it didn't feel like it was possible for me to win. I concluded that there is no winner for a circular race between cells and platelets, but I think it is fun nonetheless.

Are there ever winners for races that go in circles? They are fun at the beginning, but the cycle gets old, doesn't it?I should have remembered this, but at the time, I didn't care.

I kept glancing over at her to see if she was looking at me. I kept wondering what I should say. She came over after about an hour.
“Hey you. I am on break.”
“Hi, how are you today?”
“Well, my neck hurts because I fell asleep on a couch last night. And, my eyes hurt because before I fell asleep I was staring at a huge TV.”
I almost asked her if the small of her back hurt because of the erection that was prodding her on the couch, but I realized that this would probably not be smooth.
“Huh, sounds like an awful night you had. Sorry to hear it was so bad.”
“I didn't say it was bad. It was actually one of the best nights I have had in a long time, even though half my body is creaky as a result.”
I wanted to say that the next time she slept on that couch that her body would be more than creaky afterwards; but, I realized this would not be smooth.
“Well, what made it so good?”
“I had good company.”
With that, she walked off and went back to work.
This conversation did not stop the race in my veins. I went back to reading, and this time my brain allowed some things inside. So, that was good.

The Old Man came into the Smoke-Filled Coffeeshop later that day. After a about a half hour of reading the newspaper he came over and stood over my table. I looked up at the wrinkly, brooding figure above me—kind of like an aged God in some strange way. His tattered maroon polo shirt was unbuttoned. His gray hair protuded out from his fisherman's hat. And his face seemed to be petrified in way that allowed his eyes to zoom in and out. I don't know if God ages, but if he did he might look like the Old Man did over my table.

“Can I help you?” “Why don't you and I take a walk out to the shore?” I didn't ask questions. I just got up, got a refill of my hot drink, and followed him out the door.
“Okay.”

Collecting Connections/Connecting Collections

2009-09-03T01:10:00.000-07:00

And surely we throw ourselves into erotic pleasures above all in order to remember them. So that their luminous points will connect our youth with our old age by means of a shining ribbon! So that they will preserve our memory in an eternal flame! -Milan Kundera

Life, it seems, is a moving between eternities. It is a stretched out continuum highlighted by points which link us--or at least give us the impression of linking us--to some sort of encounter with the infinite. And, of course, many times--most times--this happens in the throes of erotic desire. Life, it seems, is temporality lived out between the illusion of the infinite, and its infinite hope. This is who we become--not the continuum, but the points along the way that leave our memory seared with the mark of something more, something beyond. These encounters take us beyond ourself and thus, in some tragic way, end up defining us. The places where we are most vulnerable lead to the places where we are most ourselves by not being anything. The places where we surrender lead to victory over time--at least temporarily.

And take it from me, my friend, only a word uttered at this most ordinary of moments is capable of illuminating it in such a way that it remains unforgettable.
-Milan Kundera

In those moments, our lives become eternal. Within seconds, we build an image that becomes the irreplaceable, singular unity of the otherwise temporal existence of everyday life. And, yes, they are unforgettable. Isn't that the goal of all of this--this erotic (non)project? To be unforgettable--to be more than geometry, more than dimensions, more than physiology?

Shall we collect them? Mark as many points on that continuum as possible in order to create a storehouse of memories of the infinite? The hopeless quest of infinite memories? Does the infinite come in terms of quanity? Or, shall we connect? Shall we connect intimately, fiercely, ferociously--attacking the moments, the seconds, the breaths with the impossible dream of destroying them? The dream of timeless victory--timeless connection?

They say for me that I'm a collector of women. In reality I'm far more a collector of words.
-Milan Kundera

For me, the infinite--the unforgettable--the reason--comes in the timeless connection--the connection that is capable of rendering time mute, even for a second. I don't want anything else, and don't want one who thinks differently. I won't fuck for physicality's sake. I won't fuck for geometry, or physiology, or even biology. In fact, in that way, I won't fuck at all. I don't want to collect. I don't want a storehouse. No, I want non-moments. No, I want unforgettable moments that are unforgettable because they are not moments.

When I can't write anymore I'll die. But I'll die loving. -Ivan Klima

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop: Bears and Piss

2009-09-01T21:07:00.000-07:00

Then one night when we had had some cold liquid and some smiles after closing hours at the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop, I said, “Hey, why don’t you come watch a film with me at my house-by-the-sea? I am a nice guy, I promise.”
She smiled, ‘showing her cards’ right away. “I don’t know.”
So, I reassured her: “Don’t worry. It will be a vegetarian environment, I promise, no meat, especially no sausage.”
She laughed at this comment and then with a wink said, “Why not?”
On the way there, we walked along the boardwalk and listened to the waves. It was a brisk Autumn evening, one of those California days that turns into night really quickly. One minute you are sitting on the beach enjoying the warmth of the day, in the next the sun goes down and the wind rips right through you. The waves provided a pleasant backdrop to our walking—one that was loud enough to give us license not to talk. I could smell a bonfire in the air coming from down the beach somewhere, but there weren't many people around. The moon was bright. I could see the light bouncing off the water beyond us. The semi-hippy woman was a bit shorter than me. Not short enough that it was awkward to walk together; short enough however to make both of us feel comfortable. We didn't walk fast, but we didn't walk slow either. On the way there I grabbed her hand and held it in mine. Smooth.

For some reason my heart started to beat fast and I felt excited for no reason at all. I remember wishing that the moment would stop—standstill. I wished it wasn't a moment; that it was something different entirely. I remember thinking at that moment that moments are my worst enemy. I remember thinking how easy it felt to walk together surrounded by the crisp Autumn air, the waves sounding in the background, the darkness enshrouding us in a world only minimally lit by a few neon traces.

We went to my house-by-the-sea. I won’t tell about it now because I don’t feel like it. But, I will tell that we watched my big TV and that isn’t the only big thing she saw that night. Very smooth.

Ok, that is a lie. I would say that the only big thing she saw that night was my TV.

As we walked in the house I had to pick up some of my academic housemates coats from the floor. I am not sure why all of his winter coats were in the door hallway, but they were. She looked around a bit.
“What a nice place. This is amazing.”
“Thanks. I would give you the grand tour, but I think my housemates are asleep. Let's go into the kitchen. You want a drink?”
We talked a bit. She told me about her plans to travel in the summer time. I told her about what I thought of global warming. We laughed. We drank.
After a few gin and tonics, we collapsed on the couch and turned on the big TV. I wanted to say, “You know what they say about men with big television sets, don't you?” But I didn't think this would be smooth, so I didn't.
We watched a documentary about bears—bears that are dying in some woods that are disappearing somehow. She thought this was sad, so I thought it was sad too. After a few moments the semi-hippy woman relaxed into my arms. We were lying together. I could tell about the coconut smell of her hair and how it felt to enjoy her presence in this new way and how I was thankful to not be in my house-by-the-sea alone and how I thought she was a very nice person and how it was the first time I had such an experience in a long while and that when she dozed off a bit I thought to myself that she was a very precious gift to this world, sweet, lovely, and hopeful, but whatever. I was scared that she would feel my erection in the small of her back, so when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the dying-bears-documentary I tucked it into my underpants. Kind of smooth.

Before I went to the bathroom however, I said, “I am going to go to the bathroom and when I get back I am going to kiss you.” Smooth (?)
She looked at me with a forced smile. When I “took a leak” I actually pissed on my fake leather belt a little bit. This could have been because I had a semi-erection, or because I was excited/nervous to be laying on the couch with the semi-hippy woman. I suppose both reasons could be attributed to her presence. Nonetheless, I don't think she noticed that my belt had been battered by my own piss. When I returned, erection tucked away, we kissed a nice kiss. After a bit, we fell asleep on the couch. This was all very nice.

2009-08-30T22:34:00.000-07:00

I won't lie, I don't see the overall goal. I don't have one. But I know that isn't the point. The goal isn't the goal. I know.

You told me, long ago, and many times. You relayed the message. You said, 'Let's build. Let's try.' I think you received that message from somewhere else long before you relayed it. It is funny, because I know you didn't have someone like yourself, you didn't have someone like I do, to relay the message to you. I guess maybe that is why it resonates so deeply within me. I guess why that, despite the lack of goal, the message is so meaningful. It wasn't given to you by someone else. You are not just repeating it to me. You taught me. You showed me. In that way, it isn't a relay at all. But, that isn't important.

I don't see the goal. In fact, I know there isn't one. I know that isn't a message you have received--not one that concerns you, or registers within you. But, it does with me. I received that message about the time you relayed your message to me--I learned them about the same time. I received two messages--one that didn't have a goal, and one that told me there isn't one.

For a long time those conflicted. On certain days, they still do.

But, for whatever reason, I can't stop wanting to show you that I got your's--your message. I did. I promise. I want to show you that you relaying it to me wasn't in vain.

I want to build. I want to try. I want to show you that struggle, and work, and good nature--that these things made it possible for you to relay the message to me and for me to share it with others. In this way, you are somewhat of an evangelist--an evangelist for the message with no goal.

I'm trying. I'm working. I promise. I'll show, and soon. But, thank you. Thank you for the relay. And thank you for giving what no one else gave you--for giving what you received from a place you can't name. I'm thankful.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

2009-08-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

At the same time we ought to understand also that it is impossible for human nature not to be always feeling the passion of love for something. Everyone who has reached the age that they call puberty loves something, either less rightly when he loves what he should not, or rightly and with profit when he loves what he should love. --Origen

As often as not, it seems to be assumed that man has his being independently of his passions. I affirm, on the other hand, that we must never imagine existence execept in terms of these passions. --Bataille

After a while, after I had filled some time at Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop, I became friendly with one of the semi-hippy people that worked there. And, yes, the person was a female. Smooth.

I would order a hot drink during the day, and ask her how she was doing. You know, I would talk to her about ‘green’ things, or why the president was what she called a douche bag, or even about text and smoke (kind of). She was shorter, a bit petite. She usually wore her hair in different ways—cute and variable (more signs of her semi-hippy status). Her clothes were second hand but still attractive. She was younger too. She was young—you know what I mean—young (not young enough to get me in trouble, stupid). Her smile was endearing and it always said something about her—something mostly pure, something consciously naïve, and something curious.
I sauntered to the Cofee Shop everyday with my words and texts. I'd sit and read. She was a pleasant distraction from all of that. At times I had to remind myself to read rather than to think about her, or to think of reasons to speak to her. The Old Man told me to grow some man muscles and ask her out. I told him to take his pills so that his man muscles might work again. This kind of talk happened almost every day.
Regardless, over time I got more brave. She’d give me my cup of hot liquid and I would wink and say something like, “Thank you beautiful.” Smooth.

She’d smile and pretend like it wasn’t a big deal. She'd walk away and flip her hair, or try not to look at me.
Then she began coming into the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop to talk to me even when she wasn’t required to serve drinks. She would come and bother me, talk to me about texts, or ‘things that matter’. She always had an opinon on a mix of things, from the best kind of coffee, or the conservative politics of the new Italian leader, or chickens.
“Have you seen how they treat the chickens?”
“What?” I would say, looking up from my text, over my glasses.
As she put her hot drink on the table, she would continue: “I saw this documentary last night about how they treat chickens. These poor animals are raised in cages with no freedom. It is completely inhumane what is done to them.”
“Huh,” I would say, stroking my chin stubble. “That is awful.”
“Did you know that it takes like 100 acres of land to provide food for a meat-eater, but only like 3 for a vegetarian?”
“Really? Goodness.”
“I am so glad I am a vegetarian. I couldn't live with myself if I knew I was contributing to such a thing. I am only going to eat free range eggs from now on too. You know, the kind where the chickens grow up in a free environment, not in cages.”
“You are right, that is horrible. I can see why you are upset. ”
“Oh, well. We are going to eat everything in this world and then it will be over.”
“Well, at that point we will be the winners—right? We win. That is why I still eat meat—I want to help contribute anyway I can. I won't hold it against you that you aren't contributing much.”
“Hilarious. You are so funny. Really.”
“Bye, gorgeous.”
With that, she would walk away with a frustrated look, but a bouncy step. Strange.

These kinds of interactions continued for a while. I was good at being and playing interested. I was good at caring, you could say. She thought so too. Smooth.

I watched her interact with people. She didn't go out of her way to be friendly—she didn't try too hard. But, nonetheless people were drawn to her. People seemed disarmed almost instantly by her humble smile and open way. It was like they knew she was thankful for their existence without having to say so. I liked how kind she was without being annoying . . .
A couple of times a week, I would watch her talk with the Old Man.
“Hey, darling. Fill'er up.”
“No problem, honey, how are you today?”
“Oh, you know—old, gray, but still kickin.”
“Still handsome too,” she'd urge him on with a sly smile.
“Well, thank you. Makes my day when you say things like that.”
“Because you like having cute, young women admire you?”
“No. Makes me feel good knowing young people still have some sense of taste—you can still spot a handsome devil like me. All is not lost.”
“Whatever, old man.” She'd say with a smile as he turned to find a seat.
Somehow, he didn't seem creepy or lecherous to her. He had grandfatherly qualities coupled with charm and confidence.
And, for some reason, I enjoyed watching her give time to him and to others.

One More (Redux)

2009-08-19T11:42:00.000-07:00

Neon shines through smoky eyes tonight,
It's 2 AM, I'm drunk again,
It's heavy on my mind, it's heavy on my mind.

How come neon always goes with heaviness? It seems neon is hung outside places like this one in order to beckon the heavy-laden to come rest. It's late; or early. Regardless . . .

I could never love again,
So much as I love you.
Where you end, where I begin,
Is like a river going through.

Okay, okay, you are right. Maybe I am being a bit dramatic. Or, maybe not. I could never love so much? Yes. No. Maybe. I'm not sure. Well, maybe the words are wrong. Maybe I mean I could never love as . . . I'm not sure. I do know that there was a point, at times, a point in time, a point in time at times, when I didn't know where you stopped and I started--or where you began and I ended. Maybe that is what I am really trying to get at--what I really miss.

Excuse me please, one more drink
Could you make it strong? Cuz I don't need to think.
She broke my heart, my grace is gone
One more drink and I'll be gone

Excuse me, not to interrupt--but one more. Yes, one more will do it--I'm already dizzy and this one will take me to the edge. What edge? The one where thought stops. I'll go over the edge where my body will finally force my thinking--my concepts--my brooding--my analyzing--into submission. Excuse me, just one more, that is all I need.

Why? Well, my heart is broken. Wait. That is too strong. Or, maybe it is too cliche. Why? Maybe because my salvation--the means of grace--has left? I don't know if that is it either. Why? I think it is this: knowing the hope of that salvation was doomed to fail from the beginning; knowing there is no grace for the temporal space which my heart--my-non-self--occupies. I guess I know that my longing for grace was equivalent to my longing for pardon from my condition--the temporal one. I wanted to be pardoned from it--cured of its disease--made whole through unity with another. Is that why it involves my heart? Yes, sir, it is. Thank you for asking. I thought maybe that was the means by which I could be pardoned. I thought maybe her and I could confer upon one another the grace of salvation through moments of incision, confusion, and, yes, the disappearance of thinking. When thinking stops, time has no hold. Yes, I know. When thinking stops you are dead. They are similar. But, I think I thought that salvation could--would--bring time to a stop without killing me.

So, one more drink. One more is all I need to beat down the circle and fall asleep. One more and I'll be okay until the sun rises tomorrow. One more, and I'll be gone. One more and I'll move, but I can't promise I will move on.

2009-08-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

I know the dog days of the summer
Have you ten-to-one out-numbered
Seems like everybody up and left and they're not coming back
The shadow that you're standing on's still here sometimes that's all that you can ask
And your heart's still beating

Yes, these, as they say, are the dog days. I'm not sure if the summer part is coincidence or not. In my--our--case, I think it might be. Yes, they have me--er, us--outnumbered. The dog days seem to outweigh the others at this point--whatever those might be. At this point, they are only memories. But they used to be something else, I promise. The shadow? I don't know if I'm standing on it, but there is one here. It is elusive. It changes. But, it is here. And yes, my heart is beating--a blessing and the curse. A blessing in that I am here--experiencing--trying--hoping. A curse in that I am doing all of that within the limitations of the Impossible. IS that really a curse? I don't know, maybe it is the beer talking.

You're not the fastest draw in town now
How many times you been shot down now?
Seems like everybody else could see the things you never did
But if you could yourself you'd probably never have made it through the things you did
With your heart still beating

No, I am not the quickest draw in town. I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, either. The list goes on and on. I've been shoy down quite a few times--even left for dead a couple. It is no longer surprising; it is always hurtful. But, it passes. Yes, others see things I don't. If I saw them, I may or may not have made it, you are right. But, you know what? If I saw what they saw, I'd be miserable. Seeing what they don't means I see what they don't--and you know--that is why I continue to try even after being shot down. That is why I continue to beat--to pound within each second--to pump blood that goes in a vicious circle.

I know the dog days of the summer Have you ten-to-one out-numbered
It seems like everybody else saw trouble sneaking up behind
Left you half dead in the street but that just means you're half alive
And your heart's still beating

These dog days of summer, they are difficult, and confusing, and even awkward at times. These days . . . Everyone saw the trouble--well, sure. Everyone always sees everyone's trouble. Half dead? Now you are just talking oxymorons. We are all already dead--being half-dead means nothing. No, I'd rather listen to this dead, dying heart--than worry about anyone else's trouble, or not try at all. I'd rather live these dog days, as you call them, than skip the heat of summer altogether. I'd rather be a dog even--which I am and have been--than worry about trouble or people or anyone else.

I'm sorry for the dogs and the days--but I'm thankful that my heart beats, and that you made it beat faster for such a time as you did.

My heart is still beating, even though it knows the blood goes in a circle.

2009-08-07T21:40:00.000-07:00

We all long for an encounter. The problem for most of us is not having one--or thinking we have had one--it is figuring out what to do once we have. Settle? Look for more? Of course I want another, it was the defining moment of my existence. Do you blame me?

We all long for an encounter. The problem is figuring out how to live here once we have. I love the desire--the rush--the passion of the during. But what about when it is over? What about the descent back into time and space? It hurts. It degrades. It humiliates.

We all long for an encounter--one that exceeds time and language. We all long for the Impossible. But, for most of us, it too much to deal with--it isn't hard to find, but it is hard to take home.

Looking

2009-08-07T21:36:00.001-07:00

Don't look for me here, please. Don't look for yourself here, either. Neither is to be found at this cyber address, and no counsel is to be taken from the ramblings posted here. They are nothing more than cheap thoughts to be swallowed as thoughtlessly as the generic lager you drank for dinner. If this is a place to wonder, it isn't a place to find.

You and Me . . .

2009-08-05T23:22:00.000-07:00

It is only you and me now. But, I can't help but worry. I worry because I never know when you will appear. I can't depend on you because you won't ever tell me when you are coming, what we will do, or how it will go. I can't depend because you aren't like that. I guess that is part of your charm. I guess that is part of why I a yours. But, it is hard. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes I want to run to another. But, I'm here, waiting, and desperate. Why? Because when you do appear I am enthralled--enraptured--in deep. When you flow, move, overwhelm--well--that is all I want and all I can imagine.

It is only you and me now. I am here and hoping you will come soon. I'm hoping you'll make it hurt, and make it beautiful.

You and Me

2009-08-04T23:44:00.000-07:00

It is only you and me now. You are always changing--always elusive. I never know what to expect and I never have control. You dominate. And, I guess I love it. It is not that I submit; it is if I want this at all, you will dominate. There is no choice in the matter. But, I'll chase. I'll surrender. I'll come. This is where I am--this is who I am. It is all wrapped up in you. I don't have me--but with you, at least I have an illusion. With you, I have something to chase--something to make me try; even if it means I am unsettled, unstable, or everywhere.

It is only me and you now. I'll try until I am dead. I'll try because the trying means I'm dead already. I'll try so that when I die, I will die loving.

When I can't write anymore, I'll die. But I'll die loving.
-Klima

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

2009-07-20T15:58:00.000-07:00

I met the Old Man Today.

Hi.

I am tired of being crazy.

Well, what do you want to do about it?

I don't know. What is there to do?

You could settle.
You could give up.
Or you could live in between, and keep talking.

Do the words stop on either side of the between?

I'm not sure. I never had any words, and I wasn't in the between too long.

Why do I want the not-between if it means the end of the words?

Why do you want anything? You know it is pointless to begin with, but it hasn't stopped you. You still saunter in here to irritate me, don't you? You still go out with those idiot friends of yours. You still try. Maybe you are a coward. Or, maybe you want to try so bad you are afraid to.

Maybe. Why do I talk to you, anyway? Your a stupid old man who sits in a coffee shop all day.

With that, he went back to his crossword puzzle. With that, I went for a walk.

2009-07-19T22:50:00.000-07:00

I met an old, new friend today; one that I had walked with in lives past, but one whom I have lost contact with since both of us have made and re-made ourselves time and time again. We used to talk about grown-up things in adolescent terms. We used to ruminate on life's meaning through telephone calls, and walks in the park. She's tall, and ginger, with a smile that doesn't sparkle with a naive, irritating optimism, but instead radiates a hard-fought, battled hope for good things to come. Her hair always flows down over hear ears and down her shoulders. Her slender frame seems to wiggle as she walks. Like before, her gait is anything but straightforward.

She helped me today. She helped me understand the impossibility and the hurt. But, she also explained why it is so hard to give up on finding--on discovering--or more accurately, on experiencing something that doesn't fit the definition of an experience.

"Of course you look for it there, why wouldn't you?"

"I don't know, to most people it seems like a thing you do; like an activity everyone loves--like recreation."

"Don't you think that's sad? I'm not one to sermonize on sanctity and holiness. It isn't what I am after. But, what happens when we stop looking for the meaning of life--or at least one of its more important meanings--in the act that leads to its miracle? What happens when we no longer look for miracles in the places and spaces where the one event--or at least one of the two--takes place? Doesn't it make sense that making sense of existence might happen in the place where life is given its seemingly miraculous possibility?"

"I guess. I don't know. You are starting to sound like a True Love Waits campaign."

"I'm just saying. When we stop looking for miracles--for non-experiences--and settle for recreation, there is a natural digression."

"But, it leads nowhere."

"Sure. But it is always more about the economy of desire in which you are participating than anything you ever accomplish."

"It feels impossible."

"It should."

"How do I let go, then?"

"I don't know."

"Okay."

2009-07-17T02:16:00.001-07:00

Hey you, tell me the secret. Come on, please! I want to know.

Okay, okay, I understand--the secret is hidden--it is a secret you know is there, but one you can't unlock. How can there be a secret inside you that you don't know the path to? How can there be a space--an inner--within--that you don't know how to access?

I know, I know--we have been through this before.

But, you need to know, I will try to get there--even if you have never been there yourself. I know it seems a bit odd--me, trying to get to a place within you that you have never been. But, that is the secret, isn't it? That is the mystery, no?

How? You know how? And, you want how? Overwhelming. Overcoming. Too much. Too much to handle--I know. I will overwhelm you. I will violate you. I will push you, enter you, touch you, feel you, and make you turn inside out in a way that brings you to an edge where meeting yourself means leaving yourself. Have you been there? Well, it is tome to go. It is time for us to try to see how far we can go into that far country.

Are you ready? Ready to enter a place where being yourself means not being a self? It is time for you to go beyond through going through and in. I want to lead you to a place neither of us knows how to get to through your surface--your inner sense--the pathway and map of desire.

I love you. I do. I wouldn't want to go there if I didn't. I just wish I could take you beyond--beyond you--to a place where you truly exists--a place of nothing and everything, a place of nowhere and everywhere, a place of ex-stasy that entails standing beside yourself in an unbearable temporal eternity.

I love you, I really do. I wish I could take you to this mythic place. We could try. I want to try. But, to arrive--to move past trying to accomplishing--means moving from sensing to death. It means going from ex-stasy to nihil.

I love you, I really do. Thanks for trying. Thanks for desring the same nihil--the same void.

I love you.

2009-07-17T02:11:00.000-07:00

Hello, would you like to dance? No, please don't speak. Don't say no, or yes, for that matter. Just shake or nod or something. Give me a sign--something that will indicate yes or no. But, please don't speak.

No, there is no time for names. I don't want to call you. I don't want to be called by you. Please, just dance with me. Please, just move with me. No names. No speaking. Speaking means trying to make sense of this--of you and me, next to each other, and the desire between us. I don't want any of that.

No, no, I mean the meaning--not the desire. The desire is why I am here. The desire is why you are here too. The desire is why both of us--neither of us--is the One. Desire means we are the not-One who has to try. Try what? Try to be themself--their-self.

Come on, lets dance. No words. No names. No meaning.

Only bodies. Only breath. Only movement. No thinking. No trying. Nothing more than sweat, movement, and thoughtlessness.

What do you say?

Come on you, lets dance.

Questions

2009-03-31T22:06:00.000-07:00

Questions, I've got some questions
I want to know you
But what if I could ask you only one thing
Only this one time, what would you tell me?

Questions, of course I have questions. I want to know you. I want to know you so both of us can know ourselves. But, what if there is no time--what if I only have one chance? What if there is only one chance to ask you--about you? How would I know you? How would I know what to ask? I guess what I am asking (and this is already a question, so maybe it is already too late) how would I know how to know you?

Well maybe you could give me a suggestion
So I could know you, what would you tell me?
Maybe you could tell me what to ask you
Because then I'd know you, what would you tell me
Please tell me that there's time
To make this work for all intents and purposes
And what are your intentions, will you try?

Yes, maybe you could help me; maybe you could tell me how to know you. Is that cheating? Does that disqualify me? Does that mean the game is over before it has started?

Is it true? If you told me, would I know you? It seems like if I didn't already know what to ask, then you telling me wouldn't necessarily mean I would know you. It wouldn't mean I knew how to know you, either. Despite not knowing what question to ask, I already know the answer I want--the answer I want from any question: tell me there is time. Tell me there is time. For what? For knowing. Tell me there is time for knowing. Please.

Impressions, you've made impressions
They're going nowhere
They're just going to wait here if you let them
Please don't let them
I want to know you
And if they're going to haunt me
Please collect them
Please just collect them

Yes, you have made impressions. That's why I am asking in the first place; that is why--despite not knowing what to ask--I want time to figure it out. But, if there is not time for knowing maybe you should take those impressions back. Except, it is too late for that, isn't it? There is no collecting and there is no time. There are questions, hauntings, and . . .

And now I'm begging
I'm begging you to ask me just one question
One simple question
Because then you'd know me
I'll tell you that there's time
To make this work for all intents and purposes
At least for my own

Begging. Begging you for a question. Now I am begging you for a question and for an answer. It seems I am rather helpless. But, I do have an answer--at least one. There is time. Is there? Well, there is time to make it work--to make it work for my purposes, if not yours; if not ours.

What is a heart worth if it's just left all alone?
Leave it long enough and watch it turn into stone
Why must we always be untrue?

A heart left alone is akin to stone? Maybe. But, it isn't the fault of the questions. No, it is the fault of the heart. The questions come from a faulty heart--one that needs an answer in order to know.

You see--as the myth tells us--a heart doesn't need questions, and it certainly doesn't need answers. No, these have nothing to do with it.

It isn't a matter of questions or of answers.

It is a matter of just knowing.

2009-03-22T22:28:00.000-07:00

I did my best to notice
When the call came down the line
Up to the platform of surrender
I was brought but I was kind
And sometimes I get nervous
When I see an open door
Close your eyes
Clear your heart...
Cut the cord

The call comes--just like the Call (Paul's or Augustine's or that of St. Francis)--unexpectedly. It comes after what seems an eternity of listening, a battle to stop listening, and an irrational willingness to continue to hear, among the crackling of fragmented voices, a call to . . .

A call to surrender. A call to be swept away. A call to step up on a platform that requires you to step down--to close your eyes and clear your heart--in order to let go. Why is it that the call always says the same thing? "Leave yourself and follow me"--Okay Jesus, okay Gandhi, okay love.

We all get nervous. Sometimes I get nervous. In fact, every time--not that there have been too many times--I get nervous. I like hearing the call. I like the fact that somehow I have the capacity to be called. But, the surrender--the stepping up to step down--that part makes me nervous, that part makes me want to close my eyes and stay still.

Pay my respects to grace and virtue
Send my condolences to good
Give my regards to soul and romance,
They always did the best they could
And so long to devotion
You taught me everything I know
Wave goodbye
Wish me well..
You've gotta let me go

This saying goodbye--giving my regards in preparation of my and/or their absence--does it signify surpassing or overcoming? Am I leaving them behind as a matter of ascent to another level or overcoming their puniness in favor of something excessive--something transcendent?

You got to let me go--let go of the categories--the projections--the types--the planning--the figuring--the imagining--all of it. "Come follow me"--that is what the call says--that it is what it requires.

Are we human?
Or are we dancer?
My sign is vital
My hands are cold
And I'm on my knees
Looking for the answer
Are we human?
Or are we dancer?

Answering this call--where does it lead? It leads to a question--are we human or dancer? Answering this call--letting myself be swept away--letting surrender constitute my existence--does it lead to being the human I am supposed to be--want to be--try to be--or to something different--to a dancer?

On the one hand, many--religious and not--would say that answering the call is the highest function of being human. Answering the call of love (or Love), is for many the very definition of being human. After all, how else could one be human without being constituted by a call--a transcendent source of their definition?

On the other, certain daring minds cringe at the idea. To them, the call is not a matter of fulfilling categories to be human, but of overcoming the human by dancing--by being swept up into a sea of singularities that plays endlessly, moves voraciously, and sings in rough, tumbling, unforgiving waves of inhuman tones, symphonies, and even silence. To them, dancing upon the surface motion--reveling in the incongruity of it all--is what it is all about.

Will your system be alright
When you dream of home tonight?
There is no message we're receiving
Let me know is your heart still beating

Does the latter mean dying? Does it mean leaving home for another? Does answering the call mean being swept away altogether?

I don't know.

I already said it makes me nervous and most times I don't answer.

But, I want to think--want to hope--that answering the call is a matter of being human by dancing.

I want to think that by being human I can get to the place where I want to dance--want to revel--yes, want to surrender on a platform in front of an audience--and be taken where the call will take me.

The trick--the concern--the idea--is to realize the call will come numerous times, in numerous places.

Yes, that's right: It is not a call from the One, but of one calling--asking--you to dance. It is a matter not of one in a lifetime, but of a life human enough to fulfill itself by dancing; a life human enough to be itself through surrender.

I get nervous.

I close my eyes.

I try.

One day the call will sweep me into an ocean of revelry. Until then, I'll wait--I'll try--and I'll continue to attempt to be human enough to be called again.

2009-02-28T19:53:00.000-08:00

" 'Here I am!' puts the lover rather than any such ego into play, insofar as the lover is radically individualized and unsubstitutable." JLM

This is what bothered him so much. This is why he had to leave that room, that situation, that world. "I'm coming!" She said it. He expected it. He said it too. "Here I am!"--me, the one, the only one--the only me. I'm coming--I'm on my way--I will be there soon--so get ready.

Why do we announce this at the height of sexual frenzy? What is the sense of yelling it--announcing it--proclaiming it? Why does one feel the need to announce their own coming--their arrival on the scene? Their being given their there?

And, how exactly does that happen? How does cumming equal coming? How do I become me--unsubstitutably and irreplaceably--through the coming of cumming?

"At the moment of loving, the lover can only believe what he or she says and does under a certain aspect of eternity. Or, more exactly, under an instantaneous eternity . . ."

That's it, isn't it? This instantaneous--even if only momentary--eternity. This is the key to the equation of cumming with coming. That moment or cluster of non-moments that signify me are wrapped up in a temporary eternity that is outside of or beyond time, language, and the world. In that momentous eternity I am transported out of me--into a non-place--a non-world--a nowhere--that somehow results in my arrival--my-self entering the scene. This makes no sense. But I don't think it is supposed to.

"Orgasm, the only miracle that the poorest human condition can definitely experience--for it requires neither talent, nor apprenticeship, but simply a bit of naturalness--nevertheless leaves nothing to see, nothing to say, and carries away everything with it, even its memory."

In one sense, maybe it is a miracle. Anything that can suspend me and thus give me me at the same time seems to fit the mode of miracle. In this way, the comparisons to the experience of mystical union with the divine, or even the revelation of the hidden-God so popular in 20th century Christian theology are not hard to make. After all, it is an experience of nothing that leaves nothing and effects nothing. It is nothing and everything all at the same time.

And, it always leaves me wanting more--I want more of me to arrive, I guess. I want to yell-scream--proclaim--my coming through cumming every chance I get. Is that right? Is that what is happening?

"Orgasm is not a summit, from which one would descend in stages; it resembles a cliff that opens onto a void, where one falls all at once."

Well, this is certainly up for debate. Certainly it is not a uniform experience across ages, genders, cultures, etc. But, despite the clumsy overreaching, there is something essential here--this arrival of me--the "Here I am!" of orgasm is indeed a summit--a summit like all human summits. It signals the end of a descent--the end of a journey that involves climbing, obstacles, thirst, sweat, and maybe even tears--but like all human summits, going up includes coming down. This experience--this experience of me--is only a temporary eternity. Its instantaneity signals its temporality. Me is only temporary.

"If eroticization were to last without end, it would suspend the world, its time and its space--the erotic reduction would thus tear me definitively from the world."

Here it is--the tragic truth of the me situation. I can only come temporarily. I don't last forever. And, if I were too last forever I would be torn definitively from the world that gives me the possibility of me being me at all.

That's right, I would be dead.

Death and desire always go together. Love and annihilation are not enemies, nor even distant relatives. They are always closer than we think.

And, this is why he had to leave.

If one is going to arrive--to come--to come to the world by leaving it--to experience their own-self, even if temporarily, can and should it happen amidst the neon glow of a mechanical, technologized, and pornographic domain? And, more than that, should it happen in a time--in an interaction between one's-self and an-other--that carries no burden of expectation--no hope that something unexpected, something new, something totally out of the question might happen?

"Tonight could be the best night of our lives." BO

Cliche? Of course. To be taken in jest? Always. But, if it couldn't--if you tell me it isn't possible--or that I shouldn't hope for it--or "tonight definitely not"--well, then, I don't want to play. I don't want to play and I certainly won't come.

2009-02-16T22:41:00.000-08:00

"It's like an earthquake."
-Marquez

"In essence the domain of eroticism is the domain of violence, of violation."
-Bataille

Like an earthquake? Yes. In what way? In that earthquakes are naturally violent. If we were discussing the problem of evil, we would discuss the natural violence of earthquakes and other facts of existence--violent events that cannot be traced to a culpable individual, but instead are chalked up to a fact of the existence into which all of us have been thrown (created), and thus which we share.

It's natural. It is not a violence one needs to remedy, much less to attempt to prevent. It is natural--it is not about blame, or guilt. It is about something more fundamental--something more prim(ordi)al.

It is about the violence of birth and death; of emerging from the nothing of Nothing into the singular existence that is discontinuous with all else. From being Nothing, or Non-Being, to Being in a way that one is separate from all else and aware of this fact. It is a violence of emerging and returning.

"existence itself is at stake in the transition from discontinuity to continuity. Only violence can bring everything to a state of flux in this way, only violence and the nameless disquiet bound up with it."

The nameless disquiet: Yes. Violence is bound up originally here. Violence is a matter of the inborn desire--the one from birth to death--to become one once again with the One--with the Nameless Quiet. Violence is being thrown from it--and returning to it.

"We cannot imagine the transition from one state to another one basically unlike it without picturing the violence done to the being called into existence through discontinuity. Not only do we find in the uneasy transitions of organisms engaged in reproduction the same basic violence which in physical eroticism leaves us gasping, but we also catch the inner meaning of that violence."

We usually do not think of violence having meaning. Natural disasters, physical violence, attack, hurt, spite, malice--these words are supposed to have definitions, but not meaning. Where does meaning come to violence?

Violence does not have a meaning; violence is the key to the possibility for meaning at all--the condition of its existence. To exist is to exist as a discontinuity resulting from violence--one that will return to the continuity of all through violence.

What does eroticism have to do here? It should come as no surprise that the erotic is a matter of violence--not only in its reproductive result, but also in the structure of the desire that propels it.

"The whole business of eroticism is to strike to the inmost core of the living being, so that the heart stands still. The transition from the normal state to that of erotic desire presupposes a partial dissolution of the person as he exists in the realm of discontinuity."

Just for a moment--even a second--my heart stands still in, within you. My discontinuity, as expressed and existent in my consciousness, my discursive thought, my sense of the temporal conditions governing existence, is suspended--is melted into the continuity of that Nameless Disquiet beyond language, beyond time, beyond the separation of me--or anything else--from Itself.

This is violence at its core. This is violation of me--myself--at the heart of who I am. This is a violent rupture of me in order to return me to the Nothing from which I came, for which I long, and to which I will return.

"The whole business of eroticism is to destroy the self-contained character of the participators as they are in their normal lives."

Normal life is a matter of discontinuity, of isolation, of singularity. We long for an encounter with unity, with union, with quiet that suspends all of that. But, we long for it while ceasing to give up on the dream--the phantom--of our discontinuity. We long for a continuity that does not mean annihilation.

"Hence love spells suffering for us in so far as it is a quest for the impossible . . ."

2009-02-07T23:34:00.000-08:00

“We perceive that for the purposes of discharge the instinct of destruction is habitually brought into the service of Eros”-- SF

They had met at the bar the day before. She was called Haley, and had only been in town a couple of nights. Some loose mutual friends had somehow introduced them at the hotel mixer, and that had led to cocktails, surface-level conversation, more cocktails, a walk on the beach, some sloppy kissing by the firepit, and even more sloppy kissing as they said goodbye a few moments later. All in all, nothing extraordinary for a pair of young travelers spending the summer moving from town to town, place to place, location to location. There is something about transient living that gives one permission to have transient, fleeting relationships without the pings of conscience ruining it. Something in the brain tells the traveler not to worry about the one night stand, the threesome in the jacuzzi, or the fellatio with someone whose name was forgotten the moment they said it. People that would never even meet, much less end up stuck together awkwardly in a hammock at 3am, are thrust together on a nightly basis when traveling. That is how it works.

He knocked on her hotel room door. As he waited the requisite time for her to answer, there was no chilling anticipation coursing through is veins, or even a sense of urgency as regards to what might happen that evening. He had a pretty good outline of how things would and were supposed to go: They would walk downstairs to the beachside cafe for a quick, cheap, but ambient dinner. Afterwards, they'd walk a bit along the boardwalk, find a place for drinks, and take shots on and off for an hour so. At that point, they would be sufficiently lubricated to meander home for a meaningless encounter--or at least an attempt at an encounter that would later be deemed meaningless. Encounters--or attempts at them--cannot be deemed meaningless in the moment, otherwise they would never take place. In the moment, they are the most important and irresistible events in one's world; in fact, they are a chance to escape the world to hide in another. The paradox is that sometimes these events--attempted encounters--must for the sake of sanity, conscience, and self-worth--be deemed meaningless.

And, this evening went according to detail. Haley looked good in her tank top and shorts--she wasn't a stunner, but she was attractive. There was nothing particularly unique about they way she looked, moved, or spoke. But, she was attractive. They ate. They drank. They made it back to her room around 11 and quickly began to go at it. Just like everything else, there was nothing particularly special about the way Haley fucked. It went off without a hitch--everything worked how it was supposed to--each lever, when pushed or pulled, responded properly; each button, when pushed or twisted according to design, led to the effects desired. There were a few positions employed, and some mild dirty talk. He got on top of her. She got on top of him. She bent over. Etc. etc. Finally, Haley was on top, bouncing somewhat rapidly, and sweating just a little. Her dyed blonde hair fluttered above her head--her eyes were closed--and her hands on his knees below her. He lay there with Haley--this woman--on top of him, gyrating herself into a perceived frenzy.

Soon, Haley began to scream, "I'm coming. I'm coming. Oh god baby, come with me."

And, just as the rest of the evening, everything went according to plan. Haley came, or pretended to, and he came (without pretending) at the same time. The seconds following were a mild blur--there was no thinking, and no words. There was only the Nothing of orgasm. But, it only lasted a few seconds.

Afterwards, he was disgusted and angry. Haley lay next to him, breathing heavy and talking softly. He wanted nothing to do with it; with her. He promptly got up, put on his clothes, said goodbye and left.

As he walked down the hotel corridor he realized that he had never treated a woman like this before. He had been with a decent amount of women, and never had the impulse to simply get up and leave so abruptly--so rudely--after sex; especially the first time.

Why?

In the days that passed--days filled with train rides, bus rides, more hotels, and more cocktails--he realized it was about coming--about himself.

2009-02-06T10:02:00.000-08:00

. . . The HYP and the Englisman stood up and headed to the dance floor with the other three women. I didn't want to dance, but I took the opportunity to escape the awkwardness and jumped out of my seat to join them. Before we made it to the dance floor all 6 of us did two shots of expensive silver tequila, and ordered a round of bottles. The dance floor was a sweaty, loud mess. Tonya decided she liked me however, and almost immediately began backing herself up into my crotch. It was an exquisite bit of human movement—me standing there with a bottle in one hand, and an inebriated woman backing herself into my denim-covered member. I looked around and saw a myriad of others doing something very similar. I should have just stopped thinking, and let myself feel. I should have just let myself feel the sensations of the beer going down my throat and the woman dry humping me into submission. But, I didn't. Instead, I tried to think in between thrusts:
Is this how souls meet?
Or, have we destroyed our souls—scattered even the faint whisper of them—so thoroughly that the only way we can attempt to have an encounter—much less to have one--automatically involves two crotches, sweat, and overpriced alcohol?

Again, I was depressed and excited all at the same time. I didn't have control of either—the depression or the excitement. Naturally, I couldn't control the depression. And, due to Amber grinding into my missile, I couldn't control the excitement. We continued “dancing” through the night. We laughed. We drank.
About a half hour in I whispered into her ear: “You know Amber, ramming a missile can be dangerous. You might end up with an explosion.” Smooth.

She smiled and I realized she didn't hear a word I said over the music. So, we continued without a change.

The Englishman pulled the month and left early with her. The HYP and I stayed with the other two until the sweaty hideaway was lit up into a glimmering, odorous cellar. In an instant the dreams evaporated. In a moment the pretending faded and it was time to saunter home and look forward to the headache that would plague the next day. We gathered our things, exchanged phone numbers with the girls, and walked home. The boardwalk was empty except for bottles, cigarrete butts, and food wrappers. I heard people yelling. I heard woman screaming. I walked past the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop and saw someone urinating on the wall. I walked slowly because of the inebriation, but not slow enough to think. Why did the thinking stop now? At home, I tore off my clothes, took two headache pills, and collapsed onto the bed.

2009-02-04T08:08:00.000-08:00

We ordered drinks from a curvy, but somehow unattractive blonde behind the green countertop and then found a seat in a maroon vinyl booth in the corner. The lights were set down real low, and there was an artificial mist hovering in the air. On the dance floor in front of us there were people dancing as if they were having the best time. I could smell and feel the congealed mixture of sweat, perfume, and hairspray. People in these situations always seem so happy. I wondered if I was lacking the ability to hear certain frequencies. Maybe I couldn't here the happy-inducing frequency they broadcast in nightclubs. Maybe I was missing out on this late-night bliss due to a physiological defect. Who knows. Others sat at the bar and tried to get to know one another over the deafening music blaring through the speakers. Some, all men, sat bobbing their heads to the music on the outskirts of the dance floor with a beer in one hand and the other in their pocket.
“Mate, there are some birds here, mate, serious birds. Let's go dance, come on!”
The Englishman had had more than a few and was now apparently excited to exercise his freedom. I knew the two of them. They would head to the dance floor, look at a lot of women, try to get the courage to go over to them, and then come back to the booth with more drinks. But, I couldn't blame them. He was free, after all. The academic looked at him, “Should we go?”
He was sniffing his index finger and when he finished he extended it straight out. I don't think he even realized he was doing it.
“Let's go.”
The academic and the Englishman went on the floor, while the HYP and me stayed behind. I didn't want to talk, especially over the happy-inducing noise I apparently could not hear correctly.
I sat in as deep of thought as you can in a place like that. I watched people move, meet, and smile. I watched a couple kiss sloppily on one corner of the dance floor. She was wearing a red halter top and very tight jeans, along with the shiniest black shoes I have ever seen. His striped pink button-up was now one button undone too many and his hair was not in the pristine condition it probably had once been in only a few hours earlier.
Is this what they came for?
Is this why we came?
Is this why I came?
What would be considered success in this situation?
Would they kiss like this and then say goodbye?
Would success be a phone number?
Maybe the would go back to someone's “home” and continue this interaction? Maybe success would be getting lucky? Is this why they came—did they come to cum? Would cumming equal success? How much is $100 really worth? As I continued to watch them it almost seemed like they grew further and further apart—they were moving away from each other but were always within reach. There limbs stretched into elongated masses, clinging to one another as their disproportionately small bodies and heads moved further and further from each other. The closer they tried to get to one another—the more voracious their passion became—the larger the separation was between them. I didn't know how they were still keeping contact. Finally, their deformed bodies overlapped at only one harried location and it seemed to take all of their strength to not let go.
“Stop staring, man” The HYP smirked, looking like he wanted to converse. I looked up to respond, but my housemates returned with more bottles of cold liquid.
“Fuckin birds, mate, I dance with a couple, make eyes at some—but what am I supposed to say?”
“I might go home and do some work,” the academic, discouraged and disheveled, was ready to call it a night.
After a bit, I went to the bathroom while the boys went to get more bottles. I didn't piss on my belt or anything, but I did flush the toilet with my foot. It didn't seem like something I wanted to touch with my bare hands. When I returned the HYP was talking to two girls at the table next to us: one incrediby petite blond with huge diamond earings and a squeaky voice, and a taller, slender brunette with dark jeans and a black top that didn't hide much. “This is January, like the month, and Tonya. Girls, this is my friend.”
“Hi,” I said with a forced smile. Just then the boys returned with the liquid and were also introduced to the month and Tonya.
“So, what's the deal? Are you going to join us or not?” The professor asked. Despite his disturbing views of women and sex, his confidence was admirable. Where did it come from? How did he believe in himself—his reason—so easily? Maybe he didn't have an abyss, I thought. Maybe I am missing the part that allows you to hear the happy frequency and he is lacking an abyss. I wasn't sure I wanted either.

“Sure we will. Let us go find our friends and we'll be right back.”
“Don't be long,” he shot back with a smile on his face.
“Mate, we are in there. Nice. Nice going. What did you say? Mate, don't know how you do it.”
The Englishman couldn't hide his excitement, and even the academic looked optimistic.

2009-01-30T01:16:00.000-08:00

As we walked along the boardwalk a few hours later, my housemates, the Handsome Young Professor, and myself, I realized we had a place to go that night—we were walking up and down. We were going parallel, like everyone else. It somehow felt good, even if I knew our reason was superficial and fleeting. We stopped at a few dive bars to relax and kill time before going to the nightclub. At a bar called “Tiny's” we sat on bar stools sipping bottled beer as the Handsome Young Professor chatted up the bartender. The boys discussed the presidential election; I feigned an interest in listening. Hotel California played on the jukebox as forgettable faces went in and out. Where did they have to go? Were they going to walk parallel? What was there reason? I didn't know. After the bottles were empty, we left.

At the “Wordsworth Cocktail Bar” some young girls giggled in corner while drinking carefully mixed drinks that seemed to take longer to make than to drink. We sat at the bar once again, and the Professor told us to go invite them out. “I don't know mate,” the Englishman said with a good dose of hesitancy in his voice. He grabbed some peanuts out of the bowl on the bar and seemed to be thinking it over. He was by all accounts a hit with the ladies. Yet, he never approached them. Never. I don't know why. Maybe a lack of confidence, or something.
“Fuck you Manning, you fucking mother cock.” The academic yelled at the silent television in the corner.
“Mate, quiet down. You can't yell like that in here. Relax.”
“Manning is such a fucking bitch. Fucking cocksucking little bitch. Can't stand him.”
We finally reached the night club around midnight. As we walked in two oversized bouncers looked at our ID's and then gave us the nod. The light was dim, with flashes coming from all around. I could smell the almost tangible congregation of the human mass reveling within the crowded space. Walking inside I felt both excited and depressed.

So many people.
So many bodies.
So much desire.

And, such deep, inexpressible isolation.

During that second it seemed there were endless opportunities in the world for meetings, conversations, and experiences of all kinds, and nothing for which to breathe all at the same time. How can it come and go so quickly? How can possibility turn to hopelessness in a flash? Why does the abyss emerge amidst adrenaline and people? How can we be so alone when we are surrounded by so many other souls? Do souls ever touch? I wondered about this last question throughout the night. If they do, it probably does not happen in a nightclub.These questions flashed through me like a sudden twitch—by the time you realize what has happened it is all over.

2009-01-07T22:33:00.001-08:00

As we sat there, on that log, near the pond, with the frogs chirping and the wind breezing, I realized we were truly all alone. There wasn't another soul near us--not even in the vicinity. I realized we were sitting--in a beautiful place--alone, except for one another. I wondered silently if all beautiful places were solitary places.

After I stopped talking, we sat in silence for a few moments--embracing--looking at our reflections in the pond. It was murky, cloudy water, but it somehow reflected a wonderfully blurred vision of the two of us. The water was still--it was the first time I had seen the water still in that pond.

After a bit, I asked you if you wanted to say anything.

"I love you."

That was all.

We sat--for a long time--at the end of a long conversation, in a beautiful place, silent. We sat without company, at the end of language, waiting for a new conversation to begin.

I didn't mind waiting. It was nice to be alone with you--in the intermittent--in such a strangely beautiful, silent place.

2009-01-05T22:07:00.000-08:00

I don't know why that woman bothered me so easily--the woman speaking about the One. I was rather rude to her, and I know it caught her off guard.

Maybe it is because I don't believe like she does. Or, maybe it is because I'm jealous--no, not of her--but, of the One. Maybe I was so irritated because I know I can't be the One; I can't even pretend to be a servant or friend of the One. I can't be the One--I can't save, I can't protect, I can't oversee the moments, or crush the space in my hands. I am not the One--I don't surpass language or time, I don't exceed all excess, or transcend all transcendence. I am not the One--I can't provide, can't shelter, can't promise, can't fix.

I think at times we all try to either be the One or to meet the One. Some of us want to meet the One. Some of us want to be the One.

I think because I don't believe like that woman I know that not only can I not be the One--but, I can't even be your One. I think I know that I can't be the One of any-one--even though I wish I could.

No. I can welcome the moments. I can take the seconds as they are given to me one by one. I can remember certain moments and seconds--certain smiles and laughter. I can remember certain touches. I can long for more. I can try. I can expect. I can hope with you, beyond hope, not for One--but for . . . what? I don't know. Maybe, just another second--to be given one more second--in which to hope. I can hope for hope and no more.

That is all I can be for any-one--for you. That is all I can be for you. It doesn't feel like enough, but, what is one to do?

Loving Strangeness

2008-12-20T23:58:00.000-08:00

I saw you today. I saw you in the woods sitting alone. You seemed reflective, but also a little hurt. As I approached, you looked up from the log in the clearing you were sitting on--the one by the small pond with the frogs. You looked up and your face screamed anticipation, hope, and reluctance all at the same time.

It was nice to see you--that was the first thing I thought. It was nice to see you sitting--looking so beautiful--in such a beautiful place.

"Hello."

"Hello you. Can I sit?"

"Sure."

"What is it you would like to talk about?"

"Love."

"I suspected as much.

So, I sat. I sat and spoke. I told you about what I had thought about in times I had time to think; times spent in less beautiful places."

"I met one. I met a woman--one that said she had met the One. Listening to her, I realized something about myself, and about love."

"Go on."

"Well, I used to agree with her. I used to think that someday I would meet the One--I would meet the One for whom I was destined--the only One--the One that was for me. I used to think I would meet the One that would give me the stability, the unity, and the identity of an unchanging, unlonging, settled soul. I used to think I would be converted and in doing so receive the salvation of earth--love. I used to think love was being converted to One--to becoming fully united with one--and letting our respective selves pass into a Selfsameness that surpassed words, surpassed all other relationships, and colored every breath of our interaction with the world."

"Okay."

"I will never love you that way; in fact, to do so would be to kill both of us. I don't want a love that takes my breath away, or yours for that matter. I don't want a love that is akin to death. I don't want the end of desire--the end of need--the end of longing."

"Okay."

"No, if I am going to love you it will always be as a stranger. You will always be a stranger to me--as strange or more as time goes on, no matter how long we spend together. You will always be strange to me--you will always be other. Instead of the One, you will be the Other. We won't be united. No. We will stay infinitely separate. The distance between us won't ever dissipate. No. We'll always be isolated little souls--treading in the sea of singularities. You will always be away--apart--altogether different. And, that is how I will love you. I will love you with a longing that will only stop when the possibility of myself stops. I will love you infinitely across a distance I know cannot be overcome, most of all, because it is an eternal one and I am so, so mortal. I will love you as a stranger in my home--in my arms--one I cannot, will not understand--comprehend--or grasp. I will love you as a blurred, bedazzling appearance I can't reduce, and therefore, one that demands my attention, my devotion, my interest in ways I can never fulfill. I won't love you as my One--I won't kill you or me. I won't love you as the One. I'll love you as my Other--as the Stranger inside me--the one crawling around--touching me in places I didn't know I had--places exhilirating and uncomfortable at the same time. I'll love you as one haunting me--calling me ever toward you. I'll love you as a foreigner inside myself--inside a land with precarious borders, and unknown topography. I'll love you even though I can't--even though eternity won't let me."

"Thank you for sharing. I appreciate what you have said."

"You are welcome."

The One

2008-12-20T23:42:00.000-08:00

I met a woman today--one. I met one. She told me about the One she had met; or, at least thought she had met.

The one I met thought she had met the One--the only one, the one for eternity, the one that would be hers forever without a change, the one that would make her complete and let her begin living for the first time.

"Wow, congratulations. That is amazing."

"Thank you. It is all a bit much, but I am overwhelmed with happiness, joy--so many things I guess."

"How did you know he was the One? I mean how can one know they know the One? How does one identify him?"

"I don't know. There is no science to it--it isn't a matter of rationality, or of logic. Nope. It's a feeling you get deep inside--somewhere you didn't know you had--somewhere that hasn't ever been touched before. I guess you could call it that virginal soul deep down--the one deep inside."

"That is ironic to me."

"Why?" she said in disapproval.

"So, you mean to tell me, that to know that the one you have met is the One--he has to penetrate you first? It just seems counter-intuitive, that's all I am saying."

She didn't like this. She didn't like my talk of penetration and irony. So, she left. She didn't even finish her drink.

What is all this about the One? And, why is the One so deeply, deeply, penetratingly connected to love?

The whole time I was talking to that woman I didn't know if we were talking religion or romance; conversion or coitus; tongues or tongue.

Where did this come from--this myth of the One? Where does the desire for Him or Her or It come from? And, which one do I want? Which one of the Ones do I want--religion or romance? Do I want to be converted to the One of eternity, or captured by the One of romance?

Maybe, I don't want either. Maybe, it is ironically the opposite. I want to be penetrated--entered--filled--and thus, hopefully, in the end, unified with the One--with the Spiritual Groom. Maybe all I ever wanted was to be filled--in that virginal--vaginal place ones from Augustine to Eckhart to womanizers such as Kundera and Klima--have called the soul. Maybe all I want is to be filled forever--consummated by the consummate One--the One that will never leave me, will never change, will never break a promise, and never ever stop loving me.

Maybe I want to be converted to the One that stands in front of me--takes my breath away--and give myself--as best as I know possible to that One. Maybe I want to surrender me in order to gain a we that didn't exist beforehand. Maybe I want to convert--take vows--and never look back.

And, maybe, just maybe--these dual myths of the One are and have always been blurred into indistinction. Maybe, just maybe, they are the same thing.

I met one today--one that wanted the One. She was so excited. She was so happy.

The Big O

2008-11-24T00:52:00.000-08:00

The big O, not the little one. The one that signifies not something--not something in the world next to me; but one that is other in a way I can't understand--can't comprehend--can't master: O. Of course, the big O conjures other thoughts--phonetically it makes one think of something else--an experience so unique it also requires to be signified differently. The big O--Orgasm. The big O--Other. Is there a similarity here? Is there a hOmOlOgy, or are the two Other to one another?

Let's start with the big O--orgasm. And, let's restrict ourselves to the big ones--the memorable ones--or, better yet, the ones that stop memory and language and thought for a second or two or more. Let's only talk about the big ones. I dare to say the big ones require an Other. Auto-affection won't do it.

It is a process--a building--an unlocking--a revealing--preparing--trying--coalescing--moving--hoping--expecting--and all sorts of other things. You and I, going somewhere we can't talk about. Trying to take the Other to a place where they are Other to even their own self--to a place where their own self is obliterated into a shaking mess of non-language. Trying to take an Other to a place they can't go by their-self--to a place of non-selfhood that is somehow an experience of selfhood. Trying to reveal to them their singularity--their irreplacebility--in that moment--in that second--their singularity--their absolute uniqueness. Trying to unlock and open their self so they can have it--feel it--experience it--even if only temporarily, temporally. Yes, trying to make them cum so they can come--to come by cumming?

Vulgar? Perverted?

The Big O--both of them--you, standing opposed to me as one I can't comprehend, can't reduce, can't make my own. You are something in the world of which I am not master--something I don't know. I am something--something in the world I can't comprehend, and something I don't know, especially by mastery. Desire for the Other--for orgasm--for becoming one that is singular, non-objective, and irreplaceable--one that is eternal for having somehow escaped the temporality of solitude and the solitude of temporality even for a few seconds, moments, or hours.

You--Other--give me me. Me, your Other--I'll give you you. I'll give you what I don't have and receive a gift I know you don't own.

The Big O. I'll receive you. I'll try. I'll hope. I'll expect. Even if it never happens--if the cumming is no coming--the desire for it never ceases. Even if it never arrives, the big O, the big one, there is always trying--always hoping--always wanting--that is tragic and wonderful all at the same time.

2008-11-17T22:04:00.000-08:00

Perhaps, it occurred to me, I was in some new space. I'd entered the place where oblivion was born. Or despair. And also understanding. Or perhaps even love--not as a mirage but as a space for the soul to move in. -Ivan Klima

I am in a new space. Well, I might have always been here. Regardless, I am aware of a new space--or trying to be. This is the where oblivion was born. This is the primordial lack--the deficiency on which I operate--the one that keeps me moving back and forward, keeping me always in between the behind and the ahead. I don't have a foundation to be-from. I don't have a future to be-toward. Thus, the abyss can lead one to think that this space is also home to despair.

But, for some, it is the opposite--it is the place where love is born--where love resides--where love is situated.

What's the lesson?

Love is movement. Love is flux. Love is longing. Love moves--always moves--between an oblivion and the threat of despair. Love is the possibility for hope despite the oblivion, and in the face of despair.

Desire

2008-11-15T23:01:00.000-08:00

Pleasure itself . . . that which would accord us (to) pure presence itself, if such a thing were possible, would be only another name for death. -Derrida

Pleasure--the drive for happiness that Plato and others have spoken about--the drive for fulfillment--for enjoyment. What kind of enjoyment? The kind--the only kind--in which time is stopped and I am me--present to me--wholly me--altogether myself. The kind in which there is no more striving--no more pushing ahead--or looking behind--in which time doesn't lead one toward an end in nothing, or from a beginning from before memory. Pleasure--the drive to recreate one's self in a way that is whole, lasting, and permanent--the drive to find a place to rest away from the scattering effects of temporality. I want to be whole. I want to be permanent. I want to rest in something eternal, unchanging, and good.

Why is it the same as death? Death is that experience--that non-experience--the only experience of which we can try to speak--that is outside of time. It is the non-moment when time no longer pushes, or pulls, or anything. It is outside--it is me--stopped--forever. In this way, pleasure leads to pure nothingness.

. . . this desire carries in itself the destiny of its non-satisfaction. -Derrida

Thus, the desire for pleasure is doomed from the beginning. We strive--all day everyday--to find the center that will hold us in place--but the only one available is the abyss--the hovering abyss that awaits. Pleasure is the contradictory desire for death--to re-create ourselves permanently--to be outside of time--that is, to be dead.

. . . the desire for presence is . . . born from the abyss. -Derrida

So, what? Despair? Back to Camus and the absurdity? Back to nihilistic anarchy? No. Well, at least not for me. Why? Well, the void--the abyss--is all I have. And, I'd lie if I didn't said I didn't love the exquisite agony of the perpetual drive for pleasure. That exquisite agony of longing to be together--to find One that could make me me for the first time--to find one way of experiencing death--not my own--but the death of temporality--without destroying myself in the process. I love the coming together and the breaking apart. The building pressure--the anticipation--the insatiability that exceeds words--exceeds time--or, at least gives one such impressions. I would lie if I said I didn't love the desire--the structure of desire--that possesses me at every second, calling me toward the One I know isn't there, the One I won't find, but the One of which I dream for so fervently.

What I am interested in is the desire for the experience of the impossible. --Derrida

That desire--the one for the impossible--for a moment in which time is destroyed and I am not. Will it ever come? Of course not. Do I want it--can I feel it shiver through my bones at ever waking second? Of course. That is the point, the structure, and the tragic beauty of desire.

2008-11-10T00:11:00.000-08:00

But who, sometimes, doesn't feign emotions in an effort to transcend the void that suddenly looms between them and someone they believed themselves to be on intimate terms with? It looks as if it's only possible to be genuine in a game in which you have more than one life. Or rather it is easier to achieve justice and authenticity in a game than in real life. --Ivan Klima

The void looms regardless. The void looms not because of a deficiency or lack left from a failed attempt at plenitude. No. The void looms as the condition for intimacy, effort, and transcendence themselves. The void looms between the two--it is the difference that makes me possible, and you too. The void looms between us--we long for an encounter in which it might disappear--even for a second--and thus feign emotions in an active tweak of the real--an attempt to forget in order to overcome. But, actively forgetting is not possible--we only forget those things we won't/don't try to forget. The void looms and it draws us near--draws us out--draws into places we really don't want to go--into places unlit and unsafe--into places vulnerable and new.

Did I say I hate the void?

I love the void. I love the movement of play the void spurs on in every moment. I love the waves crashing over, and over, and over--changing shapes--changing form--changing color--changing me. I love the difference and the movement. I love the perpetual activity and flow. If there were no void, there would be no moving--no coming together and breaking apart--no desire--no attempts at self-transcendence. All attempts at self-transcendence would be null and void.

I have only the void. And, so do you. I have only the felt absence--the sensed absence. And, I have it only passively. I'll take it (I have no choice), and let it take me into places--no, spaces--of which I do not know.

2008-11-09T00:53:00.000-08:00

Collecting Connections/Connecting Collections

2008-11-02T14:29:00.000-08:00

And surely we throw ourselves into erotic pleasures above all in order to remember them. So that their luminous points will connect our youth with our old age by means of a shining ribbon! So that they will preserve our memory in an eternal flame!

Life, it seems, is a moving between eternities. It is a stretched out continuum highlighted by points which link us--or at least give us the impression of linking us--to some sort of encounter with the infinite. And, of course, many times--most times--this happens in the throes of erotic desire. Life, it seems, is temporality lived out between the illusion of the infinite, and its infinite hope. This is who we become--not the continuum, but the points along the way that leave our memory seared with the mark of something more, something beyond. These encounters take us beyond ourself and thus, in some tragic way, end up defining us.

And take it from me, my friend, only a word uttered at this most ordinary of moments is capable of illuminating it in such a way that it remains unforgettable.
-Milan Kundera

In those moments, our lives become eternal. Within seconds, we build an image that becomes the irreplaceable, singular unity of the otherwise temporal existence of everyday life.

Shall we collect them? Mark as many points on that continuum as possible in order to create a storehouse of memories of the infinite? The hopeless quest of infinite memories? Or, shall we connect? Shall we connect intimate, fiercely, ferociously--attacking the moments, the seconds, the breaths with the impossible dream of destryoing them? The dream of timeless victory--timeless connection?

They say for me that I'm a collector of women. In reality I'm far more a collector of words.
-Milan Kundera

Regardless, there will always be words to speak about them--whether the connections and collection remains plentiful or few, vulnerable or superficial.

When I can't write anymore I'll die. But I'll die loving. -Ivan Klima

2008-10-29T23:13:00.000-07:00

And surely we throw ourselves into erotic pleasures above all in order to remember them. So that their luminous points will connect our youth with our old age by means of a shining ribbon! So that they will preserve our memory in an eternal flame! And take it from me, my friend, only a word uttered at this most ordinary of moments is capable of illuminating it in such a way that it remains unforgettable.
-Milan Kundera

Desires. Eros. What of this? Can it truly be linked to memory? Can this primordial, insatiable force within really be a matter of remembrance? Yes, and we can see why when we realize how closely memory is linked to confession. Confession is the enacting of memory--its emptying out. Confession is like dumping out the piggy bank to see what and how much lays inside. Why? Why do we confess? Why do we remember? Why do we recount endlessly in our minds vacant theater the memories of our erotic pleasures--our most intimate encounters? Why do prophets and apostles speak in words about their intimate encounters with the Word?

It seems life is a matter of words. It seems life is a matter of perpetually remembering and hoping for encounters--for moments--seconds--when we will experience that which is beyond words. As it stands, we know any words we thus use to describe it--the erotic pleasure so strong, so deep, so forceful that it makes us convulse and shake in wordless pleasure--the revelation so clear, so powerful, that it causes us to convulse and shake in wordless prayer--will fail. Words never can describe that which is beyond words, nor can they reach the Word.

Life is thus frustratingly and paradoxically always a matter of more words--of spinning and freeing the words that stem from those deep, confessional, vulnerable encounters with someone, something beyond ourselves. If there are words, we are still here to hope. If there are words, we will always try to get to the place where they will no longer be necessary, and, above all, hope we can stay there forever.

They say for me that I'm a collector of women. In reality I'm far more a collector of words.
-Milan Kundera

2008-10-28T21:22:00.001-07:00

I don't want to tell you a story. I don't want to engross you in a narrative with a beginning and thus with an end. I don't want a happy ending, nor do I want a tragedy. I don't want to leave you on your seat, or in tears, or angry beyond words. I don't want you to lose yourself in the time of my narrative--in the time of the narrative--only to have to re-emerge again when the pages run thin and the night gets dark. I don't want to change your life. I don't want to you to change mine. I don't want to invent characters with idiosyncracies, or a setting with character and vibrance.

No.

I don't even want an audience. I don't want an ear, or many ears, or fans, or readers, or you.

Episodes

2008-10-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

I had a dream the other day, Old Man; you were the main character. I was walking along the boardwalk, when I came upon you laying in the sand. Blood dripped from your abdomen down your stomach, criss crossing your legs. You were in visible pain, but onl sobbing. I expected screams or wails, but you provided only quiet sobs. I came over, and asked you what happened.

"Don't worry about it."

What? You need to get some help, some attention.

"Don't worry about it. The help will come. The help is not what I am worried about."

What?

"Look at me, I am so embarrassed. Look at me, my insides are hanging out everywhere. You know how embarrassing this is?"

What?

"Look. Everyone can see me--everyone can see me spilling out of myself. You know what they can see? Everything that is supposed to be mine; everything that is supposed to be my own--my workings, my functioning, my breathing, my existence. It is all spilling out now. And, because of that, they can see my secret--they can see my shame."

What?

"Everyone can see my secret--I didn't put any of this here, and more than that, I don't know how any of it works. I am not in charge of myself, nor do I control myself. Look at me, a sad old man laying in the sand, his self gushing out of his chest onto the cold, unforgiving concrete of this boardwalk. Look at me, the myth of my autonomy is shattered--I'm nothing but bleeding, pulsating guts; nothing but spilled open and embarrassed."

I took some sea water to try to wash his wounds, but it didn't help. It only hurt more, he said.

I had a dream the other day, Old Man. You were telling me about all kinds of gibberish, and I was playing your game.

Incoherent Words

2008-10-27T22:44:00.000-07:00

No words?

Where have they gone?

Have they really left me? Or, have I concealed them--hidden them--run from them in a way that makes their absence conspicuously intentional?

Time itself--the Transcendent--calls--let them have you. Lay down on the stone tablet to be broken into fragments--trajectories of desire--and let the words shard all over the page. Time calls and demands the words. Time calls in place of the Word, demanding speech--demanding an attempt--a try at it all.

___

I saw you today--in trying and trying some more. I saw you today and wished you all the best. I saw you today and hoped you could smile despite Time's call. I saw you today and you hurt me. But, I don't blame you. I don't think it was your fault. No, I blame time. But, here I am, answering its call. Here I am, possessed by the words. I saw you today--what should I do about it?

___

Words, words, words. Break me open and let it loose--let them loose--let them free.

You and I and Words

2008-10-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

Was it you who spoke the words that things would happen but not to me
Oh things are gonna happen naturally
Oh taking your advice I'm looking on the bright side
And balancing the whole thing
But often times those words get tangled up in lines
And the bright lights turn to night
Until the dawn it brings
Another day to sing about the magic that was you and me

Things will happen. Things are happening. And, yes, naturally--they have to happen this way. What's natural about the situation? I don't know. I don't know. Looking on the bright side? Yes. I think so. At the moment, the bright side is that there are words--lots of them. The words spew forth, yes, naturally. It's like there is no fabrication involved anymore; they are there, always. Dawn? I don't think the words will bring the dawn--I think the words keep the hope of dawn alive. There is a difference; an important difference.

Cause you and I both loved
What you and I spoke of
And others just read of
Others only read of the love, the love that I love.

Yes, we loved--both of us. But, we didn't speak of it. We didn't speak of it and that's the reason that we can only read about it, just like everyone else. Others read the words--the natural ones--that flow from what we both loved--from the non-thing that gives rise to all these words. If we had spoken about it, it woudln't exist. If we had spoken of it, others wouldn't have to read about it; but more importantly, it wouldn't be ours--it would be something altogether different.

See I'm all about them words
Over numbers, unencumbered numbered words
Hundreds of pages, pages, pages forwards
More words then I had ever heard and I feel so alive

Yes, the words are unencumbered. They come without burden or restriction. In fact, the words are the burden. The words are the burden of every day, every second. The words plague me. I have to work to crack myself open--to puncture every hidden space to bring those words to light--to let them breathe--to make them earn their existence. The words are coming, and the words are the burden. Almost out? No. Not even close. The words seem endless. And, thus, so does the burden.

You and I, you and I
Not so little you and I anymore
And with this silence brings a moral story
More importantly evolving is the glory of a boy

The silence? Don't get it confused. There are words. There will always be words. The silence doesn't signify the absence of words. No, the silence signifies the inability--my inability--despite the endless burden--to speak of what we loved. In this way, the silence is the reason for the words. The words are the silence.

Cause you and I both loved
What you and I spoke of
And others just dream of
And if you could see me now
Well I'm almost finally out of
I'm finally out of
Finally deedeedeedee
Well I'm almost finally, finally
Well I'm free, oh, I'm free

Others dream of it, but I am not so sure I don't either. But, don't worry, make no mistake, I'm not free. The words are free. The words come with ease. But, if the words are free, I am the opposite.

And it's okay if you have go away
Oh just remember the telephone works both ways
And if I never ever hear them ring
If nothing else I'll think the bells inside
Have finally found you someone else and that's okay
Cause I'll remember everything you sang

I know, it has to happen naturally. I know. I know that the silence--even if it doesn't mean the absence of words--might mean the absence of ringing, and even singing. I know the bells will sound for you again--you know how to sing too well, to call too well, and to play all too well. But, that doesn't mean the words will stop. It doesn't mean a double silence. No, the words will always come--keep coming--gush forth onto the page. With those words--with every letter--comes the hope of inseminating the page--the hope that someday the page will give birth to what we sang of--what we loved. It is admittedly a hope against hope. But, like I have explained, even if the words are free, I am the opposite. The words have me--possess me--so they'll keep coming, into a dawn that is nowhere--no how--in sight.

One more

2008-10-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

Excuse me please, one more drink
Could you make it strong? Cuz I don't need to think.
She broke my heart, my grace is gone
One more drink and I'll be gone

Excuse me, not to interrupt--but one more. Yes, one more will do it--I'm already dizzy and this one will take me to the edge. What edge? The one where thought stops. I'll go over the edge where my body will finally force my thinking--my concepts--my brooding--my analyzing into submission. Excuse me, just one more, that is all I need.

Why? Well, my heart is broken. Wait. That is too strong. Or, maybe it is too cliche. Why? Maybe because my salvation--the means of grace--has left? I don't know if that is it either. Why? I think it is this: knowing the hope of that salvation was doomed to fail from the beginning; knowing there is no grace for the temporal space which my heart--my-non-self--occupies. I guess I know that my longing for grace was equivalent to my longing for pardon from my condition--the temporal one. I wanted to be pardoned from it--cured of its disease--made whole through unity with another. Is that why it involves my heart? Yes, sir, it is. Thank you for asking. I thought maybe that was the means by which I could be pardoned. I thought maybe her and I could confer upon one another the grace of salvation through moments of incision, confusion, and, yes, the disappearance of thinking. When thinking stops, time has no hold. Yes, I know. When thinking stops you are dead. They are similar. But, I think I thought that salvation could--would--bring time to a stop without killing me.

So, one more drink. One more is all I need to beat down the circle and fall asleep. One more and I'll be okay until the sun rises tomorrow. One more, and I'll be gone. One more and I'll move, but I can't promise I will move on.

Episodes in the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop:

2008-10-09T20:49:00.000-07:00

He said, "So what's the big deal about this one?"

"Well, she was a walking balance in purity and desire. You know? There was something pure--something consciously naive--something selfless. I trusted her. I really did. She was younger than me, but I don't know if that was it. She was one of those people that is born with an old soul, and because of it stays young and uncorrupted much longer than most of us; maybe forever, I hope so anyway. Yet, she was a fanatic for desire. She bathed in it; slept in it; let it permeate her every thought and movement. She was ravenous and insatiable. I'm not just talking about the bedroom either, Old Man. I am talking about allowing desire to overtake you in a way that splits you open at the core, leaving you to be overwhelmed by existential absurdity and the height of ecstasy. She had that. She let it have her. Desire carried over into everything she did--every way she related to me. It would dominate our conversations of love, religion, literature, people, and death. Desire would waft in the air of all these places; intoxicate the water that nourished our relations--every word, every phrase, ever word, every wink. And it all carried over into our love making--into passionate, expressive, verbal and non-verbal, deep, painful, open love-making. The kind that leaves you breathless for days. The experience of coming so close to someone else's soul--so close to the infinite abyss that they don't know how to give you directions to because they have never experienced it--never seen it--never known how to explain to anyone something they know they know is not there. We would come to the peak--to the edge--of that infinite--of that mixture of two untouchable spaceless, atemporal realms. In those moments--in those seconds--I hoped so hard, so expectantly, so wishfully. In the moments and days afterward I wept over the impossibility--the absurdity--of such an endeavor. Why so broken up? I guess alot of it is knowing I'll never know how she did it--how does one balance such naivete, such kindness, such purity with the waves and waves of desire that pour over and in every second? How can desire permeate every parcel of her Being while she stays so young, so beautiful, so exquisitely generous? How can the absurdity of Being not corrupt the Good? She's a walking non-answer to this question, and that's why there is no just forgetting her, it, all."

"Okay, son, sounds like a mouthful. You need another drink?"

I didn't respond.

Transitions

2008-10-07T10:05:00.001-07:00

There is that constant transition--the one which births language again and again, day after day--that transition from me to an-Other (imagined or not, but mostly the former). I am trapped as a wave between two nodes that I don't think truly exist. Down in me--in the infinite that holds nothing--there is a crying--an urge--a desire--so before me and so ahead of me that I can't put into the words--cannot birth into the child of this longing. The world will never see it, and neither will I. This child--my word--is inadequate for carrying the space from me to anywhere else. But, words always are--that's why we turn time and again to either the Word, or that which we believe is beyond words (love). Sometimes, we even put the two together. Despite the inadequacy, that desire never leaves. Most days, times, moments, we hope--expect--through that desire. This day--this moment--it has absorbed--overtaken--submerged--not the desire--but the expectation.

Response? I don't know. I guess I'll do what is familiar.

Dancing in the play of images, logos, and ads--losing myself in a circle of sounds, one with a catchy beat and lots of smoke. Filtering in and out of a crowd sheltered in semi-darkness; a crowd longing to peak at the light only through the filter of perpetual shadow--covering--dark. Finding solitude and solace amongst those hidden, undisclosed spaces. The ones not exposed to either the light, nor to infinite. What more do you want? What more would one--could one--think to do?

Miss

2008-10-02T00:53:00.001-07:00

I am missing. I am missing one. One is missing me. Does it really matter? Yes. What is both parties agree? Even better.

Stopping? No.

Love? Perhaps.

I miss. I am missing. Is that your fault or mine? Is there anything either of us can do about it? Probably not.

So, let's miss--miss one, and allow one to miss us, so as to fulfill our selves and hope for something different. Missing means desire is unfulfilled. Missing means we still hope, even when we know hope isn't appropriate. Miss without thinking; miss without reflection. Just miss and don't stop to ask what it means. Time--as it does--will take care of the rest.

Missing

2008-10-01T00:07:00.000-07:00

Miss. To miss. Missing.

I am missing.

We automatically think of the active sense of this sentence--I am missing. I miss something. I miss someone. I had something--experienced something--and not it is gone. Thus, I miss it.

I am missing.

I miss.

Do you miss something that was present and now gone? Or, are you missing from yourself? Have others sought for you with no success?

I am missing.

Could it be both simultaneously?

I miss you. You miss me. Is this union? No. Fulfillment? Of course not. Desire for something beyond--something out of reach--something unattainable? Yes. Maybe that is the beauty of missing. Maybe that is its tragedy also.

Maybe. Probably. Hopefully.

Options

2008-09-27T21:36:00.001-07:00

Together or separate? Which is better? I don't think either work, and I don't like either option. Is permanent liminality possible? Can we be perpetually caught between separation and companionship? How am I to love you without leaving you either lonely or still--one is solitary, the other silent. Would you rather be alone or not speak? Would you rather bathe in a self-hood without target, anchor, or direction out of which to create, cultivate, and process; or stay still in a silent stillness akin to death? Are these really the only two options? I hope not. But, I know not. I'm sorry. I wish I could do better.

2008-09-23T23:57:00.000-07:00

So, what does all that mean?

It means that despite the cliche nature of it all--I wish I could be your hero. I do. I wish I could take your breath away and willfully permit you to take mine. But, I am afraid that would smother all the gray areas about you, and about me, I find so desirable. I am afraid that decision would smother the desire that spurs both of us on--that means we are the mutual heaven-makers for the other. I want to give you what I don't have. I want to receive from you that which I know you don't have. But, would giving it mean the end of it all--of that circle of desire that gives us the temporal fragmented lives we enjoy? Would it mean death? I couldn't bear the thought of killing you, even if I wasn't existing to realize what I had done. So, I won't. So, I'll stay here in the ambiguity of the circle. Please don't hate me for it.

2008-09-23T23:50:00.000-07:00

Take my breath away; this equals love. Love is willfully giving one your breath? Willfully submitting to the finality of having no breath--of death? Strange, don't you think? So, Freud was right, the death-drive is intimately related to the experience of pleasure.

What should our response be? I don't know.

I do know that death seems to be something in which I do not want to wallow; something that repels me. If Freud was right, I think Heidegger was right too--instead of reveling in death, why don't we revel in dying so as to revel in life? Let us revel in the ambiguity, the indefiniteness, the uncanny experience of waiting for an end that is so foreign, so other, we don't really know how to think about it. In short, let us revel in the dying, not death. Let us relate, communicate, and try in a space which emanates gray, while providing the place for endless movement. Let us move in between poles--between the desire for love (death) and the bliss of finite freedom.

I can be your hero baby? Really?

A friend told me once that there are no heroes. I don't know if that is true. What I do know is that it is more fruitful to hope for the impossible, unexpected, unthinkable hero--the one that can provide love apart from death--than to rely upon, or hope for a hero within the field of our experience. The lab 'hero' should be reserved for those that provide us with the presence for which we hope, without the death which we fear so absolutely, so definitely.

Love and Space

2008-09-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

"I can be your hero baby
I can kiss away the pain
I will stand by you forever
You can take my breath away" -Enrique Iglesias, et al.

"Man is reluctant to accept that his life has come to a conclusion in that most important respect, that his hopes have been fulfilled. He hesitates to look death in teh face, and there is little that comes so close to death as fulfilled love." --Ivan Klima

Born without a choice. Thrown without a word. Running towards nothing.

These conditions--those of existence--equal isolation. They result in alienation not only from one's self, but also from all others. Is it possible to not be alienated from others when you are alienated from yourself? In this case, alienation equals isolation. So, at bottom, we hope to find ourselves. And, we think we'll find it with another. It is as if our desire--the one we didn't choose--the one with no beginning--is somehow instinctively directed at another as it searches for itself. It bellows silently--"If you overcome isolation, you will overcome alienation." It drives us to believe that if one can have an encounter, they be will his or her self for the first time.

This is why death and love are so similar. This is why death and love are always blurred to indistinction--why completed love is indistinguishable from death. Why would else would love involve one person taking another's breath away? In any other context taking someone's breath away means ending their life. Death is the end of desire; fulfilled love is meant to amount to the fulfillment of all desire. The problem is that it is in the hope--the space--where desire moves that life is lived.

Alienation is a fact of existence we owe to time. Isolation is a fact of existence we might owe to death. Love isn't overcoming either of these. Love is recognizing one's interior infinite within, moving in, within, and between the endless space in which the insatiable desire for fulfillment dwells and the infinite abyss in an-Other. Love--eros--Revelation--is never a substantive, nor can it be configured in the past tense. Love is a verb we can conjugate only in the present because it signifies the endless quest for presence--the quest, doomed to failure, to give the present of presence to an-Other and thus to receive it in return.

"Perhaps, it occurred to me, I was in some new space. I'd entered the place where oblivion was born. Or despair. And also understanding. Or perhaps even love--not as a mirage but as a space for the soul to move in." --Ivan Klima

Stretching

2008-09-07T09:07:00.001-07:00

Stretch me out. Stretch me out in the in-between--in the interim that perpetually lies between longing and completion. Stretch me out--pull me and push me--back to where I never was, toward where I'll never be. Stretch me out, and let me lie in the ambiguity--let it run all the way.

This is where I hope from? To? From my natality to my mortality? From the immemorial institution of my desire to the end I'll never know?

Stretch me out and leave me here. I don't want to fix it. I don't want to exit--I love the desert of the surreal gray. I love it as much as I will ever be able to love anything. I want to wallow, if just for this moment, in the indiscretion of not-knowing. Leave me here and don't suggest a solution. Leave me here, and if you are going to stay, at least stay silent.

Encounters

2008-09-06T22:52:00.000-07:00

At the bottom of all our hopes lies a yearning for encounter. -Ivan Klima

What depressed me were certainly not doubts about the rightness of my choice, but the knowledge that I'd made a decision once and for all. I suspected that for me the most blissful prospect was not so much having the person I loved permanently by my side as a need, from time to time, to reach out to emptiness, to let longing intensify within me to the point of agony, to alternate the pain of separation with the relief of renewed coming together, the chance of escape and return, of glimpsing before me a will-o'-the-wisp, the hope that the real encounter was still awaiting me. -Ivan Klima

At the bottom of all hope--that endless circle, the one like all circles--without beginning and without end--is the desire for an encounter. It is the desire to know an-Other, and more importantly, to be known by an-Other. What is strange about this desire is its whence--its originless origin. We fight, scratch, claw, paradoxically, even to the death, to be recognized as an irreplaceable, singular one. Without one's irreplaceability, they are as good as dead--a subhuman entity incapable of true living. Without one's singluarity we are just a machine carrying out meaningless functions within a mechanical world. "NO!" Even the non-believing souls cry this--bellow it from a hidden place--"I am more."

This desire--the one for an encounter--is born out of this fierce defense of singularity and irreplaceability. It is that singular, non-replaceable infinity that longs to be found. It is like an egg waiting to be pierced by that one--one in a million--one of trillions--swimming head--to be punctured so as to give birth to life. We believe--in a place so secret not even we have access to it, from a past we were not privileged with experiencing, in a present we did not choose, in a future we will never see--that if we can have one encounter--if even one eternal moment --that life will be born; life will be experienced; we will become what we supposed to be all along.

But, what is paradoxical, excruciatingly paradoxical, about this desire--this circle--is that it is its spinning that makes life possible. If the circle doesn't spin there is no desire for encounter simply because there is no "is". If the circle stops moving the conditions for any encounter are vanquished. Yet, as long as the circle spins--as long as that desire burns within one's soul--searing scabs and scars along the outer membrane of the secret space--the place where an encounter might take place--it will long to be understood, to express, to try to explain the secret that has no words.

Escape and return. Longing and fulfillment. Yearning and rest. This is the cirlce. This is the pendulum in which desire swings.

To choose once and for all? To claim I've had an encounter? What kind of fool would I be to make such a claim?

A greater fool for never trying? A greater loss for never trying to somehow lead another down the winding, impossibly hidden, spaceless space of the infinity in which I reside?

I can't answer that. Can you?

Thus, it is no coincidence that eros and revelation are two sides of the same coin. Revelation--the Word being communicated. Eros--communicating something so secret--so precious--so vulnerably personal--without words. Both involve the uncovering of the Infinite. Both claim to lead to an encounter--to a meeting that couldn't, wouldn't otherwise be possible. Revealing the Word with special words, and revealing one's self with no words. Revealing--physically and not. All of it is in hope for an encounter. And, both spawn words--writing. Which is itself the only way to life--the immortal kind, that is.

When I can't write anymore I'll die. But I'll die loving. -Ivan Klima

Scabs and Scars

2008-09-03T15:29:00.000-07:00

Scar. Scab. Scab. Scar. One comes sequentially after the other, and not exclusively. Scabs lead to scars; but, other things lead to scars too. With scabs however, it is a matter of only a replacing the "r"--the "are"--with the "b"--the "be". Strange, don't you think? That the constant pain of healing flesh morphs into the constant reminder of hurt and pain with only the change of "r" to "b". The change happens when the present--the presence--of "are" is changed to the general--the universal--the "be", being, to be. "I am" to "to be". The particular--the scab--the trace of pain--of a mark (even in which the memory of the blow--the incision--or the scrape has been lost) is one short consonant--one short constant--from the universal inadequacy and impossibility of healing. Time means scabs heal. Time means there will always be scars.

Transitions

2008-09-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

There is that constant transition--the one which births language again and again, day after day--that transition from me to you. I am trapped as a wave between two nodes that I don't think truly exist. Down in me--in the infinite that holds nothing--there is a crying--an urge--a desire--so before me and so ahead of me that I can't put into the words--into the child of this longing. This child--my word--is inadequate for carrying the space from me to anywhere else. Words always are--that's why we turn time and again to either the Word, or that which we believe is beyond words (love). Sometimes, we even put the two together. Despite the inadequacy, that desire never leaves. Most days, times, moments, we hope--expect--through that desire. This day--this moment--it has absorbed--overtaken--submerged--not the desire--but the expectation. Response? Dancing in the play of images, logos, and ads--losing myself in a circle of atemporality, one with a catchy beat and lots of smoke. Filtering in and out of a crowd sheltered in semi-darkness, a crowd longing to peak at the light only through the filter of perpetual shadow--covering--dark.

Episodes

2008-08-01T00:16:00.000-07:00

Just then, Saint Augustine wandered back into the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop. His beach shorts dripped sand on the floor as he sauntered over to us. The venerable Saint had been lying on the beach too long, as his face and neck (left revealed by the V-line of his white Big Dog tank top) were bright red. As he sat down, MP took another bite of his croissant, letting out another orgasmic sequence of sounds. "Ignore him," I said. LN proceeded to fill in SA on our conversation. He listened for a while, seemingly taking it all in as she told him about solitude, and language, and death, and the rest. Then, he excused himself.

After a bit, SA returned with an iced coffee and appeared ready to talk. "You're are right, to a point. All of those experiences--those experiences of finding one's self where their self ends--are solitary. I know firsthand. But, I think there are intermediate states--experiences that stand in between that loss of self, and the mundane everyday dispersion we all know so well. These states parallel death and ecstasy in that language is at least partially suspended, or at least unnecessary.

"Hmmmm, that's good. So good. Oh wow, god that is amazing." MP was enjoying his breakfast once again, and had obviously distracted the poor Saint.

"Please, pay no attention to him." TL said.

"Yes, please continue," I told him.

Gathering himself, he went on. "You see, there are times when you sit with people in mourning--times you enjoy the presence of others after the death of a friend, or a family member, or during some other form of tragedy. There are times when that loss--that hurt--that pain-seeps into the fiber of all of you in a way in which you share it. It is endemic to all of you, in that instance, within that space. The phenomenon has struck you in a way that permeates every thought, every breathe, every passing second. And, in those times, you can catch seconds or moments when you sit with others--silently--and share a space that is secret--one that you couldn't explain or show or introduce to anyone else--even if you wanted to. It isn't death--and it isn't even the complete suspension of language--but it is one of those rare human times where being together doesn't involve speaking to one another."

At this, he took a sip of his coffee and itched his now worsening sun burn.

"But, that isn't all. You can have the same sort of experience for altogether contrary reasons. Think of those times with good friends, maybe before you have to scatter and leave one another to return home or move on with life or what not. Think of the times you sit and share a meal, have some wine, and let the evening pass from sunset to warm summer darkness. Think of how the world floats away--the cares, the worries, the tomorrow--even if just for a moment. Think of the way you laugh so deep you all cease thinking and cease speaking as the laughter invades you. Think of the times you sit, silent, enjoying the few breaths of satisfied existence--in warm air, after good food, among people in the world you don't have to speak to in order to communicate with. It is at those times that selfhood and presence don't have to be solitary, but they are always temporary, and always fleeting. There is no planning either type, no holding onto them, and no formula to create them. They are events that happen to us, together, which fall out of our control. They are events that have us, possess us, and thus reveal ever more clearly that those few breaths of being-together--of Ostian community--are not ours. That is, we are not our-selves--we are always given to ourselves."

"Oh god. Hmmm. Ohhhh. That is good." MP finished his scrambled eggs and bacon.

Episodes in a Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

2008-07-20T15:51:00.000-07:00

Sitting on the shore of a semi-deserted beach, watching the sun rise over another day of concealed chaos, wondering if I can turn the wonder off long enough to enjoy a loud silence apart from myself. Listening to a voice I know I will never know is there, knowing it probably isn't; allowing the heaviness of the meaninglessness to seep in to scurry off the naivete, without allowing it to stop my breath. Trying to reach the impossible balance in a place that doesn't exist wherein "I" stop--language stops--thinking stops--consciousness stops--where it fades into a backdrop with no center--the Idyllic with no Idea.

Thinking. Language. Thoughts.

Representations. Concepts. Intentions.

Wandering back to the Smoke-Filled Coffee shop so as no to too get lonely, only to find myself resenting the bodies all around me. I unexpectedly ran into friends--good friends--the kind that involve memories, laughter, smiles, and nostalgia. We sat. We talked. MP, TL, and LN were in good form, and soon the conversation led to "things of meaning."

I told them, "Religion and philosophy are concerned with Presence and Time. We desire--long for--hope for a time when time will cease--when it will stop--hold still--and "I" will be present. We long for that time when the world disappears--when thinking--language--representation--concepts--all stop and me and myself are finally one in a way that no longer requires process, development, or further journeying. We want time to stop, but we want to be present when it does."

MP took a bite of the full breakfast he had ordered: "HMMMMMM. Oh yeah, ohhh. It's good."

We ignored him.

TL chimed in, "I think you're right. This is what the myth of love is about; this is what the mythology of sex describes. We want to find ourselves in one--find one that can make time irrelevant--hold our identity stable so that there is no flux--no danger of it being taken away--permanence. In sex, the world disappears for a moment, or a couple if you are lucky. The room spins until it finally no longer exists. Time wisps away until you don't know how long has passed. All that you know is your body and their's--you are present only to them, and thus, to yourself. Time and space cease, the world liquidated into the breathing, feeling, overhwelming pleasure--and the climax. You are dead. There is unspeakable--inexpressible--silent experiences that transcend time and space. In those moments, there is no thinking--no language--no "self." No, the self ceases and thus, for a few moments, you are free to become your true "self".

"The problem," LN said, "is that it is always fleeting. Eventually, the room comes back--you see your shirt on the lampshade, your partners knickers on the windowsill, and you stare at the ceiling as the world, as language, as time, and space filter back--forcing yourself to vanish once again. You stare at the ceiling, breathing heavy in someone else's arms, wondering why it can't last forever and why the stopping always has to stop."

"It's the same with death," I said. "Death brings the end of language and yourself. Death, sex, love, and union with God--they aren't all that different. They all long for an experience of self--a permanent, whole self--in a phenomenon that requires the self to die--to cease--in order to experience it. And you know what else: they are all solitary endeavors."

I told them how Buber and Levinas taught me that love requires two people to ignore the rest in order to enter into a worldless vision of their selves. I told them how Heidegger taught me that death is always only my own--and thus, I am always alone. Mystical visions--union with God--are solitary journeys that involves one single soul.

Why does self-presence require the death of the self--the time where language--consciousness--thinking are no longer? And, why does it always involve the disappearance of the world--why does it have to be so lonely?

2008-07-19T12:47:00.000-07:00

Episodes in a Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

2008-07-10T18:07:00.000-07:00

SA left me thinking a bit. Thinking about "things that matter" as they say. Thinking about the circle--the ring--the one that centers around nothing (like all circles I guess).

I sat and sipped my espresso. I sat and looked at the bodies scurrying about under the guise of the ubiquitous sun beating down on the shiny beach. I wondered if it was still possible to "confess" like the Saint had done. Was it still possible to find the place that doesn't exist? Possible to see the cut inside of me where the circle with no space started?

It's funny, you know. Funny to think these thoughts in this electric world; funny to know that as I think them my audience is both infinite and nothing all at once. Who will read it? Who reads it? Probably no one--probably not enough people to count as someone. Yet, who reads it? Everyone: my-self, the thoughts, the interior that is neither inner nor outer, the Other I confess to, the one that hovers over me with an all-knowing gaze--I am torn open and available to all. I am brought within a matrix of an infinite sea of information--the identities and ipseities of the confessors melting into one transcendent source of unavoidable gaze. There You are--looking into me. Here, "I" am, unable to look away, and more, unable to stop writing--to stop confessing--to stop telling You of the utter lack I feel in every breath.

It's funny, you know. This transcendent matrix of digital flows that we all confess to--the one available to all those seeking salvation--all those seeking rest--all those wandering in the desert of interiority. Come, all you who are heavy burdened--find your rest here.

I guess that is the only rest we have left. I guess we can hope to rest in thee as nodes in a changing network--one in which we are thrown about--incised--exposed-vulnerable--and ultimately, just like the venerable Saint, always left wondering when the tears, the blood, the desire, and the hope will cease turning inside the ring--the spaceless space--and come to a full stop. Will it be in death or in You? I guess we'll never know.

Episodes in a Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop: SA

2008-07-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

I saw Augustine one day. He was drinking a latte. After a minute filled with hesitation, disgust, admiration, and total bewilderment--I walked up to his window-side location and asked if I could join him. The Bishop was actually quite fashionable. He told me how global warming would be the end of us all. We discussed how Internet had changed our perceptions of reality, communication, and such. He told me why he thought Obama wasn't as revolutionary as we might have hoped.

After a bit of enjoyable conversation and surprisingly comfortable laughter, I asked him about his confession--the famous one. I wanted to know if he felt like it did any good--did it help? "Were you able to stop being such a question to yourself?" I asked. "Were you able to find the rest you were looking for?"

He was a bit caught off guard I think, and then a bit guarded. He thought. He mumbled. He looked. He breathed. Then, he told me, "I didn't find any thing in particular. I was confessing to a God who already knew everything about me--what good could that do? He didn't learn anything. Did I? Well, I didn't learn my "self" if that is what you are wondering. I didn't collect myself into the eternal rest I was looking for. But, I did find something else. I found the spaceless space. I found the place inside of me where I am not. It's a place hidden--I won't say it's deep, because it is spaceless, this space. I won't say it's hidden, because a spaceless space can't hide. I won't say it's secret, because it is a place where I don't exist--how can I keep a secret I don't know? But, I found it. I found the place inside of me that is no place, no space, no circle, no ring, and no time. At first I wanted to fill it; to fulfill it. But, over time, I realized a timeless, spaceless place can't be filled. Then, I wanted an answer. I asked God how he put it there? How he put himself there, in me, in a place where I am not. God didn't answer. I tried to remember why and how it got there, but my memory had no recollection of any of it. How do you find a place inside you that isn't a part of you? A place where you don't know? A place where knowing doesn't help?"

All of this was getting to be a bit much, so I told him I had to go to the bathroom. In the urinal I actually pissed a bit on my belt, but not too much. I was hoping for two things: a) The Saint would be gone when I got back, or b) he wouldn't see the piss on my jeans.

When I returned, he was still there. I didn't get a word in edgewise when he started again.

"With that confession I learned something, but I didn't learn it about me. I learned something I don't know and something for which there is no answering--even from God. I learned about the space, that is not part of me, that makes time go. It makes temporality--your life--every instant--absent. I met the motion, the circle, the place, the space, the temporal, Time. I met the one that makes every now disappear as soon as you try to say it. I met the space where the present slips away into the past and the future never arrives. I met the emptiness that makes the absence of your life continue to run."

"Wow," I said, thinking about dinner. "Was it worth it?"

"Worth, I don't know. I'm not sure worth matters in this non-place. But, I tell you what--it was nice to meet that place inside me where I am not. You know what I saw when I got there?" He said this leaning in, and very excited.

"What?"

"I saw the most beautiful emptiness. I saw a glimmering absence; a bewildering space otuside of space. A time that stands still outside of time. And, you know what? I saw the most vile, most irrepresentable, most indescribably disgusting ring of nothing--pure nausea--pure death--the instant of non-presence--the instant of existence vomiting its hope--the place of tingling hopelessness.

It's there, it is there that I found myself. Well, I found that there was no me to find.

And, I realized something: If you or anyone else tries to get near it--to fix it--to fill it--to see it--life, hope, time, trying, desire, joy, ecstasy, thought is annihilated. I found the non-self that makes the self of time and space continue.

Don't go near me--the non-me--there. Don't try to inch close to quench my desire. Don't promise me you'll find that non-space to make it face the light. Don't hold a knife to the non-me and try to remove it. Leave it. Exit. Don't think it. Don't approach it. Don't look for it.

Let's all be embarrassed about it together. Let's agree to let ourselves die--each one of us--each non-self--in that non-place, so we can go on pretending to live. Let's allow time to swallow us--abandon us--push us into oblivion--and in the meantime we'll hope beyond hope--beyond tears--beyond blood--beyond space and time--without words--without writing--that the non-self we have agreed to abandon will end up being the Good we all dream of, and not the Devil we feel lurking in places we don't have."

"Okay," I said. Thank you. I appreciate your honesty.

We had a few beers that night, and some more laughs. We didn't talk about whatever he was talking about. For that, I was grateful.

2008-06-22T09:45:00.000-07:00

Let the ambiguity run all the way. No harnessing. No conditioning. Let it run from the beginning to the end. From the first shock of breath to the shock of its absence. Let the ambiguity make you shiver; let it ride throughout your fragile body and rivet you in each moment. Let the ambiguity overshadow, overcome, and overwhelm. Don't run. Don't duck. Don't hide. Don't shy away. And most of all, don't try to comprehend--don't try to understand--don't try to reduce--just let it ride. Let it throw you back on your throwness and shove you forward into your still undisclosed self. Yes, let the ambiguity run. Let it run from beginning to end. From the immemorial time of creation's dawn to the ineluctable end of its apocalypse. From the time you hear the call, to the time you answer the call. From the time of invisibility to the time of impossibility. Let's let it take us into the rush of the sea--churn us, flip us, bewilder us, and confuse us. Let's have it. Let's have it all.

Episodes In, Out of, but Never Outside the Smoke-Filled Coffee Shop

2008-03-18T01:07:00.000-07:00

After that old man died, I thought of him; I talked to him. It was funny--I talked to him in unexpected moments about unexpected things. I told him about the girl, and the play of the ocean, and the days. I don't know why--but I talked. I spoke. I expressed.

Did he respond? Of course not, he was dead. What are you crazy?

After that old man died, I couldn't bear the weight of reflection. Instead of thinking, I danced. Instead of figuring, I played. Goodness what a feeling--to lose yourself in the dance and to play in the play. Goodness what a feeling--to forget the burden of it all in the movement, the forces, the difference.

I sat with friends and laughed. I sat with friends and tried. We tried together. We never talked about trying together--that was the implicit part I guess; but we tried together. We ate. We drank. We laughed. We complained. We wept. This is life. This is trying. We all try our best, you know? What more do you want? You want me to swallow the ocean every day without drowning? Well, fuck you. I'd rather either drown, or not deal with the ocean.

Accidents and Love

2008-03-16T01:33:00.000-07:00

So she said what's the problem baby
What's the problem I don't know
Well maybe I'm in love (love)
Think about it every time
I think about it
Can't stop thinking 'bout it

Two things: Problems and "I don't know." First, obviously something is wrong--something is out of sorts--out of equilibrium; just not right. But, what? This brings us to 2, or problem number 2--I don't know. If there is a problem, shouldn't I know about it? And, how come she has to ask me for me to realize it? Then . . . What? Love? That seems drastic don't you think? From a problem (one I don't apparently know about) to love in just one breath? I can't stop thinking about it though. Which one--love or the problem? I don't know--the two have become indiscrete now--now that is the problem.

How much longer will it take to cure this
Just to cure it cause I can't ignore it if it's love (love)
Makes me wanna turn around and face me but I don't know nothing 'bout love

Now finally to a question that makes sense: How much longer? How much longer to cure this problem I don't know about? And, if it's love, I can't ignore it? Now finally to an answer--I don't know anything about love, just like I don't know anything about my problem. I do want to turn--in the same moment I want to both turn and run from this problem of love I don't know about, and also turn towards me--myself--even though I don't know nothing about love. Could I learn? What is there to learn about love? And, if you can learn about it, is it love? Probably not. The problem--while becoming more elucidated--seems to be becoming more unknown.

Come on, come on
Turn a little faster
Come on, come on
The world will follow after
Come on, come on
Cause everybody's after love

Turn faster? Which way? The world? I don't think I want the world following me here--following me to face myself. I don't know if everyone is after love--it seems, and this is the point, that if love is a problem that requires me to face myself--maybe for the first time--then everyone, including me isn't after love, but instead, I come after love as love comes upon me.

Well baby I surrender
To the strawberry ice cream
Never ever end of all this love
Well I didn't mean to do it
But there's no escaping your love

That is what this problem takes, doesn't it? Surrender. Surrender of me to myself and to you simultaneously. I'll try. But surrender implies no escaping--even if I want to. Surrender means it has me--you have me--and, maybe this is the most scary part, I have you.

We're accidentally in love
Accidentally in love

Accidentally is the right adjective. Love is an accident, and only an accident. If we were after it--it wouldn't be a problem, and we would certainly think we knew something about it. But, as it stands, it is a problem and it is one of which I know nothing. Love comes after me--and I only come--appear--after love--before you--in you. Accidentally--any other way and love is no longer a problem--and that is a problem of which nothing can be done.

Love ...I'm in love

I'm in the problem and in the un-knowing. I'm in the surrender and in control. I'm in you and falling out of you. It's a problem--one I hope I stay in, and one I hope never to know nothing about.

2008-03-11T00:30:00.000-07:00

Thrown before the throes which govern existence--life--breath--I faltered. I left a temple of security for a sky full of, yes, beauty, but also, darkness and only scattered lights. It was here I searched for an anchor--a grounding--a sign that could orient me to my lattitude--one that would clue me into the strange game played on this locale.

As I did, I tried. I promise, I tried. I tried to prove. I tried to show. I tried to find. I tried to help. In so doing, I made smiles, impressions, fools, and hurt. In so doing, I faltered and found not the signifier I so desperately needed to help me along life's way.

At some point however, I met the Universe. I met the Abyss which constitutes the light, the dark, and the difference between the two. I met the One disseminated into an infinite amount of parts never to be reassembled ever again (or ever before). I met the voice that calls through silence and never speaks.

You know what I heard in that moment?

"Trust, try, and thank. Don't prove to anyone that you belong in this locale--why not? Because none of you do and none of you ever will. Don't try to fool yourself into thinking you are more or better--why not? Because you know--in every breath--you have no signifier--no anchor--no Being--to tell you such things. And, there is no point in doing so. Play the role in the play which you have been given-play in the play and rejoice in its in-finitude--its lack of determinacy--its endless play. Play in the play and thank--not "me", not One, not you--along the way. Just thank. Realized that in every moment those with you in this barren and fruitful topos are just as lost and just as at home as you. Realize they are doing their best in every breath with no guide and no signifier. Thank and try. Swallow, but don't drown."

You know what I said?

"Ok"

More or Less Dancing

2008-03-05T00:12:00.000-08:00

It's funny you know . . . This business of dancing. I don't know the words and I don't know the song. Worse yet, I don't even know the steps. I guess that is what makes it no business at all--there is no purpose, no destination, and no know-how. I guess that is what makes it a game--a game to be played without rationale, without recourse, without worry.

But, it's hard not to worry, isn't it? I remember when we danced so long ago--across an ocean or two--in a world of transition, tremor, and excruciating temporality. It has been some time now. But I know I worried then too. I want to play, but I want to play right. You know?

So, that leaves the questions: Can you dance and worry at the same time? Probably not. How does one play--that is, enter the dance--without worry? How does one suspend their past--their-self--the scars from past dances--long enough to lose their-self in the dance with an-other?

I pray for the strength to be weak that way. I pray for the miracle of suspension and the triumph of desire over the still lingering, still residual "why". But, most of all, I pray that someday I'll dance and sing a song without knowing the words. I pray that I'll play in a world unworldly, in a way exquisitely and all too (in)appropriate.

2008-02-29T10:35:00.001-08:00

Sitting, legs crossed, trying to catch up with the blur that accompanies each inhale. Sitting, wondering why each one carries so much color, so much wonder, so much life, and yet knowing each one is never accompanied by breath. Inhale and breath--these don't always go together. So, sitting, trying to catch up with the blur that goes with each inhale, wondering why each one lacks the breath its supposed to signify. Angry and confused in the same inhale, holding it in with the hope that if it stays long enough it might leave when I inevitably exhale. Angry at lessons never learned and identities never stabilized. Angry at the drive--with each inhale--to be the universal in the particular, and realizing that drives leaves one with neither. Not willing to be another part in the particular, but unable by an infinite measure to be any sort of universal. Sad at the hurt that each breath means for you--for all--and wishing I knew what could be done to--no, not stop the "breathing"--but to let it begin for the first time. Left with the choice to let the hurt sting your lungs--my lungs--lungs--to trust they can take it--or, to try again in futility and in selfishness. Sitting, legs crossed, listening to my heart beat in the stillness of absurdity.

Songs, Dancing, and Words

2008-02-28T22:17:00.000-08:00

I still remember that time when we were dancing
We were dancing to a song that I'd heard

Do you remember the time(s) we danced? Do you remember the song we heard? I know I heard it, but at the time I wasn't sure if you had. I remember dancing and I remember the song--the two go together you know. You know?

Your face was simple and your hands were naked

I saw it. I saw it in your face--I saw the beauty and the mortality roll up into a ball of vulnerability and surprise. I felt in those hands as we danced--the longing for the song we both wanted to last longer than we both knew it could. I felt the hope of something new and the worry that comes with hope of something knew. But, guess what? The whole time . . .

I was singing without knowing the words

I was. I danced with you to a tune I didn't know. I sang to you--did you know that?--I sang to you a song, but I didn't know the words. And, I know you didn't either. But that's what made it such a wonderful dance; that's what makes it such a wonderful song. The words are half-written--half-composed. They remain suspended above the two of us as we twirl, laugh, and move. They remain undecided and inexressible just as long as we keep dancing. It's funny--funny to dance to a song we keep from being written by continuing to dance. It's funny to sing a song to you that can never be finished, and never be heard. I'm just glad you have ears to listen and you aren't tired of dancing.

But I started listening to the wolves in the timber
Wolves in the timber at night
I heard their songs when I looked in the mirror
In the howls and the moons round my eyes

I don't know if I started to listen to them or if they started to listen to me. After all, I was dancing and singing the inexpressible song. So, how did I hear them? And, what did they hear me cry?

Then winter came and there was little left between us
Skin and bones of love won't make a meal
I felt my eyes drifting over your shoulder
There were wolves at the edge of the field

There was, wasn't there? A winter that felt colder than usual. A little left between us--an excess of lack--a call to stop dancing. We had to get back to the world, back to the words. We weren't allowed to stay lost in the reticence only we heard and the world only we knew. We weren't allowed to stay in the dance--in the circle--beneath the suspended song we didn't know, but which knew us.

Then one day I just woke up
And the wolves were all there
Wolves in the piano
Wolves underneath the stairs
Wolves inside the hinges
Circling round my door
At night inside the bedsprings
Clicking cross the floor
I don't know how they found me
I'll never know quite how
I still can't believe they heard me
That I was howling out that loud

I remember that days(s). That day when it was only the wolves--in my text, in my pen, my fingers, my . . . song. Did they find you too? Did they hear you? I hope not, but I suspect so. It's hard not to listen to them; to not let them frighten us into forgetting there even was a song--especially one with no words and no sound.

At times in the frozen nights I go roaming
In the bed she used to share with me
I wake in the fields with the cold and the lonesome
The moon's the only face that I see

Roaming in a place unending and untraceable. Searching in a field where nothing grows, and nothing surely blossoms. The cold and the lonesome stretch along a horizon with no horizon. They make me shiver in my bones and writhe in my own skin. I crawl within myself trying to find a way out of the horizon--out of the immanence of the fear the wolves left me. I try to crawl through myself to a place where the field breaks for something different; something unexpected.

And, when I do, just before morning--when the dreams of wolves, and horizons, and the bed we used to share has me under--has me suffocated--I hear that song. I hear the one we used to dance to--the one with no words. Well, there are words--we just don't know them yet. There are words, but they are suspended--waiting--for me and you to stop dancing. I hear the silence of the song we created and the dance we keep hoping to share. And, then I wake--and the wolves scatter across the field as the thaw evaporates into the "without why" of trying again.

People ask, "why?" And I say, "You've got the wrong question and the wrong intention. We are always left without why. But, that doesn't mean we can't sing a song without words, and it doesn't mean we can't dance. Dancing is the best part."

No Wonder

2008-02-20T22:57:00.000-08:00

It's time, isn't it? Time to write about something? To have something to say--something to write about. It's time--time to reflect, or interject, or enlighten. It's time to bleed all over the screen, through these fingers. It's time to throw up through the unseen networks that encapsulate us--tie us in--tie us together.

Time to write. But, after all this time--there is no writing. No bleeding. No regurgitating.

No feeling?

No trying?

No . . . what?

________________

I saw you today--saw you hurt. I saw you try. I saw you submerge and be overwhelmed. I saw you care, hope, and do your best. It's not that I don't care, it's just that I don't know how. I don't know how to be a good person. I guess, well I could try to save you. But, we both know that won't happen. We both know saving isn't something humans do. So, I am left with walking--with callous, despair, and a genuine lack of naivete.

Is there a third way? Is there a 'grown-up' way? Some way that 'adults' would do it?

I don't know. I am not sure I care. After all, to be an adult is to simply pretend you are no longer a child. Life forces this decision upon us. It isn't one we make willingly. But, it is one we should stay cognizant of. Being an adult isn't anything different than having to face the absurdity of breathing without admitting you have no idea about how or why or whence. Being an adult is nothing more than feeling your heart beat through your chest and not being able to stop long enough to let it completely disorient you. Being an adult is not having the time or desire to stop--to let the stars become yellow blurs, the trees strange silhouettes, and the cold evening air a jolt--a reminder--of both meaning and meaninglessness.

I'd rather do it the kid's way--the naive way--but, we both know that isn't allowed either. Why? Because we are neither creative, nor strong enough to be children any longer.

______

So, fuck it. No writing. No words. No bleeding. No saving. No wonder. That's right--no wonder is the no wonder there is no writing.

Scars and Scabs

2008-02-14T17:51:00.000-08:00

Overcoming, Over-coming . . .

2008-01-26T23:52:00.000-08:00

Overcomes. Over-comes. Over-cums. Being human means there is no overcoming—no becoming what you need and should be. There is no coming over anywhere—over-coming. There is no overcoming when it comes to cumming; no over-cumming. Do it over, do it more—it doesn’t matter, doesn’t make a difference. No matter how much, the result is the same. Strain, try, excrete, grunt—both you are left empty; both of you are left open. It is the essence of being human—the epitome of the effort to become something—someone—somewhere—that simply does not exist. Over-cumming? You want to overcome where? Overcome how? Yes, enjoy the journey—the ride—the path. Thank you for the sermon—goodness you are insightful. Go ahead—the journey, if you are lucky—can and will be enjoyable. But, there is always the building—always the constructing—the semblance of hope that creeps into the anticipation of cumming—the hope that this time time itself may be overcome by over-cumming. What am I talking about? I’m talking about immortality and permanence; happiness and rest. I’m talking about the oh-so-human need to find the path that leads to immortality and permanence in order to enjoy happiness and rest. I’m talking about the need to find a home in a place, as a being, that has none. Yes, a child may appear—I know; I understand. Thank you for the reminder. But, how does the child relate to over-cumming? How does the child equate to having over-cum? Does the child solve the difficulties—fulfill the hope—quell the fear-? Will a child change this situation? Maybe. Maybe not. But don’t tell me that is the easy answer—the answer to the question I put to myself—to all ourSelves. Plato knew long before any of us were children that birth is not about children, but about immortality. Birth—is about overcoming and if you think it will happen—if over-cumming is possible, well I don’t know what to say. But, at least don’t tell me the appearance of the other will put me the quest to rest. Don’t tell me that birth equals over-cumming. After all, how could 6 billion people be wrong?

"If I had Eyes"

2008-01-26T23:35:00.000-08:00

If I had eyes in the back of my head
I would have told you that
You looked good
As I walked away

Eyes in the back? Eyes to see behind? Eyes to see a behind I can't or won't turn around to make an in-front-of. Eyes to see you even when I'm not looking. A comment--a compliment--to make you feel what you are, to make you see how you are. My eyes--these ones that make the behind possible--allow you to see who you are? Maybe. Maybe not.

The more of this or less of this or is there any difference
or are we just holding onto the things we don't have anymore

From seeing to holding--from sight to touch. What we can't see we can't hold? And, how does one hold onto something they no longer have? How does one hold on to absence?

Sometimes time doesn't heal
No not at all
Just stand still
While we fall
In or out of love again I doubt I'm gonna win you back
When you got eyes like that
It won't let me in

Time, healing? Strange. Time is the opposite of healing--it is the temporal antecedent to death--the experience that makes my experience of my-self impossible.

Stand still? In time? In the movement which is unbearable, inexpressible, uncanny? Stand still and fall in and out--strange.

And, those eyes. Those eyes--won't let me in to a place not even you know; a place not even you get access to. Those eyes--the locale of a world irreducible, even if it remains without why. Those eyes--the ones looking through me to the place I don't know--the one inside I don't have access to.

That's the answer isn't it? All of this talk of time, of falling, of love. It ends with those eyes--the ones that take me out of time--out of the unavoidable path towards my impossible end--that take me to a world which remains without why, but where the question of why is suspended in favor of something secret, something inexpressible, but something so, so Good.

Lot of people spend their time just floating
We were victims together but lonely
You got hungry eyes that just can't look forward
Can't give them enough but we just can't start over
Building with bent nails we're
falling but holding, I don't wanna take up anymore of your time
Time time time

Victims--of time, yes. Who isn't? Eyes--looking forward into a back that wants to see you--wants to see through you--but can't make the back the front. Falling, time, holding--a question without answer--without origin or end.

What then? What's left?

That world--the one we shared--the one without time--that is the eternal and that is the place to look. Turn your eyes there and let it the chorus chime as long as it takes--time, time, time.