Not Turning Away

He’s looking with an experienced brow.
I’m not seeing him though, only the blond hair 
And pool of life surrounding her.  She’s looking 
Up and East in the direction I am driving, her mouth 
In an unnatural position of surprise and misunderstanding.

I’m quickly shocked by the wrong things.  
I look to her arms and legs expecting to see
The result of 10-stories worth of gravity, 
But there is nothing awry.  She’s only dropped 
Off her chair or bike or maybe just walking on 
The curb with an armload of something and will 
Be getting up again as soon as the embarrassment 
                                  ends.
  
That wetness in the hair will be washing out 
Easily, and the clothing can be replaced.

My mouth is closed.  My eyes are shuttling 
From the police to the people to the girl 
And not seeing any of them.  She is there 
Now, but the rhythm is missing from her breast 
And the lights that were animating are moving 
At the fixed speed toward the East.  Sleeping 
Remains complete and unashamed in the West.

He waves me impatiently forward and I roll 
In first gear and turn North.  Not seeing the roads 
Or signs or dashed yellow lines that guide me daily 
On this way.  The images I hadn’t seen now replaying 
                     For my reason to redesign. 
And I’m not sure how long it will take to actually arrive.


(note: it's a true experience, and much more intense than I can possibly write.

Please feel free to /msg me with constructive comments.)

¡A rant!...
On current theory of dreams...
Inspired by Lucid dream...
For JerboaKolinowski...
...!A rant¡

The three registers of human reality are the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real, according to Lacan. I take this terminology from him.
  • The "imaginary" register is the domain of images and ideals. This is the domain of the ego, which is an essentially falsifying agency that gives a sense of unity to a body that is, in reality, fragmented and uncoordinated. The ego provides an image that is a unified, ideal, glossed over/false reality. This image is part of the so-called imaginary domain.
  • The "symbolic" register is that of semiotics. Symbolism gives "meaning" to the world. (By definition, the definition of meaning is signification.) The symbolic is composed of signifiers and signifieds. One's relation to the image is structured by the symbolic. Language belongs to the symbolic register. The texture of our world is symbolic.
  • The "real" register is that which resists signification, that which we cannot situate or explore.

Now, the interesting thing about dreams is that symbolic register is totally missing while the dream is occurring. Only afterwards, when one wakes up, is symbolism imposed upon dreams. This is not to say that dreams have no substance. Merely that their substance is "meaningless", in the literal sense of the word. Everything is immediate.

Example:

While dreaming, I see someone whom I know without any equivocation is my father. This person's form is unclear but unneccessary to the dream. Without any sort of signification, I immediately, directly know that the person is my father. Hence, the substance of the dream (that the person is my father) is immediate.

But when I am awake, I may remember the person as my father (perhaps with difficulty), but only through association and signification of my memory of the form of my father. My memory is subject to the symbolic order.

It also appears that dreaming's lack of symbolism is intimately connected with forming/restructing/playing out signification according to some (logical) laws.

Symbol-blindness is what gives one the strange sense of tunnel-vision when dreaming.

One could insert an interesting tangent about the different psychoactive mechanisms of LSD and Ketamine here. LSD causes attention to detail and texture, and is thus in the analytic domain of the symbolic. Ketamine is at the opposite end of the spectrum: it causes disassociation (i.e. mutes the symbolic), increased attention to archetype (which is the domain of the imaginary), and thus a feeling of tunnel-vision.

Tuesday of the completely banal, normal, is this it daylog

Sometimes in dreams, and badly designed platform games, I find myself in some sort of pit, hole, or crater, staring up at the edge that I know marks the join with ground level. The stupid thing about this crater is not that I've fallen into it in the first place - it always catches me slightly by surprise, even though I've been watching it approach for some time - but that it seems impossible to escape from. No matter how hard I run, or how cleverly I launch myself up one side, turn, and sprint off to the bottom and up the slope opposite, I'll always run out of steam a little way before the top.

Sometimes in movies, a helpful droid saves the day, but this ain't the movies kid.

"The greatest gift you'll ever learn
is just to love, and be loved in return"

This is my life: I split up with my girlfriend 14 days ago, after 18 months together, thus bringing my total of unsuccessful long term relationships to three, and forcing me back into single life. I've been single for all of three months since the end of my second year at university, way back in the summer of 1995, and I'm not a big fan. I'm a simple boy with simple needs, who just wants to be loved. According to my personality profile, my moderate narcissism should take care of that, but sadly, it looks like my moderate paranoia is the stronger force these days. So I'm untouchable, unless I find a nice girl with a rebound fetish.

I've been out and about a bit, though, escaping Southampton to see somebody I used to know who seemed happy to see me, even though I'm such a crap friend that she'd deleted me from her mobile phone. I even managed to fit in morning tea in a hotel with my one and only media celebrity friend (Liquid News viewers will know who I'm talking about), on fine form as ever, but it's hard not to be jealous of a man whose biggest worry is how badly his fantasy football team is faring.

The only bright spot in being a miserable pile of bones on the cutting room floor is that suddenly I've noticed that every song that's ever been sung was written for and about me.

So, Johnny Marr's tuning up on my windowsill, and Morrissey's in my bedroom reminding me I'm unloveable, Aimee Mann's got my life figured out, and Airhead, Jesus! Airhead! I'd hoped that my life would amount to more than a couplet from a band whose airplay, as far as I could see, was restricted to an afternoon in the the electrical department at John Lewis "...and this model even has a bass boost". Oh yeah, what's that for then? "It masks the cheapness by making the system sound slightly less tinny."

Anyway, Airhead, unwittingly prescient, saw the last fortnight thusly:

"It's funny how the girls you fall in love with never fancy you. It's funny how the girls you don't, do."

You know who you are.

Not to be outdone by a bunch of hapless indiepoppers whose sole album was called "Boing!" (fer god's sake), Blur have since released a song of quintessential sadness. The kind of song that'll make me nod knowingly. Yup, they've found the nub alright.

No Distance Left To Run

It's over
You don't need to tell me
I hope you're with someone who makes you
Feel safe in your sleeping tonight
I won't kill myself, trying to stay in your life
I got no distance left to run

Heartbraking isn't it? No, you're right, not really. Yes, yes, I'll get on with it. Yes, worse things happen at sea, yes it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, and yes there's always someone worse off. I can think of one friend for whom that's certainly true, and my thoughts are with him.

Soon, I hope, I will be able to sing along with Alex Chilton in a totally unironic fashion, with no bitterness, and a grin to shame the cheshire cat. I'll be just another hopeless romantic, listening to appalling upbeat music. But life will taste so good I won't care. All together now:

"I'm in love with a girl
Finest girl in the world
I didn't know
I could feel this way"

Soon? How soon is now?

It reminds me of the times my father made me wander in the forest alone at night, whispering to myself.....

I'm a bad little boy
I'm a bad little boy
I'm a bad little boy
I'm a bad little boy
I'm a bad little boy
I'm a bad little boy
I'm a bad little boy
I'm a bad little boy
I'm a bad little boy
I'm a bad little boy
I'm a bad little boy
I'm a bad little boy
I'm a bad little boy

EVEN THE TREES MOCKED ME

I apologize.

The videotape was supposed to be for our use only. We never expected it to enter into widespread distribution. Yes, we killed the mother lamb. Right after it gave birth we put a bullet in its head. Then we took that somewhat willing chick Allie and both of us had rude and ungentlemanly sexual relations with her in front of a tractor while the newborn lamb, still frosted with afterbirth looked on. That lamb is going to grow up with severe emotional problems now. I'm sorry.

I apologize.

I pushed that old lady down. I lied to the cops about it, but I'll tell you the truth. We offered to help her cross the street. Six lanes of traffic going nowhere in particular. We were almost to the median when I grabbed the back of her head and shoved her down. We ran to the median and watched as a tractor trailer truck carrying roughly hewn logs bore down on her. She was helpless. We laughed. It wasn't funny. I'm sorry.

I apologize.

I got up a five in the morning every day for the last week and went down to the schoolyard. I distributed free packs of cigarettes to grammar school age children, as well as that old woodsy fellow who has been "left back" in the fifth grade since 1971. Hey, he can't pass the basic courses, so he has to keep repeating. He helped us force the kids to smoke pack after pack of Benson and Hedges 100s. Those kids are now never going to be able to collect social security. I'm sorry.

I apologize.

I did go to the high school dressed up like a sixteen year old girl and try out for the cheerleading squad over the weekend. I had to sleep with the coach, the quarterback and two linemen to do it. They had some pretty hefty sausages and that was cool with me. Kind of like having an extra large Jack Benny Plate. I made the squad and now I have been blowing off practices. Too many hot and sweaty muscular men looking on. I couldn't stand it. I insist on remaining mostly heterosexual and going to cheerleader practice might have an impact on that. I'm sorry.

I apologize.

I've slept with countless junkies and recovering alcoholics. Go to an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting sometime and check out the pickings! Most of them were not very clean, but I haven't had a test for STDs in more than a decade. I figure, what's the point? It will probably just be bad news. Now I'm gunning for your daughter's virginity. I'm sorry.

I apologize.

I eat a lot of greasy foods. I laugh at crippled children. I steal heart medication from old fellars. I injure small dogs for the amusement of myself and others like me. I look up girls' skirts. I urinate in people's coffee when they aren't looking. I swear in front of nice families while watching G rated movies at the theatre with them. I don't rewind videotapes. I steal anything that isn't tied down. I break everything else. I smell funny. Other than that, I'm really a pretty nice guy. I'm sorry.

Really, I am. I am really sorry. I need to find a priest or something. In lieu of that, can you forgive me?

I don't like daylogs, but fuck it. It's been one of those days.

I woke up this morning with a tongue in my mouth. It didn't belong to me. It didn't belong to any hypothetical lover I might've had last night. It was, in fact, not connected to anyone. I'm afraid I freaked out and flushed it down the toilet. Yes, I should've called the police and reported it. Like I said, I freaked out. I puked my guts out, brushed my teeth 'til my gums were bloody. And I went to work anyway, because staying in my house was too creepy.

I got to work and found that someone had rearranged my office overnight. Moved my desk next to the window where the sun shines right into my eyes. Very irritating. The desk is massive and heavy, so I'll have to request for someone from maintenance to help me move it back. The lights won't stop flickering and chittering.

Sitting in an office with flickering lights while the sun blinds you is no fun, so I went to the break room and got a coke and a bag of M&Ms. The coke tasted strangely warm, red, and salty. The bag of M&Ms was full of crickets.

The restroom was worse. Not a single stall or sink was in usable condition, so I just puked on the floor and left.

The phones are out, and the streets are deserted.
Short weeks rock.

I was wallowing in a general funk this morning. I started thinking about what to daylog. How to fill this little channel for venting my bile and cursing my foes. Somebody switched the keys on my keyboard this morning. A quick trip to www.cmm.con showed me that. It is to laugh. I pried the keys off the keyboard, this little altar at which I sacrifice my youth for money.

Then I sat back, looked around, and laughed.

This is all so absurd. I get paid to bang bits in to shapes. This entire existence is insane. It is as pointless a task as has ever been done.

My mind is a playhouse. I sat daydreaming over the first part of this entry. Let me paint you a picture:

I am a lowly scribe sitting at my easel, over-looking a vast array of soldiers. They are dressed in the most dazzling array of Feudal Japanese armor, sparkling in the sun like diamonds.

My task? Count the barrels of rice. Write the numbers in dark black ink onto sheets that will fade into time, unread and unimportant.

The General assures me my work is essential, that I help preserve the Empire.

I pen a little note.

Screw you General Funk.

Love,

Sisyphus

The brick finally, finally fell out of the wall today.

Some background:

in the shipping/receiving room (which is mostly the shipping room... lots of stuff leaves here, but not much comes back), we have a bare-brick wall. It's a beautiful, old wall, original to the building. Plastered over once, discolored bits of which are still permanently bonded to the stone.

Anyway

This wall is convex. Severely convex, like the back of a deep spoon, with the more central bricks hanging on only by the tenacious edges of old, curmudgeonly grout. The center brick seemed to defy gravity...at least until this morning.

As some of you know, I work a lot of late nights; have ever since I started this job last year. I'd been assured that the wall had "been inspected" and was "completely harmless settling" and "not load-bearing", but, fearing collapse, I usually tried to get out of the shipping room as quickly as possible. Especially after I started hearing the tapping.

Everyone thought I was kidding.

But there it was. I didn't hear it all the time, it was very faint, but after hearing it once you really couldn't UNhear it ever again. Tapping, like a small hammer padded with thin leather, right in the center of the wall.

Sure, it was probably pipes. Old building, after all. But when you're at work late and hopped up on ire, you envision someone or something trapped in the featureless, crumbling warehouse next door. Someone or something with the will to tap softly on their prison wall, so intently for so long that the whole world might crumble.

There's construction on the floor above ours, and when they push heavy machinery around it feels like an earthquake. We'd all run to the shipping room door (foolishly... what if the whole wall came down?) and silently cheer for that proboscoid brick to drop. It never did. We'd drift away, more disappointed than we let on, back to our desks.

Everyone wanted me to lay off the tapping joke.

Today, there was all that rumbling downtown. We barely felt the tremors up here, so the Wall and Brick Issue didn't really occur to me; day after a day off is pretty busy after all. But I just took a tape back to the shipping room for FedEx... and there was a hole, deep and black, in the center of the wall. The brick had fallen out.

Joel had taken it right in the head.

I don't hear any more tapping.

It's amazing how easy it is to get laid when you stumble into a bar on Veterans' Day and claim that you did two tours in the 'Nam. A word about Scandinavian twins... the sex may be fantastic, but it's highly unlikely they're going to cook you breakfast in the morning. That's the second goddamned time in a week I've had to make breakfast for myself, and normally I'd let it slide like Astroglide, but after hearing the results of the Raiders-Broncos game, I was plenty pissed off. I gave Magdalena and Hannah a couple of bucks for the bus, threw on some buttonflys, and began plotting measures to be taken against Ernest.

I don't really give a flying fuck if he's the Sealer of Weights and Measures in this town... if he vetoes another one of my fantasy football trades, that fat bastard is going down. I'm sick of him and his bullshit, checking the cab meters and the gas gauges and putting his little stickers on everything in town. He's still pissed off cause I cut his son Tommy from Pop Warner, but honestly, if the kid could even put the shoulder pads on right he'd probably still be playing.

I'm sorry. That's not the point of the story.

The point of the story is this: the Canadian money must go. All of it. The wannabe quarter with the big fucking antelope on it, the lame-ass dime with the schooner on the back, whatever crazy shit is on the coins they call the nickel and the penny... all of them. Gone. I've been carrying around this Canadian quarter for three weeks now and I can't get rid of it. The washer and drier won't operate with it in the slot. The Coke machine spits it back out. Even the coin slot on the bus wouldn't count it towards my fare. This, my friends, is a conspiracy.

Things would be fine if only the machines ignored this cheap-ass worth-only-60%-of-real-money quarter. But this morning, shortly after pulling the protective tarps down off the wall in the bedroom and heading down to the Store 24 to get a cup of coffee, the goddamned immigrant behind the counter wouldn't take the quarter. Handed over like fourteen coins for a cup of coffee, and the guy notices the Canadian quarter. "We don't take the Canadian money" he says in broken English. Fucker. He's the prime suspect for delivering the bastard currency in the first place.

Maybe later I'll give the twins a call. But first I'm buying a handgun. It's gonna be OJ's day, Falling Down style.

Where I live
you exchange a look with every stranger on the street
and that look says nothing
and you know it
It is a place where women have china doll faces and their boyfriends don't get jealous
We stand on the top of the library and see
beyond suburbia's roll
our City
crown of the land
From anywhere
the invisible chorus is heard
three wailing notes lilting off the building faces
like the air can't stop screaming
Fire falls from the trees and piles in the streets with autumn
We kick at the flames if they catch on our shoes
then walk steadily on
to the streets
where whiskey flows and no man bears a grudge
and it always smells of donuts.

Where I live is Medford
which is north of the Cambridge
which is north of the Charles
which is north of the Boston
and you'd be right to call it heaven.


Long distance to the other coast, my message being returned:

So this guy's comin up the street, right? And he's movin his mouth like he's gonna chew his ear and he's makin this movement like he wants to talk to me and I hate dealing with retards, man. They freak my shit out. I don't know what level to operate on. They make me feel real fuckin uncomfortable.

uh huh.

So he's makin this move to talk to me and then he coughs and sneezes at the same time, and I see he's not retarded after all! He just looks that way when he sneezes!

crazy. you find a roommate yet?

No, only people I've interviewed have been a bunch of assholes. Oh, but get this, you know that dude who was obsessed with me?

no, man.

Shit. This dude, right, comes by the place to check it out and likes all the right shit, but way too much. Fanboy. Shook my hand way too long. Smelled like a sweat sock in a subway. Didn't feel right, so I tell him I'll call him. Asshole spends the next week calling two three five times a day, til finally I tell him, "Hey, boy, I found you another roommate. I think he's an asshole too and that's why you might like him. Just don't ever call me again."

wow. harsh.

Yeah, but check it, the cops came by this morning to ask some questions about the dude. Turns out he stabbed his roommate in the shower with shards broken from the bathroom mirror, then shot himself in the head with a fucking flare gun.

what?
you're putting me on.

I shit you negatory, if divine Providence hadn't interceded and shied me away from a bad choice, I would have been murdered last night.

crazy, man.

Yeah, man. Crazy.
So your message said you need help with the rent?

yeah. one of my roommates got vacated today.

What happened?

it's complicated.


ET's got the magic touch and he doesn't come around much so, when he does, we really roll out the green carpet and go HOG NUTZ to make a splash. Like you have to try when ET is around, bitch laced up to the Keds and busting out of his skin. Shit, even the Fry Guys know bout when ET got juiced up on tanq and tanq and took a riding mower to his bitch's house in Dorcester.

So we were ready to roll out when Jammy, the gook, comes up the stairs and says someone's slashed our tires! The nerve! In our parking lot! In Medford! Of course we ran down and sure enough, rims to rubber to asphalt, and I immediately suspected the slanty, but ET played it off legit, real cool. The man says Jah hates you boys, it's Gaymo Patrol for us. It is a pain in our asses to drag our vespas and ET's shriner car up the basement stairs and into the lot. Once assembled, though, we look BAD. ASS. All within earshot to hear the fury of our song know that we rule the school, and we'll shoot your cracker ass down if you cross the street in front of us. It makes me feel like Brando in The Wild Ones. Or Sinatra in The Manchurian Candidate.

Even if Jammy hadn't slashed our tires, he still totally fucked up our vespas. We were rolling drunks and running reds on tha Mt. A when he flipped out, total commie shitstorm. I saw him smile, thin, animal, as he gunned it and sailed into oncoming traffic, slid that shit right under the first pair of headlights he could find. Diverted the goddamn flow of traffic right into the head of our posse, cleared out four of us before the group halted and drew their buckys. ET was on Jammy already, dragging him into the car, and I knew I wanted a piece. The man says Step, po's rollin and they not here to skank. I hop in as they scream away to a dark afternoon, Jammy's eyes bugging as I tell him We are going to shoot you. In the back of the head. With Chekov's gun.

Jammy is undaunted, asks where we're going. ET says Man, we taking you to the Mick, he patch you right up for us. Jammy says back You can't perforate me, I got the ninja styles. I punched him right in his gook teeth and he kept em wired until we got to the Mick's place in Newton. What the Mick had done was gutted this mansion and replaced the inside with a maze of mirrors and french doors, a carnival labyrinth to his scotch hutch where he sits and polishes his irons. He is bomb high on his Pumas when we roll up, like he's already got the hook on the handle. He led Jammy through a pair of superfluous doors to a superfluously mirrored room.

ET gets out his notebook, says He's gonna smoke that Vee Cee, time for us to forget and lie. I put my finger to the glass and mouthed Go Fuck Yourself. Jammy was alone with The Mick:

What are you on then?

i never knew i could get drunk off one beer.
i wonder which one it was.

Funny, oi, ya be smilin outta yor arsehole if ya don't get straight with us, boy. Why'd you roll yer homies?

forty makes a man mean
whiskey on the streets makes him meaner.



So the Mick kissed him with butt of his stubnose and told him to face the glass. His words, as he said them, were You may hear a sound, a bit like a gunshot.

And if the gook did hear it, he didn't hear it for long.

I saw my boyfriend figure skate today.

He invited me along for the dozenth time; I could make it tonight. We drove and drove and picked up a fellow ice-goer. We arrived and ritualistically put on all his gear. I watched, expectedly. I wished him luck as he stepped onto the ice, then retreated up to the benches to see onto the ice.

I saw my boyfriend figure skate today.

I sat down and bundled my coat around me. Then I saw him. He was gliding across the ice, his movements smooth and clean, so controlled but so free. I watched him... my eyes kept on him as he circled around. And then it all made sense.

I saw my boyfriend figure skate today.

It made sense: his movements on earth translated so well onto ice, into a projection of himself that I immediately understood... understood... what? Him? No, just something more... He's amazing. He transfers from ground to ice, he changes, expresses himself...

I saw my boyfriend figure skate today.

I love him.

Wore FIFTEEN socks of varying colors and sizes today. Also a slice of bacon CLEVERLY CONCEALED within my hair.

MORE LATER.


That's not really true, about ths socks and bacon. But I dreamed it. I slept fitfully last night, wine and sleeping pills forcing my fleshy hu-man body into Sleep Mode. Parts of my brain resisted. They invented strange and complex images and sounds, composed of earlier events and imaginings. I think you call them "dreams".


I was dressed in plain clothes - black pants, a deep summer-sky-blue shirt and white vest. My Mother and Father were dressed similarly but in a different, more regal shade of blue. An evil man, a baron of some kind, had requested an audience with my Uncle. My Uncle was a man of power and prestige, but an old man. We sat in a great factory, my Uncle sitting and looking wistfully over the machines and storage tanks. My parents were elsewhere in the factory.

"Uncle," I said, "why are you meeting with him? You know he intends to kill you." I sat next to him on a huge cylindrical tank filled with fuel of some kind.

"I know. But it is.." He smiled and looked at some faroff place. "It is the best way."

I knew at that moment that my Uncle had resigned himself to death. It was the only way we could get rid of the Baron. And either I or my Father would remain to take the throne after my Uncle was gone.

We flew, bodily, to a junkyard that was a few miles away. (I could fly by force of will. This was nothing unusual for me.) There were huge wheeled vehicles, like gigantic 50s-style American cars with rockets on the back, suspended in the air by chains and magnets. There were barrels of oil and gasoline here and there on the dirt ground and piles of twisted metal and crushed vehicles towering around us. From around a large corrugated metal warehouse came a fat man in clothes like mine, only green, followed by a few dozen slim men with long, thin staves and pikes and green hair that matched the Baron's shirt. They flew towards us, hovering about a foot from the ground, leaning forward, weapons at the ready.

My Father and Uncle's eyes became hard. They lunged forward in unison at some unseen signal, and a battle began.

At that moment my Mother somehow triggered an explosion. A barrel full of gasoline 50 feet away engulfed a few of the green-haired men in flames. My Father and Uncle broke formation and began firing balls of translucent red energy from their hands, or maybe from some unseen weapons in their sleeves. These quickly felled two of the men defending the Baron. I stood and stared, dumbfounded. I floated absentmindedly a few feet higher in the air.


Birds, hundreds of stupid little chirpy birds sat in the pine tree outside my window. Chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp, they said. I tilted my head back and looked at them out the window. They continued to tweet at me, despite being upside-down. I made a noise like a angry gorilla, or so I imagined. It probably sounded more like an angry, upside-down computer nerd. The upside-down birds were not at all frightened and they chirped exactly as before to indicate this fact. I checked the clock: 6:45am, too early for consciousness and far too early for upside-down chirpychirp birds. I pulled the covers over my head and concentrated on making them explode with my mental powers. Instead I fell back asleep.

I ate fator inside the university Mosque located inside the American University of Sharjah. The friendly atmosphere inside the Mosque while people ate and socialized blew my mind away. Some of the reasons why this social gathering was created during Ramadhan is to help out poor students get a free meal, and also help students socialize with people of their same faith. I'm not going to go there again since I'm not poor and I'm not in a social mood. People usualy get their own dish of chicken and rice, but there was a shortage that day, so everyone had to share their dish with at least one person.

The mixture of different nationalities was huge, Arabs from all over the middle east, Iranians, Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Filipino, Europeans, Americans, just to name some. The last time I've seen this many different nationalities in one place was in Mecca.

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