Monday, July 30, 2007
Harlan T. Bobo :: I’m Your Man [title track; new cd; (web)]
Harlan T. Bobo :: Pretty Foolish Things
I'm frightened here alone tonight. That happens.
Friday, July 27, 2007
juan rozoff feat booster-you are the one
Mascara - Baja (Instrumental Dub mix)
Unklejam - Stereo (Lo-Fi-Fnk Remix)
The Trucks - 3am
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
self help reading + music
Yama refers to the abstentions
· Ahimsa: abstention from violence
· Satya: abstention from lying; truth
· Asteya: abstention from theft, and by extension, non-covetousness
· Aparigraha: abstention from possessions, and by extension, abstaining from greed for possessions
Niyama refers to the observances
· Shaucha: purity
· Santosha: contentment
· Tapas: austerity
· Svadhyaya: Self study; introspection
· Ishvarapranidhana: surrender, or devotion, to God ('particularly' Ishvara [creation per se])
Asana: Posture of the body, especially perfect posture for meditation.
Pranayama: Control of prana ('life force') or vital breath
Pratyahara: withdrawal of the mind, defined by Vyasa as "that by which the senses do not come into contact with their objects and, as it were, follow the nature of the mind.”
Dharana: Fixing the attention on a single object; concentration
Dhyana: Meditation
Samadhi: Oneness
Kosheen – Hungry (trance remix)
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Friday, July 20, 2007
Monday, July 16, 2007
self help reading + music
It is true that some speak lightly and loosely of insanity as in itself attractive. But a moment’s thought will show that if a disease is beautiful, it is generally someone else’s disease. A blind man may be picturesque; but is requires two eyes to see the picture. And similarly even the wildest poetry of insanity can only be enjoyed by the sane. To the insane man his insanity is quite prosaic, because it is quite true. A man who thinks himself a chicken is to himself as ordinary as a chicken.
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers.
Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything is a strain.
from: G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
"En El Desierto," Federico Aubele
Sunday, July 15, 2007
--Colm Toibin, The Master
Oles / Trzaska / Oles - Lonely woman
bonus-Ry Cooder, Buena Vista Social Club - Candela
Saturday, July 14, 2007
White Zombie - “More Human Than Human (Lorn Remix)”
Clémentine - Une Homme et Une Femme (Readymade One Man DJ Show remix) [did DmS decide Chet Baker was for wussies? Am I remembering that right?]
Depeche Mode-Pleasure,Little Treasure (Glitter Mix)
Thursday, July 12, 2007
self help reading + music
--Simone Weil
Gravity and Grace
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Reason is a fine thing, there's no question about it, but reason is only reason and only satisfies man's rational faculties, whereas desire is a manifestation of the whole of life, that is of the whole of human life, along with reason and all our head-scratching. And even if in this manifestation our life frequently turns out to be rubbishy, it's nevertheless life and not just the extraction of a square root. I, for instance, quite naturally want to live in order to satisfy the whole of my capacity for living. What does reason know? Reason knows only what it has managed to find out (the rest, perhaps, it will never discover; that's no comfort, but why not say it?), whereas human nature acts as a whole, by everything that is in it, consciously and unconsciously; and even if it lies, it still lives.
--Dostoevsky
Notes from the Underground
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Known as the tantric, or left-handed path, desire, in this view, is a vehicle for personal transformation. --“The problem is not desire. It’s that your desires are too small.”
Desire is a longing for completion in the face of the vast unpredictability of our predicament. It is ‘the natural’, and if it is chased away it returns with a vengeance.
In its path of desire, Buddhism has a natural counterpart in psychoanalysis. Both traditions encourage an appreciation of the important links between the spiritual and the sensual: the ways in which erotic experience can be transcendent and spiritual erotic. There is an understanding in both traditions of the multidimensional levels of what we call the self, the ways in which we can be seeking comfort, closeness, pleasure, affirmation, release and oblivion all at the same time, from the same persons, places or things.
Intimacy depends on how lovers understand that gap between them. Desire recognizes the sense of incompleteness that is endemic to the human condition. It seeks a freedom from this incompleteness in any form: physical, sensual, emotional, intellectual or spiritual. . . Desire can be freed from the tendency to cling. As this happens, the sense of ‘self’ and ‘other’ becomes transformed as well. For desire, in its paradoxical nature, in its ability to simultaneously breach and maintain the space between lovers, in the way it both connects and separates, and in the manner in which it forces us to reconcile love and hate, is often as close as we come to liberation in our regular lives.
It is desire, after all, that makes us seek liberation in the first place.
--Mark Epstein
Open to Desire ---Buddhism and Psychotherapy
U2 – Window in the Sky (Jackknife Lee Remix)
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It was community supported organic agriculture distribution today--every Thursday all summer, the hippie farmer (Stew, whose red hair is hard to tell from the rest of him, sun burned into one giant freckle seems like, sober as a judge with his ‘notes from the farm’ newsletter) and his crew drive into the city to give us our re-used Target bags full of fruits and veggies. The black raspberries ripened this week. They come in picked that same day, the temperature that it is in the afternoon, still smelling a bit like dirt and their own berry-ness. I didn’t bother washing them because I like dirtsmell and daytemp—I just popped them into my mouth all the way home, feeling Alive.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
self help reading + music
O I gave myself a 3rd degree burn a few days ago bla bla and now my arm hurts like hell and looks like I buried a gerbil under my skin and like the whole thing needs lopping off. It keeps waking me up to remind me. So that I remember to feel sorry for myself between REM cycles. [Wa.]
from The Book of Genesis [exegesis], John Calvin:
Genesis 1:21 And God created . . . A question here arises out of the word created. For we have before contended, that because the world was created, it was made out of nothing – But they who truly and properly assert that the fishes were created because the waters were in no was sufficient or suitable for their production, only resort to a subterfuge; for in the meantime, the fact would remain, that the material of which they were made existed before; which, in strict propriety, the word created does not admit. I therefore do not restrict the creation here spoken of to the work of the fifth day, but rather suppose it to refer to that shapeless and confused mass, which was as the fountain of the whole world. God then, it is said, created whales, not that the beginning of their creation is to be reckoned from the moment in which they receive their form; but because they are comprehended in the universal matter which was made out of nothing, So that, with respect to all species, form was only added to them.
[Everything is already there, forming into one (pleasing) incarnation after another that surfaces into Being, and each whale (or circumstance) is just an instance.]
Sunday, July 08, 2007
self help reading + music
from The Dhammapada Verses on the Way, tr. Glenn Wallis:
Not seeing what is pleasing is painful,
As is seeing the unpleasing.
If you cannot find a companion
Who is better or like yourself,
You should make your way, steadily, alone.
In the childish there is no companionship.
A childish person considering his folly
Is thereby like a skilled one.
But a childish person considering himself skilled
Is rightly called ‘childish’.
A childish person would desire unwarranted prestige,
Preeminence among practitioners,
Authority over their dwellings,
And to be honored by families
Other than his own.
Trembling and quivering is the mind,
Difficult to guard and hard to restrain.
reincarnated playlist:
Red House Painters: Follow You, Follow Me (Genesis)
The Decemberists: Human Behavior (Björk)
Rufus Wainwright: Across the Universe (John Lennon)
Ben Kweller: Sorry Signs on Cash Machines (Mason Jennings) my pick of the litter, I think - or
The Whip: White Wedding (Billy Idol) the weirdest in show, and oddly kind of really good, no seriously
Rickie Lee Jones: Show Biz Kids (Steely Dan)
Saturday, July 07, 2007
self help reading + music
--Yes, God made the monyjang tall and strong, and he made their women beautiful, more beautiful than any of the creatures of the land.
--Yes, my father continued, --and when God was done, and the monyjang were standing on the earth waiting for instruction, God asked the man, “Now that you are here on earth, on the most sacred and fertile land I have, I can give you one more thing. I can give you this creature, which his called the cow . . . “
--Yes, he continued, God showed man the idea of the cattle, and the cattle were magnificent. They were in every way exactly what the monyjang would want. The man and woman thanked God for such a gift, because they knew that the cattle would bring them milk and meat and prosperity of every kind. But God was not finished.
--He never is, Sadiq said, to a wave of laughter.
--God said, “You can either have these cattle, as my gift to you, or you can have the What.” My father waited for the necessary response.
--But. . Sadiq said, helping out, What is the What? He said, with an air of theatrical inquisitiveness.
--Yes yes. That was the question. So the first man lifted his head to God and asked what this was, this What. “What is the What?” the first man asked. And God said to the man, “I cannot tell you. Still you have to choose. You have to choose between the cattle and the What.” Well then. The man and the woman could see the cattle right there in front of them, and they knew that with cattle they would eat and live with great contentment. They could see the cattle were God’s most perfect creation, and that the cattle carried something godlike within themselves. They knew that they would live in peace with the cattle, and that if they helped the cattle eat and drink, the cattle would give man their milk, would multiply every year and keep the monyjang happy and healthy, So the first man and woman knew they would be fools to pass to pass up the cattle for this idea of the What. So the man chose the cattle. And God has proven that this was the correct decision. God was testing the man. He was testing the man, to see if could appreciate what he had been given, if he could take pleasure in the bounty before him, rather than trade it for the unknown.
-from What is the What, Dave Eggers
Thursday, July 05, 2007
self help reading + music
They were the Royal Nieces of Pinyudo. It was unlikely that these four girls unaware of their nickname, and no one doubted that they found it agreeable. They were aware of the reverence we had for them, but still, they seemed oblivious to me in particular.
As the semester wore on, I began to doubt my strategy. I was the best student in the class, but they paid me no mind. I began to worry that they didn’t care about the academic achievement of me or any boy. It was likely they wanted nothing to do with someone of my status
It took the entire semester, but finally my efforts toward the Royal Girls bore fruit. With one week left before classes let out for a month, as I was leaving school one day, Agum positioned herself in front of me and said something. It was as likely as a zebra appearing before me and whistling. What had Agum said? I had to piece the words together. It was all so sudden, the changing of one life into another. I was so jarred I heard nothing. I had been looking at her eyes, her lashes, her mouth that was so close to mine.
--Achak, my sister has something to ask you, she had said.
Agar, the eldest and tallest, was suddenly next to her.
Her sister stomped on her foot and was punched in return. I didn’t know what was happening, but it seemed good so far.
--Do you want to come to lunch at our house? Agar asked
I realized at that moment that I had been standing on my tiptoes. I righted myself, hoping they had not noticed.
--Today?, I asked.
--Yes, today.
I thought a moment. I thought long enough to think of the wrong thing to say.
--I cannot accept, I said.
I could not believe I said that. Why? Because I had been taught that a gentlemen refuses invitations. The lesson had been explained by my father, one warm night as I was helping him close the shop, but the context was not applicable here, I would later learn. My father had been talking about adultery . . not of an invitation to lunch.
I went about trying to recover. What could I do? I had to take the invitation, now dust, and somehow reconstruct it. I would make fun of myself. Could I act as if I had been kidding?
--I shouldn’t have said no, I said. I wanted to go to lunch.
--Then why did you say no? Agar said.
--Because . . .
As we spoke, I hesitated, Agum joined us. And under that sort of pressure, I had a blessed and fortuitous thought.
--I was concerned what your mother would think of me.
Now Agar and Agum were interested.
--What do you mean?
--I’m from the Kinka Malual Giernyang. I don’t speak your dialect. My customs are different. I wasn’t sure if your mother would accept me.
--Oh! Agar said.
--For a while, Agum said, we thought you were brain-damaged.
Agar took my right hand in hers and spoke. The eyes of Agum and Akon were upon us. They seemed both expectant and familiar with the script we would follow.
--Now we’ll play hide and seek, Agar said. –First you have to find something that I hid here.
Agar pointed to her chest. I took a quick breath.
--You have to look for it. With your hand.
I glanced to the to the other girls for help. They nodded at me. They were all in on this! I felt as able to put my hand under her shirt as I might make fire from earwax. I stood, smiling dumbly. My nervous system has ceased functioning.
--Here! Agar said, quickly taking my hand and putting it under her shirt . . . You have to look!
I forced my hand to make cursory explorations around Agar’s torso. I didn’t know what was what. –Okay, That was a good try, she said. –I think you found it.
--Now we have to find something on you, Agum said.
--I think it’s in there, Agar said, pointing to my shorts.
This was a very different step, and I could not watch . . . In seconds, all three girls had looked for the missing thing in my shorts, and, satisfied they had found it, informed me that something was now lost under their dresses. I obliged . . . I was very bad at looking for things, so I had to look and look! This was my life for many of the days that year in Ethiopia. It was not the worst of my years.
lenny kravitz – breathe chromeo mix
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
o pussyfeathers
for virgo this week: When Adam sampled the apple from the tree of knowledge, he was expelled from Paradise. After Prometheus stole fire from his fellow gods and gave it to humans, he was punished by being chained to a rock and getting his liver chewed on for years by an eagle. You, on the other hand, won't have to suffer for the nervy coup I hope you'll pull off in the coming weeks. So don't look over your shoulder as you do your daring deed. Throw yourself into it with unconditional love and fervor.
u2 – god pt II (hard metal dance mix)
Monday, July 02, 2007
Here's hoping the Red Guys picked up somebody who's fetchin'.
Sunday, July 01, 2007
. . . makes the better broth
And it’d be a pretty lethal one, since we’re all trying to “get over it” rather than realizing it’s a temptation.
I don’t hate Wisconsin, it’s just a place, but when I go there, a bell jar of memory-feeling cups over me like a jelly jar on a flapping moth. The feeling is Insecure. After an initial “Wa!”, I resent the glass like a moron, flipping off my own reflection(s).
Someone told me the Pride post was really about Hubris. I’d like to think he’s right. If I could switch from a basically Calvinist worldview to a Hellenic one, I’d get my wings clipped right there on the spot of a crime rather having it hanging over myhead, and when I die I’d go to Hades, which by most accounts isn’t much more unpleasant than a basement apartment. But since I even named one of my dogs Tulip, I think my orthodoxy bent is a given at this point.
Party game: Quick you’re about to die and you’ve got one last sentence, what is it? (“I’m sorry.”)
I don’t mean insecurity like ‘am I pretty?’ insecure. I mean Insecure: the world is threatening and my being in it at all might be a mistake.
Prideful Rant: When I got the “are these your kids?” line at a KFC, it hit a nerve that keeps getting hit lately, and that overlapped with my habitual allergy to Wisconsin, and I couldn’t really sort it all out until I got back here. It happens allll the time, mostly with strangers who have no idea that I’m “one of them”. And on the flipside, the ‘woman between 35-45’ category bobs to the surface as one for analysis and usually some sort of condemnation. It’s a favorite topic of disc jockeys. It might include extended commentaries of Katie Curic’s boyfriend or speculation about the capability of Demi’s ovaries or Cameron’s recouping athleticism in the face of rejection or or bla bla bla. Every time something like this comes stumbling out of someone’s mouth who knows me, they kind of swallow it back last second, or more often they respond to my “HEY! No age-hate!” with “O god you’re not like that, you look like 25 or something.”
First of all, that is not true. I look exactly like myself. Being assessed favorably in a context that assumes my cohort is one of loitering sexuality inside of physical wrecks is not really a compliment. If you doubt me, well let’s reverse it - I’ll compliment you for not seeming as young as you actually are, and you 20-somethings tell me if this works: “You have thoughts about something other than yourself sometimes!” “You’re hardly prone to premature ejaculation at all!” “You’re skin’s usually clear!” See how that doesn’t really add up to unqualified praise, since it implies that your cohort is a set of self-absorbed sexually incompetent puss balls?
Also, I don’t look 25 because I know what I actually look like. At 25, you have no idea what you look like, frankly. Add on what you have planned and what you have not planned, a kid or two or none, a marriage (or two or none), a career (or three or none), a parent’s decline (or two) inevitably, some gains and a fistful of losses etc., press fast forward through 10 years, and THAT is what you actually look like. If you doubt me, crack out a picture of your mother before and after YOURSELF. See what I mean?
And I know what the biggest missteps of my young adulthood have been. They were all false ideas, mistakes on the inside of me that became reflected in my deeds and works. To do or fail to do what you ought not or you ought be getting done – you’re probably making your biggest mistakes right now at this very moment, doing or not-doing, cleaving to the wrong thing, throwing away what you’ll miss, etc. and you won’t know what the mistakes are for another decade.
Pray for a sense of humor.
(armscrossy) I defend my right, and by extension my category’s right, to be humanly “viable”, and stress tested besides where y’all might not hold up so great. And pictures don’t capture much besides, not who smells good and who doesn’t, let alone who is a dumbass and who isn’t. Who is miserable and likes it that way. Who is cruel behind closed doors. Who would say anything to get their way. Who makes themselves bigger by making others smaller. Who could be in pain on someone else’s behalf and who couldn’t. Who loves their mother and who doesn’t. Who can love another person more than they do being right. Who can love another person at all. Who is gentle, who is not. Who can feel simple delight and who cannot. Who is full of shit and doesn’t even know it, doesn’t even suspect it. The line that divides isn’t “too oldish” vs. “still youngish”, it’s thinking vs. not, trying vs. not, trying harder vs. not, (and funny vs. not). A good rule of thumb: We should probably all worry less about our age, and worry more that we might be measly humorless faithless feckless assholes, eh?
blablabla bla bla bloatbla blabla
The problem with that rant (besides the Pride) is that I could care less any which way about much of that, really. It obscures what is actually weighing on my mind. When I got home, out of sorts, slept funny on couches and tired and solitary and all my screws loose, to collect myself I ran and cleaned and did this:
This, if you can do it for 5-10 seconds, challenges the body. If you can do it any longer than that, it begins to hit the right nerve, the one in your mind. You press your chest open to the sky and bare your throat. The instructors say when they walk you through it, “Allow vulnerability. Go further. Look at what is directly behind you. Allow vulnerability.” I think of specific people. I leak sadness (weeping is a common response to that particular position). I could not have done that 10 years ago. Or even 3 years ago. X used to say, furious, that I was like a sheath, offering no resistance to a blade and thus un-stab-able. I can feel the first stab and then see lips moving and hear no sound; the assault will blow through me like a dust bunny through an empty room.
Being an empty room is hardly an achievement, whether it has kept me ‘secure’ or not.
Does anyone else feel like we’re supposed to be winning certain battles, accomplishing a set of things, and when we win them then we’ll be able to go “home”, to be “there”, to arrive, to relax and look backwards and forwards without fear and with equal contentment?
I’m not there yet. I’m still going up the hill. I need more time than most people do. I Am Alive, which still stuns me often, as if I’m new to it. I run so I can feel that and get used to it again every day [not to have a good ass, which is built too close to the sidewalk no matter what I do anyway]. I know I’m alive because I’m in a body. It’s a good body, healthy, I’m deeply grateful for it because I cannot think straight when I’m sick. And it is wearing out slowly, which is a merciful thing because I’m slow and sometimes unwise. Writerly, I need time to Revise. Multiple revisions. That I’m Running behind Schedule! is the nerve that’s getting hit. But that idea is just another damn jelly jar.
Grapes of Wrath – Tell me all the Things I wasn’t