Weed, Wine and Caffeine

Here's a link to my new journal, Saturn Returns. Will I post both places? I don't know yet.

the black and bloodless canopy
that we now forget
has spread itself over us all our lives
to think-
we have always shared a sky
spattering it with our seperate moments
they shine
my hands break over my own face,
doorjambs
your skin
and I cannot remember anything
what I want or
what I mean

I have become a monstrous thing.

eed
26 Feb 2005

What is it that makes some people more special to us than others? This is a question I have been fixated upon lately. A few weeks ago at a bar, my boyfriend was making fun of a man and woman which he deemed "an unlikely duo". But I remember wondering aloud if they perceived themselves as unlikely, or if anyone ever looked at us and thought the same thing. And what makes something unlikely? Think of all the people we never meet. Think of all the people we do meet, but almost don't. And of those people who bump up against us in this quick and churning sea of existence, why are there some that force us to consider them? This is one of the most beautiful mysteries that humanity has to offer. I don't have many friends, or even like many people. Anyone who reads my journal here will be sickeningly familiar with my rather one-note contempt for humanity as a whole. And though I have accepted lonliness as my natural state, I can't help but wonder at the magic of meeting a kindred spirit. Is it something coded into us? I have long ago abandoned the idea of fate or destiny. I reject the notion of pre-planned, programmed lives. There is no romance in such a thing. I prefer now to think of synchronicity as Carl Jung described it. I want to marvel at a universe I cannot comprehend, but which salutes me, winks at me, with meaningful coinicidences that decorate and enhance my life. I try very hard to look and listen. I hope to be rewarded.

Tonight I was almost smeared across the intersection where I was walking by an oblivious woman in an SUV. She never looked at me. I try to imagine what the scene might have looked like if I had been walking just a little bit faster, if her acceleration through the traffic light intended to prevent such catastrophes had been intensified. I visualize a brilliant red streak across the glistening pavement, my blood like a comet's tail, leading the eye to the crumpled and rain-soaked form of my broken corpse. I envision warm blood running out of me, mingling with the rain and grime of the street, cooling as it flows into the gutters and is lost into the bowels of this ugly and uncaring city. On the cusp of the streetlight's shimmering and disintegrating pool of amber light lies my body. My favorite green sweatshirt and my new blue jeans are black with rain and blood and the darkness under whose auspices such an accident was permitted to happen. My body is a small and soggy thing, a thing forsaken. Twenty yards away the SUV has finally stopped. As other drivers pass, her taillights are just bursts of incandescent red spatter between strokes of their windshield wipers. Her hands grip the wheel, and she wonders what has happened. Meanwhile, I am dead.

Eventually, though I carry no identification, my body would be named, claimed. But before that, what would they think? What conclusions would be drawn? In my pocket they would find an assortment of candies, with buttered bread and peppered cashews, wrapped in a paper towel. Would they understand that I intended to leave these offerings at this crossroads? Would they remove them and make such offerings in my stead? I have no hope for such a thing. Myself and the candies would be regarded similarly- as refuse. A human animal wasted, improperly sacrificed. I am overcome with sorrow for all those who have died in a place they did not love.

If my death had not been instant, if I could have held one glowing locus in my dissolving thoughts, it would have been New Orleans. I would have strained to hear and feel it stretching before me, flaking and balmy and musical and endless- I would have rushed into the bosom of such a Heaven. I would have flowed happily into the gaping mouth of Death for such a reward. I would have rejoiced across the rolled edges of the gutter's toothless gums to know I was free, that I was going Home, at last.

Yet still I live.

This rain, I prayed for this yesterday.

It is of singular interest to me this evening to discover that asylum is the Latin word for "sanctuary". I have spent the last two days trying to establish just that (while, I imagine, being considered by others to be a person who might be better off if I were committed to an asylum). A third ominous sign combined with an intense intuitive feeling that I shouldn't go caused me to back out of a much-anticipated ski trip at the last minute. Naturally, everyone thinks I'm crazy. So, instead of skiing, I have spent the last two days in solitude at the art museum, wandering from room to room letting space and color and form and ideas collide against me, letting the chipped and ugly things inside of me become reduced to rubble. I stood before canvases and sculptures not seeking their meanings, but hoping that their beauty would smite me. I longed to feel the wrecking ball of beauty rolling about in my heart as the dark cracks expanded, so I could tear everything out and start from scratch. I want to rennovate my faded and dusty soul.

And when the thing happens, it comes without warning. I approach a windowed corridor containing a row of glass cases. The hallway is a study of sterilty and precision; the light passing through the treated glass is at once bright and diffuse. Later, I will see a blasphemous girl talking loudly on her cell phone as she absently scans these same cases, but for now I am alone. Instantly, I am drawn to an unpretentious Archipenko torso in the first case- a bronze piece about twelve inches tall. I cannot explain how this piece affects me. I stand beside the case as closely as possible, to inspect the light running like liquid over its glazed green lines. Suddenly I am under a spell. My eyes are stuck in a loop - my gaze travels from the top to the bottom of the piece and then back, over and over again. I cannot look away, am unable stop my hungry eyes from devouring this thing. I slide my eyes over each curve, watching them bend unto the laws of cosmic proportion, watching as each line is the luxurious outward expression of a curve, as defined by this gracile distillation of the human form. And here, in the presence of such Divine beauty, I am overcome and suddenly find myself with tears streaming from my eyes to behold such a thing.

Behind me, people walk by, and politely try not to notice the girl weeping in awe at the Archipenko statue, but when I think about all the beauty that I am witness to, beauty that that no one else is seeing, it makes me cry even more. It is after I am enticed upstairs, by the hypnotic Lullatone notes drifting from his exhibit that I discover a kindred spirit in Brian Alfred. Alfred's flat, graphic style is aesthically pleasing in exactly the way it was meant to be - an imitation of the geometry of our daily world within which we package ourselves. Buildings, windows, waterfalls, even plants are described with mathematical exactitude. But it's via Overload, a continously looping DVD animation by Alfred that the desperate soullessness of his work truly impacts me. The images projected onto the wall in the darkened room are seemingly disconnected: falling snow, a nuclear substation polluting the sky with darkness, an elevated commuter train with nondescript grey people disembarking and embarking, airplanes, highrises, fluttering leaves, the accumulation of technology, the uninspired monotony of materialism. The Lullatone song being cycled endlessly across the speakers is at once cold and ambient, a bright electric pulse which is like a current for the images. I watched the film over and over again both today and yesterday, and am moved by the latent sorrow in these images, the quiet grief of insulation by the modern world. That it is unwelcome by that from which it stems makes it all the more intense. It is a shapeless sorrow in this plotted and measured place. It is my sorrow. It is Chaos.

In Alfred's work I see a reflection of a world that is being tread upon by great sqaure footprints, a world of meaningless and recycled patterns, a prescribed world of organized dimensions and elegant pragmatism. And we move though it like sleepwalkers, unremarkable, grey and undefiant. Nothing happens that is unexpected, or unaccounted for. And suddenly I am aware of the room I am in, and how the museum itself is like Alfred's images- the intersection of lines into angles, the subtly pleasing integration of straight and curved lines, of texture and light. The world is suddenly counterfeit and inescapable, like the infinite reflection generated by holding a mirror up to a mirror. As I sit on the single bench, making notes on this phenomenon, two shadows enter the room and watch part of the animation before moving quietly away. They leave before one loop has even been completed. In some other part of the museum, I hear a cell phone chirpping loudly. What does a person do when they don't want to be a shadow? Where can you go to become gelatinous, or to grow spines and random tufts of brightly colored fur? Where can you go to disintegrate?

When I look back down, there is an ant(!), crawling miraculously across the page of my notebook. This unexpected and unexplainable visitor crawls haphazardly across the page, and disappears into one of the holes where the metal coil binds the spiral notebook together. I stare at the page for a long time, trying to decide if he is an emissary from the Realm of Chaos, or something accounted for already, a little algorithmic probability, lost in a notebook full of nonsense.

i am love and beauty
given form by pain
the dark side
that exists to equal the light

i am god's gouged palm
even the stars bleed through me
their dying light streams across my face
and i feel the terrible finality
and the great burden
of being a lone witness
to such wonder

without my shell,
i shiver at the rage of birth
biting at the universe
i would taste its blood
i would tear it and make a hole to fall through
my soul aches
beneath the strain of those things
beyond articulation
and my heart opens, my throat opens
my very skin opens
in agony

you have never seen a thing
so beautiful.


eed
(c)2005

It was brought to my attention this morning by a friend (thanks, Q) that the 24th of January is statistically recognized as the worst day of the year for most people. Although many of the factors that Dr. Cliff Arnall's mathematical formula relied upon (such as holiday credit card debt and failed new year's resolutions) were irrelevant to me, I still felt the oppressive melancholy of this day, without knowing why. It really was an awful day. It was concluded by a tearful reading of Philip Larkin's Aubade before I difted off to sleep. Many that I've talked to have reported being unable to sleep that night, accompanied by general malaise. Funny, I didn't even know about it until it was over.

Someone spitefully suggested to me that my ability to be affected by such a common psychic malady such as the mathematical Worst Day of the Year meant I was typical, but I think it is instead some kind of evidence for the intense bad energy of January 24th. Whether or not the formula is legitimate, it brings to mind the more appropos question of manifesting your reality and perhaps influencing the realities of others. What if, through the invention of this formula, this psychologist has really only invented the idea of a global Shittiest Day? Would it get the ball rolling, just puttting the idea out there? Would people start having a bad day every January 24th simply because they expected that they would? Would they unwittingly transmit their nasty, pulsating energy all over ther globe to infect unsuspecting people like me? Is that psychologist really a global sadist?

Or am I just typical?

[http://www.brandonstone.com/photos_generated/light_through_bathroom_door-750x600.jpg]
It seems I have met a human version of Schrödinger's cat. A friend recently revealed to me that they had once experienced trauma that resulted in nearness to death. His story included a doorway of light, a feeling of wanting to go toward it, but an ultimate choice to remain alive. I've always been fascinated by stories like this. Since I was a child, I've been obsessed with death, and dying. I realize this may make me somewhat macabre, but it seems to me like death is the thing we have the fewest answers about, and where the most important questions are.

Carl Jung had a near-death experience in 1944, after which he correctly predicted the death of his doctor. I've read countless reports of people being endowed with psychic or other paranormal powers after a near-death experience, or of the supernatural wisdom and peace granted to them following their "return" to their bodies. My aquaintance hinted at out-of-body experiences and other disturbing phenomena. There was a time when I was preoccupied with the idea of experiencing this, and fantasized about returning to Earth endowed with Special Knowledge. But now I'm not so sure I wouldn't be able to stay out of The Light. In some of the stories, the dying are told to return to Earth, that it is not "their time". I suppose I would have no choice but to turn around and go if I were instructed to do so. I wonder what would happen if someone refused? Perhaps punishment would be sharing in the awful fate of people who are brain-dead, but kept alive for years and years through life support systems.

It seems strange to me that I will die someday. I cannot really fathom it. When I think of it, it is with a chalky-tasting mixture of fear, anticipation, and disbelief.

and why should the ocean be merciful?
to take a different point of view-
such a greater thing
can smite the small
with no need for sorrow.

it is our own lesson;
each thing feels only its own pain-
the chaos of a beetle's death
or of a star
will not
transfer,
cannot disslove us

but given bleeding heaps
the broken, weeping scaps of us
offer what we understand
our hearts were made to break-
we declare it
we fill the quiet universe
with roars.


eed
(c)2004

the empty places
within a space
hang like a mouth without a question,
and are
in the end

does space govern form,
pressing shape into all things
with Divine intent?

or do we force the Universe to surround us,
dragging it like a cape of stars
twisting and softly crumpling it,
letting there fall empty folds
which hold no part of us
though they ripple when we breathe?

did you feel God singing
in your bow-
the grace across the strings of your mind-
did your dark eyes weep
to know
you could hear
and understand?

eed
2004

Albert Einstein is without question one of the finest that humanity has offered. I keep having synchronicities about Einstein, who was himself a believer in synchronicity. This was my third attempt at a poem about him, and though my attempts have been recent, I have long been deeply compelled by a strange grace that seems to manifest itself in his physical appearance. As I scroll through countless online photographs of Einstein I am struck by an interesting dichotomy in all the photographs. In most of them, Einstein is gazing heavily into the camera, or into the middle distance as though the very knowledge his mind contains, combined with the exhertion of reconceiving the universe makes his eyes weary to be open. There is a tired and gentle sadness to this Eisntein, as though he knows how doomed we all are. Or maybe he is just lonely.

In the other kind of Einstein photo, Einstein is caught on film trying to surprise us. He is unexpectedly animated- his tongue is out, or his arms are extended. Is this Einstein lonely too? Is he trying to play with us, like an adult tries to make a baby laugh? Or does he feel the weight of knowledge like a jacket of ice around him- is he trying to shatter it and shrug it off? But it is in considering Einstein The Cellist that a new idea occurs to me: perhaps Einstein was trying to teach us something with the sudden-animation photographs. I read a story once about Einstein bursting into a stranger's apartment to accompany her piano-playing with his cello. According to the story, he flung the door open and shouted, "Don't stop playing!" to the surprised woman at the piano. I loved this story but never really saw what was so wonderful about it. Einstein was not a wacky kook. He was not trying to be funny. Or maybe humor is part of it. In his madness there seems to be a message by example of the random nature of the universe, of the Beauty in Chaos. And I am reminded again of fractals, and a strange existence with billions of suns burning in the sky, of planets slowly swirling in the goo of space-time like a pool of black molasses. Of a world where moments blossom unexpectedly and some small beautiful thing changes the universe; a flower grows in a crack in the sidewalk; Einstein bursts into your parlour and begins to play the cello; an ocean is formed; the language of God translated.

I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way, I've gone all Ebeneezer and lost my Christmas spirit. I don't know how it happened, or why, really, only that it's gone. I used to be the kind of person that got really excited about Christmas. I started listening to Christmas music right after Halloween. Sure, I knew Christmas had been transmuted into a revolting capitalist orgy, but somehow that warm-belly-full-of-nog feeling of celebrating your friends and family would soak through and none of the bad stuff would matter.

But this year something is different. Everything seems off, somehow. Even in doing simple searches for the photos in this entry I have discovered two disturbing facts:

1. There's a weird prevalence to the idea (perpetrated by tree farmers) that it's okay to chop down a perfectly healthy, oxygen-producing, air-purifying tree in order for you to stick it in your house for a few weeks, as long as you then allow the city to grind it up into itty-bitty pieces, per the "environmentally sensitive" mulching programs which are so en vogue. I was always able to block out the gruesomeness of Christmas trees before, but now Christmas tree farming seems as sad and unnatural as the meat industry.
2. Target Corporation has banned Salvation Army bell-ringers with their red kettles from soliticing for holiday donations outside its stores. This is a situation with layers of sadness to it. First, and most obvious is the negative imapct this will very likely have on the Salvation Army (but not on Target). But there is something else about this that is harder to pin down. This something has to do with corporate fascism and the swift and silent dissolution of American icons of humanitarianism and compassion in the face of conspicuous consumerism. Do not give, Target suggests. Bring all your money inside our store and buy, buy, buy!

The world promises to twinkle less this year. The carols I've heard are tinny and sneering. This year, Christmas is a piece of tape, stuck to the bottom of my shoe.