i can walk barefoot, i can

hi friends, hi sneezing cat.

i have been spending a lot of time in my house, it is quiet quiet here. i awake to the sounds of quiet voices and coffee grinding and when i get up i can play loud music and dance around half-naked and there is no one home, or so i think--cats wandering around doing their cat business, books lying luxuriating waiting to be read, worlds and jars of beans sitting quiet.

i am not sure what i am doing here sometimes,

sometimes i am not sure

i watch the sun slink around

the moon's fingernails grow

last night i saw a dance show about love by hand2mouth

it was called "something's got ahold of my heart"

it had four parts--greatest hits, stories, dance, concert.

i did not see my kinds of love there.

there were lots of old songs, lots of dissonance and interruption,

people dancing to adele on their headphones while old love songs blared loudly

straining in opposite directions with their arms clasped around each other

very few kinds of unmediated moments.

i thought, i could do this or something i'd like better.

i'm not sure on days like today if it's still winter, it is so sunny and warmish outside. am i in california?! i'm pretty sure not

cause things aren't free

most things

except for bike rides

and because over and over i find myself surrounded by people

mumbling about fermentation and their sourdough culture and soaking grains

and their gardens and occupy

and buying eco-friendly cleaning products

and their cool co-op whatever

and their new diet where they're not eating any of the bad stuff

geez

portland

i have been in clownface more often than not.

sometimes it is a mask, sometimes it is to say

"yes i am here and i have interiority and you can feel strange sitting by me"

at new seasons the cashier giggled and averted her eyes

i imagined that it was because i am jesus christ

yesterday when i was in bed

masturbating

i imagined i was huge huge huge, sitting atop buildings

someone was getting me off with a wrecking ball

bouncing off my clit

i was talking to my mom yesterday about polyamory and said something like "i return often to something you said when we were kids--like 'why does it hurt you for that person to have that [crayon, experience, new toy, etc.]? it doesn't hurt you.' she laughed and said, 'eliot, people and hearts are different than boxes of crayons!'" but then she got it too. she is a good carrier of reminders to not be so hard on myself.

i want a break from taking a break

i am ready to work really fuckin hard

stop having my heart and mind be the source of all of my hardnesssss

i want to get my hands dirty

feel things growing slowly

stories that run with blood and hair

water the only thing that stagnates

gupshup gossip outta my head

after ade edmonson and rik mayall made "the young ones"
they made another sitcom named "bottom"
which they described as waiting for godot
but vulgar in the extreme
kd has had one sexual partner in the past year
when he was my sexual partner
i kind of wanted to die of embarrassment
and bf i totally know who you lost your virginity to and i didn't even ask
beyonce had a miscarriage
beyonce had a miscarriage and jay-z told everyone about it in a song
that nikki minaj song
that song is about lil kim
and like ade edmonson really doesn't have any hair anymore
and i really thought rik mayall was dead but turns out he's not
he just has crazy hair
like he collected all the wind of a thousand thrusts to thwop ade edmonson over the head with a foam frying pan
and stuffed them in his weird hair
beyonce is the happiest looking pop star of all the pop stars
maybe it's because she didn't go to boarding school like lana del rey
i think i know someone who writes for timeout london
i definitely know someone who writes for timeout london
man buns are really hot right now
chris's friend sam has had a man bun for at least a year
and demographically the students of sarah lawrence
are going to tend to be from new york or la
or like the one weird girl from their suburb
which constitutes a large portion when put together
because there are a lot of suburbs
america is made up of suburbs
which is not an overestimation like saying dominique strauss-kahn is still a socialist
he was a socialist
he's not anymore and his wife is running the huffington post in france
and france is not very close to here
and when he died in france, evariste galois said
"don't cry albert, it takes all my courage to die at twenty"
and he's buried near jim morrison and oscar wilde
but you wouldn't know it
it's a common grave
and the legend of his death is probably pretty outsize
and actually
my paycheck comes from the government not tuition
professors have to cover 60 percent of their costs through funding
the funding goes in a pot to the university (sort of)
my paycheck comes out of that
i know this because the system is the same down south as it is up north
and like
thwack thwack thwack
rik mayall totally has a consistent speech impediment throughout the 90s
there's an app
that let's you designate people to shut down your social networking
if you die
but they all have to be in agreement
that you're dead
and google thinks i'm female and 25-34 years old
which is not wrong
and i am into

Arts & Entertainment - Performing Arts - Acting & Theater Arts & Entertainment - Visual Art & Design People & Society - Family & Relationships People & Society - Social Sciences - Psychology

like he collected all the wind of a thousand thrusts to thwop ade edmonson over the head with a foam frying pan
like she could actually smile with all her teeth
and smiling with your teeth is totally a scare tactic and everyone should be afraid of other people smiling at them
if one lung pops there's a good chance the other other one will, but after that it's unlikely it will happen to either
it just happens
these things totally just happen
and bubblers exist as scientific pieces of equipment which leads me to think that people have been getting high via a technique invented by a bored chemistry grad student

there's more than one of all the types of people you know
ugh
ugh
ugh
the devil is in the details
none of which i strictly need to know

The Smudge

I want to start a band called The Smudge. It makes a good movie title too, but I don't like art house flicks as much as some people. I think The Smudge has a good ring to it. I can see it now - it's a foursome of mixups who just barely get along. One has spiky hair, one has a minor facial tic, they would all be pretty pretty if they'd just smile more. Their armory includes a 7-string bass, assorted horns, jazz drums, theremin, lots of kazoos. They play a mix between klezmer-punk and downbeat post-club (heavy on the bass effects there), with the occasional third-wave ska break throne in for shiggles. They're so different, an early critic writes:

It isn't the manic energy that makes The Smudge stand out; not the way they tip closer and closer to disaster and then pull back with a grin; it isn't the moment they switch out of a long, banging, bowel-shaking paean to some ancient devil and into a rapid-fire celebratory horn solo that makes you wonder where you've been all this time, although that's closer - it's that they're just having too much fun, and they know that you know that we're all right there with them.

I'm ready to get this show on the road. In my fantasies The Smudge starts in the basement of the doxy lounge, practicing once or twice a month. It starts to take off when friends of the smudgelings keep coming to practice uninvited. leli p monster quits his day job and ditches his farming plans in favor of equipment, publicity, a van. These semi-humble beginning become part of the The Smudge's origin myth, later to become a rock-group biopic (think Stone). Reviews on the movie are mixed.

Eventually the group breaks up, moves on. They never sign a major record deal - they don't need to. Rather than rely on 10% of the profits off of millions of people, they run everything themselves, living off of shows and handmade merch and cds sold to thousands of trufans across the country. Later they sign with two different indie labels and tour Europe, but the ethic remains. About their strange brand of success one critic writes:

They were never a household name. Then again, the naughts and tens were the end of the era of household names. Sure, they had their adoring masses, but I'd say the best way to measure the success of The Smudge is in their influence. One out of every three people who saw The Smudge in those early days ended up a free thinker and a fool, in the best sense of the word.

I've been thinking about fools a lot, ever since a great conversation with teemz in the doxy kitchen. I hope that when I get invited to speak at some (hopefully worthwhile) event because of Smudge-related fame, I stand up and talk about what it means to be a fool in the modern age. Tmo said: "The fool stares into the void and laughs".

Friendship is religion

What is heard through the din of doubt?
cult of boxes is overturned.
the voice of a friend burns back the fog
Which seemed gentle at the start but actually hisses and singes before it departs.
It is the tear that burns and marks
at last
a return.
So here I speak with what I have
Friend your words remind me of something that still lives inside
and is glad. A light cuts through the deepest tomb of the self.
Now i am reminded and emerged. Thank you.

I am admitting how i tried so hard not to see
Not to lose a single thing
because losing something has damaged me.
But so does insisting on never having and never being had.
Hence my weird grief.

This is the heart of my journey and the journey of my heart
This is the dance
This is the edge I walk
The teeth of all my talk and the distance through which
I see the tree bearing its fruit

We can pick all the fruit on the tree and most of it overflows our arms to the ground
or we can take a bite of each round but never finish a single one.
I pick the fruit off the branch but toss it before tasting of its sweetness
and so I am missing the whole point.

I was a boy who used to collect souvenirs of every happy or felt moment
to remember that something so nearly impossible happened.
I was deluded! by the crime of my american childhood. Joy is not elusive.
Still this doesn't mean I understand the word happy. It feels inappropriate
and turn my back on it.

I cant stand to lose because I never had much
But somehow in that I have become rich and held
which caused light to be born into my eye
and eclipsed the dead child that just wouldn't die.

I need to be more careful or heart-wise.
We are circumstantial flowers of the desert..
Blooming spontaneously but with such precision.

I weep at my lost selves
the ones that fail to be honest or satisfied
I weep and say single file
Haunt me in a more organized way

I weep but smile
under what we're making
despite the world.
Your words pinch together a torn seam called
clarity to see what is there but unseen.

whenever your eyes lose a bit of their glint
your lips a touch of their sparkle
the cheshire smile begins to drip
and your diamonds turn to charcoal,,

remember that you are the divine muse of the
hiphophoorahing universe
sent back to the land of the living
to reawaken the dead

you are the silly, unwitting chalice of all knowing
you are ancient air in a brandspanking new booty
you are sly
you are tricky
you are shocking
you are much bigger than you

if you forget your mission at times, that's ok
you've come far from the start
and forgetting and playing is half the fun

just remember the mystery
remember the riddle thou art

and back come the cherries,
back come the roses,
back comes the bloody orgasm of your cheeks

back comes the fire,
back comes the wild
back comes the magic that you leak

before there was fucking
we were fucking the rules

more new york pulses

at night i take my eyes out
so that the grey taste in the back of my mouth
goes away.
the heart can be a small soft rose. that is what i want.

come morning i cast a shape of myself into the world, a large bright shape
but realize i cant actually fill it out
and i am too dark
i shouldnt have to be bigger than i am,
or smaller.

thinking of rose on the titanic smoking a cigarette being bored as fuck
being exactly where she and everyone else thought she should be.
how many of us have felt like running in the fancy gown of our life
toward death.
i see everything this dramatically.
even in such proximity to the end there are a million and more
moments between you and it
something will happen.