This is fall in Jamaica Plain, MA, on 10/24/2021, at 8:30am.
“I tend not to think about readership. Instead, I think about a reader, the person I am trying to communicate with, but I don’t have the idea that a lot of people are ever going to read anything.”
We live as prelude to the mother of all bloodlettings…
We jockey frenetic prayers—glean sources—Sleep the sleep of strangers …
Ghosts in your house—Live through your eyes—live your memories…
The wizard of siren calls—calls you to gloom—cries: kiss me, kiss me, kiss me—I offend no one but you.
“In our home here by the sea we will not last much longer. The cold and the damp will certainly get us in the end, because it is no longer possible to leave … “
Sometimes I have the ocean roaring in my ears, in my head—not the intermittent breaks and ebbs of waves on the shore, but only the crashes—crashes, crashes, crashes—on an endless loop for minutes, hours sometimes. A stream of white noise. Vision becomes strained, as if I were only seeing clearly through the spaces in a chain link fence. But much of this is going on without my awareness—and only when it becomes suddenly silent and my vision resolves, refocuses completely, do I become aware of what has just happened. Where did those minutes or hours go? What was I doing? Was I here all along in my room, in my car, in my office, this museum—or did I go somewhere else and do other things: unconscionable things, while I was out on the waves?
Best,
X.
“And now here I was, a first person singular. If I’d chosen a different direction, most likely I wouldn’t be here. But still—who is that in the mirror?”
who drilled a hole in the front of his own skull to increase brain blood volume? & allow the full heartbeat to express itself inside the cranial cavity a column of fire midnight ’til dawn rain fire after the defeat of los aztecas the spanish forbade pagan idolatry ceremonial mushrooms montezuma ii saw the stars of mamalhuatzil & images of fighting men riding on the backs of animals resembling deer caught by fishermen a two headed man tlacantzolli mirror on the crown of a bird running the streets simply to ward off cold ward off heat the touch of flies/mosquitoes/wind/sun/reptiles deserts at one time inhabited by thousands of ascetics hermits anchorites solitary confinement inside a cell adopting lifestyle of a beast abandoning personal hygiene self-inflicted pain voluntary suffering hedonism that views moral sexual restraint as either unnecessary or harmful i wrote in minuscule handwriting on a continuous roll paper i rolled tightly placed in my cell wall to hide a fifth person in and out of psychiatric hospitals due to unspecified disorders a new generation born of the legacy of the cinema of transgression : underground cinema transgressive art found footage controversial matter surgical footage psychodramatic performances physical interventions into the material film stock i retire to the eighth-floor cafe : the terraces the lines of comfy leather couches the explosive ordinance disposal market bomb dispersal units robots & specialized tools
“On my daily walk, I steal Meyer lemons from my neighbors’ yard, a small pomegranate. Instead of eating them,
I observe their casual rot on the kitchen counter, this theatre of good things turning into something else.”
Avernal Pumpkin Head the all purpose gossamer failure genuflecting in the wind: I am an American by birth, an atheist by choice, and a drowning man by design. I walked the plank between good and evil. I’m not an alien sex fiend but a paunchy pirate in bullet absentia from the wind and the rains—and the blueprints for plate tectonics and monster mechanics of the spherical planetoids. I can’t agree to disagree—I’d rather shoot you in the Id. I need your longing. I long for your need. I trap a shadow of your patina—a pity in the putty of pubescent pentacles and pugnaciousness. Your pulchritude is pungent—and somehow plangent simulateously. I’ll elaborate on the footnotes. Please call at three.
“Well, I suppose the thing that most helped me in my early days of trying to figure things out was not being driven by the need to succeed. And it maybe just came out of the era and the proximity to the punk scene, but I really didn’t give a shit. I wasn’t afraid of failing … I just didn’t seem to care, when I launched into something, whether it was going to succeed or fail—and the lack of fear of failure is a great tool. It’s a great aid. It helps one move forward if one doesn’t care if one falls flat on one’s face.”
— Danny Elfman / The Creative Independent interview
The odious neglect of the scab Crab Nebula yelling: I Zimbra, I Zimbra, dada, dada, dada, doo! At the Cabaret Voltaire after hours parties degenerate into clean well lighted chess matches in top hat and overcoated teas with perfectly dictioned inflections and timbres of sonorous dejection odes to propriety. No one moves as Breton enters—trailing Leninisms and Trotsky ice picks, well before the weapon was chosen in dim back alley Mexico City. ¡Viva la huelga! ¡Viva la huelga! Tzara cries out—he’s Romanian of course, but he knows Breton has a weakness for Spanish. No one strikes, but they are all stricken with peripeteia and aposiopesis—walking in circles and leaving things unsaid. There is a full minute of elation, some confusion about elisions, and then someone dims the lights.
This is fall in Jamaica Plain, MA, on 10/17/2021, at 8:48 a.m.
“Everything from porn to nonexistent WMDs can be sold to us because we are perfect receptors for dada poetry, made pliable by a relentless history of nonsense and nonstop pitching.”
“… a Dada life will include by definition pranks, buffoonery, masking, deranged senses, intoxication, sabotage, taboo breaking, playing childish and/or dangerous games, waking up dead gods, and not taking education seriously.”
“… I’m definitely not interested in this idea that there are blank issues, like women’s issues or black issues. If you are really good at hurting black people, you will indeed hurt the environment, I promise you … it’s true. If you are really good at hurting women, you’re probably also interested in war — I promise you.”
— Jericho Brown / “Small Truths and Other Surprises”
