There is nothing more devastating than the
unsurmountable pain of watching someone you love suffer. You try your best to
remedy their sorrow and provide by whatever means possible, delaying the
onslaught of grief, but when someone is decaying before your eyes it’s
impossible not to find yourself slowly deteriorating with them. Void of
suspense or sentiment, Amour unfolds like a long and painful novel, rigid
in its unapologetic nature, and it tears you up inside. It tears you up like
the real death of someone you love does. There’s nothing similar. There’s no
movie similar to this one. In fact, it’s not even a movie, is a chunk of bloody
life, a heart that pulsates slower and slower until the end credits roll down.
There’s no music to it. There’s no music because there aren’t any feelings lacking, feelings that need to be filled artificially, with carefully selected
tones. It’s just the saddest most gut wrenching thing I’ve ever experienced.
And I know I won’t want to see it again.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Thursday, December 20, 2012
questions about answers.
The boy from school
The boy with whom I only talked about Dostoyevsky and
Metallica
The boy who left
The boy who stopped my nosebleed with a handful of
snow
The boy who always peeled the pomegranates for me
The boy with the bleached hair
The boy with the grey hair
The boy who only watched Romanian comedies
The boy who didn’t speak Romanian
The boy who was nearly as tall as me
The boy who looked like Gael Garcia Bernal in
Blindness
The boy who only liked boys
The boy who lied to me
The boy that I lied to
The boy with the funny name
The boy who gave up
The boy for whom I filled a notebook with short
stories
The boy who said it couldn’t work
The boy outside the old souk of Damascus
The boy who was clinically depressed
The boy who got it all wrong
The boy who actually liked me
The boy who looked at me and saw birds
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
trigger and happy belong together.
The problem with love, or any other feelings of the
sort, is that when you fall into it, it’s like this kind of succulent melting,
but when you fall out of it, it’s not at all like rebuilding ice cubes out of
the juices, but rather evaporation, condensation, and then always the rain
again, but not the one that’s really strong and heavy, which seems like white
noise, except not empty, but the slow and treacherous one, that makes you think
there’s something there, except not.
And on a not quite so different note, the problem with the past is that
it gives you what it didn’t give you when you needed it. Nothing that happens
in the past can be taken away, that’s for damn sure. It’s an amazing gift, in
the end. The issue is that, although the past is done and over and settled (after
all, you can’t get it back, you can just try and gather and live with whatever
good you have gotten from it, spiritually, emotionally and all that), it
reaches out and infects your present. The sneaky little pervert. It makes you
value most the things you lost in that said past. Because when they’re lost,
said things suddenly become perfect in your head again. Like they never rusted.
Like they never broke. Memories make you see them rosier than a newborn’s cheeks.
Brighter day by day. They are made of dreams of how wonderful things could have
been because they don’t suffer the indignity of actually still existing, if you
ask me. Of being real. Of having flaws. Of breaking and deteriorating. Only the
things you no longer have will always be perfect. And that’s really shitty.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
let them think you were born that way.
dear
daughter,
if you’ve inherited my heart
then don’t be ashamed
of how desperate you sometimes feel
or how you stain sheets and shirts
that you are sopping wet
a walking haemmorhage
curious hands in the shower
the first menses of a young girl
a virgin writhing on a bed
you are on fire
you are like your mother.
if you’ve inherited my heart
then don’t be ashamed
of how desperate you sometimes feel
or how you stain sheets and shirts
that you are sopping wet
a walking haemmorhage
curious hands in the shower
the first menses of a young girl
a virgin writhing on a bed
you are on fire
you are like your mother.
so
how could i ever talk about sin or damnation
when you have legs like creaking doors?
you welcome ghosts home
so i know you will know hell intimately
men who like to punch women in the face
who tongue kiss girls who look like their mother
men who hold you down, face in the mattress.
when you have legs like creaking doors?
you welcome ghosts home
so i know you will know hell intimately
men who like to punch women in the face
who tongue kiss girls who look like their mother
men who hold you down, face in the mattress.
daughter
with a soft body
the hardest ones will fall for you
and you will usher them in
seek out their sharp edges
the abrasion
and by the time they’ve finished
you will be bloody and sore
teeth marks on your thighs
your torso a burnt house of worship.
the hardest ones will fall for you
and you will usher them in
seek out their sharp edges
the abrasion
and by the time they’ve finished
you will be bloody and sore
teeth marks on your thighs
your torso a burnt house of worship.
habibti,
you do not deserve it but
you will be loved in fragments and fractions
until you no longer look like yourself
until your mouth is just the shape of his quiet name
oh my little girl
rip him out of your body
you come from a long line of women;
hawa who doused herself in petrol
ayan who pulled out her own teeth
khadija who fell asleep in the river
forgetting is the hardest thing in the world,
remember that.
you will be loved in fragments and fractions
until you no longer look like yourself
until your mouth is just the shape of his quiet name
oh my little girl
rip him out of your body
you come from a long line of women;
hawa who doused herself in petrol
ayan who pulled out her own teeth
khadija who fell asleep in the river
forgetting is the hardest thing in the world,
remember that.
The
letter your mother couldn’t write, Warsan Shire
(our
refinement of the abyss: to oblige us to ask ourselves whether, in truth, we
are falling)
Photo
credit: Armand Seguin, Les fleurs du mal, 1892
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
filmmakers on jean-luc godard
Chantal
Akerman: You
can see him excluding himself from the world in an almost autistic manner. For
people like me, who started doing film because of him, it is a terrible fright.
And the fact that the long evolution that Godard has been through can lead to
this, almost brings me to despair. He was kind of a pioneer, an inventor who
didn’t care much about anybody or anything. And that a man at this stage of his
life isolates himself, should also be a lesson for us other film makers.
Woody Allen:
I think he’s a brilliant innovator. I don’t always love every film he’s made. I think he’s very
inventive, but sometimes his inventions are taken by other people and used
better. But he’s certainly one of the innovators of cinema.
Paul Thomas Anderson: I love Godard in a very film school way. I can’t say
that I’ve ever been emotionally attacked by him. Where I have been emotionally
attacked by Truffaut.
Michelangelo Antonioni: Godard flings reality in our faces, and I’m struck by
this. But never by Truffaut.
Ingmar Bergman:
I’ve never been able to appreciate any of his films, nor even understand them.
Truffaut and I used to meet on several occasions at film festivals. We had an
instant understanding that extended to his films. But Godard: I find his films
affected, intellectual, self-obsessed and, as cinema, without interest and
frankly dull. Endless and tiresome. Godard is a desperate bore. I’ve always
thought that he made films for critics. He made one here in Sweden, Masculin Féminin, so boring
that my hair stood on end.
Luis Buñuel:
I’ll give him two years more, he is just a fashion.
Jean-Luc Godard: I am not an auteur, well, not now anyway. We once
believed we were auteurs but we weren’t. We had no idea, really. Film is over.
It’s sad nobody is really exploring it. But what to do? And anyway, with mobile
phones and everything, everyone is now an auteur.
Werner Herzog:
Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when
compared to a good kung fu film.
Fritz Lang: I
like him a great deal: he is very honest, he loves the cinema, he is just as
fanatical as I was. In fact, I think he tries to continue what we started one
day, the day when we began making our first films. Only his approach is
different. Not the spirit.
Roman Polanski:
In fact the worst thing possible is to be absolutely certain about things.
Hitler, for example, must have been convinced in the certainty of his ideas and
that he was right. I don’t think he did anything without believing in it,
otherwise he wouldn’t have done it to start with. And I think Jean-Luc
Godard believes he makes good films, but maybe they aren’t that good.
Satyajit Ray:
Godard especially opened up new ways of… making points, let us say. And he
shook the foundations of film grammar in a very healthy sort of way, which is
excellent.
Quentin Tarantino:
To me, Godard did to movies what Bob Dylan did to music: they both
revolutionized their forms.
François Truffaut:
You’re nothing but a piece of shit on a pedestal. […] You fostered the myth,
you accentuated that side of you that was mysterious, inaccessible and
temperamental, all for the slavish admiration of those around you. You need to
play a role and the role needs to be a prestigious one; I’ve always had the
impression that real militants are like cleaning women, doing a thankless,
daily but necessary job. But you, you’re the Ursula Andress of militancy, you
make a brief appearance, just enough time for the cameras to flash, you make
two or three duly startling remarks and then you disappear again, trailing
clouds of self-serving mystery.
Orson Welles:
He’s the definitive influence if not really the first film artist of
this last decade, and his gifts as a director are enormous. I just can’t take
him very seriously as a thinker—and
that’s where we seem to differ, because he does. His message is what he cares
about these days, and, like most movie messages, it could be written on the
head of a pin. But what’s so admirable about him is his marvelous contempt for
the machinery of movies and even movies themselves—a kind of anarchistic,
nihilistic contempt for the medium—which, when he’s at his best and most
vigorous, is very exciting.
Wim Wenders: For
me, discovering cinema was directly connected to his films. I was living in
Paris at the time. When Made
in USA opened, I went to the
first show—it was around noon—and I sat there until midnight. I saw it six
times in a row.
Photo: Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean-Luc
Godard gather to distribute copies of the Maoist newspaper “La Cause du Peuple”
on the street after it is banned by the government, Paris, 1970.
Friday, November 30, 2012
bill.
“Gilda got married and went away. None of us saw her anymore. There was one good thing: Laraine had a party one night, a great party at her house. And I ended up being the disk jockey. She just had forty-fives, and not that many, so you really had to work the music end of it. There was a collection of like the funniest people in the world at this party. Somehow Sam Kinison sticks in my brain. The whole Monty Python group was there, most of us from the show, a lot of other funny people, and Gilda. Gilda showed up and she’d already had cancer and gone into remission and then had it again, I guess. Anyway she was slim. We hadn’t seen her in a long time. And she started doing, “I’ve got to go,” and she was just going to leave, and I was like, “Going to leave?” It felt like she was going to really leave forever.
So we started carrying her around, in a way that we could only do with her. We carried her up and down the stairs, around the house, repeatedly, for a long time, until I was exhausted. Then Danny did it for a while. Then I did it again. We just kept carrying her; we did it in teams. We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way—over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour—maybe an hour and a half—just carrying her around and saying, “She’s leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda’s leaving, and remember that she was very sick—hello?”
We worked all aspects of it, but it started with just, “She’s leaving, I don’t know if you’ve said good-bye to her.” And we said good-bye to the same people ten, twenty times, you know.
And because these people were really funny, every person we’d drag her up to would just do like five minutes on her, with Gilda upside down in this sort of tortured position, which she absolutely loved. She was laughing so hard we could have lost her right then and there.
It was just one of the best parties I’ve ever been to in my life. I’ll always remember it. It was the last time I saw her.”
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
we write "and for the first time" so often.
În clasa a şaptea, când am
primit de la doamna dirigintă Istoria Literaturii Universale în 3 volume
potrivit de groase, mi-am pus în minte să citesc integral toţi autorii
prezentaţi acolo, pe rând, să nu pierd nimic, pentru că ori e tot ori e nimic,
îmi ziceam de parcă aş fi ştiut ce zic. Şi nu ştiam cu ce să încep şi mi-am zis, might
as well start from the end, why not, şi am început de la litera z şi singurul
autor cu z de acolo era Zola şi prima carte de el care mi-a căzut sub ochi la
biblioteca din oraş a fost Fecunditate, groasă carte, promiţătoare, mi-am zis,
încep bine, chiar dacă de la sfârşit. Şi-aşa a fost, am sfârşit de cum am început,
pentru că atunci când am ajuns la pasajul cu vătraiul pe post de instrument de
tortură menit sa vindece femeile fecunde a trebuit să o las din mână şi să merg
în grădină să dau afară mărul roşu pe care tocmai îl mâncasem de prânz. Şi era
aşa un măr mare şi roşu, un măr care-ţi scraşnea printre dinţi şi-ţi zemuia
toată gura. A fost păcat de el. Nu poţi să termini ce începi de la sfârşit, am
învăţat atunci.
as he finally managed to swallow.
“It’s the same with everything, why do or not do something,
why say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, why worry yourself with a ‘perhaps’ or a ‘maybe’, why
speak, why remain silent, why refuse, why know anything if nothing of what
happens happens, because nothing happens without interruption, nothing lasts or
endures or is ceaselessly remembered, what takes place is identical to what
doesn’t take place, what we dismiss or allow to slip by us is identical to what
we accept and seize, what we experience identical to what we never try; we pour
all our intelligence and our feelings and our enthusiasm into the task of
discriminating between things that will all be made equal, if they haven’t
already been, and that’s why we’re so full of regrets and lost opportunities,
of confirmations and reaffirmations and opportunities grasped, when the truth
is that nothing is affirmed and everything is constantly in the process of
being lost. Or perhaps there never was anything.”
E ceva cu cartea
asta. Mi-a luat remarcabil de mult timp să o termin (aproape o lună încheiată),
deşi are doar 278 de pagini. Not because it was bad or dull or overly
difficult, but because I kept getting caught in rereading loops that propelled
me back to the beginning. Ceva neobişnuit pentru mine, avand în vedere că-s
genul de cititor liniar, care reciteşte abia apoi, dacă simte că nu a digerat
cum trebuie totul. Să fi fost calitatea prozei, labirintică prin excelenţă, and
hauntingly so, sau pur şi simplu cvasi-terifianta auto-identificare cu
naratorul, habar n-am. But I loved it. This is the type of reading experience
that doesn’t happen to me every so often as an adult and any book that manages
to provide it is immediately propelled into an exalted category.
Deşi cartea îşi ia
titlul dintr-un vers din Macbeth – „My hands are of your colour, but I shame to
wear a heart so white”, sentimentele de vină şi implicit complicitate fiind
două dintre temele majore ale lui Marias – personajul principal îmi aminteşte
mai mult de Hamlet în indecizia, pasivitatea şi propensitatea sa de a reacţiona
în faţa fiecărei situaţii printr-o retragere grăbită în solilocvii şi o stare
generală de anxietate paralizantă. Despite his self-description as
pathologically eager to absorb every piece of information (he is a translator
and interpreter), Juan’s constant avowal that he does „not want to know” is a
more apt description of his existence throughout the book; much of the tension
comes from his unwillingness to say or do anything at all. Pasivitatea lui e
mai mult decât o trăsătură de personalitate, mind you, e mai degrabă un soi de
frantic existential angst: he is tormented by the dialectic between wanting to
understand and the futility of communication; the desire to record and to
remember, to create a coherent narrative of a life, juxtaposed against the
pointless repetition and subjectivity of existence; the inherent instability of
both personality and reality.
E o carte despre
trasul cu urechea şi voyeurism, despre conversaţii auzite prin ziduri,
comentarii rătăcite care sunt sau nu destinate persoanei care le prinde din
zbor, uneori fără să vrea, despre corespondenţe consumate de alte persoane
decât cele cărora le erau destinate. M-am tot gândit la Bakhtin, teoreticianul
cu care mi-am petrecut cea mai mare parte din timp în facultate, şi la teoriile
lui despre dialog şi alteritate: if ever a book is highly dialogic this one is;
it’s a book to make me long for academia. The mystery unfolds through these
layers of dialogism with a sharp interpersonal voice. Există foarte multe pasaje care se repetă, dar care îţi dau sentimentul de accentuare narativă
necesară, în nici un caz plictisitoare, obositoare sau enervantă. It’s a
symphonic, polyphonic buildup, utterly accurate if I’m to compare it to my own
experience of this kind of ongoing obsessive anxiety.
E, to say the least,
o carte teribil de intensă, dark and fretful. Care mărturiseşte prin
intermediul personajelor atent construite adevăruri incomode, pe care poate nu
ţi le-ai recunoscut în totalitate, dar care sunt acolo, lurking beneath your
layers of social and emotional obligations. De exemplu ce se întâmplă cu doi
oameni, în intimitatea gândurilor lor cele mai sincere, odată ce relaţia lor
trece de bariera căsătoriei. E genul acela de carte pe care, atunci când o
închizi, nu poţi să zici decât, „oh, you know, I don’t know, you know?”
Sunday, November 25, 2012
beneath my hands, your hands, their hands, more hands.
leaving is not
enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.
(Frida Kahlo to Marty
McConnell- Marty McConnell)
Thursday, November 15, 2012
and that’s how people burn to death in hotel rooms.
After you’ve been to bed together for the first time,
without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance,
the other party very often says to you,
Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you,
what’s your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do
without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance,
the other party very often says to you,
Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you,
what’s your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do
sincerely want to know your life story, and so you
light up
a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you
lying together in completely relaxed positions
like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed.
a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you
lying together in completely relaxed positions
like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed.
You tell them your story, or as much of your story
as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, until the oh
is just an audible breath, and then of course
as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, until the oh
is just an audible breath, and then of course
there’s some interruption. Slow room service comes up
with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee
and gaze at himself with the mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror.
And then, the first thing you know, before you’ve had time
to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story,
they’re telling you their life story, exactly as they’d intended to all along,
with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee
and gaze at himself with the mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror.
And then, the first thing you know, before you’ve had time
to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story,
they’re telling you their life story, exactly as they’d intended to all along,
and you’re saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming
no more than an audible sigh,
as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left,
draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion
and stops breathing forever. Then?
each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming
no more than an audible sigh,
as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left,
draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion
and stops breathing forever. Then?
Well, one of you falls asleep
and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth,
and that’s how people burn to death in hotel rooms.
and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth,
and that’s how people burn to death in hotel rooms.
Life Story - Tennessee Williams
(photo: Installation for Arnhem Mode Biennale,
2011 by A.F. Vandevorst)
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
you loved with more hands than a parade of beggars
The glass does not break because it is glass,
Said the philosopher. The glass could stay
Unbroken forever, shoved back in a dark closet,
Slowly weeping itself, a colorless liquid.
The glass breaks because somebody drops it
From a height — a grip stunned open by bad news
Or laughter. A giddy sweep of grand gesture
Or fluttering nerves might knock it off the table —
Or perhaps wine emptied from it, into the blood,
Has numbed the fingers. It breaks because it falls
Into the arms of the earth — that grave attraction.
It breaks because it meets the floor’s surface,
Which is solid and does not give. It breaks because
It is dropped, and falls hard, because it hits
Bottom, and because nobody catches it.
Said the philosopher. The glass could stay
Unbroken forever, shoved back in a dark closet,
Slowly weeping itself, a colorless liquid.
The glass breaks because somebody drops it
From a height — a grip stunned open by bad news
Or laughter. A giddy sweep of grand gesture
Or fluttering nerves might knock it off the table —
Or perhaps wine emptied from it, into the blood,
Has numbed the fingers. It breaks because it falls
Into the arms of the earth — that grave attraction.
It breaks because it meets the floor’s surface,
Which is solid and does not give. It breaks because
It is dropped, and falls hard, because it hits
Bottom, and because nobody catches it.
(stallings)
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
not that this isn't perfect the way it is.
When you’re at school and
you want to quit, people say ‘You’re going to hate it out in the world.’ Well,
I didn’t believe them and I was right. When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to be
grown up, and they said ‘Childhood is the best time of your life.’ Well, it
wasn’t. And now, I want his company and they say, ‘What’s half a loaf? You’re
well shot of him’; and I say ‘I know that… but I miss him, that’s all’ and they
say ‘He never made you happy’ and I say ‘But I am happy, apart from missing
him. You might throw me a pill or two for my cough.’ [pauses, smiles] All my
life, I’ve been looking for somebody courageous, resourceful. [pause, thinks]
He’s not it… but something. We were something. [pause] I only came about my
cough.
Monday, October 29, 2012
under the influence.
People kill themselves because of society’s
inability to educate, in terms of love, any further than a given point. Nobody
in this world seems to be able to love beyond a certain point; they all go up
to a certain point then they become emotionally tired of it, or bored or hurt.
They change, and their love doesn’t transcend certain obstacles. For somebody
who is very sensitive and idealistic, as we all start out to be, it becomes a
dramatic experience. You can either make that bridge or not, and we are going
to make this picture for people who are possibly lost, and try to point out the
reasons for it.
One can always count
on Cassavetes to tell it like it is.
Or Neruda.
But love, this love
has not ended: just as it never had a birth, it has no death: it is like a long
river, only changing lands, and changing lips.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
i beg your pudding
Regret
nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering
any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering
any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.
Antilamentation
– Dorianne Laux
(photo: Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen)
Saturday, October 20, 2012
central nervous system
When we first met, he told me that
he liked large breasted women and that on his way to see me he walked past a
child squatting a meter from a high end concept store, his parents whistling
him on as a pool of urine slowly coated the pavement around him. “what the fu- I
mean, welcome to TST”, I said in a soft voice, while he was already firing
questions at me consecutively, without waiting for the actual response.
I was there to write and eat
cauliflower soup, it was one of those ‘always-a-buzz’ places, one you
definitely avoid if you hate life. He had short frizzy hair that felt like the
rough green side of a sponge, the ticklish kind, and his skin could best be
described as ‘free from hardship or troubles or fried food’. Except for the
dark circles surrounding his eyes. Really big and really sunken. I could tell
he had trouble sleeping, though he never seemed to be dozing off.
He talked for minutes on
end, while outside’s blistering heat was creeping through the door left ajar.
He wasn’t annoying or anything, and he seemed to have been waiting for someone
to just sit there and listen. My remarks were scarce and usually followed by a
quietness that seemed to bother him for a few seconds, the time it took him to
blurt out another shot of nonsensical comments.
I was fiddling with my
spoon, the soup already cold, when a sudden halt came into the conversation.
His face changed, as if right at that moment he realized where he was. He
started sniffing the stale, pungent hot air. “There are scents here that can
penetrate to your imagination”, he said. “Some I can only describe as, ‘WHUT’.”
“So much of the city is our
bodies with their neverending smells”, I said looking out of the window. “Even
the city carries ruins in its heart. Places that no longer exist but are full of
feeling. Like phantom limbs. Like in that Stephen King novel, Duma Key. Few
buildings, few lives are built so well even their ruins are beautiful.”
Like a room with the air
suddenly sucked out, he paused his breathing and looked at me. I held his stare
unable to read his eyes, seemingly wandering in mine. We sat in silence for a
long time after, minds wandering.
Later, while in a taxi with
some friends, without kissing or knowing me, he says ‘I love you’.
‘It’s just literature though’, I respond a few minutes later, as if I knew him. As if I was sure that had to be the correct answer. As if what he had said had come carrying a phantom question mark at the end.
A few months pass and he
really, actually, truly falls in love with another girl, and she falls in love
with him too. Every now and then I think about them, like today.
Not that I know them well,
to me they are just names on a piece of paper, no graphs, no illustrations, no
stories for me to read. But they fell in love in an interesting place and lead
a- if not interesting, at least not mediocre- life.
I guess that’s what I’m
thinking about today, a ‘not mediocre’ life. And literature.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
basically
Leopold: That thing is a
damned hazard!
Kate: It’s just a toaster!
Leopold: Well, insertion of bread into that so-called toaster produces no toast at all, merely warm bread! Inserting the bread twice produces charcoal. So, clearly, to make proper toast it requires one and a half insertions, which is something for which the apparatus doesn’t begin to allow! One assumes that when the General of Electric built it, he might have tried using it. One assumes the General might take pride in his creations instead of just foisting them on an unsuspecting public.
Kate: You know something? Nobody gives a rat’s ass that you have to push the toast down twice. You know why? Because everybody pushes their toast down twice!
Leopold: Not where I come from.
Kate: Oh, because where you come from, toast is the result of reflection and study!
Leopold: Ah yes, you mock me. But perhaps one day when you’ve awoken from a pleasant slumber to the scent of a warm brioche smothered in marmalade and fresh creamery butter, you’ll understand that life is not solely composed of tasks, but tastes.
Kate: It’s just a toaster!
Leopold: Well, insertion of bread into that so-called toaster produces no toast at all, merely warm bread! Inserting the bread twice produces charcoal. So, clearly, to make proper toast it requires one and a half insertions, which is something for which the apparatus doesn’t begin to allow! One assumes that when the General of Electric built it, he might have tried using it. One assumes the General might take pride in his creations instead of just foisting them on an unsuspecting public.
Kate: You know something? Nobody gives a rat’s ass that you have to push the toast down twice. You know why? Because everybody pushes their toast down twice!
Leopold: Not where I come from.
Kate: Oh, because where you come from, toast is the result of reflection and study!
Leopold: Ah yes, you mock me. But perhaps one day when you’ve awoken from a pleasant slumber to the scent of a warm brioche smothered in marmalade and fresh creamery butter, you’ll understand that life is not solely composed of tasks, but tastes.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
An Entomologist’s Last Love Letter
dear samantha
i’m sorrywe have to get a divorce
i know that seems like an odd way to start a love letter but let me explain:
it’s not you
it sure as hell isn’t me
it’s just human beings don’t love as well as insects do
i love you.. far too much to let what we have be ruined by the failings of our species
i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night
i know you would never DO anything, you never do but..
i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night
did you know that when a female fly accepts the pheromones put off by a male fly, it re-writes her brain, destroys the receptors that receive pheromones, sensing the change, the male fly does the same. when two flies love each other they do it so hard, they will never love anything else ever again. if either one of them dies before procreation can happen both sets of genetic code are lost forever. now that… is dedication.
after Elizabeth and i broke up we spent three days dividing everything we had bought together
like if i knew what pots were mine like if i knew which drapes were mine somehow the pain would go away
this is not true
after two praying mantises mate, the nervous system of the male begins to shut down
while he still has control over his motor functions
he flops onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly up to his lover like a gift
she then proceeds to lovingly dice him into tiny cubes
spooning every morsel into her mouth
she wastes nothing
even the exoskeleton goes
she does this so that once their children are born she has something to regurgitate to feed them
now that.. is selflessness
i could never do that for you
so i have a new plan
i’m gonna leave you now
i’m gonna spend the rest of my life committing petty injustices
i hope you do the same
i will jay walk at every opportunity
i will steal things i could easily afford
i will be rude to strangers
i hope you do the same
i hope reincarnation is real
i hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures
i hope we are reborn as flies
so that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to.
-Jared Singer
Friday, September 14, 2012
anchors in your eyes
4/2/2010
Dear
Shipwreck,
Even
though you’re over a century old, they say that everything inside you is still
intact. Even the crew? Must be lonely. I’ll write again.
4/6/2010
Dear
Shipwreck,
So
what’s it feel like to have everything inside you still “intact”? That’s what I
want to feel like. But I’ve actually never felt my “insides” at all—I think
they’re positioned in a way that keeps them from banging around. When I was
small, I would jump up and down for hours trying to make them rattle. Nothing.
I am an empty rattle.
PS.
Please write back.
4/24/2010
Dear
Shipwreck,
So
I was talking to my priest the other day. He’s worried that I’m having some
kind of existential crisis. Meaning: I’m trying to rationalize God by replacing
the ephemeral with a tangible object. Or: I’ve replaced one object that’s been
hidden from view with another object that’s hidden from view. Or: Every time I
speak to you, I’m talking directly to God.
If
this is the case: Lord, I noticed you haven’t written back yet.
5/9/2010
Dear
Shipwreck / Metaphor for God,
I
was thinking of Basho today, and I wrote you this poem:
O,
Shipwreck, untouched by moonlight,
molested by billions
of writhing quagga mussels.
molested by billions
of writhing quagga mussels.
Is
“moonlight” too heavy-handed? Not believable enough? Let me know what you
think…
6/24/2010
Dear The
L.R. Doty,
Sorry
I got your name wrong, initially. Apparently, in life, you were known as The
L.R. Doty. What an odd name for a boat! (No offense, I’m just sayin’). Did
you know there’s a poet named “Mark Doty”? Wait—are you two related? Damn. If
so, I’m embarrassed to have sent you my little poem. (Is this why you haven’t
written me back?)
6/29/2010
Dear
Mister-Too-Good-To-Write-Anyone-Back,
Fuck
you, man. I don’t care if you didn’t like that poem. That’s no excuse for
ignoring my letters. I will say this real slowly for you:
Write.
Me. Back. You. Dick.
6/30/2010
Dear L.R.
Doty,
It’s
me again. Sorry about that last letter. I’m just frustrated about some things.
I’ll forgive you, if you forgive me. No harm, no foul? Right?
7/2/2010
Dear
__________,
Listen.
What I was trying to say is this:
When
I was a kid, my dad took me to a beach on your lake. I know what it’s like to
sink, to be angry because no one on Earth knows if you exist.
There
had been a storm the night before, and the ripped-up pieces of crayfish covered
everything. Then, I thought that scene was horrific. Now, I wonder if that was
you.
"For a recently discovered shipwreck at the bottom of lake Michigan". Matthew Olzmann.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
la vie en double
Ce ce doit doit être être difficile difficile de de se se retrouver retrouver à seul deux ou sur seule une sur île une déserte île sans déserte d’autre sans personne personne à à qui qui confier parler, ses sans doutes, bien sans même même une une belle lettre lettre qui qui débarque débarque un un jour jour, comme comme cela cela sans sans prévenir prévenir. Qu’emporterions-nous qu’emporterions-nous sur sur cette cette petite petite île île baignée baignée de de solitude solitude? Nos nos disputes regrets, nos nos calins souvenirs, à quelques l’emporte fous pièce, rires nos éparpillés besoins et de une solitude bonne et dose une d’optimisme bonne pour dose faire de face fous au rires vide. Ce ce serait serait peut- peut- être être le le creux creux de de la la vague vague. Le le doute doute partagé absolu. Alors alors avant avant que que cela cela n’arrive, n’arrive, il il faudrait faudrait simplement simplement en en profiter profiter en pour solo deux. Pour pour qu’une qu’une fois fois à seul deux, ou sur seule cette sur île cette déserte, île il déserte ne il nous ne reste nous plus reste rien plus sauf qu’à à profiter profiter de de soi nous.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
light reading.
+ you know that feeling you get when you're reading a great book and you're already been through half of it and you don't want to read it anymore 'cause then it will be over soon and you don't want to deal with the sadness of it ending and all? because each wonderful page is just a step further to you not having wonderful pages to lean over anymore? that's a contradictory equation that I wish mathematicians would solve already. I know that I make things happen. I'm less good at making them stop. the want always wants more. how does one learn that to dove is to build something for as long as it's needed, then release? and that this does not stop the wanting, does not unravel the spell or make the magnet any less magic. otherwise how do you explain what stays on the body for days, invisible to the eye, but so painfully palpable on the inside? the kissed arms, what they've sheltered and what they've let go? does reading it one typed letter at a time is really the solution?
+ tulips
+ two lips
At some point it becomes true that all stories
are love stories. all making, love making.
I didn't make this rule. but it binds me
all the same. I wish there was a law
against condescending against love. against
the economy of fear that says your joy
means less joy for me as if love
were pie, or money, or fossil fuel
dug or pumped from the earth, gone
when it's gone. it's just not true. the heart
with its gift for magnificent expansion
is not coal. not fruit set to spoil or the dollar
cringing in its wallet. when you say darling,
the world lights up at its edges. when mouths
find mouths and minds follow or minds find
minds and mouths, hands, hips, toes, follow-
how about you call that sacred. how about you raise
your veined right hand and swear on the blood
that branches there, yes. I take this crush
to be my lawful infatuation. I will bend toward joy
until the bending's its own pleasure. I will memorize
photographs and street maps, I will acquiesce
to the maudlin urgency of pop songs and dance,
and dance- there's a perfection only the impossible kiss
possesses. there are notes you can only hear naked
in the dark of a room to which you will never
return. anything that moves the world toward light
is a blessing. why not take it with both hands,
lift it to your lips like a broth of stars. this
is the substance that holds our little atoms together
into bodies. this sweet paste of longing
is all that binds us to the earth.
and all we know of the gods.
"Three of cups"- Marty McConnell
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