Reply to Staying Sober

Reply to Staying Sober

Saying enough is enough is not enough

The film was from Poland,
and what else to inhale but
the air of Polish sorrow and snow.

The documentary was
about 15,ooo endangered chimpanzees
another spectacle of a white man sweating
the endless African woes.

Be it white snow or tropical greenery
under the stupid sun we gave too much respect for,
it seems inescapable –
as long as we remain conscious.
Mother Nature,
I’m losing interest in staying sober.

Braille for the Colour Blind: Children Art

Braille for the Colour Blind:


Children Art

The argument persists
It doesn’t matter if we were using
Crayon, pastel, colour pencil, water or poster colour

Is the sun yellow, red or orange?

Tree and Trees

Trees (Version 2)

Flat image,
The branches above,
the roots clutching down
the ‘shadow on shadow’ I stepped, I found
on every Ground depicted as horizontal:

The three rhizomes of every Tree

Trees (Version 1)

The branches, the roots,
The ‘shadow on shadow’
The three rhizomes of every Tree

Armchairs - Andrew Bird

I dreamed you were a cosmonaut
of the space between our chairs and I was a cartographer
of the tangles in your hair
I sighed a song that silence brings
it's the one that everybody knows
oh everybody knows
the song that silence sings
and this was how it goesthese looms that weave apocryphal
they're hanging from a strandthese dark and empty rooms were fullof incandescent hands
and awkward pausea fatal flaw
time it's a crooked bowoh time's a crooked bowin time you need to learn to love
the ebb just like the flow
grab hold of your bootstraps
and pull like hell‘till gravity feels sorry for you
and lets you go
as if you lack the proper chemicals to know the way it felt the last time you let yourself
fall this low
time oh time
it's a crooked bow
time's a crooked bow

Diamond Sea - Sonic Youth

Time takes its crazy toll and how does your mirror grow
you better watch yourself when you jump into it 'cause the mirror's gonna steal your soul
I wonder how it came to be my friend that someone just like you has come again
you'll never, never know how close you came until you fall in love with the diamond rain
throw all his trash away look out he's here to stay
your mirror's gonna crack when he breaks into it
and you'll never never be the same
look into his eyes and you can see
why all the little kids are dressed in dreams
I wonder how he's gonna make it back
when he sees that you just know it's make-belief
blood crystalized as sand and now I hope you'll understand
you reflected into his looking glass soul
and now the mirror is your only friend
look into his eyes and you will see
that men are not alone on the diamond sea
sail into the heart of the lonely storm
and tell her that you'll love her eternally
time takes its crazy toll
mirror fallin' off the wall
you better look out for the looking glass girl 'cause she's gonna take you for a fall
look into his eyes and you shall see why everything is quiet and nothing's free
I wonder how he's gonna make her smile
when love is running wild on the diamond sea

Letter: Some thoughts to share

Hey XXXXX,

I have some thoughts to share:

1. We like to say that Bolano's writings are 'plotless' and about 'nothing' actually. But still it intrigues us. Maybe the reason lies in the word 'nothing' which is the other word for life, our lives.

2. Baudelaire said one must be drunk! I was drunk on my reminiscence over Olivier Rolin's 'Paper Tiger'. Drunk with the kind of despair and disappointment, drunk with a nostalgia for the May 1968 I have never experienced. I want to read it again and again, if I have the time and energy to spend. If not, I would waste it on 'The Ogre' by Michel Tournier. Whenever I am overburdened by work, the mere thought of sipping Cortazar's 'Hopscotch' to quench the thirst, returns the smile on the face I kept in the closet of my brain. But sometimes, it's difficult to get in. His writings, his texts, are like the popular bars in town often overcrowded with the complexities of his thoughts and emotions. I don't like to wait outside. I read it as a form of rejection. If only I could drink them like the melodies and words of songs I have downloaded for free.

3. I really enjoyed the part in Paul Auster's 'Brooklyn Follies' about the Christian sect. No, not about the Reverend asking Aurora to suck his dick, although the manner he made the request in such theological rhetoric was funny and frustrating. Fucking charlatans! But the all those ideas about sacred/profane, beatitude of silence, no telephone, no music, no TV... and the discussion on the Chapter 1, first verse of the Gospel of St. John. (the Word, God, beginning) Aren't we not that far off from such hypocrisy and sanctimonious ideologies?

4. I told Samuel yesterday that Love and Boredom are just as counterrevolutionary as Package-Tour and Backpacking to see the 'world'. Stupid seekers of the 'evental site' (Badiou) in this manner. I was questioned about romance (what a mouthful of cliche! in the form of a single word, not even a sentence is enough) I have to admit we can't avoid the use of these terms to 'get the idea across'. I do see the sparks of excitement in the beginning of relationship as romance. Rather, the commitment to certain mundane weekly activities is the True Event, all the more 'romantic'. Since, what is a bank robbery compared to the opening of a bank: what is a fling or fleeting passion compared to a marriage. The event of living it thru's in a singular non-evental form. Building Nothing from Something, the topic of the lesson you gave?

5. You told me Tolstoy condemned Baudelaire for being a dandy. Few days later, I found an article by Louis Althusser on Lenin criticising Tolstoy's faith in art to change the world. Well, Lenin is 'troublesome', he also rejected Gorky's invitation to discuss philosophical questions with some philosophers because revolutionary issues weren't meant to be discuss but practice, Althusser use the anecdote to expound on his notion of 'theoretical practice' if I am not wrong. Well, anyway, today is Lenin's birthday, although it has nothing to do with us.


Cheers.

Watching Time

…All he had left now was the very vacuity of time. Then he tried to see how time passed, an undertaking just as difficult as that of catching yourself falling asleep. Sitting at his cash desk he would watch the big clock above Meussieu Poucier’s shop, and follow the progress of the big hand. He would manage to see it jump once, twice, three times, and then he suddenly found it was a quarter of an hour later and the big hand had taken advantage of this to move without noticing it. Where had he been all that time? Sometimes he had been back in Madagascar, sometimes he had relived an episode from Flash Guy or Mandrake, his favourite heroes, sometimes he had merely re-eaten a meal or re-seen a film, more or less fragmentarily.

At the end of two months of application, he managed to register three jumps of the big hand, but he never got up to four, not remembering this occupation until much later, being then lost in a fun-jungle, or repeating to himself like a scratched record some conversation he had had with Housette, Virole, or one of his other neighbours. He couldn’t manage to make his mind a blank.

Raymond Queneau, The Sunday of Life (Le Dimanche de la vie), P. 113.