Curved cortices, consciousness of the othered, you lack in your miles of half-smiles and squander. Incisors bared, inward-turned, glint slick with palaver strings— as sibilant missiles cut involute trails into a sky of ruined trajectories. Growling cur restive.
What I’m Reading:
“But there was so much more hate than any of us had the capacity to understand. Hate seemed to spring from the deepest core of our beings. Years later, all you had to do was peep through a peephole and there it was for anyone to see-a whole world of vitriol, entirely without end. It seemed that rage was what we were made of.”
4/10 Called at 3:41 when banging/noise began and apprised X., but as it stopped after a couple of minutes (and hoping it wouldn’t recur) I suggested I’d call back when it started again.
— test stain on floor
6:57pm continued thru 7:11 Spoke with X. again. He said he would call them, and I assume he did because it stopped after 14 minutes.
— scrub kitchen floor
4/12 1:43 pm continued thru 1:46 Spoke with Y., and suggested to him that maybe a parent was indisposed and that I would call again if it went on longer—it stopped while I was speaking to him.
— caulk shower holes
4/13 Started at 12:55-12:57pm, stopped before I called the desk. Again 12:59-1:01pm, then stopped. Did not call.
— connect electronics
4/23 Called Z. at 12:56, after a couple of minutes of same noise it stopped at 1 pm.
— bookcase lights
4/27 A couple of minutes of the noise and then a crash. It stopped.
— clean/paint balcony divider
What I’m Reading:
“… in every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death.”
Did you notice you don’t stop ‘til you really stop?
What does that even mean? Panta said.
Well, Moira said, imagine a bunch of barking dogs or cats meowing to Jingle Bells, it doesn’t stop in your head even when it stops in real time. You’ll never rewire those synapses to do anything else; they’re forever programmed to bring those dogs and cats back in moments that you least expect it, or want it. Forevermore, those neural connections will do nothing else, those electrochemical passageways will do nothing but wait in ambush to bring it back at inopportune moments.
It sounds like you’re describing PTSD, Panta said.
I’m describing a bad dream. A greenish and sick nightmare. No more. Make it stop.
What I’m reading:
“My whole process starts by free writing dialogue. Before I even have characters. I’ll write a sentence that has some traction for me. And then I answer that sentence.”
—Vanessa Veselka / The Creative Independent interview
S. understands nothing. He tries, squint-eyed, to turn his brain over. Without spark, the ignition doesn’t catch.
S. sees himself, monochromatic, on the screen of his childhood 1974 Panasonic. He’s talking globular in a rectangular city. He makes connections obliquely — only in transient bursts. He needs raiment for the soul but finds defenestrated appliances and tatters in mounds in their stead. He walks a bray of winces in piles of miles of monticular hunger. Nothing for the stomach and nothing for the next life. He quanders in squandered lines of obtuseness. A sign up ahead reads: “Squelch and Skronk, $2.99/lb.” He makes a beeline for the whole ball of wax — a hive of astute astringency on loan — from a god lost in this corner of the universe…
He’s lost in the reticular coldness of the attenuating picture — a cathode ray tube snow (fuzz from his childhood in 1974) and a muzz of voices echoing from the exhaust vent above his head. He’s one with the toilet seat now, one with his pins and needles thighs, and uncomfortably prescient.
He continues his note: … all will be needling shit this new year… Happy so and so… New Year so and so…
“Screw ‘Auld Lang Syne!’” he says. “Screw Robert Burns?” he says to his reflection in the mirror.
And some person outside his hotel room door — which is disquietingly close to the bathroom door (for hadn’t he last night passed one door where he swore he heard a fugue of wet untethered flatulence, and walking by another door heard wretched retching and moans?) — why did the man outside his door continue saying “hogmanay” this and “hogmanay” that, and what was that infuriating accent?
S. understood nothing.
What I’m Reading:
“The croaker lives out Long Island … light yen sleep waking up for stops.change.start … everything sharp and clear antennae of TV suck the sky … The clock jumped ahead the way time will after 4 P.M.”
Conceptual Film: Critical Focal Acuity 2 (Shot / Unshot) In A Can
Series of found film cuts as the camera racks out of focus / or shoots unfocused footage
(Asynchronous sound: random and obtuse observations)
Series of stills from said shots
(Asynchronous sound: mundane observations)
Series of cuts of shots slowly resolved into focus
(Random aural cut-ups chosen via chance operation)
Fade in / Fade outs to black leave 2-3 sec black between shots
(Tank tracks grinding as Exit Music)
What I’m Reading:
“In order to reproduce the colors of nature in our films, we have painted nature black and white. Startle the cuttlefish. Harvest the sepia. The literal color of fear.”
“We now understand that race doesn’t actually exist — it is not a biological fact — and humans share all but 1 per cent of our DNA. Our differences are not scientific but due to other factors such as the environment. But race is a lived experience, therefore it is enormously consequential. Understanding the fiction of race doesn’t mean that we can dispense with the categories, not yet.”
— Bernadine Evaristo / Manifesto: On Never Giving Up
thee istsfor manity reader 