why the title, i wonder
and the paintings chosen for the cover
though the hell inside is not so simple as Moreau
why did i allow a used bookstore to sell it to me for $21
in front of my mother
when it was already warped at the corner
like someone dipped in the tub
when it traveled across the ocean
sold to the same someone for 20 pounds
at gatwick or heathrow

(but that's modern loving, isn't it?
reading the same book, months apart
in different cities, on similarly piss stained trains
ice and salt drawing mandelbrots on our boots
that's what left to us)

in the smell at the bottom of the washing machine
cold basement stone and wet sand and mold
in underwear hardened with blood
i know there's a religion amongst those pages
if you were so inclined
(who else but a prophet can know that much about so many people?)
a calendar for doom, a new gravity of suffering
support documents for the work of Carlton Pearson
the long ream of research for the thesis of Melancholia
and it's in my hands to help me get right with god

but more truthfully,
it's that our lives glance off each other here too
if only we could see the whole a little better
maybe we sense that there could be sense
that there's a brain in every department
or at least a set of lungs
but kick in the shins, kick in the teeth, kick in the nuts
it's no good to think
we've done anything more than create a new Nature
and god bless you, but you don't find faces behind storms

word from a bird in a puddle...and what is travelling for?

today we're leaving for matagualpa from grenada today...sunday we climbed a volcano (mumbacho) and put our heads in the clouds! yesterday i saw some islands, monkeys and trees, a volcano's rocky vomit that grew trees. (as tmo and i know well, beautiful things can be crafted from vomit.)
generally, it is funny travelling this way--in a little bubble made from cordoba-dollars. good to see people doing things, to feel the fluidity of my place in the world...or at least the millions of tiny worlds that are always just out of view. to brush up against something hard and distant, and to remember what i can and cannot do with my hands; what i can make and transform, and how i still don't know how to build a house or fix electrical wires or give an allergy shot, but i can make necklaces and zines and drawings--
if we all had to rely on what we could create out of nothing...?
funny, this time, maybe like many travels, to feel somewhat displaced, a little homeless except for the home built of fellow souls, soon unlimited by the walls of the bäo...echoing jbird i am wondering what we're waiting for...

mumbling muttering packing a subtle smoke behind the jungle-garden, air like sweat sweat like pools like a night in the mumbai airport six years ago, silence silence and i am so much the sister/a she, reading "wind-up bird chronicles" and confused about reality and dreams--dreaming intensely (my mother is pregnant and z is playing with clowns and a thousand-year old ficus named the thief wife is just around the corner)--

adraft adrift.

a history of ivory violence (nearly forgotten)

we are not without historical precedent...

just found this article about the 1968-69 student occupations (and tent-in! and hunger strike) at uchicago. it was the most brutally repressed student occupation of the 60s--62 students were suspended and 37 expelled. paul sally, the pirate-esque current head of the math department, tried to defend students against one of the many disciplinary committees which sprung up.

it's an interesting story -- read here. (http://thecore.uchicago.edu/winter2010/which-side.shtml)

sounds like the maroon was a lot better back then.

also, some of the protesters' claims still ring eerily true--
"'How can an unbiased judgment be expected from a committee formed from a University which claims to be a bastion of pure, value-free, uncorrupted, ivory tower thought, yet which allies itself with the war machine and acts as an agent of social repression to the black ghetto?' Steve Rothkrug, X’70, wrote in the Maroon."
racism, sexism...

i love the parts of the article about the "chickenshit theatre brigade" and the WITCHes (Women’s International Terror Conspiracy from Hell).

apparently after the repression of the '69 occupation, the university got a lot of bad press and enrollment dropped; it took until the 80s or so for the university's "reputation" to "recover."

cool shit!
enjoy.
(this story should totally be told on admissions tours. and taught in classes.)

for your consideration...

i think this is a pretty interesting article that conflicts interestingly with this whole line of thinking i've been doing about alienation, labor exploitation under capitalism, greed, excess, money...for me, this makes me want to think more about the language i'm using to describe the system and where i'm placing (or depriving) people of agency/desire to do good. (what is the desire to "do good?") anyway. i'd love to hear your thoughts.

whole text is at http://billtotten.blogspot.com/2007/02/army-of-altruists.html

"Army of Altruists: On the alienated right to do good
By David Graeber
Harper's Magazine 2007

You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq. -- Senator John Kerry (Democrat, Massachusetts)

Kerry owes an apology to the many thousands of Americans serving in Iraq, who answered their country's call because they are patriots and not because of any deficiencies in their education. -- Senator John McCain (Republican, Arizona)"

(continue reading here)

from the warm&quiet isolation of the regenstein,
elz