Popcorn Double Feature (redux)

Various ideas for your book:

Include a scene at the rheumy palace — 

Maybe a nonfiction setting on shipwrecked cay. 

Maybe not.

Use these words liberally:

Ablation; asperity; cassocks; chasubles;  hooded cowls; astringent; incursive; afflux; minikin; Grand Guignol; rutilant; cadge; rebus; limpid; enmity; hackles; pathoformic; sabbat; afflatus.

Write, one hundred, 100-word chapters. 

End abruptly, midway through the narrative, and append a long footnote that elucidates nothing.

Add Autocorrected Texts and Overheard Conversational Automatism.

Include two single word chapters: “Isotope” and “Gunplay” on pages 33 and 66, respectively.

Include the anecdote about the Girl Scout merit badge you were awarded for “Sailing.”

Title the work: 

Lime Automatic See Thru Three Cats Aging in the He Code Other Using Nixon No-Stow Straws

Include the anecdote about Harry and Jerry not having cottage cheese on their plates at your Sweet Sixteen BBQ. And how Stone took the big wooden spatula and rammed it in Orpheus.

Remember people are usually pessimistic about rain.

Include the scene where you make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for every potential boyfriend on the first date. 

Include the line: “I’m a hipster.”

Don’t disappoint everyone.

No one was mad at you.

Remember what Dr. Greene said:

“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic, and fear which is inherent in a human situation.”

Include the words THE END.

What I’m Reading:

Although many people find it helpful to discuss their feelings with ChatGPT, mental health experts have warned that users who have intense conversations with the chatbot can develop beliefs that are potentially harmful. The phenomenon is sometimes called “AI psychosis,” although the term is not a medically recognized diagnosis.

OpenAI estimated last month that 0.15 percent of its users each week — more than a million people — show signs of being emotionally reliant on the chatbot. It said a similar number indicate potential suicidal intent

— Gerrit De Vynck and Jeremy B. Merrill / “We analyzed 47,000 ChatGPT conversations. Here’s what people really use it for.” / The Washington Post

Meanings Change

A mathematical effusion —
Léger’s mythopaiea —
The opposite of apposite.
A case of disturbing halitosis
Like a cage full of false alarms announced.

So herewith, and henceforth, I —
Eye affix my afflatus
To my dominant hand.

I, too, spend my time breathing
And enjoy it tremendously.

Only the captain hears
A familiar melody.

Things are wandering,
Their meanings change.

What I’m Reading:

I’m encircled by a single thing, a single movement:
a mineral weight, a honeyed light
cling to the sound of the word “noche”

— Pablo Neruda / “Unity”

Carbuncles

I woke up covered
With eyes —

Carbuncles in my sockets.

The displacement of trash
Language leads home —

A place that doesn’t exist
Anymore.

What I’m Reading:

The dying swan, whose screams are sweet to hear,
Oozes the black blood that writes these lines.

— Jean Cocteau / “Soft Eyes”

Softcover Words

Read this “How to…” book
and communicate in softcover words
your hardcover deeds —

herding sheep and goats,
lying with packs of dogs,
theorizing  yersinia pestis theorems,
and puzzling though a sheaf
of sanity assassins.

Read about the coughing
and sneezing of the infected.
Eat stands of banana, malanga, and yuca.

And make ten thousand marks
silvery and lustrous gray —

recounting the executions carried out
by children bored of kicking
old oil drums green
and rusted brown.

What I’m Reading:

I spend the drive searching for cactus
as if cactus was part of our bodies

— Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme / Until we became fire and fire us

Duchampeum

The kings and queens surrounded
by swift nudes
apropos of little sister
torn in tatters.

Stripped bare by bachelors
trailing coffee mills and paradigms —
siphoning a network of stoppages —
nine curving lines.

Dust breeding hideous
noise and a farewell to Florine —
Apollinaire enameled —
by a girl painting a bed frame.

So why not sneeze
At a cage full of sugar cubes?

What I’m Reading:

I wanted to get away from the physical aspect of painting. I was much more interested in recreating ideas in painting.

— Marcel Duchamp / “Marcel Duchamp” / MOMA installation

Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

There is no point
In doing anything,
There is no resisting
The monstrous god
Who devours
His own children.

— Fernando Pessoa / “Ode I”

Cars are, without exaggeration, one of the most significant and negative environmental, political, social, and cultural forces in the history of humanity … Instead of unbounded freedom and rugged self-reliance the never-ending proliferation of automobiles has delivered a host of costs and burdens. Among them are the demolition of our neighborhoods, towns, and cities to make way for expensive car infrastructure like freeways.

— Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon & Aaron Naparstek / Life After Cars

My disorder stacks to the sky. Those whom I loved were attached to the sky by an elastic. I turned my head … they weren’t there. 

— Jean Cocteau / “The Red Packet”

Oceans absorb more than 90 percent of the excess energy in the Earth system, which is primarily caused by burning fossil fuels, such as oil, coal, and gas. That imbalance hit a record 23 zettajoules last year, more than double the average of the previous two decades.

As a result, the oceans are warming at an accelerating rate. In 2020, the amount of heat being added to the oceans was equivalent to about five Hiroshima bombs per second. Last year, it was closer to 11 Hiroshima explosions per second. The UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, has warned “Earth is being pushed beyond its limits.”

— Jonathan Watts / “On the Longest Day of the Year, Ocean Surface Temperatures Hit a Record High” / Mother Jones

Where there is violence
there is always a trace
of an echo buried
deep
deep
down

— Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme / Until we became fire and fire

I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

— Marcel Duchamp / “Marcel Duchamp” / MOMA installation

I could fit all that matters
into one bag.

— Kate Braverman / “Job Interview”

What I’m Listening To:

We don’t know anything
You don’t know anything
I don’t know anything about love
But we are nothing (Whoa-oh-oh)
You are nothing
I am nothing without love

— The Magnetic Fields / “The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure”

(They Hope)

All we do is theatrical resistance —
Without direct action —

Elaborate gestures
Of a futility profound.

A pantomime —
Enervated and impotent —

A room full of brume
In my vise-like brain.

Fight fight confront confront
Resist resist resist —

Resistance is pointless.
(They hope).

What I’m Reading:

My blood has become ink. It was necessary to stop this revulsion at all costs. I am poisoned down to my bones. I sang in the dark and now that song frightens me.

— Jean Cocteau / “The Red Packet”

What I’m Reading:

4 am
We are under siege
I say we and yet oceans divide us
If you don’t leave
they will demolish the house on top of your heads

— Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme / Until we became fire and fire us

overheard in nyc …

… Someone said …

… Geckos of a wet finger … 

… You mean fingers of a wet echo? …

… which is why I get so physical in my practice …

… They cut off his head — they threw it overboard … 

… Only two drops of datura to make you lose your mind forever …

… Who is feeding the pigeons yellow rice? …

… I need to focus on finding an exit from that maze …

… Was the message sent using standard encryption? …

… The future is the same …

… We are in the midst of a mass extinction event driven by humans …

… I wouldn’t say she’s ugly …

… Is that what I look like? …

… I still don’t have a job …

… and he’s saying: I’m not perfect — I’m not no saint — and meanwhile he’s robbing the shit out of you …

… Wait here, you need to stand in that line …

… They got the Legionnaires’ thing up on the east side …

… How am I safe here now? …

What I’m Reading:

Nothing is stranger to humans than their own image.

— Karel Čapek / Rossum’s Universal Robots

The Pomp (redux)

Today I broke my vow of silence when I broke the glass in case of emergency. I croaked in a muttering fashion most embarrassing, “Ra… rah… run. Run! There’s a moth infestation.” We had moths. We were underground in our hermetically sealed glass boxes, and here we were with an infestation of moths. How was this possible? Had we not paid our alms, and made our ablutions in the appropriate manner? Had we not made cretinous burnt offerings—I was always against this affectation—pungent and breath-taking like good little pawns. For our troubles, for our conceits to our deity … we get moths! Was it worth breaking 137 days of silence over? Documents were signed, codicils initialed, an ascetic’s vow taken. The pomp. The sacrifice. Moths! What does this mean?

What I’m Reading:

My enemy keeps
a bowl of anemones
on my bedside table
and this cruelty
has killed my will
to perform even the duties
of an invalid

— Fanny Howe / “My Enemy”