distancing as means of possession / Marco Polo awareness

perceptive possession begs space. a retreat to secure. extirpative immersion at odds with fathom-soundings. the call and response of conversation, especially with oneself. morelike twoself. a yes:yes that shimmers forth a mirror studio within which to think and meet another truly. do not get con-fused, leave that for the skin. you know that retraction of space that another can 'inflict' on you, they literalize you, becoming themself some spontaneous arbiter of reality? some people are very good at this sort of violence, but don't worry, it only postpones their realization. literalism is a sort of thievery, a social trick, try not to encourage it. you are a broadbeam of pure thought, so think of time as its syntax and respect your spectator.

Each Hit and I

Something beautiful should be written, but I am a bit too angry to be the one to write it. Mine is the anger of a fantasist, and it's not very healthy. Here instead is a saying that I can only hope is truly attributable to the supposed source:

"One winter’s evening whilst gathered round a blazing camp fire, an old Sioux Indian chief told his grandson about the inner struggle that goes on inside people.

“You see” said the old man, “this inner struggle is like two wolves fighting each other. One is evil, full of anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, deceit, false pride, superiority, and ego”.

“The other one,” he continued, poking the fire with a stick so that the fire crackled, sending the flames clawing at the night sky, “is good, full of joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith”.

For a few minutes his grandson pondered his grandfather’s words and then asked, “So which wolf wins, grandfather?”

“Well”, said the wise old chief, his lined face breaking into a wry smile, “The one you feed!”"

Egregiously borrowed in entirety from Don't Feed The [Wrong] Wolf (www.dontfeedthewolf.com)

how soon is now?

Riddles often don't beg solutions, but choice. And so the riddles remain, their understanding somewhat improved. Most deceptive are those riddles intimate with their solution; their alloy betraying all hopes of choice. How many ways to choose are aborted by such prejudice? By solution?

Consciousness is most effective when gauging differential. This is stimulating, and the conscious mind will crave it. Much harm has been done by the sheer ability for the consciousness to create it for itself.

What is confusion? To crack it as one would some lexical geode, it appears to be a contradictory state wherein competing thoughts are co-mingled beyond individual discernment. What then rises to decipher it?

This imminence of present-mindedness is a messy, messy business. How 'thick' is the now? Thick enough for the mental space required for efforts of projection into the past or future. But it must fluctuate also, determined by those minds consensual of the shared moment. Also, I still do not trust the idea of 'being in the now'... what does that mean? Opening the senses? Reading the symbols? Destroying the past/future (both of which a could be said to take the form of remembrance)? Taken too literally, we might spite our gifts of intelligence.

Tractable familiarity saddens me, which might be why I get upset when people forget that they've already told me something. It makes me feel interchangeable with anyone else. This interchangeability is likely all too true, hence my sadness. When someone's warmth ebbs and flows, I am distressed, perhaps because at that point I am more them than they are me.

things rich people say

"oh, that's just so the otters won't get in"

"Maude, I can see a piece of chewing gum in the privet"

"it's not squabbling, it's foreplay... for our respective extramarital affairs"

"I don't have a hammer. will a power-washer do?"

"Free Tibet? you're Free Tibet.. on whether or not it'll ever gain its independence"

"one of my sons is a broker, the other a hippie. but i forget which is the blighted freeloader"

"she's in Bermuda, but we play correspondence tennis"

"we save the tonic water for when we have guests"

"i only laugh upwards in class"

paper scraps found while tossing my room for Tax

-landscapes of stories folding always back on themselves; pushing mountains out of them by sheer heft of societal force -> putting roads and rest-stops, stores and haylofts. And kitchens, always kitchens.

-egg punctured by the tines of a fork -> clouds like a jangle of brass keys

-inversion of the city's wealth strata

-of Victoria's nightlife:
"phalanxes of flaxen lactators
identitties, casualties of whore?
there's safety in numbness
village of the dumbed
remancipate yourself dears
pluck the sucker from you"

-?:
"symbionts and symbols
symphonies of cymbals
how's it hard
forests of fingers
contorting, distorting, retorted

and there's pride, it's filling
but not enough
to fill the trough"

-sudoku on the toilet; a process of elimination?

-anything that changes your behaviour must be real

-"ruffled willow Ryn,
wind whisperer, eolian empress
rustled billows press the push of swish and swoosh
her wisp, a kiss to cup the air
her shift, a crisp kristling crown of hair

lithe limbs arouse a mind amaze
enlaced grace assists the heart's arrest
and curtseyed skirts curtain your search
to curve your course to convalesce

fronds framing her slendor, besplendrin' the attender
with manifold dance of light,
levity lands, licked liminal,
by many lanced delights
fanning favour for fancy's full flight

with dipped hips Ryn sweeps and weeps for the river
sighs breathe through her, the breaths move her
a silhouette in shiver,
a candlebraic calm veils soft muted charm
hers is dryadic embrace
tending sanctuary beneath
her lullaby sways.."

similimilimiles!

- like a prostitute describing herself as 'outdoorsy'
- like birdsong from a thicket
- like confusing Plenty of Fish for People of Walmart
- like being corrected for a purposeful hyperbole (A- "that bobcat driver is skilled enough to change a diaper" B-"i don't think that's really true")
- like literally shaking the last drop out of the carafe
- like being the very last person that anyone will sit next to on the bus. yet again
- like the magic cyclone a project needs to be finished
- like an atheists ability to still reference the world using religious language
- like the apparent nonsense of echinacea being applied BEFORE one gets sick
- like a clown afraid of children
- like a surname corresponding to the profession (Madoff the shyster, Maycock the optician, Pollen the horticulturalist, Straddlin the guitarist...)

so yesterday i smashed the tea set at my pity-party. needed that. today, i woke up with the idea of augmenting what to me is central to the anthropological problem: scale.

but maybe i'll do that later instead.

going to just hover my fingers above the keyboard and see what blurts out.

winds blew April into us and a synapse somewhere burped me a message so simple i'd of course overlooked it. hide in plain sight. blossoms evolved to release and capture pollen in those March winds, to be watered by those April showers. i am one of the many of this town that venture into gusty nights. it is a favourite escape. see the world pulled by an edge of force (i repeat myself, surely, but the force enacted on an object in the wind is more of a suck than a blow. think of the 'lift' of an aircraft's wings as it creates its own wind here.) perhaps the stormchasers who roam out to intercept the sensory concert these nights generate are there for the pollination of blown ideas. to receive the ideal mistrals of others, and perhaps let go of a few of their own.

i am confused by myself. there's some sort of problem of the heart that occurs everytime i try to play the sheet music i burnt so many candles to scribe. this is a stupid metaphor, but also apt: i can think it, just not do it. i'm not sure what is at fault here. a fear, a very basic fear, one i learned before i learned that i learned. i'm not sure what is holding me in this spot... i am afraid of finishing anything, and it's affecting my entire life. over. and over. i defer, i procrastinate, i moan, i mither... and i feel sadness, as i know i could be wonderful at life. that's all i can say, as i don't want to participate in its reification any further.

a Mona Lisa simile

like a broken arm and an apple tree...
like a bobby pin on the floor of Starbucks...
like an old dear in the Express checkout...
like Gandalf's hemline...
like a conversation about Stephen Harper with your mother...
like mustaches and 'irony'...
like your ex contacting you upon breaking up with her latest boyfriend...
like a meteorologist in a convertible...
like the last biscuit at a tea-party...
like flattery after an unintended slight...
like zombies, vampires, trucker-hats, wearing your pajamas in the mall, and the miasmatic word 'sustainable'...
like reviving your use of Facebook a few days before your birthday...
like finally receiving the email you sigh to...

sounds

communities used to convey information through the use of bells: marriage, commemoration, time, religious observance, victory, defeat. now this news is quietly embedded in our self-phones. and bells, when they bell, are a sort of vestigial emotion. a nostalgic tracing similar to Bjork when she gets to that part of the song where she plays with the limn of words' sound and meaning

i have a collection of 8 foot bamboo rods in my bedroom right now, they crackle softly like a bored Geiger counter. harvested from my yard, i wonder if i wouldn't love giving it all up and becoming a bamboo treehouse guy

toast is quite sonorous when the lights are out. spreading butter sounds somewhat like someone ox-plowing a parking lot

my alarm clock does not wake me up. but my sister's one, 35 feet away and through 3 doorways, does. by some feature of harmonics, it's soft enough to be piercingly loud. that and its bleeps are akin to a truck backing up

extractor fan drones; ear-bud hiss; people dragging their feet in libraries; the noise of another's single mistake that you somehow know is antecedent to their declaration that they're having a bad day; sailboat clanks as the water passes its waves through the boat and to your ears; the ticking of an unseen bicycle being walked past your window; the sound shadow an object creates as you pass, such as how bench curves the susurrus of a fountain; the ubiquitous use of power heels and jangled keys forecasting arrival of authority

the word 'ostentatious' is

Divestity First

Point form!! YAY!

- Sustainable porn?

- is one of the Kids in the Hall playing the role of Stephen Harper these days?

- Found shopping list at Safeway:
1. Chips
2. Pop
3. Ice-cream
That's it! Someone WROTE THAT DOWN TO REMEMBER. I hope they're not still wandering the aisles in anguish as I write this.

- Diversity Fest, 2009. Was as righteous as ever [aside from another sad loss] But I remember thinking one thing to always keep in mind: the nastiest object that one could possibly touch would be a hand-sanitizing bottle when it's empty. That's all for this point.

- Best movies I watched this year (2009-2010, in order of remembrance):
1. The Fall
2. Moon
3. Let The Right One In
4. District 9
5. Stalker (favourite?)
6. Mary and Max
7. Mongol
8. Primer (a sci-fi filmed for $7000?!?!)
9. Silent Running (made me feel sadder than I thought it could)
Could you recommend any? This list feels mildly insubstantial...

- You are my among my softest thoughts, being not privy to yours. Is that why we always end in obloquy?

- Also, THIS GUY!

no more negative thoughts

soundtrack: shackleton's breezeblockmix.mp3

homework's jeering at me and my room's a snowglobe of clothing in stasis. these are both pushing at me, and i realize i realize them. as walls and arches, i feel i occupy and build within such negative space of these outerworldly materials. not negative as in subtractive, or in some perceived absence of good, but as the space of semi-invisible constraint. as tasked materials within which i react. often, i dwell there precognitively: i shouldn't drink a beer now, i want to drink one later. i should reflect on the memorial service for my mother's neighbour. i am afraid to finish that music track, so i won't. i am afraid to write, so... i will...

What are the benefits and pitfalls of approaching sustainable building from a philosophical position?
i owe an essay to this question for an accreditation course i am pursuing. i wish i could decrypt the problem i have with it... it appears to have too many intrinsic assumptions: philosophy is an immovable, immutable 'monolith' with no endogenous complications? surely not... philosophy will aggravate ideas of sustainability until it has bled all intended meaning? no... a philosophical position is doxy, whereas the vacuity of the word 'sustainable' is necessarily adaptive? i'm not sure about any of this... honestly... benefiting who? in the purview of what timescale; the lifecycle of a building? is sustainable sustainable? building is generative whereas philosophy is masturbatory? perhaps at whomunculus, but really, philosophy has set itself up so that only parts of it can fail [this could be read: succeed in becoming 'factual', and thereby aphilosophical]... so this shivers out of shape again. instead, i hope to divert the river here:

take the human out of her own devices of measure, and place her in the universe. she becomes both the alien and the intimate. let us suggest that she could imagine her self being more-than-one within her lifetime. that is, she can readily say phrases such as: 'i like myself when i am around you' or 'sometimes i wish i were a tree'. it could follow that these possibilities allow for this differential of self down to a minute quantum of time (quick cloud gaze: do units of time become 'dryer' the smaller the get?) thereby, taken objectively, a person both is and is not who she is... it is only her claim -and constant repetition of such- that she is that might make her so. if we allow the shattering of that person even further (or, it could be said, simultaneously) into feelings, then perhaps feelings belong as organs. not separately, such as anger = pancreas and love = heart, as that shit's older than age itself, but as parts of a whole. the twist is, the whole is not here the individual anymore, but that which is conceived by the individual. our she might have an idea that is made up of many emotions, each one presenting themselves as they are benefited or pitfallen by interaction with the universe. any perception that she IS her emotions, would speak to her beholdening of herself as a contiguous in-dividual. instead, she could become the (now messier than my room) many-one that conducts emotional response over now very divisible ideas. again, the blurring of these ideas into a representation of her true self is a conceit of convenience and indiscriminate thought. i'd say developed, in part, by legality [as attempt at quantifying the human condition in lieu of acceptable qualification?] and deeply ingrained social mores. what's left becomes subject to questions like 'what becomes of personal agency and responsibility in the case of the many-one?' - but do we not already have this problem, i.e. pleas of temporary insanity (apparent interruptions of continued self) or corporate malfeasance (bad doings by the meso-many-one)?

so now, anger becomes again a failure of intended or anticipated happiness of an idea 'he's late to pick me up to go for ice-cream at Fisherman's Wharf'. and not 'i AM angry'. admittedly, there were many allowances made to come to this manifold sense of organic self, but it's largely because i did have that beer in the end.

and, by grand allusion, i'd like to propel this idea as an argumentative analogy to spite 'sustainability'. with out its supersaturated marketplace connotations, 'organic' means so much more... the paisley wallpaper of ecology remains (or is even strengthened), the systemic notions are made firm, the mortality reintroduced (as opposed to some hazy embedding of trans-generational communism/collective guilt) and space for change is again of central concern. considering our historical faults have become evident and that methods of underwriting true value (energy consumption married with nutritional systems) are now available, we have further to go than we've yet come, and sustainability is not enough as that would imply that we've already arrived. besides, 'sustainability' WILL lead to programs of overt eugenics.

of passersby who just don't

in montreal, i began to notice a girl who i could only describe as 'a spunky redhead' was popping up wherever i went. sitting at a cafe, she'd nip past. waiting for an elevator, who would exit it? catching the VIA train to Toronto. even on a ferry in BC. it became at least a bi-weekly game: 'oop, there she is, riding a unicycle, of course' [that never happened] she'd only grimace at me, spunkily. and i've no idea what expression i carried, but one of mild irritation perhaps?

well, this is beginning to happen in victoria, except this time it's with a hispanic-looking dude. i KNOW he's seeing me at least as frequently as i see him. he seems to be on every bus i get on... i suppose we do conduct some affairs in the same quadrant of town, but still, come on. next time i see him, perhaps an awkward moment hovering in the produce section, i'm gonna just tell him that he's got to alternate days with me, else take up a wordless high-five ritual so's to keep it real.

the Princess and the Blog

blogging for me is like doing mental calisthenics. always done alone and in the pink, it's a graceless, self-serving endeavor, like being busted with your mouth on the milk carton, dribbles beading down your bathrobe lapels. for others, it seems not so, and they pull off some remarkably thoughtful ruminations that find a resonant space balancing between the extremes of trivial and profound. perhaps its just their hidden machinations, my own so brazenly revealed (to myself), that make it so, but i'm always impressed. it's a baser program for me, i feel, as i do it to simply wake myself up. i'll readily discuss burrito recipe balancing or bull markets, post-structuralism or polyps... if only to feel that in that day, i had a thought that, if not original, was presented as such.

however.. as i left my own musings in the cold, more or less for about a year, i'd also fallen out of tasking myself to comment on the blogs of others. this is a critical function, like the return of blood to the pumping heart or the intake of fresh air. blogging without reading and contributing to others is being a PRINCESS, and something i really must prevent in myself. on one level, i'd readily admit that i don't want to comment just for the sake of it (as most comments seem to be self-referential/promotional) but shit, this form of individualism is alas an accepted medium for discourse (and tends to trump the input of the modest moiety). it takes a community to whisper up an individual but an individual to shout down a community (or something loose-witted like that). so i'm gonna try to get out of myself and visit the ol' blog-pond and bask a while on their lily pads. kiss kiss.

Team building exercises are an odd idea. I'd imagine their usefulness as having any lasting value being as limited as a People magazine editor's attention span. Take our high school exercises for example: get everybody across this imaginary alligator pit using not-enough planks and a skipping rope. The future applications this has can be projected to what exactly? Escaping from a Nintendo game? Smuggling somebody's relatives across the Rio Grande? If there's ever a point at which I can hold my hand up to the group I'm mysteriously traveling with and say 'don't worry guys, I got this, luckily we covered this one in gym class' I'll reappraise my relationship with my junk-mail folder. Honestly, if our teachers were truly serious, shouldn't they've gone a few steps further in the imaginary activity: 'A few of you have been spraying your precious bodily fluids down your thighs for the last 8 days due to dysentery. One of you is at the end of their second trimester with the Somalian pirate-king's baby. Those two are still chained together and you over there are still blinded from the gasoline siphoning mishap in the exercise we just completed. Now get across that alligator pit.'

Hey! How about some skills we could perhaps transpose onto the real-world? Oh, I don't know, something like 'how to do your taxes' or 'this is your charter of freedom and rights' or 'massage circles' or 'fixing small combustion engines' ...anything even remotely relatable. So what was the point then? For a teacher's lounge betting pool? 'Good job. Because you were death-rolled by the alligator, Mr. Jenkins now has to dress like Monica Lewinsky for a day [this was in the late 90s]. Therefore you have a Type A personality.' Or something more insidious, like getting us used to the absolute pointlessness and subjugation we'll have to endure through much of life? Breaking our spirits with an uncompletable exercise so as to prime us for later brainwashing and ideological impressibility (this has been shown literally ad nauseum through psy-op detention exercises).

I've totally forgotten the point I was trying to make. Nothing like the introduction of gOVERnMENTAL brainwashing to prime one for forgetfulness... Um. Oh yeah, the denouement: We all made it across without a single sacrifice (voluntary or non-) and then, as a reward, we were hosed down and prodded back to our gruel-troughs.

white

i am white. i don't mean that in an ethnic sense, or as a statement of pride, or even as an approximation of my capacity for rhythm. but as sheer fact: my whiteness is profound. i'm surprised i cast a shadow i'm so white. it's beyond ceramic. beyond mime. beyond The Bachelor's teeth. my white is weapon's grade white. i make Russians look Brazilian. i make tampons feel like harvest farm hands. brides feel like anti-smoking ads. i get crank calls from pieces of chalk and magician's bunnies, cave newts and Welsh people, i'm that white. i have to use aloe vera after a full moon. i cannot even look at my own feet during summer.

i say this as i took my shirt off yesterday, and a child pointed me out to her mother, and i heard an audible gasp. people gasp as if i'm some sort of perversion! which is a fair appraisal, it just skips a few salient intermediary points.

hypocropolis

so i published a post i did. it was inappropriate, so i just scrubbed it off. those types used to be my favourite, as they seemed to press against consensus and get something closer to a dialogue rolling (in my head). some people don't even know they have beliefs until they're challenged, which is Fox news' approach, i'm sure. i can't really pull that off anymore, as in my world we're fresh to an earnest era. baiting, trolling, cynicism, scrutinizing, contrarianism... these are skills of rarefied value in Victoria. and this is fine, as it makes this place pleasant (if not repressed and shrewd).. it's just that i had devoted many hours to becoming an obstreperous bucker of convention (i.e. a jerk), that now i get facial cramps when i have to say something nice.

but pissed off people DO things. i know many people who only work to make change when they're angry, often projecting things to get angry about, just so they can make motion. it's effective... but only to the extent of their own self-righteousness. they often forget that multiplicity is the cosmic condition, and that duality is an anthropic conceptual vice: there are more than two ways to live. indeed, any way that is not always under processional review is flawed, as all ways of living are yet still open. living systems can always be short-circuited... not always for the good, of course... but sometimes, by introducing another element, for the better.

i saw a hummingbird this morning, who had, through whatever process, learned to raid spiderwebs for insects. that struck me as a marvel, as the blighter zipped straight for the web expecting a meal. that is, knowing that the web was there, knowing that it could find food and knowing that it could retrieve it.

also, today i called a callous driver a cumshot. which is pretty good, as normally i fumble around for something offensive and end up yelling something like 'mean... yellow-haired... car-driving... groober!' feeling a little uncertain as to what a groober really is, and whether it would suffice as slander. my all-time yell: diesel dick. still proud of that one, but can never seem to remember it in time to use again.

a stomach lined with the wax of a thousand paper cups

a mind a pail of clattering crabs. i wake up early, catching the future napping, knowing that noone dreamed of me last night, not even myself. that's ok, as somewhere in time there's a petroglyph of me. relive a relief! haven't quite got madness right yet. multiplicities keep collapsing and rendering themselves as one (how can you rip yourself whole?) it's pages like this, lost eddies and whorls of word-spittle, that are becoming the nascent-Being's dreams. not that It'll ever be satisfied with as insubstantial a moniker as 'Singularity'. but for now, i am still my own corpuscle. my monads my gonads. and today i place myself back onto the hungry caterpillar's saddle, armed yet with a lance made of incredulity and a shield of comedy-tempered ostentation. it'll be easier now that i know to let the decisions do the deciding, the revisions do the deriding and that it's ok to wear a scarf even when you're not cold. because you might be.

zoos

no more zoos. just as well really, we've done some seriously sloppy work this last decade. an olimpdick effort. [un]just[ly] sequestered our human further from our animal. earphone cords looping from our ears round to our own asses. ipood: i'm listening to what i consume and it sounds like indigestion. aural coprology.
i'm to blame. you're to blame. for the good as well as the bad. take responsibility for the good! but still left feeling like a soggy shoelace in someone else's boot. slops sploshed from the vat we've used to churn the sun, into gods and saviour-science. i was in a bookstore yesterday and everyone was wearing black and suddenly there was nothing left to read. wanted to grab the nearest and yell 'hey you sepulchral fucker! tell me what you know!' but i suppose the nearest was me, and he's already admitted, under duress, that he's too busy shoveling information into his baby-bird personality to know anything much about the world.
and all this is not true. which is a relief. the kind of relief i bought earphones to hear.... thank you for listening, now go and let the animals out.

"if i would, i could"

there's no truth fairy

perseveres
perverse and sere
see here
you wee knights
of weeknights
all blood, bile and quicksilver
and bellies full of eyes
awful jaw-fulls of ornate lies
sucked on and plucked from
and worried out by your lover's tongue
placed beneath your pillowed font
whence from your pilloried dreams once sprung

always liked the hidden orthography of 'heart' and 'hearth'.. 'th'[e] dental fricative draws it on. the 'h' makes a beggar of the heart, but warms it also. gives it heat.

sub/merge

striking in its grandeur, the West Coast resonates in and around me as holding its mysteries in its heights. the persistent reminders of altitude flattens the mid-lands, portraying promises as being 'over there'. this vertical hazes on nearly every horizon, creating a ciel-ing of great magnitude. the past and the future is up, and i often feel that i live in tomorrow's ruins (upon which i might survive to look down upon, hidden by roiling currents and revisionary stories of a pre-delugional world.)

this is much unlike my memories of the european mystery, which is locked down by water and sediment and buildings. it is hidden, and there is a prominent sense of 'down' - something beneath every surface, as if, like water, history abhors the steeps and instead collects beneath the feet. the stories are below, and in need of excavation. here, above, and in need of expedition.

in this vein, one might be able to extend the analogy to perception of memory. here it feels that memory for me is futural. as if i am nostalgic for something that has not yet happened, it could be the wide sky, the occasional murky weather, the high gusting winds, the mountain-locked microclimates... the history is thrown forward temporally. one just does not cast their mind to what lies beneath the ocean.. not truly, not in the way one would in the Mediterranean or English Channel. not in that inherited identity. identity here is created, not sought.

i now work at a bakery in dockside green. and as the construction guys and gals clamber all over their scaffolding (sometimes with a pilfered pastry in their bellies, the punks), it seems as if they are not so much building a new building, but preparing inevitable rubble. and due to the large amount of marketing and spin put onto this complex (immediated narrative) it is building its story right into it as it goes up. however, 'in these uncertain economic times' several phases of the complex have been stalled to wait for consumer confidence (aka best chances of return). so what this means is that the foundations that had been blasted prior to construction (so that residents would not have to suffer hip-rattling booms once moved in) will now be left fallow until the money returns. so it's now a ruin before even being built. i am very excited for this, as this will reveal this building community's true intentions: how will a self-proclaimed 'environmentally conscientious' for-profit PRESTIGE DEVELOPMENT/VERTICAL GATED-COMMUNITY respond to an unplanned open space on their lot? a market? a venue space? a temporary garden? racket sports? a reservoir? tent space for the city's homeless?

we'll see, we'll see.. either way, i'm going to step up and confront any corruption of ideal within the project (i suspect this corruption will occur, if not had from the original inception)

october

Stopping up short, I sat down on a wicket above the visual traipsery. Stretched below it all its blistering vertigo was the sea and creatures like me picking around its wavering borders. The sun was poised to strike the mountains, and Echospace's 'Empyrean' was thrushing my ears through headphones on-loan. The music pooled itself into milk, and ceased. I took off the phones and sat longer, waiting for the melting hues.
Behind me, a sister and her friend pushed a stroller, from which a wee imp-girl's face jutted with intent concentration. The motion of this trio brought my attention into their breathy conversation.
"...no, I'm serious. So VERY serious," the imp-girl laughed.
"Oh really?" Said the friend, "How serious are you?"
The imp-girl scrunched up her face even more, looked at her hand, then thrusting three fingers forward to her interlocutor enthusiastically stated the degree plainly and with confidence:
"400!"

verticklarity

building big.. i'm not sure it's worth it. proponents claim that densification is the major objective of bigness, but some of the most densely populated areas of the globe barely have one storey, and if it weren't for the dire poverty and health risks of living there, it might be said that their existence and spread is proof enough that they work. no, i'd propose that the purposes of the big build are of very few things, far less noble: investment return, commercial floor space (rent money), prestige and arrogance. who really owns these buildings? silverstein owned the WTC complex to lease, which would've cost some hundreds of millions -if not billions- of dollars to clear of asbestos (recall the post-collapse respiratory problems locals suffered?), instead he received some 4.5 billion in the insurance bid (to which, due to poor phrasing, he was able to negotiate as if there were 2 terrorist attacks.. i forget the name for it, but there's a phrase for where a private institution lumps the health costs on the general populace.. good thing it wasn't intentional, or else it would seem as if the company benefited) that's an unimaginably large payout on what was technically 5 years away from becoming a nightmare of a white-elephant. but, i digress.

who owns the buildings? credit card companies!? yes, they do. they've got/had the best credit rating around for a while (self-regulation has its rewards, eh?). the nature of credit is that it necessarily swallows asset, and the only TRUE form of asset yet quantifiable is land (though potable water will become so in the next decade).. which the individual can't really own, as why then are they compelled to pay yearly land tariffs, especially if the government isn't distributing it as they see fit. no, most people 'own' through credit, so, to be frank, they are serfs working the land. but, i digress.

credit card/investment buildings have styled their buildings as 'sky-scrapers'. and they seem so intent on raising the sky's limits that yesteryear's sky-scraper is now this year's thigh-draper. they're towers of purposeful religious semblance: since their inception, you'll notice that no cathedrals are yet being built (barring gaudi's, but perhaps there are others). and for what the church lent in absolution, the credit companies can now lend in relativity. the spacious resonance of the cathedral dome has been replaced by hard, phallic, inscrutable presence. and further, the reflectivity of their surfaces are not just for the sake of pretty. they are one-way mirrors, and we're the captives. simply stated: you can't watch the watchtower. the panoptic prison has been developed on the metropolitan scale, and our depressions, our minuscule, compounded worries have been greatly amplified by this further estrangement from the hegemony. this effect, i'd readily argue, has been committed with the utmost of calculation. the reflective planes act as both as paring sheaths and urban[e] limit. you can't SEE the opulence anymore, just feel it, yet not know from whence that feeling originates. but, i digress.

i saw a film on manhattan island a few days ago. it said, that until the advent of the elevator, the most exclusive, prestigious commercial spaces were located on the lower floors. quite a concept in this present era. as the street level has degenerated, until now it is scorned and vilified, even by those who claim to act on its behalf. all streets are now alleyways, where the garbage, in various packages, is pushed, conning us into wanting it, needing it, feeling something about it. in the case of dumpsters, the effect is one of revulsion. in the gaud and bric-a-brac we're meant to buy, desire. but all the lightin and flashy signs, all that fantasy does not disguise the fact that the street has lost its political power: it has been relegated back to an alleyway of the body-politic, where people wander quietly in scream, marginalized on the one level at which they are ENTITLED to feel most powerful. but, i digress.

above all this, shining high, as if we all agree, are these looming symbols of power. but in a few quick months, as snickersnack as a vorpal blade, a few of these reflective windows have been broken and an awful stench has wafted out from what lies within: as symbols, they are not now crumbling as consumer/borrowing confidence has waned, but they've perverted, and twisted themselves to their true form: we are being watched, bullied and manipulated. and all it takes is an elevator to keep you away from stopping it.

to dream

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

just twitching and twisting out the glamour vein... a cracked stain, like a tree-window's scattered strain... can one replace pleasure with the sheer absence of polished pain? what remains? depravity? a torn remembrane? light-drunk lives bored sane? what, when equanimity has orange pith neath its nails, and a chin sticky with juice, and has glutted itself equal, what can it protect anymore? what can it censure? who can it blame? it stays the same, until someone calls it so... its self-congratulations would drown its articulated spires of citydreams, dragging over itself a deluge of murky hypocrisy, grit and sand and silt and knick-knacks underneath and through the curlicued currents. you'd be there too, submerged, shapes of the known blurring and obscured by the spuming amorphia of dislocation. when all is stable, all becomes unknown. and our silent motives, the ones taught to us in the sun-drenched mires of childhood. the prejudices we osmotically somaticize, as easily as rising, as deriving, as deriding, as red riding. and so what's to want, knowing we are tethered by discrimination into mists of perpetuity?
we're a broke-down gasp, a crippled pleasure pier, licked by the froth as we cantilever ourselves further over the abysses... one a tall child of god, his cherubic hair tickling her nostrils. envying those myths as one envies the inevitable supplantation of us at the hands of our progeny. so, in the meantime, let our tongues dance, let us not plan, but engender casus bella. it is time for an ethos of beauty, as grounded in ecological reclamation, as grounded in partnership and not mastery, as grounded in you and me. now. embrace the dream immediate.

you were there with me, all along, in the little emotion, not the big
i don't know how you contact me, but you appear
we're not-at-my-house and i'm concerned about the backyard
there is no lawn, just rust, but the small-life is growing as if by thought
and you ask me what colour it should be
and i say that i don't really care about grass, it's just for want of anything else that it should be. for lack.
a light green seems to make sense, not the dark verdant want i'd wish for.
you sense my distress and take me to a cork-board to show me a collection of red insects pinned to it by their latin names.
they are long antennaed and articulated, quite ugly-beautiful
you tell me that you birthed them. that they were of your boyfriends'. that you were ashamed but elated. i hugged you and said that i knew where to dance.
you said YES! and left. but i lingered to speak to my friend who turned up to tell me of a prank he'd played on a mutual friend. it wasn't a clever prank, it preyed on his alcoholism. but he did show me the telephone poles that he'd reassembled. bolting the pieces together. i was impressed, but i could see you in the distance. walking in a purple cardigan. and i missed you.
so i collected my urn, and sat astride it, as it could levitate. and it pulled me to you until again we were alongside.
but you were hurt by my absence, and laughed with others, and for the first time since i'd known you i felt jealous. and felt it tear us a little, my toes an inch from the ground, the urn never waning in it's power to fly.
when we arrived, all was well again, as if we'd remembered to forget. and while we danced, we spoke of your insects. i suggested that the next time they happened they would be butterflies and that you make a play out of the process and call it 'metamorphoses'.
you said i was dreaming. and i woke up utterly in love with you. and came downstairs to see if you had written. you had not, so i thought this important to write instead.

the one in which i use stereotypes to affectionately mock British Columbia

In July, I moved from Montreal to live in Victoria for a while. While that while has whiled from indeterminacy to determinacy, I find that my initial impressions of the people here have retreated from stark cardboard caricatures into full-fleshed, thoughtful and intentional human-beings. So in coming to meet these people (a relatively slow process) they've revealed, in discreet but poignant increments, the sense and sensibilities behind their social behaviour. So I'm going to undo all the empathy and compassion that's malignantly metastasized throughout my perception of these warm, sea-side folk with some good old fashioned lampooning...

2 months ago, in the Dupermarket...

A That's my favourite label..."
B What?"
A Soysters.. the product you're reading there... Maude's Homemade Soysters..."
B ...I wasn't reading it..."
A Your lips were moving... hmmm, denial... you've been in Victoria 3 months?"
B Yes, how'd you..."
A So, what do you think of Victoria?"
B Well the people are very..."
A ...friendly."
B Yeah.. But I find it hard to..."
A ...make friends."
B Yeah.... And there's lots of girls. Like, everywhere. Just yesterday, I saw one running across the roof of..."
A I had noticed that you were a guy."
B ...um.. I AM a guy, present tense I think, though I must admit that a fine mist of confusion appears to be..."
A Yeah, the blonde girl at the deli counter said there was one in here today..."
B Oh. I'm uncomfortable, can we talk about something else?"
A Sure! Victoria...?"
B Oh yeah, well, the only whales I've seen so far..."
A Are the tourists! Can I touch your genitalia?"
B Ye.. wait, what? Pardon, I mean..."
A I said I'd like to own a Westfalia."
B Oh? Why's that?"
A So I can extract your seed."
B I... er... I'm mostly done shopping now, and should go pay. Nice chatting with you."
A Creep!"
CHECKOUT GIRL Ooooh! Soysters!"

Last week, on a date...

A No way! I like coffee!"
B And dogs?"
A YES! LOOOOVE dogs."
B Cor blimey, I even HAVE a dog... Hmmm. Could we try a quick compatibility exercise?"
A Sure..."
B Ok.. Complete the following sentence: '...'"
A Broccoli!!"
B Wow... we are so alike! I would so give you a high-five..."
A ...if we weren't both recovering from a volleyball injury! This really is astonishing! So, what do you think of Victoria?"
B Love it! Though I'm still kind of caught on some of the lingo here..."
A Oh? Like what..."
B 'Postman'... is that like a male cyborg?"
A 'Cyborg', is that like a type of Polish Kale?"
B 'Kale'... is that like a type of dragon?"
A Dragons! I love dragons!"
B Me too! Let's talk about them..."
Time lapse...
B Wow, look at the time, it's 9.30!! In the PM!! So late! And I just realized that the time spent drinking these 2 coffees encapsulates the longest relationship I've had in 11 months."
A Yes. We should do this again soon! How does January sound to you?"
B Um, well, I.. I'd like to do something a bit sooner. Something social perhaps? Maybe with some friends?"
A Oh, we WILL be doing that, silly..."
B How do you mean?"
A We'll be hanging out in the meantime..."
B I still don't really quite follow..."
A In 'society', you know? Everybody hanging out with everybody!"
B Hmmm.. when you put it like that you sound like an idiot."
A You're funny! Wow, now it's almost 10! Want to do some cocaine?"
B Huh... but I thought you were a vegan?"
A I can't believe you just used that term! It's prerogative towards vegetables!"
B Pejorative? Towards... Wait. I'm confused again."
A I'd say, you're wearing slippers!"
B Yes, just like a typical BC person, right? Wear socks and slippers everywhere.. eat apples.. make obscure allusions to suffering from white-man's guilt..?"
A Er, it's socks and sandals, ok? Sandals."
B So, you're saying that we don't really have that much in common..."
A No, I was just going along with what YOU were saying."
B Wait. Have you been making fun of me THIS ENTIRE DATE?"
A What could you possibly mean by that?"
B You know, making shit up? Having me on...?"
A Of course not!"
B Then why are you...wait, you want some sperm? Is that it? I've got a mason jar here, I could..."
A Nope. No sperm... Thanks though."
B THEN WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?"
A Well, I'm starting this petition against Reginald Howser, the local regional federal commissioner on How to Commission Federal Regional Local Issues More Locally -here's a leaflet printed on reconstituted potato- and I was wondering if you'd sign this...
B Listen, I've got to go now as I might get up tomorrow, but maybe we'll do this again in June, like you said...
A January. Yeah, ok. I could meet your dog!
B But I thought you were lying about liking dogs.
A Oh yeah. Well, see you!

- Modern Language Association of America unveiling new line of punctuation marks to help bolster recent decline in emoticon usage.

- Edible Soap finds fiercest competitor in McCain's new Deep 'n' Soapy dessert.

- Area New Zealander finally relents, sighing: 'Yes, I am Australian'.

- Dalai Lama files multibillion dollar lawsuit against N.A. kindergartens for retroactive royalties on hit song If You're Happy And You Know It..

- Ecologists find new species of newt living on Victoria Beckham's pout.

- David Bowie to make guest appearance on NASA Central Command radio-link.

- KFC launches new Buckets Made Out Of Chicken dinner option.

- Obama declares Domestic Policy of leading US through desert for 40 years in search for land of milk, honey.

- Somali Pirate stocks at all time high on NASDAQ.

- Psych Prof. Gary Weinhoff unveils latest wife at UCLA Psychology Department Christmas Party.

organization

"Every resultant is either a sum or a difference of the co-operant forces; their sum, when their directions are the same -- their difference, when their directions are contrary. Further, every resultant is clearly traceable in its components, because these are homogeneous and commensurable. It is otherwise with emergents, when, instead of adding measurable motion to measurable motion, or things of one kind to other individuals of their kind, there is a co-operation of things of unlike kinds. The emergent is unlike its components insofar as these are incommensurable, and it cannot be reduced to their sum or their difference." Lewes, 1875

Emergence... after picking away the rancid meat left putrefying in the jaws of summer, I've come to a state of dynamic equilibrium. Amidst life's noise, interwoven patterns have once again begun to come forth. Not to say that the noise has ceased, I would never want that, more so that ciphers now jut through the tangle of murky background. Pivot-points of life have reassembled themselves, reorganized themselves into forms indivisible, and they provide life to my presence on the mesoplane. It feels good. It feels fun. It feels empowering. It isn't without work, and does not arise out of independent action, but as a concert of many forces and consciousnesses acting for and through me.

Thank you world, I endeavor to repay you daily.

Day 1

Mine entrance? Witch's shack? Waste of time?

The Storm Project

I've started a photo essay over at of murk and sky. It's over there for a few reasons, but chiefly because WP's photo management is superior to this spotty outfit.

I won't say any more about it, it's a bit of a surprise, but if you guess (not too hard really), then I'll explain my intentions.

forged textures

Today I burned the last vapours of a hangover on a photo escapade along the coastline. While I'd wanted to capture the root system of a huge gnarly old stump, some other geezer with a serious-looking tripod and lens selection was all over the thing, and I wasn't feeling especially social, so I gave myself another exercise. It involves an idea prompted by a sci-fi book I read about how people might live low-tech inside a massive interstellar sphere (here called a Fullerene orb, I suppose after Buckminster Fuller?). They have no natural gravity, so the rich among them create their own with centrifugal forces, whereas the poor grow fragile and spindly. The author plays with the concept pretty successfully, and my thought was that gravity is a discreet value that determines EVERYTHING we do, so much so, that we tend design our environment with it as a given. But what if we can trick ourselves to give the impression that it can be tampered with? Would our estimations of beauty change? Would we rightly know what we're even looking at anymore? So I thought I'd torture the camera to produce some textured pictures that play with our vernacular and reflexive reliance of gravity. Both as a determining force on our actions and also as a means of orienting ourselves. The outcome was pretty interesting. Many pictures almost produce vertigo, and the hidden patterns we might otherwise miss seem to leap right out. It's almost that as soon as the mind realizes it can't quick grasp the aspect, the imagination quickly creates a new possibility. Also, while taking the pictures, I found that in order to reject the referent force of gravity, I had to focus more on axes and weighted symmetry.
The first picture is from a set I took of the moon last week when I played with exposure, and then the rest are from today's late-afternoon/sunset. Hope they're interesting and not proof positive that I finally drank myself into idiocy last night.

waves chewing on the moonlight

real

please click this for a description of both what and how and who... someawe!!!