ricepeste

Hell Is A Place Of Loneliness

2008-04-11T15:13:53Z

"For it is just that a man not look for his pleasure
In the forest of blood of the following morning
The sky has coastlines where life can be avoided
and some bodies must not repeat themselves at sunrise"
-F.G. Lorca, ( by way of Jack Spicer's After Lorca )

This is Jack Spicer, who spoke about poetic inspiration coming from the outside, the poet being like an antenna, or like the radio in Cocteau's Orpheus film, him sitting at his typewriter for hours for a single line to come through, no revisions ... ( The House That Jack Built )
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"Graftings create certain difficulties. The result is almost always fragile monsters: two rival heads that gnaw on each other and draw all the blood from a half-body; eagles with the beaks of doves, that destroy themselves each time they attack; doves with the beaks of eagles, that stab one another when they kiss; paralytic butterflies. Incest is common law. There is nothing they like more than unions within the same family. There is nothing they like more than unions within the same family. But it is baseless superstition to attribute to this circumstance the poverty of the results.
carried away with the enthusiasm of these experiments, I cut a trench in one from top to bottom, I take the eyes of another, I chop off legs, add arms, beaks, horns. I gather crowds which I regiment into schools, barracks, wards, convents. I flatter instincts, I cut and recut tendencies and wings. I make the round sharp, the smooth shiny, I soften bones, and ossify viscera. I dam up natural inclinations. And thus I create graceful beings with a little life"
-- Octavio Paz, Eagle or Sun?

This reminding me of my aborted project to write a bestiary, and my time spent researching them at the NY Research Library, as Fashion Week was unrolling just outside, in Bryant Park ... also, reading Gaston Bachelard's critical look at Les Chants de Maldoror, which has an entire chapter devoted to the some 200 animals / animal scenes which comprise the book, and expounding on his concept of cruelty: animals that do not kill, but rend, and tear, the eagle that inserts it's head into the body of the dragon in midair ... the interesting and, to me, inadequate hypothesis that Lautreamont wrote this book as a rebellion against the castrating influence of his teachers in boarding school ...
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( Detox ) dream where i was at Venice Beach, California, and a group of small, elegantly dressed kids led me, drunk, into a youtube-inspired attempted beating then, afterwards, I find myself in an interview with them, where they say they decided to do it because they hated my friend ( "he's friends with that Matt Cannon, from South Carolina, what a loser" ); then the surprise guest comes into the studio : Chloe Sevigny, who, after I make the comment that it's absurd that these guys are doing what they're doing ( "you are some pretty, pretty boys", she says, almost fawningly ), and answers some questions about what she feels to of merit in the genre, she looks at me angrily, mumbles something, then gets up, "OKay", grabs her purse, then heads to the door, after which I follow her, saying, "but I loved you"; and she, turning, "and how long did you love me?" tears welling up in her eyes, "years", I said, lowering her head, then following her as she steps out of the ( TV studio? ) into the sunlight and palm trees ...
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So one of the decisive factors in my leaving for the West coast is that the doorman at the Market Hotel in Brooklyn, who owns the Silent Barn, told me last time I went there that I'd mangled his hand by tackling him down their grand stairway, while being kicked out for feeling up one of the girls in Telepathe. He said it cost him $300 to have his bone set, and that he has no insurance. I gave him my contact info, which he checked against my Driver's license, so's I'm afraid he might take me to small claim's court. I'd like to help the guy out, but that would liquify my assets, and someone told him he was kind of asking for it. As for me, I don't remember. In any case, if I stay in NY much longer, I'm going to be stuck where I'm at: so, despite my fears of indigence elsewhere, in that direction must I go ...
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My last email to my father went like this: "suck my dick in hell. Love, Cris". I've written him numerous lengthy, coruscating emails basically telling him: fuck you for what you did to me, where you put me. But to no effect. I'm hoping this one will have the desired effect. That, and I know he'd appreciate the incest theme. According to Jack Spicer, hell is "the lack of anything but the eternal to look at / The expansiveness of salt / The lack of any bed but one's / music to sleep in".
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I've always identified with gays because of my sensitivity - strangevisitor's youtube of a Morrissey interview ( just scroll through his entries and you'll find it ) how I can't detox myself in my room where I live for a couple of days without them coming by to check on me, make sure that I'm not going insane -- they start rumors that I'm crying, which of course isn't true, I couldn't be happier not having to deal with the general population, and especially not the ghoul-like supporting staff that seem to enjoy nothing nore than to see someone like me fall into pain, to suffer ( I've said this before: The thing they say that hurts me the most, and that I think consoles their medicocity and self-importance the most is that I am weak, which, if you look at the details of my life, is hardly the case. Anyway, I don't get my two days alone here, much less Morrissey's 3 mos... Remember the pain caused after a rumor started in Maine that I'd done my 3 mos. in the County locked in my cell, afraid to come out -- which, of course, would've had me starve to death; in fact, I was happy to have a single cell, to which I was moved after my previous, bankrobbing cellmate threw a wailing fit after some of my spit-wad matter fell on him from my top bunk... indeed, the 3 mos. I did in there was one of the most hermetic experiences of my life - a 300 pg. "cartoon" of a novel, and some 250 pgs. a day of reading ... I exercised in the common area, did "road work" with friends on the top tier, and beat hell out of a guy who daily messed with me -- the difficulty of living such a public, open-air life, now that I've become increasingly introverted - a life that I once enjoyed, but now, in my increasingly pained mental state, having to leave my coccoon ...

The June Gemini

2008-03-14T17:52:06Z

"...then I shuddered as I remembered that, according to a tradition well known in Germany, every man has a double and that when he sees him, death is near" -- Gerard de Nerval, Aurelia

I went to bed early, after reading most of this short dialogue of disintegration, and an image came to me, of the Gemini twins, joined at the hips, and the horror they must experience, being constantly confronted with their double ... I feel like my life, for the last couple of years, has been like this, coding death in my shadow ...

After Nerval remembers a man who had been released from jail the night he'd been imprisoned for insane behavior, under his own name: "...But who exactly was this spirit who was myself and yet outside myself? Was he the double of legend or the mystical brother whom the Orientals call ferouer? Had I not been struck by the tale of the knight who had spent an entire night in a forest battling an unknown adversary who was none other than himself?"
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"the seventh of the many philosophical systems of India recorded by Paul Dressen denies that the self can be an immediate object of knowledge, because if our soul were knowable, a second soul would be required to know the first" ... "Schopenhauer rediscovers this idea around 1843. 'The knower himself,' he repeats, 'cannot be known precisely as such, otherwise he would be the known of another knower'" -- J.L. Borges, Time and J.W. Dunne'
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"I caress the white bears without reaching you" -- Andre Breton, Mad Love

Old Time Relijun

2008-01-20T06:54:47Z

For absintheur: "Let's pull the smiles inside" ; ( that one presidented by Bambi Lake, in memory of the boombox days, Polk st, baby ...
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& don't wory anout "saving me from", let's just acknowledge the fucking darkness -

Cold Harbor

2008-01-19T01:59:49Z

The Night They Tore It - because I tried to post it another alcohol-sensitive night not so long ago and the tag didn't work. The only thing that will actually produce/ bring me to choking tears is the thought of things like, well, the civil war, and, "The Night They Tore Old Dixie Down" ... the approach to Richmond, the worst of which took place in my backyard, ( I'll spare you the appenadages -- Battle of Cold Harbor/ Bloody Run Creek ) netting 3,500-7,000 deaths in about twenty minutes, which, of course, is more than U.S. casualties in the entire Gulf War ...

Which brings me to thoughts of growing up in Mechanicsville, VA, which I am brought back to on reactionary drunk trips, thinking how the the smell and tang of the soil was taken up by , specificially, Jason Mraz to enormous fame, ( if that's what you want to call "the sound of the soil", or "enormous fame" ) just I tell you without acid that the boy is notorious for investing a voice that he hidn't then, and a lot of people would rather he not now ...

Which brings us to Lee Davis High, strangevisitor... which, after this Morrissey interview, though not the High of English hooliganism which he describes ( and, yeah, I've seen on my travels ); we did get botched for a fairly genuine "race riot" when I was in 10th grade; most of the rest was pretty demure, remember a friend saying, "look how older women in this town dress", which you'll see in this video, and though I say I knew 'em hot and young when I came through, I love this one for her immediacy, and excitability ...

Back, oh oh, that works: 11:11: incorrigibile. Put down I'm not there, I'm Only Bleeding, Ma, and let me get on with "this".
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& for my boss at Kim's, Mr. Lennon's is beautiful ( I'm jerking off now ) but I thought I had it well there ( Sandston, VA, what is it-"re-immigrant" "recalcitrant" brothers )-- sorry nothing from my mobile nights, mo.mo.

Whoa Whoa (It Was) Placebo

2008-01-09T00:00:42Z

Whoa-Oh, Placebo
No more pins in your eye-eyes!

Whoa, Oh, Placebo
No more tears in your eyes

Jukebox

2008-01-07T02:35:27Z

Liaisons Dangereuses-Los Ninos En El Parque

DAF-Mussolini

Pil-Careering

Suicide-Dream Baby Dream

ESG-Moody

Cocorosie-Animals

Chrome-New Age

Lou Reed-Street Hassle [1] [2]

Xiu Xiu-Clowne Town

Tricky-Christiansands

Amy Winehouse-Beat It

Feist-1.2.3.4

Into The New Year

2008-01-07T01:10:00Z

1-03: I spent last night watching my roommate's television , which he found in the trash, down the block, where he finds all his ( largely useless ) appliances ... coing in last night with a vase of plastic flowers his brother gave him, and a large pack of carrots with which to test out the juicer that he brought home a couple of weeks ago ... there's a permanent bar of snow on the screen, which shifts position if you apply pressure to it, the placing on of the faux flowers tilting it to cover half the screen, making me cock my head sideways in a comical attempt to see under it ... he spent a good hour disassembling the juicer, showing it the same attention that my father would, in cleaning one of his guns ... later, we fed the carrots to the machine, surprised to find that it produced a large amount of orange pulp, and only a small amount of juice, a couple of small glasses, which tasted sweet, but gritty ( as he'd neglected to clean the carrots ) ... this morning, after i woke, and came back from the deli with my cinnamon bun and coffee, I find him with the radio on loud, his Christian station, an after-Christmas reprise of "Silent Night" filling the room with it's sober, warm glow, reaching into the crummy, linoleum corners ... he lovingly cleaning out the machine's compartments, still carrot-clogged from the previous night's vegetable debauch, telling me that he's going to sell it to the grocery store on Forest Avenue, and if that doesn't work, at the liquor store ... I come back from my day in Manhattan, early evening, see that he's watching the Spanish-langguage channel, a soap opera full of extreme facial close ups, betrayed grimaces ... find that he's taken the flowers off the television, improving the picture somewhat ... he tells me, sulkily, that no one wanted to buy the juicer, and drifts off to sleep, shortly after ... A couple hours later, he wakes up, while I'm watching Public Access, walks to the television, and turns it off. "I was watching that," I said. "It's my television," he replies, I deciding that it's not the best time to remind him that he always watches television in the mornings, while I'm sleeping ... the following morning, he gets up, cheerful, having decided that he's going to give the juicer to one of his "brothers", a Puerto Rican guy who'd done some 20 years in prison, and settled here, apparently giving up on life in society ... after he leaves, having offered my roommate $$ for it, which he refuses, he gets himself a glass of water from the tap, telling me, "we don't need juice, as long as we've got water," taking a sip, savoring it, "I love water. You can do a lot with water. You can take a bath in water, wash a car with water. All you need is water to keep your whole house clean. WATER HELPS YOU KEEP YOUR WHOLE LIFE CLEAN!" ... ( This making me think of Georg Trakl, who I'm re-reading, who is said to have first attempted suicide at the age of five by walking out into a lake, and having to be rescued; who told his friends that all he saw of the world, until the age of 20, was water ...
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In Philip Whalen's New Year poem:

"The Scholiast refers to a Gaulish custom of selling their lives for money, and, after a year of feasting, allowing themselves to be stoned to death by the populace" -- Nora K. Chadwick, The Druids

"St Honore"--being Balzac--"preserve us against black coffee
these japanese knickknacks & from writing ourselves
To death instead of dope, syphilis, the madhouse, jail
suicide

"What I have to do is practise music. Spending money isn't the answer
dope is only temporary. Magic is more useful and exact.

"Remember to be careful with magic.
Try for money next time. jewels & money"

"I hate parties, I always have a good time
And it always takes hours for me to recover my sanity
I go there to reassure you that the world is impractical
Magic and lunacy, poetry spells and music"

"Hope says:
'the European models have wrecked us all, they spit blood in my cunt'"

"The Frog Child has a new brother:
How's his insect taboo?"
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Incest evidence, in the poetry of Georg Trakl:

"Hands touch the age of bluish waters
Or the sister's white cheeks on a cold night" -- Helian

In the park, siblings see each other, and shiver"

& the prose poem, Dream and Derangement
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Fragment, from talk radio:

( talking abt. uniform sentencing for murder )

A. : "even if they're a drifter, or a whore"
B. : "I'm sorry to hear that"
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In Bailey Seton detox a couple months ago, as I was leaving the unit to go back to my residence, refreshed, a train of patients from the psych ward passed me, and another guy who was leaving, the staffer leading them raised his voice, "DEAD MAN WALKING," I griamcing, as I thought he was talking about me, "THE GREEN MILE!" A short, longhaired white kid at the back of the line hanging his head, "it's me", my heart going out to him, at that moment, regardless of his transgression, as I know how it feels to be in that position ... ( A lot of people will duck into hospitals after committing crimes, as police are not allowed to enter, or make arrests in them, even know if a suspect is in one ... for example, the Dark Angel of Brooklyn, or my buddy Anthony Fortunato, at Beth Israel )
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from M. Butor's Historire Extraordinaire: On A Dream Of Baudelaire's:

(g) Suicide and Poetry

The existence of the dandy, that inferior version of the poet, culminates in the moment of his suicide, but he is then victim only of himself, his own executioner; his disappearance is without consequences. It is his own nothingness he is punishing. His death reveals him as pure appearance.
In poetic existence, which is the reality of which dandyism is only the shadow, there is indeed such a thing as voluntary death, but this acquires quite different dimensions. The welcoming of death is no longer contained in the suspect brevity of a single, final conclusive moment, it is coexstensive with the entire fulfilment of the work. It is the latter which is the long, incomparable weapon of the crime.
But above all, the poet is not only victim of himself, but of the entire people, the entire crowd; he is not only his own executioner but that of the entire crowd. His voluntary death, though perpetrated by the very milieu that has produced him, condemns the latter, and is the greatest consequence to it.
Poe's work and life thus appear as one long suicide, in which he forces the society around him to perpetrate against him that crime which is transformed into a punishment.
'This death is almost suicide - a suicide prepared long before. At least it caused the scandal of a suicide.'
In this society, scandal confers a sacred character upon its victim. As a matter of fact, whatever the faults it may have been able to blame the poet for, the death penalty which it has inflicted not by the intermediary of executioner but directly, as though by its own hands, suddenly seems disproportionate. Society cannot say: justice has been done, order has been restored, we have saved ourselves an exexutioner; it is obliged to complain: things shouldn't have gone so far, and we must punish this dead man for having caused this disturbance, for having revealed this injustice; yet the dead man henceforth escapes any human punishment. Human justice remains with this wound.
'Society regards the man who commits suicide as insolent; it would gladly chastise certain funereal remains, like that of a wretched soldier, afflicted with vampirism, whom the sight of a corpse aroused to the point of madness.'</i>

In reading this, I'd like to think that this qualifies me as a poet, rather than a mere dandy, as I believe i am living my death, on the installment plan ... knowing that, as far as I can tell, I'd never engage in the single, unremediable act unless to avoid some terrible, continued suffering ... that I cannot see myself practising suicide as an "gratuitous act" ( Gide ), or of the kind celebrated by the Surrealists ... Four Dada Suicides

Jukebox

2008-01-04T03:37:44Z

Jesus and Mary Chain-Something's Wrong

Pere Ubu-My Dark Ages

Gang of Four-Damaged Goods

Guns n Roses-One In A Million

Shins-New Slang

Guided By Voices-Ironman March Song

Big Black-Bad Penny

Pixies-Head On

Christmas In Pynchon

2007-12-26T21:33:45Z

"Christmas bugs. They were deep in the straw of the manger of Bethlehem, they stumbled, climbed, fell glistening red among a golden lattice of straw that must have seemed to extend miles upward and downward - an edible tenement-world, now and then gnarled through to disrupt some mysterious sheaf of vectors that would send neighbor bugs tumbling ass-over-antennae down past you as you held on with all legs in the constant tremble of golden stalks" ... "The crying of the infant reached you, perhaps, as bursts of energy from the invisible distance, nearly unsensed, often ignored. Your savior, you see ..." -- Gravity's Rainbow

( & tdaschel, give me your advice on that one again: the signif. of the colors... so far, 'mauve' ).

Naked Lunch

2007-12-18T17:37:59Z

<

Naked Lunch. from Michel Leiris' Brisees : "Note also that cannibals, who are more refined than is generally believed, have been credited by one sociologist with the invention of the fork"

"This is probably the only difference that exists between our period and the period of the cavemen: today we have a multitude of scapegoats who take it upon themselves to perform for us everything we wouldn't be brave enough to perform ourselves. This is the very reason, I think, that murderers are so popular: a good crime is no doubt horrible, but at the same time it unconsciously satisfies everyone, and the murderer becomes a kind of sorcerer who has ritually performed the most terrifying of sacrifices"
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Joy, that I no longer have to feel fallen into the arms of this love
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"The destructive character sees nothing permanent. But for this very reason he sees ways everywhere. Where others encounter walls or mountains, there, too, he sees a way. But because he sees a way everywhere, he has to clear things from it everywhere." -- W. Benjamin, 'The Destructive Character'

'A nihilist wants to live in the world as is,
and yet gaze the everlasting hills to rubble" -- R. Lowell, 'The Nihilist As Hero"
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Scared Straight : "Uphevals, anxieties, deprivation, death, exceptions in the physical and moral order, the spirit of negation, brutishness, hallucinatins willfully induced, torture, destruction, sudden reversals of fortune, tears, insatiability, servitude, wildly burrowing imaginations, novels, the unexpected, the forbidden, the mysterious, vulture-like chemical peculiarities which watch over the carrion of some dead illusion, precocious and abortive experiments, bug-like obscurities, the terrible monomania of pride, the inoculation of profound stupors, funeral orations, jealousies, betrayals, tyrannies, impieties, irritations, acrimonies, aggressive outbursts, dementia, spleen, reasoned terrors, strange anxieties which the reader would prefer to be spared, grimaces, neuroses, the bloody cork-screws by which logic is forced to retreat, exaggerations, lack of sincerity, catch-words, platitudes, the somber, the lugubrious, creations worse than murder, passions, the clan of assize-court novelists, tragedies, odes, melodramas, extremes perpetually present, reason howled down with impunity, odours of milksops, mawkishness, frogs, octopi, sharks, the simoun of the deserts, all that is somnambulous, shady, nocturnal, somniferous, noctambulous, viscous, speaking seals, the ambiguous, the consumptive, the spasmodic, the aphrodisiac, the anemic, the one-eyed, hermaphrodite, bastard, albino, pederast, abortions from the aquarium, bearded women, the drunken hours of silent depression, fantasies, sourness, monsters, demoralizing, syllogisms, excrement, those who do not think with the innocence of a child, desolation, that intellectual machineel, perfumed chancres, thighs covered with camellias, the culpability of the writer who rolls down the slope of the abyss, despising himself with cries of joy, remorse, hypocricy, vague perspectives which crush you in their imperceptible works, spitting on sacred axioms, vermin and their insinuationg titillations, extravagant prefaces, such as those to Cromwell, those by Mlle. Daupin and Dumas the younger, decay, impotence, blasphemy, asphyxia, suffocation, fits of rage -- it is time to react against these repulsive charnel-houses which I blush to name, to react against everything which is supremely shocking and oppressive..." -- Lautreamont, Poems

"CXVII

Hygiene. Conduct. Method. I swear to observe henceforth the following rules as immutable rules of my life:

To pray every morning to God, the source of all power and all justice; to my father, to Marielle and to Poe; as intercessors; that they may give me the necessary strength to fill all my appointed tasks and that they may grant my mother a sufficient span of life in which to enjoy my transformation; to work all day long, or as long, at any rate, as my strength allows me; to put my trust in God, that is, in justice itself, for the success of my plans; to offer, every evening, a further prayer, asking God for life and strength for my mother and myself; to divide all my earnings into four parts -- one for current expenses, one for my creditors, one for my friends, and one for my mother -- to obey the smartest principles of society, the first being the abstinence from all stimulants whatsoever" -- Baudelaire, Intimate Journal

Miracle On 42nd St.

2007-12-04T21:51:20Z

An incident which renews my faith in the innate goodness of mankind: I step into the peep show at the corner of 42nd and 8th Ave, and lay out the wad of ones I have in my pocket on the ledge of the cash acceptor. I feed the machine a bill, and, before that bill's time runs out, I hit paydirt. Jump started by the rapid victory, I pull up my pants, and jolt out of the booth, down the mirror-lined hallway, looking approvingly at my pale face, and step out onto the busy street again. I walk down 42nd st., through Times Square, and am strolling through Bryant Park, about to head into the Research Library, when I realize that I left the wad of ones on the cash acceptor at the peep show. At first I think that I won't bother going back, as the cum-mopper must have gotten to it, already, or the next occupant of the stall. Tehn I decide that, well, it's only two avenues away, I might as well go back. I walk quickly through the bitingly cold wind, back past the Madame Tussaud's wax statues, the movie theaters, into the 'show, where I see the mopper at work, sweeping out a stall. "Did you find any money in that stall?" pointing to the open one, near where I thought I had been. "I haven't found any money today," he says, as if offended, already. "Come on, man, I had a stack of ones on the grille, there." "I tell you, I haven't found any money today!" The accent places him as an African. I look at the numbered covers of porn videos on the wall outside the booths, and find the pair of Asian breasts that corresponded to my stall. "No, it was that one", I said, and, just as he was telling me I'd have to wait till it's present occupant was finished, the door to the stall swung open, and a young black man, with wide, and deep reservoirs under his eyes, smiled, and thrust the ( I later found out ) untouched pile of ones at me. "That is an honest man!" I said, "THAT IS AN HONEST MAN!" ( "and so am I," proudly emphasized the African ).

Control

2007-11-29T19:36:43Z

Saw the Ian Curtis biopic last night, and could tell by the first minute of the movie that I'd be disappointed -- misled by a glowing Voice review ... the actor playing Ian being a bit too pretty and childish ( even as a teenager : can you really imagine Ian Curtis donning Ziggy Stardust makeup and furs? I always imagined him as conservative in that sense ) for the awkward-looking, serious-sounding Mr. Curtis. This was especially clear when the first song chimed in, and the actor lip-synched to them. The audio held the movie I wanted to see -- it's amazing that someone who died at 23 could sing with such sober authority, with his brand of intensity, which seemed so mannered. I thought he was at least a few years older than that when he died. His story has been considered for film for a long time, it's disappointing that the photographer who put this out as his directorial debut was the one to do it. It wasn't bad, and Samantha Morton was great as his estranged wife, I had just for something more substantive. The scenes of the band in bars, or backstage suggest an aloof and silly, definately naive band ( and they may have been, being as young as I guess they were ). I'd like to know if the interview conducted by Curtis' soon-to-be mistress was an actual transcription - if it was, then maybe it's director got it right. I remember meeting a young actor in Washington Square Park, in that period after I'd chosen to abandon college, who said that he was being considered to play the lead in a film about Ian's life, and he, at least, seemed abstract and psychologically gaunt enough to approximate a better Curtis. I remember thinking that the guy who played the lead in Children of Men would be great also, but that would be misplacing his age by, like, fifteen years! The best line of the movie, delivered by the band's manager, after Ian has a seizure onstage, comes as he's comforting him backstage: "it could be worse, you could be the lead singer of the Fall". As it is, it's got to be a daunting task, trying to reimagine someone who had such purity of vision ...
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Was looking, earlier in the week, at a tribute page to Peter Laughner, who died at the age of 24, due to alcoholism. How you'd have to drink to kick the bucket from saucing, at that age, astounds me, though our next-door neighbor in the neighborhood my brothers live in in Richmond, which I spent my first years in, managed to do it faster ... That Pere Ubu, and the Dead Boys came from the same initial band is hard to imagine, but I guess that in the smaller metropolises people and energies are forced closer together ... I know one of the 'Boys got it, also, I think it was Stiv Bators ( 'Ain't It Fun /When you know that you're gonna die young' )

ricepeste @ 2007-11-28T10:30:00

2007-11-28T15:43:49Z

Quote from touchyou, after seeing an "Amazing tree" on the street: "I was fixated on it and started to cry. You cannot judge a person crying on the sidewalk, you really can't".

I identify completely: I've spent months feeling like I was on the edge of tears. I'd say I developed this condition a few months into my year's homelessness in Maine, or a little over two years ago ( though I'd experienced fairly long periods of sobriety, previously ). I used to wake up in the wet shelter, or in my sleeping bag, and, until I got that first drink in me, feel like I was about to burst. I just went for a walk this morning, very early, and felt the same way; indeed, walked from 42nd st. to South Ferry yesterday, moving through zones of "alright" and "in crisis". I've been told that it's because of my drinking that I've developed this condition, but it didn't get a hell of a lot better during my last couple periods of sobriety ... the strange thing is that I can usually stay out of the red when I'm alone, but when I'm around people it becomes hard -- so many people abhor the sight of a man crying that the anticipation of their censure alone brings it on ... all of this making me think of those who've judged me as weak, a weakling, because of this, and my drinking ... Me, who've travelled all over the world, often just by the skin of my teeth ... and so I'd say that yes, I'm weak, but my weakness is a condition, not a spiritual problem, or lack of will-

I used to have an incredible capacity for life, and living; I DO blame myself for the erosion of my ambition, though the circumstances of my life, at present, don't help --

* : Sad, also, as when I see someone in pain, or crying, I usually want to, if only in a small way, give comfort to them. I think the prevailing, or at least the offensive, sentiment is: 'We've all got our problems, so don't show me-" when, of course, the "showing" of doesn't feel like an option -

ricepeste @ 2007-11-26T15:47:00

2007-11-26T20:49:53Z

Just found out that my old pal cedar sigo was in New York, and didn't contact me, even though we'd been exchanging the occasional mail recently ... feels like I really have become a pariah ...
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Kryptonite real

"...the leper scene couldn't be repeated..."

2007-11-23T21:42:59Z

Just got out of detox ( again ). read an author I'd never read before in there: Umberto Eco. He teaches semiotics, which makes sense, as his narrative seems a web of languague-and-history relations...

"the monk who is despised and bears it is like a plant that is watered every day"

"those who perform magic, it so happens, finally are persuaded that, even if they don't believe in the devil, the devil surely believes in them"

"the world condemns liars, who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie aout the greatest things."

Leos Carax

2007-09-25T23:16:36Z

this is beautiful, with the dream-passage from Night of the Hunter and music by Scott Walker;

( also, this tribute; it's great when the Bowie kicks in...

Spencer Sweeney

2007-09-25T20:12:15Z

Who's also played in Will Oldham's band, was in the 2006 biennial;

[2]

[3]

ricepeste @ 2007-09-25T10:59:00

2007-09-25T15:00:29Z

I had a flag for Brian DeGraw, of Gang Gang Dance's show at the James Fuentes gallery last week ... This had me look around to see what GGD was doing, and found out that they were doing a tour where they made a video entry for each day, which they edited in their van, along the way ... Now, I've long admired these folks, thinking of them as some of the most vital artists working in New York now ... Lizzi Bougatsos showing work, also at James Fuentes Gallery in Chinatown, along with Brian; and now, Interviewed by Rockers NYC; They're going to put out a DVD of "Retina Riddim", which, come on, isn't so far removed in spirit from other riddim music(?!); I can't say how much I admire these people, who's influence shows in what seems to me a similarity between DeGraw's collage work and Dash Snow's, ( though maybe the link is only assumed, after seeing an IRAK sticker on his amp at their show in Greenpoint a few months ago ... I say all this unreservedly, as it was one of their members who told me to "give up," the last time I saw them : if only I knew what they based this opinion on ...

ricepeste @ 2007-09-21T09:06:00

2007-09-21T13:12:10Z

After thinking about Mr. Supertramp, and his idealistic journey, I was reminded of a NY Times article I read about a logger who can't give up methamphetamine, on the show Intervention, which I have yet to see. This is truly the voice of the vast hidey-holes.

Perhaps related, but probably not, I had a dream last night that was incredibly vivid, due to the fact that I'm slowing down my drinking: I was with my youngest brother in a Canadian waste expanse, having somehow become indigenous peoples, and lain in a fort to confront a visiting enemy that, by sheer number, was impossible to defeat. I tried on tons of different guns and knives befire using a six-barrelled musket ( it was olden times ) as they broke our gates, and, after an hour of sword and spearplay, the room became overrun with a glowing incandecence, and a ton of multcolored lemming- like creatures overran the room. I was so impressed by the beauty of it, the color of the light matching that of the surrounding mountains, that I woke up, to check myself for wounds.

& Chris Marker's La Jetee

ricepeste @ 2007-09-20T18:12:00

2007-09-20T22:15:25Z

Recovered my radio from my old roommate today, and heard on WFMU that it's Crispin Glover's birthday. Happy birthday, What Is It?.

Forget The Swan

2007-09-19T18:30:35Z

There's a new Sean Penn-produced film coming out based on the book Into The Wild about a traveller named Alexander Supertramp, who, from my own travels in Alaska, was definitely greeted with "indifference and indignation" by the locals. I remember meeting a number of people who lived in tents out there, some year-round. That he possessed a rabid brand of idealism is, I believe, the come on, even though I much preferred the Grizzly Man version of idealism.

Read in the Post a blurb about a guy I knew from the hospital, Anthony Fortunado who's lawyers are bolstering his story by using his admission of being gay, himself, to free him from being charged in a hate crime. Now, this guy acted pretty tough in the hospital, but looking at what those guys are facing, he's going to have to be real tough to navigate the waters of his conviction. Good luck, guy.

Saw James Clauer's O'Salvation produced slice of Nashville life with a boon companion last week, and liked it alot,. Don't know if this is their first production or not.

And finally, a blast from the past, Forget The Fowl.

Youth Of Today

2007-09-13T18:20:55Z

Chk. out the drawings: from PS. 1.

Brian DeGraw activity= <*>

Major Star activity ( Wished I could find some seminal Crystallized Movements, but there is none that I can find ).

& a fat Raymond Pettibon interview= <*>. ( Stored here for later play: "Come back any time" )

ricepeste @ 2007-09-10T09:15:00

2007-09-10T13:24:59Z

"some taboos seem to us to spring from the general horror of violence; for instance, the taboos associated with menstruation and the loss of blood at childbirth. These discharges are thought of as manifestations of internal violence; blood in itself is a symbol of violence. The menstrual discharge is further associated with sexual activity and the accompanying suggestion of degredation: degredation is one of the effects of violence." -- Georges Bataille

I came across this quote on the same day ( yesterday ), when I was walking through the park, and saw one of the women from my residence laying sprawled on a bench, with one of her hands stuffed between her crotch. As she saw me, she raised her hand to reveal what looked to be ligt-brown menstrual blood, but what was probably just tobacco stainage. Still, it startled me into heading on down the park-path without saying hello.
______________

Also, I came upon this story in the hospital, a true life "just because you're paranoid" story, which bolsters my conviction that it's criminal to dismiss stories like that of PaperClipDoll's.

ricepeste @ 2007-09-09T09:48:00

2007-09-09T13:55:53Z

I like this guy's math class, notebook doodling alot, and also the fact that the entire gallery was full of it. There was a great video on, also, but I couldn't find it out there.

Clark Coolidge put out a book of his improvisations, based on cowboy Westerns, streamed from satellite television.

Also, this classic was my favorite in the hospital. I read it three times.

ricepeste @ 2007-08-30T16:10:00

2007-08-30T20:20:47Z

"The artist's journey to Tahiti via Suez was lengthy but uneventful. he arrived in Papeete, the capital, in June 1891, bearing his paints, 100 yards of canvas, a shotgun ( for securing food when breadfruit failed ), a French horn,a guitar and two mandolins, the better to thrive in a love- and music- making society. He was disillusioned very soon. The culture of Tahiti, like that of almost all remote islands that--in the dreadful but accurate pun of anthropologists--have been syphilized by the West, was somewhat decayed. Gauguin already had syphilis, having contracted it in Paris, but still expected to find noble savages; he was 100 years too late. Two weeks after his arrival the last native King of Tahiti, Pomare V, died--much to Gauguin's sorrow, for he had counted on the idea that a local savage would help a European savage such as himself. The King, who had no power and was only tolerated by the French authorities, had drunk himself to death at 52. The King's father, grandfather and great-grandfather had also perished in the same way. Gauguin attended the royal funeral. Pomare V was laid to rest in a stone mausoleum 15 feet high, painted red and surmounted by what had been intended to be a Grecian urn but actually resembled a huge liquor bottle."