mirando los santos

AMERICA!
SOAkING IN SOFT POWER
AMERICA!

do you know the institutions that made you? the institutions that make you.
naming them's not hard; try it!

DROP THE BEAT

*speaker repeats audience offerings*

FAMILY: hi mom, i dad, hey little sister, how you doing? how is home? is it SAFE there?

MANHOOD: hellos abstract code of conduct! hello invisible brotherhood of the penis that drives its furred and blunted sword in to the ground, into our lives. hellos. no i won't wear pantyhose in public. is there any kind of violence we've left out?

FOOD: hello food! hello steaks from Rainbow Foods and hummus. hello sodapop. hello olive bar at Lunds. Do you love me? your packages promised me life. thank you food place. thank you.

INDEPENDENT MUSIC:
hello independent music scene. wanna trade? where ARE we going? nice coat. radical means to the roots, man. like radishes. how can we effect structural change with sound, sonic youth? how can we effect structural change with sound, psychic TV? how can we effect structural change with sound Knotwells? How can we effect structural change with sound Whitney houston? with the police. how can we effect fucktural change with sound, b3n h34th? how can we..psychotic breaks in the sounds of the streets.

GRID: hello grid. hello to all the streets aligned to magnetic north, and to those adjacent that do not. hello Enlightenment Rationalism. hello Hoffmann on Franklin and Chicago, smoking a cigar. hello (specific addresses of friends). hello holy shit we are humans and we walk in straight lines! hello gutter, hello cars.

HEllo NATURE in the city, how's it going? we miss wolves. hello plants by asphalt, you are trying really hard. remember in november? the buffalo where streaming down Lake Street to the river, churning up the earth beneath the streets, it was covered in fallen leaves.

hello RADIO! you're ALRIGHT! i love the way you make me feel like i am not alone. electrical beacon fire, you relayed the fall of Troy to Clymenestra. but what the fuck is a radio wave, really?

HELLO MONEY!: money money money money money money money etc.

bues, bien.

i am definitively back to posting. today's happenings:


slept in my rented, soon to be not rented bed for the duration of ana's shift.

picked her up at pizza luce downtown, 3pm. drank beer. went to american apparel; she stole. met heather, jim's girlfriend, while he was on his lunch break. went and drank margaritas (on ana, thank you) and had our palms read. instructive, at least about hand physiology. made skeptical phrenology jokes with twin straws: unappreciated. drove jim and heather home to st.paul, made them listen to old cities of the plain mix; jim and heather (and i) agree: david's voice is god-like(i explained whiskey's help on torchbearer).

dropped ana off at a lame party. went (very late) to D&D; made new eldridge wizard character. good talks with germy, m kyle, and otha. made fun of trevor's hair and studiousness. picked up ana as she was sitting on gross boy's lap. fought. cried. fought. cried. made up. started watching dune. ana fell asleep (worst movie buddy i have). lucy joined me for crucial sting scenes. tried to carry ana to bed. failed. drove home drunk. can't type more.


love.


ps i gradjamated from college

here's the song: https://www.yousendit.com/download/YkxMS3dsT01LVlUwTVE9PQ

we're planning to re-record it next week. readers! how would you improve it?

.

*

that's a kiss for all creation, dedicated to the nice Christian ladies that stopped by my mother's house this morning.

and here's your invitation to my band's show tomorrow night, Saturday, at the Steven's Square Center for the Arts, above the convenience store just north of Franklin and 3rd Ave. it's golden oldies night, folks: expect a dirty cover of Golden Slumbers, and some good ol'screaming 60's soul music.

love,

gabe

my amazingly productive friend Miranda has been working with various local citizens to open an art and performance space up the stairs from the Nomad Bar (West Bank, Minneapolis, MN).

what's this place going to be about? i'm not quite sure yet, but i'm going to their opening party to find out. you should too:


West Bank Social Center Opening Night Social
Saturday, June 27th
7 p.m. until late (see below for details)
501 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN


"Help us celebrate the official opening of the West Bank Social Center, a new creative community space where unexpected things are happening! Tonight: Cocktail Hour with a special guest host to be announced! Performances, films, and other multi-media contributions from local artists. Dance night extravaganza! To join our email list send a note to westbanksocialcenter@gmail.com with "EMAIL LIST" in the subject line."

(see westbanksocialcenter.org)


Cedar Avenue as seen from the corner office at the WBSC.
>
( more info in wordy mass email reprint below!!--> )

DO YOU LIKE PARTY FUN MUSIC TIME:

my sister and i are going to make a christmas album for my mom and dad. we might do a carol or two, and cover a few of my mom's favorite folk tunes, and we need a whole bunch of singers.

so i'm putting out a call to everybody who'll be in the city on TUESDAY, to come over to my house to drink festive drinks and sing and strum and generally put a party on record in the space of an evening.

we're pressing record around 6 and will play in a ramshackle fashion til 9 o clock.

beer and eggnog will be plentiful. bring instruments!!!!

on the West Bank at 1903 S 6th St. come in through the back.

hwy ljers! want to help me with a research project?

I'm doing research on LUCID DREAMING, and i'm looking for lucid dreamers to interview about their experiences.

what's it about?

the basics: the mechanics of your induction process, your individual experiences, motivations and creative/therapeutic goals as lucid dreamers...  what PLAY means to you...

i'm also particularly interested in gathering your views on the ethics and interpersonal aspects of lucid dreaming: what role do other beings play in your dreams? how do you think of the "other" in these dreams? and how do you interact with these others when you know (and sometimes THEY know) they aren't "real"...

your confidentiality is assured of course.

i'll be conducting interviews via whatever chat program you prefer, so if any of you think this sounds exciting, drop me a line at gobifish@gmail.com or post a comment with your IM or MSN number so we can set up an interview time. our chats shouldn't take more than 30-60 minutes, i think.

yours truly,
chachuuung

school punched me in the face without any warning at all. i thought you were my friend, school. i thought i'd won you over; now it looks like all that work, all that self-abasement, all the time spent pretending to like the crappy CDs you played for me was in vain. you punched me in the face without any warning at all.

the state fair on labor day. bloody marys for breakfast. drunken, mostachioed boozetranauts crashing off bicycles into pavement, over and over. tremendous plastic soda cups full of vodka and black label. the scrambler. the ferris wheel. fried cheese curds out of steaming black garbage bins. techno power. booty dancing on the midway. yells of "let's get lewd!!!".

and then tuesday was slow-motion violence day. woke up bleary, shrieking back at an alarm clock that said 11:00 am - two hours past the start of my first shift at my new job. fumbled apologies to too-polite english professors over the phone.

so yeh, bad start to the week. it'll work out, though. this is gonna be a hard hard hard and probably very rewarding semeseter. barring termination on grounds of alcoholism/sociopathy/twitchy eyeballs, i'll be spending the year working as a writing consultant at the u of m writing center. more on this later.

anyway, tonight's horror is me staring glassy-eyed at my first assignment. it's for a class on writing consultancy, and i'm suppose to BLOG on the official writing center BLOg about the early life experiences that made me a reader and writer. BLOGgy Blogggy blog blog. for cash.

i don't know. this licor cafe is a big help though.

when i'm in a dark room, for instance, and i need to throw a pop can into the recycling with the minimum of effort, i use a trick i learned as a kid trying to chase down my black dog in dark suburban forests:

look above your target. for some reason, if you focus your eyes on a spot about 20 degrees above the target, it's a lot easier to see. it can't be just me.

[p.s. the purpose of this "skill share" series is to document the kind of mundane, incommunicable life-skills i've acquired over the years, no thanks to my dad. i've been rehearsing this sort of thing since about 2005, when my biological clock kicked in and i started fantasizing about fatherhood. sad but true.]

tallulah gosh - beatnik boy
http://download.yousendit.com/C4B27FB51B30192F

hey, my band needs 2 loud, portable amplifiers.

how do we do this? links?

thin skin kid
like wet paper
up riverside ave.
face first into warm wind

everything passing right through her, a rattling through of alien things, drumtight translucent skin. heart sick.
were gonna sing about anxiety. mortal fear of the enemy in you. the enemies in you. the many many no-one no I in you.

loneliness.

tell her what? to wait. it comes back. it comes back. it will. it has to. it always does. and yeah, people are always warning you not to cross that line... cuz if you cross that line.. just like never mind.. don't you cross that line. but no one ever tells you what to do if you've already crossed that line. no one ever tells you what happens after the cataclysm.

heart away. but hands and hair and mouth and skin and brains brains brains. (checks hisself) yup, all still here. thats almost enough, having a body.

ohh lah lih lah lyh

kidney (?) pain
spleen (?) pain
what the hell is going on in there? i need to make a doctor's appointment.
lot's of thoughts today. took adderall in the morning to study for european history presentation. it went well, but i felt wrong all day.. active and ambitious, but wrong. reptilian calculation without feeling.

modular, self-examining mental structures. the mental strength, flexibility and reflexivity i need to create new mental patterns. instrumentalized consciousness.

scientific method. data collection: "instantaneous observation" - record daily self-checks.

walking to class, smelling springtime, i realized that i live in a sort of permanent state of emergency. routines/rituals fizzle before they start due to my constantly hitting reset. so rituals... slow life. movies do seem to help. time to try a strong, daily diet of cinema. morning viewings!?

increase nerdiosity. the things i learn in these months will be with me all my life.

cook my own food.

identify self-sabotaging social behaviors and work on them. this is related to courage and to being alive to the great possibilities of the present. radical action within established boundaries of self-damage. brave enough to be strange.

foresight. strategy. nurture ambition.

ok kids, i'm leaving for spain tomorrow, but i'm home alone tonight and feeling dull as a rock and kinda sad. ana went home to aberdeen today; i'm suddenly lonely, although not enough to go out and find my friends, wherever they are. i can't sit here and not-pack any longer though, so i might just go to palmer's and get boozed up. but i almost hope i don't run into anyone i know; i'm feeling so flat and affectless i'd probably creep them out.

in any case, i know all i have to do is get through the next couple of days and i'll feel better. DUH, i'm going to spain TOMORROW! and i haven't been home for a year and a half...

minneapolitan friends, i love you and i'll see you in 3 weeks.

i'm getting rid of the cellphone. but i have a home phone #. call me sometime!!!

612 338-3898

mara_pauline says she's gonna write a novel for NANOWRIMO(dot org). this is super exciting, and i hope if she ever needs some quick hack-job content to fill out a slim chapter at the last minute - she'll know who to turn to.

i think if i were gonna write a novel first of all i'd refuse the impulse to begin a "psychological" novel. (but i think i'm blind to "character", so...)

i'd make sure that form and content were carefully calibrated for complete mutual sabotage so as to prevent my nestling myself into the spongy "benevolent universe" or "coming to a realization about life" crap i know i'm prone to in journal form. a self-sabotage so complete, an entanglement in a form so ungainly and convoluted, that anthropocentrism won't even have a chance, i'll be too busy figuring out how to get from point A to point B to point C...etc.

i'd revel in my godlike ability to just mush the text-world and the thing-world into one big ball of invented physics. actually i'd probably write in all kinds of metaphysical mumbojumbo like that, just cuz i'm god, shit. arrange the heavens however the fuck i want. if any "humans" show up, i'll dismantle their psyches and reuse the parts in ludicruous or creepily diffused ways...

clumsily introduce a ferociously powerful embodiment of NATURE into a mostly urban narrative, about halfway in; invent the urban pastoral.

make the first half a puzzle that the second half must enter and solve..

intrusions of the novel into the real. photo-documentation of a real life shoplifting excursion as coda to part 1.

vertigo-inducing dilations/contractions of human-scaled time

maybe some real lurid fistfights on the city bus. or a tiger-hunt. committing unconscionable crimes vicariously, through a bloody-minded alter ego, named after some friend of my mom or dad's who i think is kind of a creep anyway..

avoiding the psychological means avoiding tedious boy scout scenarios - being 'true'. tie it to the gleeful amoral obsessive in me instead. better to write like i'm getting away with something.

ok, gotta ease back into this updating thing. too many confusing things going on, things that could be horrible but i can't tell because i can't manage a shred of objectivity; been drifting back and forth between sorta-ok-ness (before the cigarette), and(after) sinking, drifting, identity-shredding (this is a sinking ship metaphor) horror in the vastness of deepest ocean...

but i seem to remember a couple weeks there in june that were really amazing.

see, the lifeforce-draining effects of booze (and cigarette smoke) always take a month or so to really take hold. in the mean time, amid that long, slow decline of certain pleasure-producing centers in my brain, the booze does wonders. It stabilizes my chemistry somehow, looses the hold of some skull-clenching fist,

keeps King Mania on the throne (err.. at the till..) for days.

i am a man blessed and cursed with miraculous, glorious hangovers. the nighttime debauchements are nice enough yes, (ahhh, silvery dreamscapes...) but ohh, sweet apollo!!, the waking up in the sun next day, still soused to the gills and GOLDEN, eyes, arms and throat all opening to the miracle of sunlight. that makes it worth it.

gasping sweet air, stupidly, swimmingly happy, okwiththeworld, still-drunk as a newborn babe. flitting up stairways in the public library, making eyes, making a spectacle of myself in the park ...i don't care, summer is a miracle, the city is a miracle, my life is a miracle...etc... it goes on and on for days and days and days.

(((( remember when we walked around stadium village, and I showed you the field where my house used to be, and you were feeling kinda bad, but I blathered on anyway, told you a story about the time a moose was fighting an elephant in my livingroom, and the elephant crashed through the wall and stumbled bleeding out into traffic and got run over by an elephant-shaped bus full of elephants who all came streaming out of the bus to moan and grieve for their fallen friend and then all turned at once with a trumpeting of VENGEANCE and trampled the house to the ground?

and we ate at the wok, and told lies, and made a pirate ship out of a parliament box and christened it the ARGY and it really sailed for a while... (that dance wasn't hard to do, was it?) although I started fading as the sun went down))))

never long enough.

drag down this rotten hull of a ship, oh lord,
the crew's all dead, sails torn to shreds,
to the barb'rous sea may i be wed.

or not. maybe I'm being silly, but it might be worth trying to quit smoking again, or getting a little exersize, etc.., or calling up a friend, before I quite MARTYR MYSELF TO A MERCILESS SEA GOD

mojave 3 - life in art

in case of overwhelming loneliness.

i´ve been keeping a paper diary and indulging myself in untranslatable shorthand, which i plan on keeping to myself.

any task becomes manageable when broken into enough small steps.

1. throw backpack onto roof
2. drag big garbage bin to side of building
3. jump onto bin
4. climb over eaves and scramble onto roof
5. pickup backpack
6. open window
7. climb in

if you have the courage to initiate step 1, the rest takes care of itself. a little like nuclear war, i guess. a single test of will at the start, but the rest is purest action.

10th grade feet. becky and me.

climbed the oak tree at the edge of the ballpark.

saturday will be a busy day:

GRAND OPENING of the downtown library.

art-a-whirl

crunction junction party

POST YOUR PHONE NUMBER

or

CALL ME: 651 230 4589 (same number as before)

cuz i have a new phone.

llamadas internacionales aceptadas!!!!!

going back to school next fall. haven´t registered yet- will be doing so in next few days.

english lit. of some kind
fiction writing class of some kind
history class or global studies class of some kind
spanish lit. of some kind
or a cscl class of some kind

suggestions?

and my minnesotaCare finally went through - june will include a battery of medical pokings and proddings, including, after a year and .5 of pain and suffering and musical stagnation, HAND REHAB.

work. took my 8th grade students on a whirlwind tour of the u of m via city bus today.
but the school whork will be over soon.

this summer:

lunch shift at gardens of salonica
evening shift at the aster cafe

hours and hours of tastefully refined subservience to power-lunching nordeast yuppies.

i lost my fucking cellphone.

sorry for the mechanized post. it´s been a long day.

stuff is good. very very good.

hoy entregé una carta a la universidad de minnesota, pidiendo la readmisión, pero no me darán respuesta hasta el medio de maio. es un poco incomodo - empiezo a prepararme para una vida scolastica, sin saber si es en vano o no. pero lo que deseo ahora es, encima de todo, la oportunidad de estudiar profundamente, durante meses, sin descanso. si me dejan, empezaré este verano, y parece ser que gracias a mi pobreza será o barato o gratis.

la primavera me ha devuelto la vida. hoy sentí 289 variedades distintas de bienestar, y he sido el valiente explorador de las Eufórias, esas islas misteriosas que aparecen en las esquinas del mapa...

me divierto mas en el trabajo con los pekes ahora que hace buen tiempo. los lunes y los miercoles salgo al campo detras de la escuela (y al lado de un parking y de una carretera) y con una pandilla de niñas intento plantar un jardín ("jardinear" es un anglicismo?). martes y jueves juego al futbol con los niños.

el discurso público sobre el bigote parece dividirse exactamente por linea de género. con la pequeña excepción de mi jefa francesa.

y mientras:

mi bigote crece. crece mi bigote.
como las hiervas del campo, crece.
como las flores entre los huesos del búfalo, crece.
como los altos pinos..

etc. etc. etc..

reading:
Quicksilver - neal stephenson
Spain in America - charles gibson
la autopìsta del sur y otros cuentos - julio cortázar
ATOMIk AZTEX - sesshu foster (!!!!!!!!) '

booze moderation going well. this seems to be a sustainable pattern - one beer a night - the occasional two-fer if in womanly company. i felt like such a bore hanging out with robyn. cigarettes are my kryptonite. i just close up, shrink to a shivering silent husk. every time.

things to do that r not done:
turn in respectable loring app.
turn in readmission petition
(and that's it, that's the important stuff)

exersize everyday - try for outside fun, cuz the gym is getting sooo boring.
quit smoking, eat well.

SPRING PICNIC!!

life begins to seem not so bad, especially when it's warm and sunny. adieu

read recently:

mr. clemens and mark twain
the duel and other stories - chekhov
the tempest

There was a vivid flash of lightning at all three windows, and it
was followed by a prolonged, deafening roll of thunder, beginning
with a hollow rumble and ending with a crash so violent that all
the window-panes rattled. Laevsky got up, went to the window, and
pressed his forehead against the pane. There was a fierce, magnificent
storm. On the horizon lightning-flashes were flung in white streams
from the storm-clouds into the sea, lighting up the high, dark waves
over the far-away expanse. And to right and to left, and, no doubt,
over the house too, the lightning flashed.

"The storm!" whispered Laevsky; he had a longing to pray to some
one or to something, if only to the lightning or the storm-clouds.
"Dear storm!"

He remembered how as a boy he used to run out into the garden without
a hat on when there was a storm, and how two fair-haired girls with
blue eyes used to run after him, and how they got wet through with
the rain; they laughed with delight, but when there was a loud peal
of thunder, the girls used to nestle up to the boy confidingly,
while he crossed himself and made haste to repeat: "Holy, holy,
holy. . . ." Oh, where had they vanished to! In what sea were they
drowned, those dawning days of pure, fair life? He had no fear of
the storm, no love of nature now; he had no God. All the confiding
girls he had ever known had by now been ruined by him and those
like him. All his life he had not planted one tree in his own garden,
nor grown one blade of grass; and living among the living, he had
not saved one fly; he had done nothing but destroy and ruin, and
lie, lie. . . .

"What in my past was not vice?" he asked himself, trying to clutch
at some bright memory as a man falling down a precipice clutches
at the bushes.

School? The university? But that was a sham. He had neglected his
work and forgotten what he had learnt. The service of his country?
That, too, was a sham, for he did nothing in the Service, took a
salary for doing nothing, and it was an abominable swindling of the
State for which one was not punished.

He had no craving for truth, and had not sought it; spellbound by
vice and lying, his conscience had slept or been silent. Like a
stranger, like an alien from another planet, he had taken no part
in the common life of men, had been indifferent to their sufferings,
their ideas, their religion, their sciences, their strivings, and
their struggles. He had not said one good word, not written one
line that was not useless and vulgar; he had not done his fellows
one ha'p'orth of service, but had eaten their bread, drunk their
wine, seduced their wives, lived on their thoughts, and to justify
his contemptible, parasitic life in their eyes and in his own, he
had always tried to assume an air of being higher and better than
they. Lies, lies, lies. . . .

empiezo la cuaresma secular anual. que llegue la primavera!!!!

y desde hoy empezaré a colgar aquí algunas grabaciones de mi grupo de vigo, del año pasado, empezando con este pedazo de rock totalmente excesivo. pero joder, mola, no?:

ROK KILER!!!

"
"se llama así la canción - rock killer!!"

at the wilmar house

Me voy a nuevo mexico, en coche con mi amiga lizzy. Saldrémos a medianoche, y esperamos llegar en poco mas que 24 horas.

Volveré en una semana, y les contaré mis aventuras.

¡!

=== I´m driving to new mexico with lizzy. We´re leaving at midnight! See you in a week! !!!!

Llevo bastante tiempo sin intentar reestablecer comunicaciones con ustedes, mis queridos vigueses. Miseria, frio, un trabajo agobiante, depresión, vagancia, el abuso del alcohól.. etc..etc..las excusas son infinitas. no se que me pasó esta semana. había conseguido vivir durante unos cuantos meses sin excesos de morriña (es así la palabra, no?), hasta sentir algo de verguenza por mi capacidad para perder tanto sin remordimiento ninguno. pues ha sido esta semana, en el nadir de un horrible invierno, cuando me he llenado, de repente, de melancolía, de nostalgia, sentimentalismo, saudade etc., y, pues, hay que hacer algo ya, antes de volverme loco o tirar me al oceano(que queda un poco lejos).

Si os atreveís a volver de vez en cuando a este sitio, os prometo lo siguiente:

1. prosa mala, patosa, rota, extraña.

2. Una introducción a la gloría, terror y mediocredad sorprendente de la vida norteamericana! (Así en plan exposé sucio, como hunter s. thompson). CRIMEN, SEXO, OPRESION!

3. Os ofreczo las sordidas vidas de mis amigos aquí en minneapolis; cosa que no haría en inglés, pero, como casi ninguno de ellos entiende el español…je je

4. las grabaciones del antiguo grupo de la calle lopez mora. Tengo muchas cosas guais aquí grabadas, algunas que pablo, jaco, y rubén seguramente no han escuchado. Si os interesa..

5. Y para no fastidiar demasiado a los yanquis: nada de inglés, por ahora, pero les prometo mucho como el siguiente video, que no require palabras:

Ajem. señores y señoras! os presento… como introducción… como saludo… como bienvenida…

FRANK ZAPPA!!: http://www.youtube.com/?v=yeNcHPvqcjA

ok yanquis, sorry, but for the near future, this will be a spanish-only space. feel free to babblefish it, if you like. not that i think that you're, you know, going to be suddenly horribly mentally impoverished without my wondrous prose or anything, of course.

don't worry, i definitely won't be gossiping at length, in detail, and with ruthless precision about your sordid, pathetic sex lives to my spanish friends.

now go away.

""Images of Disorder," by social critic Michael Harrington in his collection "The Accidental Century," ...highly literate account of Mann's political progression from bourgeois conservative to left-wing nihilist."
"Anthony Heilbut's biography,Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature (1997), was widely acclaimed for uncovering the centrality of Mann's sexuality to his oeuvre."
DIARIES!
Mann's great correspondence with Hermann Hesse

Lotte in Weimar (1939) (read sorrows of young werther first!)
dr. faustus (music)

good summary - http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webdescrips/mann313-des-.html
book club discussion - http://www.readliterature.com/BC_magicmountain.htm

susan sontag: "No book has been more important in my life than The Magic Mountain..."

There were papers strewn everywhere. i sat with my back to the wall, facing the front door, with my legs stretched out over the collapsed diningroom table. The pistol was infuriating me. One little hinged part kept swinging open, and i kept accidentally flipping the safety on. I shifted it, exasperated, in one clumsy mittened hand, trying to reach the trigger with my index finger without firing(my left arm was a bandaged, bloody stump).

The bullets fell out.

-FUCK FUCK FUCK! - through gritted teeth, my neck tense and trembling.

I lurched up into a squatting position, pulling my coattails out from under my boots, and began jamming the bullets back into the chamber.

It’d been the sort of day when the entire physical universe seemed to be conspiring against me. 1. Banged my shin on the coffee table. 2. Sprained my ankle falling down stairs. 3. Had to force my fingers into the impregnable space between wrist and coat to untwist my shirt sleeves. 4. MY LEFT ARM WAS A BANDAGED BLOODY STUMP. and now this. I pulled the mitten off with my teeth and stuffed it into my pocket in a blind fury.

The others milled anxiously around the livingroom, puffing steamy breath into the cold air and producing soft scuffs and creaks as they clomped around on the filthy beige carpet and over the landfill of garbage our 38 hr vigil had produced. As R lifted the heavy cream-colored curtains to scan the street, L came stumbling back over the shambles, yelling at me, drunk and hoarse and phlegmy. He held a small black revolver to his breast with maternal tenderness, and a half-full, open vodka bottle swung with his limp arm as he came stumbling over the couch. In the incipient daylight, the booze had lost all its glamorous, limpid allure, and now I recoiled as I watched it swish in the bottle with the pale light of dawn behind it. The morning tasted of vodka.

-What the fuck are you---hey gimme that gun.

-No.

-Cmon...you...you already have a rifle, man, all I have is this fucking...uh...

He paused, raised the pistol to his face, and stared at it slack-jawed for a while before finishing his sentence:

-…cat shooter.

I ignored him. Morning had destroyed him.

scene 1 Act 1

a brothel

A: what about the voice of geddy lee? how did it get so high? i wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy.

B: i know him, and he does.

A: and you're my fact-checkin' cuz.

FIN

my amazon wishlist!!!! :

http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/U8KB76U6CM70

what a miserable day. not even walking an hour, cold and lonely, or talking to friends whose pets had just died or drinking beer despite a stomachache out of sheer desperation or even having the laundromat lockup 10 minutes early with my bedsheets and clean socks inside could make me feel any better.

i did finish "death in venice", however. i realized, too, that the more miserable i am, and the colder it is, the harder i have to sing as i walk. i've always done this, but now it's ALL THE TIME; and while it's still a nonsensical mash of mixed metaphors, oldies song lyrics and sheer cliche, my melodies do get better and better. i'm proud of my improving ear for intervals, and although it depresses me to think of all the good vocal melodies that get spent out there in the empty evening sidewalks of NE, i'm consoled by the knowledge that tomorrow's will be better still. and maybe i'll record some someday. and write songs. and... stop wasting the few years of lucidity i have left trudging mindlessly back and forth between my dead-end job and my filthy, lonely bed. seriously, i don't even have sex fantasies anymore, or power fantasies or anything, just IMPROVED TRANSPORTATION fantasies. flying carpet please, now.

seneca's stoic good sense appears to be the perfect antidote for your mewling self-pity, if you could only unknot yr stomach, steady yr shivering, smoke-ravaged lungs, and drain yr head of churning black bile long enough to actually absorb any of it.

interchangeable drunks outside, i wish you would die.

i always miss the good Church shows. how 'bout a secret little lj post about it from you more cued-in ljers out there, next time? same thing goes for the other subterreanenan institutional events out there.

i woke up at dawn today, had methodical, peaceful breakfast at home, walked to stadium village for cigarettes and coffee and an hour of reading. morning blustery snowfall makes me breathless. i ran into amanda on the sidewalk, and she was breathless too. she is great.

the cityscape fades to white at half-a-block's distance (the Fog of War, oh RTS nerds!), and i am strong and rested and full of coffee and reverence for the unknown.

so much reading this month!:

i finished thomas mann's the magic mountain. maybe i'll say more about it later, but i have a lot to do today, so for the moment, only this: it's the greatest thing i've ever read, in my whole life, and it has (i'll be cautious here) transformed me - has shown me a method and a clear, steep path to self-creation.

as i drunkenly told jeremy last sunday, "this book has made it possible for me to say that i want to be a man." not "manhood" in the small, gendered, chauvinistic sense - but manhood in the big, becoming-fully-human sense. whoever i am, i am no longer a boy crippled by spiritual fatherlessness.

and from now on, i read in earnest.
other january reading:

the three-penny opera, by brecht
travesties, by tom stoppard
(both are plays, read in the interests of my theatricuhl edjamacation)

and "islam para todos", in spanish - a short, cogent history of islam, by muslims, for everyone.

...up from the (european modernist)ghetto with the help of my (textual) stilleto.

it's like there's just sunlight falling from the sky, and it's warm.

i slept all day, now i'll walk to work along the river. sorry betsy, no movies today.

BUT: the first three people to visit me at the aster today and bring me a good cd to listen to, and play scrabble with me, GET FREE MOVIE TICKETS!!

no joke!

i can't think of anything better to do tonight than stand on my front step and smoke and glower at people.

i'm a wreck.

I wrote this last march but didn't post it because i thought the term “the john coltrane of pissing yourself” might be taken the wrong way by certain people and because i didn't think it was really thought out and finished. it still isn't, but the topic still seems relevant, especially in light of the recent, supposed ascendancy of noise music as the new punk rock, and anyway, i've outed myself as a beatles fan, for christsake, so it doesn't really matter what my avant-friends think about my opinions on this topic, does it?

( i'm a little self-conscious about the tediousness of my posts lately, ok, so don't read this if you don't hate fun, like i do )

some mornings i half-wake up into a kind of mythic, pre-rational state of mind. i love my east facing window. from my loft i can lie half-asleep, cheek on pillow, with one eye on the light streaming in past the antennas and telephone lines, looking out over the flat tops of the buildings, all the way back to the grain elevators and the railyard behind dinkytown. this morning i noticed that the light through the window forms a series of golden rectangles on the west wall at my feet. half-asleep, it occured to me to draw their outlines, to do it every morning.. a sort of a transcription process, you know, like when allah whispered the koran into mohammed's ear. a conception of islam communicated to the prophet in the form of a long series of abstractions probably wouldn't have 'swept the world like wildfire' like the written kind did, but i like the idea.

i'm broke but i was so hungry when i got up, so i went to the purple onion at like 9am and sat in a booth for another hour of sunworship, and read the chapter in magic mountain where hans castorp's proud militaristic cousin joachim leaves the sanatorium to join his regiment, and they have sort of a heartbreaking parting at the trainstation, and the silent joachim speaks a few intimate words to his cousin, after months of silent conflict and i, uhhh, cried. in the sun. while dipping a sandwich in vegetable chili.
pleasure heads must burn!!

more foolish spending at the bookstore:

creative drama for the classroom teacher
woodstock kid's crafts (awesome early 70's hippy craft book, with guide to radicuhl street theater)
bertold brecht - the three penny opera
germany in the twenties (same big coffeetable book i got cory for christmamas for only 7 bucks)

now i have to go to work, and clean the art supply room, i think as punishment for missing a training thingimajiggy yesterday, and i'm supposed 'lead a brainstorm' (eww eww brainstorm brainstorm.. can we have a barnstorm instead?) on dance theater and performance with my YMCA coworkers, and i don't know how the hell to do that...