When I left my body

Over the top and through the woods a martian I became. Travelling the light and gliding the air I suceed and meet me by the lake. The raft is ready and onward we sail. Me and myself wandering by and bye. The trees look so clairvoyant from up here.

Gauguin's Title / Empire Song

You're over there parading with some lover while I'm over here forging checks attempting to postpone my eviction another day. Not that you being here right now would solve any of the real issues I have to deal with, and it's not that I even am jealous or angry that destiny, (if there is such a thing) has disallowed our being together from happening, it's just that I'm poor and have no vision of how to get rich laid out infront of me. That's been the problem now hasn't it? My mentality has never been one with the financial gain in mind you see. It's always been about aiming all my efforts into self-examination and study, the big question's...who am I and what is my purpose, on this planet, in this body? I guess now I'm dealing with that last one in Gauguin's famous existential painting...'Where am I going?'

Consolidation factor : the work is becoming more individualized and personal while the enjoyment of making also rises. This is always a good thing.
Undeniable fact and hard to disgest factor : Quantifying the product into income?


This all comes at a time, pinnacled today, by a visit to Edgar Allan Poe's house, where I'm so over tired of the genuine visionary artist being downtrodden, tormented, disgraced, subjugated, ridiculed, involuntarily depraved and consequently poor because he does not carry himself in the typical normal fashion of his society, whether mentally or physically or because his talent is not received as valuable to the war effort or because it doesn't serve the immediate want of quick minded, dim-witted consumer consensus brain. That a sport's player can be afforded hundred's of million's of dollar's for slam dunking a ball filled with air or slugging a dense whizzing ball up and away four hundred feet in the distance while a secular man exhibiting articulate, rational concept's, psychologically prodding into the most constricted and also vast reaches of the human mind, suggest's that this is no time for me. On the other hand or cheek, whichever you prefer to ponder, it could be said that this is no time for me to sulk in my seat for this is a time when no man will bow down from his own efforts to help lift you up when you are twitching on the ground. The harsh reality of our time is while each man invision's himself an island and wants the best quality of living for himself, so does everyone else, and the people who most have that are the one's who I see as misguided and corrupt and basically sinister evil corporate sucker's of satan's thorny cock and balls. As the David Byrne song 'Empire' suggests, '...young artist's and writer's please heed the call, what's good for business is good for us all, for as it is in nature so it is in life, the weak among us perish, the strong alone survive.' Meaning to have both the freedom of creating your own island, along with the luxury of enjoyoing all the pina colada's one could desire while on that island, one seemingly needs to learn a little about playing the game that allows for such riches. This is the game of business. Can this possibly be pretty? (Dips right foot in. 'Oooo!..the water's fucking icey!)

Word of the Lord

Nathaniel and I got into a conversation about 'the Lord'. I knew it was going to happen when the UPS guy came into our room starting to talk about, 'He's going to come.....Abraham....Shalom something? in Hebrew'. Nathaniel is Jewish you see and although he doesn't force his religion onto me in our daily association's, this occassion was certainly unusual in that he didn't stop the UPS guy from going on his end of days synopsis preach.
The meaning of the word 'Lord' was brought up by none other than, 'me', later, curious to know what he meant when using the word. I asked if 'Lord' meant a person? 'No', it meant something like a being, a cosmic force that humbles us when we contemplate the powerful forces in the universe. This was intriguing but I wondered why this profound sensation that was mentioned and that I have felt before had to be equated with a word such as 'Lord', it still didn't puncture my reasoning. The conversation ended quite abruptly when I pursued the plausibility of not needing a mere word to associate with this cosmic entity, whatever it was. I pitched the word 'energy' to him as a possible starter for a dialogue with little bounce back.
I was left feeling unsatisfied. Again a potentially penetrating conversation with a practiced religious person, conditioned in a methodology and practice surrounding a religion not like my own (that which I was brought up in and have since dispensed myself from) whereupon I was curious to learn from in a open-minded way. No new revelations revealed or opened. What a let down. No surprises.
Later, when I was left to myself, I got to thinking about the need for humanity to name this transcendent quality when we sense our smallness in the big scheme of things. When we ponder the greater, the vast, and are left with no real resolve. It seems to me to be one of our biggest deceptions. That we feel the need to put a name on that which we cannot fathom or describe. It stings tragedy. A catastrophic joke pulled over us. I feel a sort of pity when people talk about 'God' or 'Lord' and needing to use such specific, defining words to hint at the creative power behind the universe. Probably because this is utterly lacking in me. I have no need to sum up this ultimate unknowing with a simple word. It seems utterly useless and not at all reminscent of the experience one feels while in that 'humbled' state. Only perhaps in a paragraph or novel could one maybe suggest or elude to what your personal experience of this transcendence was like, but for God's sake don't belittle it all by giving me a word that you can pitch everytime you are referring to the almighty force penetrating all things.
Futility reeks constant on this plateau.

Amsterdam

It was three close friends from a distant past together again for a weekend. Saturday night they'd recieved invitation from some girlfriends to come out dancing with them. Guys are always willing to do what cute girls want them to do this is simply fact. Chris had found this new band that he put into the computer and played through the speaker's. The music that came out immediately demands your ears to perk up at them and you do without second thought because it's that infectious. They listened to it again without remark while looking through some collected photographs. Around later the three of them finally made way for the club where they were to meet up with their cute girlfriends. The conditioning of beer made their bodies sway to the music pumping behind them so they instinctively followed the wave and reason for their being there. Hit the dancefloor.
It doesn't take much to recognize the pleasure felt via invisible patterns moving all around people when they let themselves dance. The beats inundate your bloodstream, kissing each cell as it passes by, licking them into releasing unwanted tensions.
After constant dancing for more than two hours the group of friends decided to leave and head home. Chris' car only had room for three in the front so the guys rode up there while the four ladies who joined them laid in the back. Snuggled close together. Their picture was taken. All was well. A cute friendly girl there asked Allen out on a date because she liked the way he danced and other reason's he's sure. What they are is not known. She said she liked his 'chops'.

Sullen Sunday

Sullen Sunday Oct 8.06
Such a beautiful day today it'd be a shame not to spend it outside. I pick up a pack of American Spirits and a bottled water from the corner store. Standing outside are a couple of harmonious singer's. A black man missing several of his front teeth, apparently blind, and a white lady with her eye's closed, chubby, rotund. Singing an unfamiliar song but doing it really well. I wanted to give them money and sit and listen to them but I didn't for some reason, probably not a creditable one, probably was concerned with how other's would think of me. Silly social concerns like that will stop me from living spontaneously and joyfully. Not even a block down I see a father kneeling to his daughter pointing into a store window where there are figures of a red devil and skeleton done in the Mexican style of lacquered paper mache with their arms around each other. Subconsciously I make the distinction between these two figures and the couple of blind singer's I just pasted and I look back again at them, still singing, looking so out of the norm and uncaring, enjoying what they do, without concern. I find great relief in them. I walk a little further and stop to lite a cigarette and put on my Ipod, Labradford album. I turn into a small graveyard and walk through to the other side and make a left out. A small cemetery. Wonder what lives were lead here in these bodies laid to rest? Soldiers? Missing husbands? Housewives died of old age, lonely? Nobody ever comes to visit you do they? Only passer bye's like me walking to another destination. I come across two of Greg and Katherine's German friends and stop to say hello. Continue walking deciding to go ways I'd never gone before in attempts to see all the hidden pathways that make Old Philadelphia so unique. They're at every turn. Leaves rake under my feet. Green moss fill the cracks between uneven cobbelstone. I decide to sit down in the courtyard of the first White House and there are people site seeing all around, couple's walking with hands clutching, families, and a Asian girl whose on her phone now. I remember her from earlier this morning when I was up in my apartment reading some of my old writings. I looked out the window and saw her stop and take a photograph in my direction, of the building I live in. I wonder if she'll look at that picture and see me on the third floor window looking at her? Strange how I saw her here. But I set it up that way. I wanted to see her again when I saw her take that photo, I followed her with my eyes, willing subconsciously to run into her somewhere and there she was walking past me with her phone on her ear and me with my Ipod in mine. Only in the unphysical dimension of imagination and stories will we know each other?
Just between the physical reality there is undoubtedly other realities that await eyes to see them. More tangible in a way than this plastic seemingly fake reality where societal infections of behavior hinder us from acting out on our desire's and feelings. The tree's know this about us, that's why they've kept quite for all time. They just got fed up quicker I guess? Didn't see the point in continuing to try and live the lie. They commune in that other world beyond surfaces. How does nature do that? Exist so purely and eternal, where their presence is always beautifu and knowingl.



When I get too close to the source there is a wall of self-destruction there waiting. There is a time of love and devotion and out pouring creativity and enthusiasm and almost getting to see her face and know her presence, but then just like bumping into a brick wall I fall back. Not this time though. I'm talking to you about it. I don't want to loose you so I'm going to hold on, hang in. I've smelled your breathe and I know you are the one, the reason for me to exist in this world. To create you and show you without loosing you, without cheating on you, or mistreating you. You know I would never do that to you don't you? You have to know you mean more to me than anything physical eventhough I am a depraved man needing of desire and skin pleasure that pass and come back in psyciological phases that I've yet to be able to control. Do you forgive me for those times? You live there too do you? Sometimes I think you live all over me. In every part of me, body and being. That's what I like about you, you make yourself available.

Dancing and The Husband Factor

Last night they danced like ravenous lovers, exhibiting dips and lunges as if in a wild river rapid, possessed by an interior urge to exorcise repressed emotions. The music wasn't all that good and it felt like the DJ may have been schizophrenic to some degree, or at least mildly tone deaf, but this did not hinder the dancer's enthusiasm. Any beat would do. They simply adjusted for any off timed mix. After a couple hours of gyration and thrusting the group of dancers felt they could use some fresh air reminded by the close proximity of dozens of other mover's and shaker's gradually encrouching, compacted with a hovering cloud of cigarette smoke that they had bodies, and they were saying, 'give us a break and you need fresh air.' This was merely intermission, a slight reality check, soon there after they went back inside, contuining with the liberation of body and mind. It was a feast of the body. A Dionysian gorge of rhythmn and movement set to a backdrop of beats. Hurt so good.



Within the past two weeks I'm going to say, a strange phenomena of sorts has occupied my life. Not strange in the sense of paranormal activity ,although something like that could be trying to creep into my consciousness via this subject, trying to 'say something'? I can't be sure, but strange in the sense that it's from out of nowhere, seemingly unplanned, unthoughtout, not within my scope of intentionality. I have received three proposals for husbandry by three different ladies at various times in a very small time frame. These three separate ladies are all co-worker's of mine and no doubt talk about me behind my back, I'm sure after these forward compliments.
The first lady to comment to me about this was a nice, friendly Southern Cowgirl type from Austin, Texas of all places whose recently moved to Philadelphia if I remember correctly? She made the comment that, 'if I were a little younger I'd marry you.' I smiled in reply. What was I to do? My Ipod was playing Tom Waits by my request and she'd walked into my area and began talking to me about Tom with a huge smile like I'd made her the happiest woman alive because she knew someone else who listened to and liked Tom Waits. The backstory to this is that we'd had other similarities of interest's like a odd unquenshable thrust for knowledge and learning, talking from politic's to books to travelling to Cuba, and obviously we had a recognized ease with each other's personality traits so for her to say that to me was kind of an acknowledgment that in another life we'd have made a good couple more than a direct forward annunciation that she wanted to be with me. So that was the first comment about the 'husband factor'.
The second was by another very nice lady who works in the make-up industry prettying Senator's and busty phone sex models for television. We'd talked briefly in passing and always shared big hello's and smiles whenever we saw each other and then one day I was playing a Sade album when she came walking up behind me and made the comment that, 'if you were older I'd marry you' or something like that. Basically the same thing the first lady had said but reversing the older' ,'younger' scenario. Both of these women are I'd say mid-forties? Both of these ladies are people whose company I would enjoy outside of work and would welcome a drink or conversation with and probably will down the road should the opportunity arise for they are both well spoken and have interesting things to say and I always enjoy listening to people who have more experience in living than I do talk about things that are interesting to me to hear about.
The third comment was made the end of last week and was made indirectly to another co-worker of mine who then passed on the information to me, probably with the intention of creating a internal workshop soap opera which I of course will take no part of. This lady and I share a similar age and she has a child of less than a year and how serious she is or not, is probably looking for a good man to help watch over her child with her and who she can tolerate and consider's 'normal', which she did call me and to which I had many grave questions which I kept to myself for she presumed to walk away quickly after rapid firing me with half-a-dozen question's. They were yes or no question's. She's inquisitive.
All of this gives me some comprehension of self-worth for I figure I must be doing something right if these women all feel I'd be worthy of courting them. This all comes during a time in my life where I have conscientiously separated myself from the movement towards looking for any companion whatsoever and have intentionally kept more to myself wanting to only focus on my artwork and creative endeavors. I find it very complimentary that three women, who I also find intriguing to be around, feel the same about me. But alas, none of the women would I really want to sleep with per se or be married to for any reason and not so much because of them but rather that I do not want to be married at all to anyone really, at least not in the way they mean. So it's this concept of marriage and me as 'husband' that has come into my waking reality that has been questioning what indeed I would be like as a husband or a father and would I be able to deal with both wanting to work in my studio and have to be responsible for another small human and what would it be like to have a 'wife', a fine lady I'd love and get love back from on a daily basis, although that is probably more fallacy than outright reasonalbe to even think, I mean no relationship is without its turmoils and hardships, not even me and my work get along sometimes. Sometimes the pen just doesn't want to work in direct harmonious unison with my hand, like they have two separate minds and none the two shall meet. But isn't that the challenge? The rope with two ends that you keep trying to tie back together to form a warm knot with?
I think I'd make a fantastic husband.


I found four one dollar bills crumpled up in a cup in a trash can on my lunch break one day last week. I was throwing away a toothpick from a sushi sample and saw the beckoning bills sitting right there looking at me, like they were calling out my attention. I put aside all social proclivities and made my hand go in for the money's. The trash janitor was the only one I made eye contact with but I'd beat him to it. He missed out if he didn't think anybody would stick their grubby hands in the trash canister to pick out dirty dollar bills. Well he was wrong and I won and am four dollar's richer. That same day I jokingly made a bet with lady #1 from above that a certain folder was 'black' and not 'green' like she'd thought it was. The bet was two dollar's which she came up with and when I returned from my lunch break she gave me those two dollar's, although I'd have been fine if she never gave it to me. I thought it was more of a friendly joke.

Part I

Jeremy stood short in his stance, he was a good six inches shorter than the average for his class. He'd always been ridiculed for his stunted stature growing up, making it worse he was also very frail. On the way home from school one day, a Friday when all the kids were especially anxious to get home, Jeremy lagged behind not having much to look forward too. None of the kids would be calling him up to hang out anyway. Mom and Dad were never around, always out at the casino's. This Friday Jeremy stumbled over a tree root in the ground that made him look down. Underneath the tree root Jeremy noticed a glittering piece of rock. He didn't know what it was at first but he picked it up and held it in his hand. Shortly his hand began to turn warm and see thru. He could almost look through his skin to his veins and a little of the sidewalk even. Jolted by this he dropped the magical rock and just as quick his hand turned back to normal, like any other boy's hand. Jeremy stood there for some time pondering what had just happened. He decided he had to at least keep this special rock for keep sake and maybe look at it later to see if anything happened again. He put it in his backpack and continued walking home.
When he got home there was a note on the kitchen table from Mom saying she and his father had gone out to Joe's and would probably be out late, that there was a microwaveable dinner in the freezer and to get to bed early. Jeremy was used to this kind of behavior from his parent's by now, for years they'd barely had a single meaningful conversation about anything, not even about his day or how he was doing in school. Jeremy heated up his meatloaf dinner with corn and mashed potato's and sat down in front of the tv. Feeling hopelessly bored Jeremy then remembered the rock he'd found earlier in the day walking home from school so with excited enthusiasm he ran to his bag to get it out. The rock in his bag had a somewhat phosphorescent glow emanating from it now, he didn't remember it having this sheen during the afternoon, maybe it glows in the dark he thought? Curiously Jeremy pulled out the rock from the pocket and held it up to the tv light. Vaguely the rock began to change luminosity and loose its glow, turning more solid like he found it in the day. Jeremy held the rock closely to his chest now and walked toward his bedroom where it was completely dark. He walked into his closet where no light was sure to enter. Holding the rock out in view now Jeremy again noticed it's vibrant luminosity and his hands warming like before. This wasn't a painful or frightful warming but something like a warm shower on a cool morning, rejuvenating, desirable. Jeremy was amazed at the strangeness of this rock for he had never seen anything like it before. After a while he began to feel slightly different than ever. Like he was getting lighter or losing weight. The translucency he had noticed before in his hands were now moving all throughout his arms and chest and he wasn't afraid but welcomed it, he was feeling better than he'd ever felt in his life. Eventually, still holding the rock Jeremy turned completely invisible. To make sure it wasn't just the darkness of the closet that didn't allow him to see himself he walked outside his room and into the living room where the tv was and to his amazement he wasn't there, his body was entirely dissappeared. He held up his arm to the window where a little moonlight shone through and there was no arm. He looked down at where his feet should be but there were no feet. He couldn't believe it. He walked into his parent's room where the only mirror in the house was and looked for his reflection but had none. Jeremy was gleaming with the biggest smile. He'd dissappeared into thin air.

The Moving Towards

It's going to happen. The acquiescence of deliberate non-partisan contracts that neither infiltrate or ignore the process of self-containment in this belljar, simply because the realization of instinction is just around the bend. Like it or not, this is inevitablility. It's the cyclical course of nature. There are laws after all.

On bowling and the dark muse

Last night was our friend Joe's Bowling Birthday Party. That's J.B.B.P...? Bowling is fun and should be practiced more regularly by my limbs for it enables one to make a fool of themself. It's strange the contorted movements I found myself making after a strike or misguided roll, both manifested instictive, primitive gestures out of me. Gestures I wouldn't normally make. Hence the fun.

Before the party me and Puma decorated cakes:


Carl the video guy:






















Joe the Birthday Boy:
Mauro, the only bowler who
beat me. Go ahead, laugh it up.





















Friends blow out their friends birthday cake candles.

















Girlfriends cut their boyfriends cake.






















So sometime last week as I was walking to get my morning caffeinated beverage I past a window with a interesting old Religious woodcut that grabbed my attention and made me step back to look at it. On the flyer were the words 'The Psychospiritual Journey's of Abraham and Rebecca, Jacob and his brothers, ....'. This was enough for me to say, 'Ok. I'm listening.' I took note of the date and time in which this presentation was going to occur disregarding that it was a Baptist Church. That was this morning. Thankfully my friend Chris, who I told about this event and who also shares a curiousity towards Religious themes, text messaged reminding me for I was disenabled or disemboweled, either one, in bed, recovering from a slight hangover. Oops, I did it again. Thank goodness I drank all that water before going to bed!! Lessening the brain swell.
Feeling slightly ackward, as I usually do venturing into church's, I had the same discomfort and lack of ease sitting in this one. This had nothing to do with the greeter's or other worshipper's, it's strictly something in my own head that doesn't allow me complete relaxation in 'House's of God'. Context? Memories of nuns with sticks? Smelley breathe priests dictating dictum's? The talk dealt somewhat with this very notion in fact, the feeling lack of ease in a setting part. As the pastor read from Genesis stating a passage about Abraham, God said to him, along the lines off, Go away from your home, your people, and I will put a new one on you..' The statement resonated with me for it is something I have felt before, the sense that one should periodically zoom out from one's environment and circumstance to see where one is and where one is standing, questioning if this is where they want to be and/or if there is something they feel should change. A good way to evoke a change in one's circumstance to welcome new things is to step out of one's 'home', into the feared unknown, the bardo realm that acknowledges no guaranteed comforts but is essentially necessary for personal development.
Something I've been pondering lately lead from this idea is the notion of longing. Wanting something that we do not have, causing forms of suffering to overtake our mood. For me however the longing has been aimed towards a hopefully more productive end. I have been focusing, or attempting to focus my energies to the creative process aligning myself with the special interior female that I harbor in me. I think of her symbollically as the source from which all my creative efforts rise. With concentration and time dedicated to her maturation and fruitful givings I am able to feel this longing for the physical ,that I lack, dissipate and mean less or be of less concern than my art making endeavors. One because the rewards I reap are so much more substantial to me on a holistic level. The evidence I create by drawing worlds with people and imagined landscapes remain much more vital than any passing relationship I may seek out in tangible reality. This of course will need to be intergrated further down the road to avoid complete insanity perhaps or extreme isolation and/or unwanted Hermetism. But having heard the Reverend's lecture re-iterate to me what I had/have been thinking about extensively within the past two weeks ,struck me as serendiptious and synchronous. Fading then into a awakened, knowing certainty that it all makes sense, that of course he is talking about this, it goes beyond me. I'm not the only one feeling these feeling's. I may be giving it a different name, giving it a body, a gender, a symbolic archetype, but world wide I think there is some longing for something deeper, more meaningful and gratifying.

I will never cheat on you.

a moment with fortune

..I grabbed the cookie so fast from my reclined position the trails of my movement immediately echoed in my brain, making me realize how abruptly I had just made that move. Not really thinking about anything, well, not true, more like what if I knew a magician or a witch and thinking that'd be cool and then thinking that would re-lead me too my investigation of Sacred Geometry, then began seeing geometric shapes everywhere in my surrounding environment even finding the styrofoam container I just ate the beansprouts with tofu and seaweed lunch from beautiful and fascinating. Noticing the subtle pinks and metallic blues imbedded into its superficial surface. The crumpled napkins organic and chaotic perplexity. I can see them making a wonderful relationship together, say in a still life painting. I never paint still life's, haven't in a while. Then I hold my mind blank, for a couple seconds, that's when I manuevered the abrupt lunge for the fortune cookie, making me realize it and leading me to write about it....let's see what the fortune says?

'The laws sometimes sleep, but never die.'

Right. A dog is only a dog when somebody see's it.

It's not always greener on the other side. Sometimes it's not green at all but more like a deep red or purpleish hue, and there are bones lying in the thickets mingled in with rotting meat and sworms of scavenging flies, and the smells makes you nauseous. Sometimes the grass is five hundred feet of drop-off plummeting to a rocky bottom where ogres and beastily mongrols dwell, now that wouldn't be so pleasant would it? The point is that perhaps it's best if you find grace and enjoyment in what you do have control over, with what is immediately at your disposal for you to use and meddle with instead of wishing you had that 'other' thing, the item which you do not possess. Because truthfully it might not be all what you hoped and expected it would be even if you did have it. Not that she'd want to be possessed and had by you anyway. Wisen up old boy.

I Miss You

Friday September 8th 2006

Had free sushi at work today! Good name for a band? FREE SUSHI. Ended the day strong, finished off five large posters of reknowned sport's heroes: Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Vince Lombardi, Lance Armstrong, some runner who ran the mile under four minutes? Large prints four by seven feet, packaged, shipped out fed ex overnight. Ran out the door to meet Chris and Rebecca for a opening at the ICA. Ended up being a great unexpected evening. First the work was interesting, all over the place. Arranged high on the walls, drawings of all assortments, and some in glass cases, bound, very delicate, rich assortments. Gave some good ideas for my own work. Remember. First drink was a merlot purchased graciously by Rebecca. Enjoyed it outside and met Sarah McKeaney without knowing who I was talking with. Very nice lady. She gave us free drink tickets which we never got to use because right then the director of the museum offered everyone huddled outside free dinner, we gladly took the offer. It felt like we we were on a cruise ship. Outside the breeze was there but very pleasant and the festivities lended itself to the aura of 'simply enjoy yourself, you are being catered too' feeling. Wine was provided on the tables and the best beef tenderloin I've had in a while was eaten. Drank a really simple great drink: Welsh's white grape juice with Vodka and grape or two. Good I guess when you're serving in the hundred's. Met a couple nice people who had just recently started at PAFA. One from North Carolina, we talked about Anselm Keifer and books and being in graduate school. Talked with Rebecca a little about Wind-Up Bird because she'd just re read it herself. I'm still very fascinated by this book. I just finished it a couple days ago and started Kafka on the Shore today but Wind Up still lingers with me. I'm thinking about the tangibility of dreams and translating those in my waking reality and vis a versa. More often I'm remembering, questioning moments as if they are dreams or reality? What is the difference? Something about sensory depth, the richness of the experience. The complexity and illogical nature of scenario's that manifest? Sometimes I'll notice that I'm realizing if I'm dreaming in reality and focus on the current situation to try and pinpoint was is happening, viscerally, mentally, to try and use that information as memory in my dreams. What makes them different? What relates them? The sense's are the main focus right now, trying to recognize the physical sensations being experienced in both along with the mental interpretations of those sensations. Remember the hands, look at your hands. Use those perhaps as remembering points.
After we decided to leave the dinner we ran back into Asher and Alana, who we met at the dinner. I suggested White Dog but ended up at some other tavern. Just one drink and me and Chris and Rebecca left for the night. Tommorrow we're planning on meeting for Mauro's opening at Serraphin Gallery.

Wind-Up Bird Book Review and Running thoughts

In this place I just left and arrived simulatenously. The strangest thing. I saw myself come in through the front door while I was walking away from the counter. Another time, at a cafe, I was paying for my mocha drink and spilled a little on the book I was reading, page 343. The next day on my lunch break I went to get a drink and there on page 343 was a brown stain. 'Huh', I think I mumbled. 'What's going on with this time delay thing?', I said to myself, in my mind. The page was about how annoying those bike's are that ride around without muffler's, the real loud one's that demand you listen to them when they roar bye....they're so ridiculous and over the top. Sure I can understand maybe getting something out of the physical vibration from them riding - I assume that's why they ride those things? - but ride those on your own time, people are trying to concentrate here.

I had a dream I was at a beach, sitting down in a lazy chair reading. (picture here) The ocean foam kissing my feet periodically, languidly hobnobbing. (picture here) Receding....reacquainting....going back....'how you been? Kind of like a perfect relationship. Who needs attachment? (picture here) 'Not I' said the writer writing away, or did they not even acknowledge the question?
'Yeah, I don't think they even said anything?'
'Must be deep in thought?'
'Must be? So you wanna go kick over bike's?'


This book I'm reading, actually just finished, called 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' by Haruki Murakami was one of the most enjoyable book's I've ever read, and the longest coming in at just over 600 pages. I gave myself two weeks to read it and that's how long it took me. I've never read anything that long so for me it's kind of an accomplishment. Shut up all those who've read 1,000 page epic's over a night, I have nothing to say to you accept 'go read'. It read more like a book half that size, I guess because of how it was written? The author describes very well little details, sensorally, so it encapsulates you in the world being created. This really allows my mind to forget about time and just melt into the words unfolding a scene, a story, before me, leading me through its labrynth. The character's were easily identifiable too. I mean easy to picture their personality as if you knew them personally, conversing with them.

The main thing I'm taking from it is a concept that suggest's, (although is never blatantly brought up in the book), that 'dream' (timeless) reality affects waking, sequential time reality. To the extent that things happening in the dream time can manifest into the waking time. And this is something that meander's around and through the novel constantly, at times purposefully alienating the reader from differentiating what is actually 'reality'. Surely I've felt this before? Do I have to ask myself? Who am I asking? Our main character seems to exist in a world where nothing much happens and he slowly begins meeting strange people who play roles in his life. These character's interweave from his dream life to his waking life and swirl back again. The order of things gets jumbled and it becomes increasingly difficult to decipher what happened when. Things inexplicably occur. He seems to be following a story he has no control over. He seems to know little and you are him while reading he novel.
Juicy like watermelon on a parched summer day this one is.

Ever Glowing World of Fiction

Finished Haroun and the Sea of Stories this afternoon at the bookstore. Two days of good reading basically allowed me to finish it. A fairly straight forward fairy tale book, imaginative creature characters battling in the fight for light over darkness. I think Salman wrote it during his days of exile, perhaps as a meditation or practice in keeping his attitude healthy with all the impending doom and threat and paranoia looming in his then life? I'm going to stop my Rushdie phase here, feeling I'm ready to taste a different author for now, but I do want to go back and try my hand at Rushdie's more meaty political writing. I've just skimmed his fantastical verse's, which was a special surprise for I knew not that he was such a writer, taking me to worlds I'd not expected to go. Next I'm picking up Haruki Murakami's 'Sputnik Sweetheart' for starter's. Wanting to read 'The Winged-Bird Chronicles' next? I've heard some good things about it. So after I finished Haroun I immediately went down to pick up Murakami and rode to a shaded tree area on green grass and prosumed to begin this adventure. Reading, fiction inparticular, is really suiting my needs currently. It's allowing me new modes of thinking that I'm wanting to develop in myself. Having to do with imagination and stories and truth thru stories. I'm finding out that truth can best be explained, if not by personal experience (the preferred manner), then by imaginative suggestion, metaphor, by example. But in the end it is personal revelation that guarantee's one's understanding of what truth is. Fiction is helping me develop a new language to view reality from.

Please gracious, come indulge this sacred feast
We rhapsody sinsualities, soon shall summon a miraculous beast
The vine is ripe and supplies intoxication
Be not shy, but practice acts of fornication
You are welcomed guest, act your will merrily
Disrobe if you wish, to fashion us arousingly
Here you will find all you desire
Dance now the night along this ceremonial fire

Never Lets Me Down

My constance, sadness, remain true, without recession.
I am absorbed and surrendering in you, who never lets me down.


I was telling a friend of mine my current acknowledgment of the understanding that the emotion of sadness seems to me more a consistent and timeless emotion than love. And that this did not make me ,well, sad or depressed like he instintively thought it would/should? Sure sadness gets a bad rap, everybody's trying to beat it like a fat kid in elementary school, but when looked at from a place of confirmation that it exists and is a part of you, rearing its sensations from inside, then I find that comforting.
Even in love, when everything is blissful and nothing can touch you, inevitably you will feel sour from this very person who has given so much love. At a funeral you are very well reminded of sadness and it's actually this sadness that I most identify true living with. This acknowledgment of our passing, our identifying with our mortality and relatively short existence in these bodies. The realization that we are built to die can be a fulfilling one by wanting to utilize your time most creatively, effectively, productively...but in society it has been locked up and never talked about.
I have felt most alive at funeral's, in sad movies, or when I'm so humbled I tear. It is a constant friend she and I. Wearing a black blue cloak.

Sore throats happen when you sleep with your mouth open and a spider lays eggs in your esophagus.

Finished the blue book. A dream book compiled of over two years of dreams and notes. It smells slightly of patchouli and has deep sentimental feeling for me. I'm going to say that it, along with my drawing books, are the most important material items I possess. The objects I would look for if a fire were burning down the house. For they show my history, evidence of my interior worlds made manifest. They tell me who I've been and maybe lend clues to where I'm heading. All I am is in these books.
I started my new dream book this morning with a entry about me not participating in a orgy; yelling 'alligator' in a crowded dining hall and fooling everyone into believing their lower limbs were in danger of being devoured and chomped; and was attacked by Matthew Barney in a Versailles type garden while a large hedge came to life giving me time to get away. I am in love with dream logic.

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome

Come all who seek entrance into this place.
Soon the sun shall sink beneath the sea,
and the heavens be illumined by the glow of the moon,
who whispers our secret future.

No passage is so removed from decency as this.

Drop your garments that hinder you.

Drink from the cup that heals you.

Fear not your wake

For you are witness to the dawn of your birth.