mugged by the muggy

it's been awhile--

my skin's a little browner, my tummy a little emptier, my room a little messier, a couple projects finished, a new couple projects in utero, my thoughts tumbling around like damp clothes in this broken-dryer-wet heat,

in the mornings, i stumble out of my bed (sort of like sheets left on the floor of a sauna) and put on the minimals and walk to the lake. so the first apprehension of my day is engineered, clear--i count to ten before i can dunk myself into the icy water. then i take a deep breath and count to ten again. and then i breathe for a little while. and then i dive--

this morning i sat on the porch swing with my coffee

and noticed a tiny spider hanging on a web
between the ropes of the swing

she must have built that home last night
while i dreamed of clay bodies

while no one was watching, she began to wait

and i watched her crawl around and didn't want to ruin the intimacy

(the promise of my silence, our tacit agreement that our shared story would turn out a particular way, that is,

enduring)

i didn't want to break our moment
by being the one to point out that

her home couldn't stay there,
that her home would be folded in upon itself

within the hour.
(and then that i might be the one to do it, to undercut
the optimistic fantasy that drove her to create a home.)

the man who supports the weight of his white crippled dog as they walk through the ally walked through the ally with his dog. the biker who lives in the house with the garden rolled his bike out, strapped on his helmet, and squinted at his watch. a car-driver in a car drove by. things went as they do, the listeners listening and the coffee-drinkers drinking their coffee and the bikers biking and the wakers waking and the sleepers sleeping.

LB wrote, "'i didn't think it would turn out this way' is the secret epitaph of intimacy."

(and i wonder, how do i change my living to avoid that--

not to say cynically, authoritatively "i knew it would turn out like this,"

but to think that in our intimacy, nothing is sure or promised or forever,

and this is okay and good and beautiful because it is)--

and to the spider, what i might have wished i could say was:
"i'm sorry i cannot be seduced by your web
but my aesthetics of attachment are not careful enough
for us to flourish together. it doesn't have to make sense."
but the quietude was tempting and i intimated with my breath
...it doesn't have to make sense.

last week my brother was here, what a quiet charming fresh young mind,

we adventured around and i felt my spirit of adventure returning,

to the MCA to live on metal mobile islands, biking, bäoing, sitting by the lake,

a sip of a beer is an illicit transgressive simple delight,

the world is not so hard, it is good, and the days flow by filled with ideas that are sometimes followed through till completion and sometimes the sketches are left behind.

and these days have been days of making and unmaking,

tinctures pickles lentils paintings drawings beginnings plans truths quietudes stories bread zines

promises obligations burdens annoyances aspirations falseness messes stresses desires pressures expectations stories bread zines

i'm finding great satisfaction in these small projects which have become daily rituals, and though sometimes the process is painful the reward is always great. i am content being alone and together, quiet in groups, fermenting and bubbling in my desires and allowing them to slowly unwind as i bike up, down, back, forth, through the prairie and the froth and the broken-dryer-air.

for now, that's all. i'm thriving on air and memories and presents and futures and glasses of water and icy mornings and the sparest of intimacies and the occasional loaf of hot hot bread.

fuck europe

for eating all of my money. fucking a.

this is an unimaginative post, it's just me sharing links. then i'll get off the screen and go to the barn.

Saturday evening in Pune someone bombed the German Bakery. Now the count is 9 dead, 60 injured. I wonder if the U of C will do a program there next year.. it's a funny city. I don't know why anyone would target the Pune German Bakery over any of the other ones in the country. Maybe proximity to the Osho Ashram? (AKA the Sex Ashram, it's an expensive place to go and very popular with western tourists. and they hang out at the german bakery a lot. it's a good place to meet creeps and drink kombucha and watermelon juice (mmmm), eat green hummus and really really good coffee-chocolate cake). I guess Headley (one of the main guys involved in planning the 26/11 attacks in Bombay last year) visited the Osho last year, scoped it out. so maybe... well anyway. this happened. feels weird.

completely unrelated to that
I've been listening to the radio because the CD player in my parents car is still broken from when justin, alonso and I went to Maine last december. 1) it's all gaga 2) if it's not gaga, it's me trying to figure out what magic is contained in the refrains of these three songs
Replay by Iyaz

Whatcha Say by Jason Derulo

Let's Hear it for New York by Jay Z and Alicia Keys

there's something in these refrains that makes me feel something. it comes from outside of me and i feel good or strong, or like driving faster, or like singing loudly and bouncing up and down. also present in the Kaskade Remix of Break the Ice by Britney (~50 seconds in). this sort of feeling I think is unique to pop. it feels contrived, dirty, manufactured. it's like the assholes who made that song "Tonight's Gonna Be a Good Night" knew they were gonna make it big.

i think it's that aaj kal (these days) I'm supersensitive to media. I feel like I'm overloading, I'm hyperstimulated. my mind's been whirling a mile a minute, even now when I'm alone with my dog in the house. I can't be quiet except when I went to the Quaker meeting house on sunday. i'm so excited and confused to be back and but i haven't yet given myself any responsibilities that come with home. whirr whirr whirring with activity and a low balance on my bank account. waahfladjklfa ca

but while we're on the topic of youtube,
check out Julia's Bad Romance video (julia is mine and justin's friend. she lives in Mass and made this video for something at her school. &she won!)

oh also wayyyyy to much gaga. i'm taking a break for a while. probably until j comes back. (a week)

deep deep deep in an underground vault with no walls: a short essay on essays

figure 1. extending boundaries to enable depth

alack, alack!
the hail earlier today hit my face sharply, a welcome relief from the nebulous cloud of nonsense (see fig.2) that i breathe in when i try hard to focus on the cloud without thinking about its units of nonsense. (but what is a unit of nonsense? and would not the cloud bring me greater nourishment than a tiny unit thereof?)

figure 2. the possibility of borders

fuck time, i will refuse to disintegrate and somehow forge forward.

figure 3. a question of borders

it is hard to remember to take pleasure
in contradictions
when they begin
to melt
all over
my
glasses

figure 4. on the edge of concern, there is just one more thing

enough, i say! enough!
i demand more!
it's too much! do you really need to--
totally overlooked.

figure 5. the desire to draw boundaries induces dilemma

now is the time.
(how can the time be now? i'm not ready yet!)
the world is as it is because it is as it should be and
all is how it should be because it is how it is
(***reference proof for "why giraffes go up in lifts," car cemetery 12(4):2009)

figure 6. the recent discovery of additional dimensions to the problem has dire implications for the accessibility of shimmering intergalactic portals to contemporary youth culture

and of all possibilities
we are left with the comfort that:
all things are possible
which we can conceive of as possible!

figure 7. a statistical abnormality suggests the need for new methods of analysis



comment!, e.g. with your favorite little screenshot of brain2.0?
(these invisible mediators, these quiet prompts)