lady sovereign - love me or hate me

black painting 2 - cecily brown

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radiohead – how to disappear completely

mid drift, 11.2006

from Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity:

Free beings alone can be strangers to one another. Their freedom which is common to them is precisely what separates them. As a pure knowledge, language consists in the relationship with a being that in a certain sense is not in relation to me, or, if one likes, that is in a relationship with me only insomuch as he is wholly in relation to himself, [Greek word?, looks like kaOavro], a being that stands beyond every attribute –a being, consequentially, completely naked.

james eric - More than This (roxy music cover)

This week: Sometimes, Virgo, you're too damn smart for your own good. (LOL) You may describe a problem so brilliantly, for instance, that you think you've solved it merely by talking about it, and never get around to actually fixing it. On other occasions your fine mind runs amuck in an orgy of razor-sharp analysis (snort), cutting things apart in order to understand them but not putting them back together again. I beg you not to indulge in these excesses during the coming week. Your intelligence will be soaring beyond even its usual exceptional levels, and it would be a shame for you not to capitalize on it momentously.

O damn, ixnay the orgy this week.

Motor – Black Powder

(more new bedding la la la)

Matisse - Harmony in Red

So, the bedroom. Obviously, it’s a feng shui challenge. It used to be the “guest room” though we rarely had guests. I think of it as the room I retreated to and lived in apart, like an ill-performing au pair who could not yet depart for her own country. Yes. This is the room that was the waiting room for the departure to my own country. I had a futon on the floor, some books, some cans of orange soda and whiskey, and a laptop in the dark. It could use a chi pick-me-up before my ass cheeks crack into bits of ice and hit the ground. The book says to get rid of mirrors and any family photos. Ears broke the mirror recently and I decided that given the circumstances I’d count that as 7 years bad luck BACKWARDS. The book says that you should hang photos of happy couples, and I go with Fay Ray in King Kong’s fist. The book says to pick restful colors and colors to look good by, flesh toned hues. So I go to the paint store, the one I always go to, down on Best.

Those guys have been with me since the mid 90’s, through the commune and the sanctum and 12 and 81 several times over each, since I’m always remodeling something or other. I’ve got a fistful of off-whites. I’m trying to lighten up. I lay them on the counter, making my final selection: whipped cream, fresh bread, vanilla, champagne, or melted ice cream. See the punch line coming? Yeah, they’re all edible. I hadn’t noticed. I suppose it could be a backhanded blessing that my X told me once (and again and again and) that I am a Ridiculous Person. Good practice. Since this year has taught me that I can be lost in the Ridiculous Woods like Little Ridiculous Riding Hood and not know I’m about to get my frozen ass chewed off (or not, as my Unconscious would like to point out). I bite the inside of my cheek (shit lololo), one of the guys says “Toning it down, eh?” and I smile politely “Melted ice cream, please – Thanks.”

David Gilmore Girls – House Warming Party

The Judge orates philosophical truths from the back seat. His latest: Life is like a race downhill towards a deadend. Then he ranked his grandparents for which he thought was out in front. He thought he was clever and lucky besides to be the youngest. But his brother pointed out that the dog was the first to go, and she was younger than he was. The Judge thought about it a second. “You’re Right”, he said soberly.

sometimes it's just too hard to go back i think...
sometimes there's nothing to go back to...
sometimes there was never anything there but attempt
turned inward contemptuous words breed contemptuous thoughts
maybe this is all there ever is

- words and image from faintedink

(come back, we’ll drink more wine)

It’s good to know some writers and some books. The need for expression and the capacity for it are two different things. The need for ______ and the capacity for it are two different things. Capacity for it and its existence are two different things. I had once and again the capacity for what did not exist. So I made it. I had once and again and again (and again?) the capacity to lend that capacity to others. I can make-pull a man towards me into being. I have need of this. But I should be careful, and now I try to be, stepping around the shards of glass barefoot, trying not to get cut but refusing to put my shoes on also because in safety you can lose your feel for it altogether. No stomp stomp stomp just to go downhill faster, as people seem hell bent to do, stepping on or over whomever they will like roadkill.

It is a beautiful day. We go for a walk. He seems happy. He says hello to almost everyone. He looks at me, asks me a question with this eyes: “Is it just me, or has that storm made a buffet of hard hats and rescue workers out of the city?” He takes a sniff. I always look at my feet when I walk, and have to remind myself to look up, which doesn’t cost anything if I don’t want it to, since I’m too short to make eye contact without further effort on my part. Usually, anyway. Our solitude together is interrupted when one says hello back, three times, and seems to be talking to me. Looking dead ahead, I am eye level with his diaphram, the hernia of which killed my brother. I hear someone else singing in my head, stare politely right on through. To one I would say “okay”, to someone else I would say “I always say okay.” This seems a crucial difference to me. But it probably isn't. Say La Vee.

Meanwhile, I study feng shui.

trentemoller - take me into your skin

tegan and sarah – when you were mine (prince cover)

tournament day

I definitely have a mood that would not be ill expressed by spinning nun(numb)chucks and knives in whirling circles and throwing them into the air to catch them on the turn around as I barked out EEEEYA at the top of my lungs over a deafening soundtrack of warehouse dance party heavy beat. The boys are in training for that mood. Like "Stop Drop and Roll", one hopes it’s an unnecessary precaution, but . .

Eeya: Disillusionment and Frustration Training, 11.2006

Ears won his first trophies, in forms and sparring both. The sparring was particularly impressive, since he is the smallest by far in his rank, and he came out of his corner like a leprechaun composed of adrenalin on a mission. His eyes were as big as half dollars, and he literally spun at his opponents in a blur of little "eeya eeyas". The first round, the Master stopped at the point hit and laughed out loud, "Wow little buddy, Geez!" I looked at him and thought sure he already knew plenty about that mood thing.

The Judge got 2 medals, and was disheartened by his brother’s larger success. Noticing that, then Ears refused to have his picture taken without him. I told Judge that all little brothers catch up to their older ones, and do better in the long run usually because they don’t make the same mistakes. I told him that my own sister was sad when I had him and thought she’d never have a kid so great, but that now she was having her own baby. He said, Well that doesn’t count because almost all girls wind up having some babies but not all boys wind up winning trophies.

Lifting Belly Baby and Bokun Playlist:

Outrageous Cherry – Paranoid World
The Knife – You Take My Breath Away (mylo remix)
Graham Coxon – Freakin Out
Ash - Meltdown
Juniper (Damien Rice + Bell x1) - World is Dead
Margot and the Nuclear So-and-Sos-Barfight Power Revolution Violence (o Canada la la la) [best in show]

bonus track:

the postal service - brand new colony

from News of the Weird this week:

In September, the headmistress of the Dvergsnes primary school in Kristiansand, Norway, proposed that boys be taught to urinate while seated, in order to reduce splashing and mis-targeting, which burden the cleaning staff, but many parents and politicians reacted bitterly. Said Vidar Kleppe of the Justice and Order party, "It's a human right (for a boy) not to have to sit down like a girl," adding that the school was "fiddling with God's work." Parent Nancy Bakke was proud of her 7-year-old boy's ability to aim: "This rule goes against everything I've tried to teach my son." [Daily Telegraph (London), 10-15-06]

the pretenders - precious

Lorenzo Martin, 34, was charged with domestic violence in September, accused of holding his estranged wife's leg in a bed of fire ants, resulting in more than 100 bites (Cottonwood, Ala.).

cake - world of two
elliot smith - ballad of big nothing

beware of dog (he snores)

voices of the seven woods - an hour before dawn (if only--seems like it's now light in this city only about an hour a day total)

If the thirst would subside just for awhile

It would be a little bit, enough.

--Ashbery"On the Towpath"

I am finally reconnected to the World. And I try to think of what to say or even think about the last several weeks as words come rushing like factory girls in a panic over a fire at the backside of my face, which is not a door. I suppose I’ve been building a fortress mostly. I like my handiwork so far well enough. I like the houseplants reclaimed from the snow and the smell of new paint and of the sage I burned to smudge the place. Locks (click click), stairs, up and up, closing the ways in behind me as I go, bricking them over, Rapunzel of heart. (Did Batgirl ever get a cave of her own?) I turn around and think that nobody would have the hutzpa or quixoticism or imagination to attempt to scale this, certainly not against my will. I’ll let down a knotted rope, maybe, if you know the password and have a jar of some kind of secret sauce as a fort-warming present. No fucking strangers allowed.

Meanwhile, I also get to know my tenants. They guard the first floor. A couple, their first apartment, she’s a graduate student and he’s currently working as a painter and retaking the GRE’s. She’s been going bonkers increasingly, first with no power for over a week, and no internet still as of when she left this morning. I hear her flipping out down there, weepy hissy fits, and then his appeasing voice. Once I glanced through the window on my way in when they were in the middle of one of those, at day’s end again with the hard hats not showing up again. He was kneeling in front of her, and she had her hands over her face trying to pull it together. I am deeply glad they are here—they are the perfect counter in spirit to the unhappy-couple vibe this place has been sucking up for too long, and I like particularly that they are on the first floor, where I remodeled to make everything so beautiful and wrote in my journal two years ago that its loveliness seemed in direct negative proportion to the punishing marriage resident within it. Like this year, I was living in two places, so to speak. The little couple in love are righting the chi on the other side of the torn wall. My side is still a gash. I’m working on that.

for Virgo this week: In a number of indigenous cultures, there's the tradition of the "joking relationship." Two members of an extended family, often a brother and sister-in-law, are expected to form a bond that revolves around them playfully teasing each other. If you don't have an ally like that in your life, Virgo, I urge you to get one. And if you already do have such a companion, raise your connection to an even higher level of loving mischief and jocular amusement. It'll keep you loose in just the right ways during the coming weeks and months.

the caesars - jerk it out

So get this, the place OPENS but because of the power situation, it can’t PAY US on PAY DAY. Nice. Huh?

I’m at a neighbor’s house, sending a smoke signal that I’m alive, having moved with heroic help in that storm, in a Uhaul truck that the truck guys just basically gave to me (since there was no swiping credit cards) . . . Ok, I hate this about this city, the weather, but I love it too, because every time this massive bizarre you can’t believe it storm happens, people come out and just give you whatever they have. The last time, the big bad one that shut the city with 72” of snow, 20 guys, or so it seemed, picked up my little Saturn and moved it so I could get around a turned-over bus. In the Apocalypse it’s no wonder I’m going to come off alright. I have to admit I love the way some of us just throw down and do our best, strangers, with “God Bless!” calling out all over in bemused good humor at it all.

And then I hate the other people. The “I have to get to where I’m going so fuck you.” I wonder if hating people like that is the prerequisite for loving the other kind. (?)

"Stand by Me," Sam Cooke
"If You Want Me to Stay," Sly & the Family Stone

(thanks DmS for the tunes, I can hear them in my head)

a tree. just fell. on my car. [LOL]

first heavy snow. breaks trees up and down the street, falling onto cars. my ass will never thaw. and my couch is gonna get moved in this? what next, a 40 day rain of snakes or what?

and what the hell is this? for Virgo this week: Astute salesmen from the British store Fortnum & Mason took full advantage of the Crimean War back in the 1850s. They sold picnic lunches to officers who were leading the battles at the siege of Sebastapol on the Black Sea coast. In the coming weeks, Virgo, you too can capitalize on a conflict you're not directly involved in. For best results, make sure you don't get caught in the crossfire. Cultivate neutrality, doing absolutely nothing to feed the flames of hostility. Ply your skills and offer your services with impeccable timing, slipping in and out with understated efficiency during lulls in the uproar.

the bangles - walk like an egyptian

so long 2,
10.2006

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. [always loved that one]

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. [whew] --george bernard shaw, both

amon tobin - easy muffin (rib kick)

I miss my dog.

billie the vision and the dancers - ask for more

I want to thank everyone who came to help this weekend, and ahead of time everyone who's coming next Saturday too (though I'll thank you again). [and I'm sorry I cried that one time.] And I loved my tarot reading, because for all my schmoozing around with decks of bullshit, that was my actual first tarot. And it wasn't what I expected at all, but more like a list of questions.

Think, for instance, but translated into Gina-speak, if I handed you something and said "this means that someone or something in your recent past is heavily associated dirt." You look at it. It's whatever, a little picture card. And I ask you, so what do you think about dirt? Especially recently?

planting tomatoes? who knows--think fast. dirty?

Isn't that kick-ass? Because who saw that question coming?! I love that, because I really hate being bored shitless, among other things [cruelty]. T'wound rather freefall into a crazy question for no good reason but clean fun.

(And ya gotta admit, my getting that over-turned cup card, cup runneth f'n kicked the hell over, that was not disputable.)

hush little alien

When I left, I took 2 wine glasses. 4 milk glasses. So much of a dent already, on our insides, it seemed like a good idea to take what was nearest to the door, literally the room NEXT TO THE DOOR, and only what else I’d absolutely need to seem recognizable to the kids. Chosen all in under 2 hours. I suppose too, that it softened the 'for-keeps' factor for me to take less.

But, every single wine glass (guess no showing off the wine w the tofu recipes like "friends" as planned, eh? hahahaha) Every single toy.

Every picture except those of me, the one of him looking down that was next to the one of me at three, curly like B. As I type this, I'm looking at the one I picked to take with me, of him smoking in a doorway in Germany. This is for sure one of those times that bloat wouldn’t help, since no eloquence could describe the nothing that could possibly prepare you.

(. . . . . . . . . . . .) reel but stand, stay standing, try ( . . . . . wait, breathe . . . . ) . . . lock right jaw. shut . . . tight. (remember the fuckthis, shitbreathe . . .)

Guess I’ll be saving up for some trips to IKEA and Toys r’ Us.

mike doughty – looking at the world from the bottom of a well (i.e. "divorce la la la")

I think I might have to sign off for awhile until I can find a song that goes "don't touch me, doo wap doo wap"

paul mcartney- maybe i'm amazed

I can't wait to paint instead of always putz.

for insomniacs, the world is littered

(who'd ya get?)

bishop allen- making friends

the strokes – on the other side

feist- gatekeeper

for Virgo this week: Writing in The New York Times, Joyce Wadler captured the essence of a genre that has lost its once-heady repute. "Poetry, if we may take a moment to explain to the young people," she said, "is an art form somewhat like rap, only it does not sell, and since the death of Lord Byron [in 1824] there has been a paucity of bling-bling." At the risk of nudging you toward a cultural dead end, then, Virgo, I'll ask you to expose yourself to concentrated doses of poetry this week. In my astrological opinion, you need to have your brain scrambled and heart flushed in a lyrically healing way, which good poetry can do. Here are some excellent sources:

x

I was going along until "brain scrambled". And, no, I don't need that.

cut chemist - what's the altitude

I think I did too.

Ruthie Foster- Woke Up This Morning

(is this Morrison's Ruth Foster?)

King Missile - Detachable Penis

The blog genre. It begins to be a chorus, everyone singing in private sound-proof rooms, though all at once. Seems a good metaphor for how we live. And how we live, how I live, and how I write (i.e. explain things to myself) are inseparable. I remember playing the violin, badly. I would go into one of the rooms when I was supposed to and relish it—I could read a book, be left alone. When I would leave, I would glance at others through the glass and they were actually playing music, and I imagined the music was a lot better than anything I could make. But since someone was playing music, it did not have to be me, anyway.

A friend writes about solitude—it’s a variation on the lonely, and if you’ve ever played the violin you’d know that “variation” can mean VERY DIFFERENT. Solitude is the condition of writing; so many people have asserted that. She says. She quotes Thoreau. I’m dubious. I remember him as being quite self-satisfied and often hanging out over at Emerson’s, trading his crappy beans for the home cooked meals (nearly invisible women, their little marks) and calling it conversation that was vital to the whole history of ideas. (!) Imagine that.

But it might be that Emerson needed him. (“A friend is one before whom I may think aloud”.) I like Emerson. On that basis, I grant Thoreau his necessity, his telling everyone who would listen how alone he was and making them think about solitude (self-reliance being a variation). Okay.

Still, the interlocutor is the thing. The only non-bloated words I can think of for interlocutor (which admittedly sounds harsh, like a train) are ‘friend’ and then ‘lover’. Because no matter how much you’d like to (and perhaps anatomy confuses men on this issue somehow), you can’t kiss yourself. You cannot convince yourself that anyone is listening to you if nobody is. And when someone is listening to you, then . . . (cold and hungry) . . . [I’m listening for, keenly]

skye edwards – what’s wrong with me? (nouvelle vague remix) [try not to think]

“All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.” – Emerson

self help reading + music

from Captain Underpants: The Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People:

One day you’re a superstar because you pooped in the toilet like a big boy, and the next day you’re sitting in the principal’s office because you said the word “poopy” in American History class (which, if you ask me, is the perfect place to say that word).

You’re probably wondering, “Why would adults do that? Why would they encourage something one day and discourage it the next?”

The only answer I can think of is that adults are totally BONKERS and should probably be avoided at all times. Perhaps you’ll be lucky and fine a small handful of grown-ups whom you can trust, but I’m sure we can all agree that you really have to keep an eye on most adults, most of the time.

Didn’t I just say that yesterday?! I couldn’t believe it when I came to that passage last night reading to the buggers, and suddenly this whole project of reading the Captain Underpants series for how it conveys skepticism to children occurred to me. I’m rusty on philosophical texts that would apply to that project, but god knows I got the time. And then I could suggest whether it’s an ethical thing to do or not (YES—if a person needs anything in this world it’s SKEPTICISM). How much you want to bet me I can do this, get it published in an ERIC journal someplace, and come back from sabbatical with an actual thing to show for it (which nobody ever does), plus then be actually qualified to teach in the graduate ED program--? HA! The idea is so ME that I turned to myself and thought: Where the hell have you been Bitch?

Jack Johnson – You’re Missing Me

court me with carbohydrates

Bloat is one of the major crimes against understanding. For instance, a person may make a promise but do so in words, which could be twisted to mean anything and even twisted to be the opposite of what the promise implied. A simple example. A man sees a dog, it is skittish and skinny and hurt and at an unreachable distance, but present and in need and quick and compelling. The man says to the dog, I won’t hurt you. He holds out his hand. The dog inches closer, and the man says it again, I promise I won’t hurt you. The dog inches closer, and the man captures it gently, “I won’t hurt you” as the leash goes around its neck and it growls but doesn’t bite. The next the thing the dog knows, it’s at the vet being put down for infirmity, the long-term results of unwantedness. This is a more humane end than the dog was doomed to before the man caught it—so did the man keep or break his promise? You tell me.

The language problem gets worse with abstract concepts. In particular, I have been trying to understand the meaning of “lonely”. When I say, “I am lonely” I know what I mean. But repeated back to me, I can get confused, because the translation that friends and therapists and books offer back are things that don’t mean “I am lonely.” They mean things like “I have low self esteem”, I am “not my own best friend”, I “fear my own death”, bla bla etc. These ideas have nothing to do with loneliness. Loneliness has two physical components: it is cold and it is hungry. Period. So it is me who is making the language mistake, because I should say in the first place: “I am cold and I am hungry.” My ass cheeks are like hot water bottles someone filled months ago and are now a soft kind of frozen. And I can’t eat because what I have a taste for is a recipe the next man who warms me up knows—it’s something man-food, cheese melted on waffles or some such thing.

I am waning with my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth and my arms crossed.

I was going to make a joke now by applying these thoughts to the repeated suggestion by one of my friends that I register on eharmony because “it was designed by a psychologist.” I find this very funny, and the pictures of whitey-white people would be great with captions like ‘Where Barcaloungers Go to Find Each Other.’

But: The men I kissed on the mouth I only did so after I spent months inching closer to it, skittish itty bitty advances, retreating and inching again, and even after all that it was a bit like hurdles in gym class where it’s make it over or break your neck. When I wake up for my nightly bout of insomnia, in a few minutes I give myself before I put my thoughts away and become my own best kick in the ass, I let desire float from me into the night, and I fill my nose and stomach with that man who smells like himself and soap and who hasn’t tried to put me down (yet). I ache once, and then amuse myself, maybe by writing my imaginary eharmony profile: will pin and mount you like a butterfly for months of seemingly distracted flirtatious frigidity, followed (suddenly) by an instinct to touch you every time you pass by closely enough, like you do with children and your dog and all things good and warm, while I tell jokes at every opportunity. Until you disappear right before my eyes. (And then I’ll save you from the Apocalypse, so not to worry.)

Ane Brun – To Let Myself Go

cake - carbon monoxide

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for Virgo this week: Jeff Greenwald (www.ethicaltraveler.com) has traveled extensively all over the planet for the last quarter of a century. "Do the citizens of the world revile us Americans more each year?" I asked him. He said that while millions upon millions have come to despise the U.S. government, most don't actually hate us, the American people. That's because they know firsthand the corruption and tyranny of their own countries' politicians, and so they don't hold our awful government against us. Let this distinction serve as a guide for you, Virgo. The time is right for you to fight inept institutions and rotten traditions and bad ideas, but without hating anyone.

(When is the time not right to fight against bullshit while trying not to hate anyone, I wonder? Maybe next week I get to wallow in ineptitude and hate everybody's guts.)

red hot chili peppers - higher ground (stevie wonder cover)

As today is Oct. 1 and thus the beginning of the official housing switcharoo, where packing and booking movers etc. should start getting done, I'm of course doing pretty much zip. I found the "Moving Doctors" business card from the last time, and I can't wait really to get ol' Mike on the phone to explain that the stuff he moved from floor to floor in one house last year, and then moved across town half a year later, is now going back to the original house and the original floor it was on to start with. Maybe I'll ask him for a bulk-nutty discount.

On a brighter yet completely pointless note, as I was scrounging around downloading the above tune, I learned that Anthony Kiedis is about to turn 44 years old (and a Scorpio no less, be still my heart).



there's playful in his face, I like