celebrity encounters

Así en la paz como en la guerra, cap. 8

And the wire cutters slipped and clipped the copper wire and the explosion lifted him and before crushing him against the wall it had already blown him open and other explosions followed the first and the deaf murmur went from the room and rolled through the house outside to the end of the street and when the firemen arrived it was necessary to chop down the door with an ax because it had been locked from within and in a cloud of smoke and dust they saw the bodies in pieces and the furniture in pieces and the clothing blown to shreds. Outside the clouds loomed dark and low, lightning flashed in the dark pink clouds, the pink clouds were a black darkness and they loomed low a dark portent, and smoke and dust billowed from the splintered door, the entire room was covered in blood, there was a silence and he remembered the kiss at center court in the rain in the park between their houses. He was 15 and she was 14 and they loved each other deeply and they kissed in the rain at center court a night the sky was overcast and pink and thunderheads boiled upward from the stratocumulus and it rained and they kissed, and his body ached, his body ached so powerfully and he ached .

there's yet time for another commemoration. turnstile diaries. last sentence here.

another version of the 3 sentence story

Taken to the nth degree my objections yet would seem understated. Fear of the blank page is only as consuming as the abyss when unconfronted. we stare on the brink into the dark depths, we dance in the air between the ghostly towers. we emerge victrious.

3 orange toast banners undid the lapse in refrigeration. like muscular, seeming insouicant, carriage toasts, unbeknownsts.

hapsburg, tel aviv, detroit rock city, motorola.

the endless tunnel,
the signpost to the endless tunnel,
giving directions to the signpost to the endless tunnnel,
removing all humor from giving directions to the signpost to the endless tunnel.
a painful automatic chore.

writing is responsibility.

but how lovely reigned in
spoken from the curve device

teach us how to speak english.

don't ever ask permission ever (internet persona)

don't you ask permission now
the endless squadron deflates any notion
while spider webs draw blue prints
to spider's shakral aura or
spider's shakral perception of your's.

the tabatha retreats to indolence
smelling the palabra like
eating a chimp's foot.

remake your Dictionary of Received Ideas
Flaubert may never have been born come morning.

variations of beauty and the beast

upon viewing Jean Cocteau's wonderful version from 1946...

1. switch the masculine and feminine roles - the beast is a woman who wants the mother's beautiful son to marry her... what would this feminist version reveal to us about our inherited gender attitudes...

2. the beast kills the beauty immediately upon arrival in the castle. he asks her why she's come, she explains to save her father, that she feels responsible and that her love for him binds her to... he snuffs her out, he cannot stand that such pure goodness exists in the world. From here the narrative must take a completely different turn - the beast is not goodness disguised in a horrible facade, he is truly evil.

3. The scene where the beast says "you pet my head as if I were an animal" (I am paraphrasing) and Belle replies "but you are a beast"... our protagonist sits on the couch watching this scene with his housemates cat in his lap, petting it gently, the cat stares him directly in the eyes, purs, expands, borders on mythic. we clearly see the wide brush of his whiskers.

4. "your goodness will cost you dearly, Belle" beautiful

July 29, 2008

http://www.cassettefrommyex.com/

here's a link for myself and for anybody who accidentally lands on this site.

and some thoughts.

jacques tati's PLAYTIME / unique cinematic masterpiece.

origin of species ... a must read for before, during and after a long encounter with nature. especially the first 4 or 6 and the last chapter... read the summaries of the rest unless you're a biology student looking for prescient research projects in the field.

just back from a week in the Crazy Mountains of Montana. the highlight / white-winged crossbill

July 12, 2008

the word of the day is "potlatch"... http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/potlatch

currently writing a review of what might have been a dull doc on Yao Ming, an athlete I know nothing about who plays in a sport I care little for. It's enough to get a guy going, though. It seems a career as a writer is a real possibility for me, but I have got to pay my dues. I think film criticism will be a good start. Literature, too, but keep at it day in and day out.

I feel pushed around by unpleasant obligations and feel this is my own fault. Really, I am just not suited for American culture - I prefer living abroad and will most certainly become an expat. Too much violence, and not just physical, criminal violence, but violent gesture and violent intentions underlying much of our activity. I realize this exists everywhere and is part of the human animal, but that it is more apparent to me here on my native soil is undeniable. I suppose I am learning to cope.

back to my yao essay...

July 9, 2008

Voyage of the Beagle is just great, especially after the first 15 pages or so it took to adjust to the arcane language. Practical, curious, wonderstruck, elegaic - this man may have been a novelist (and nearly was a preacher) but for his training in and passion for the natural sciences. Makes one want to carry around field guides on botany, birds, insects, animals. Makes one want to keep rigorous travel journals. The idea of shooting narrative films while on the road and conducting field work simultaneously came to me. Have a resident biologist on set and schedule time for observation. Then the thought of staging musical performances in the rainforest while planting trees. Fuck concert halls and entertainment, lets do the hands-on work this planet needs and apeal to the soul and to the aesthetic intellect at the same time. All of this is ridiculous, but that is the point of this blog space, to serve as a sounding board for those thoughts I otherwise let go unexpressed.

July 7, 2008

in that warehouse of stored-up ideas one never taps:
pale death.

when we sit to write every day we do just that.
when we aim to and fall short it is that we are doing.

we’ve read more of roberto bolaño than perhaps everyone in this damned country minus a dozen people. write down what we’ve found out.

we’re reading cormac mccarthy and have something secretive to say about it. we love it but we cringe at the politics. dissect this beauty and dissect this romanticized, diminished portrayal of mexico

we have beautiful movies and beautiful photographs inside of us waiting. get them out.

we have a notion of beauty that we’d like to propogate. do so.

this pep talk is beyond all reason.
get to grant writing, get to the page, open up final cut pro and spend time editing. photoshop. we are not to sleep or worry about our health or comfort. we are to race around destroying the world. we are to populate the world with monuments to ourself. produce produce produce!!!

tv – freaks and geeks, buffy the vampire slayer
film – ugetsu, birth, bad doc on photography, angels with dirty faces
books – mccarthy’s border trilogy. on deck – voyage of the beagle
conversation with helen – her divorce, my mom’s obesity, maca’s visa, strategies for expediting the process, conversation strained, uneasy, forced, both of us tired, still somehow sweet