My muse leaned against the brick wall, struck a match on his heal + had a smoke. 

He was in no hurry.

He said, You are not a writer unless you write very day.

i replied, since he is very well educated + thoughtful in his criticism, in the only way he would understand;

i said, fuc you.

He loves that talk.

 

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?  

- Albert Einstein

   ... 

Never mistake a single mistake with a final mistake.      

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

   ...

Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.

- Peter S. Beagle / The Last Unicorn

Pie? Who cares about pie, when there is Russia? -DV

Burrowing into what matters. Or, what i learned today:

• Not much gets accomplished at 3am when you’ve already been awake for 72 hours.

• A tiny brush holds very little  paint.

• Bad things happen when you are trying to be very, very quiet.

• Making pancakes is much easier than how i make it look.

We were oowing & ahhhing over an acquaintance’s book of poetry that had been begrudgingly lent + was now being carefully handled. KB set it down on the papered work table near our 8th floor open window. In one very foolish elbow move, by me, it disappeared. There was a cursing of bad luck in twain. In our mournful anguish we looked out the window expecting to see the book free falling eight stories w/ the binding bowed + pages stretching wide, liberating themselves, fluttering as to say I’m this free. Down, down to the pavement + crushed underfoot by a New Yorker who was sipping hot expresso making a guest list as he hurried to secure a newspaper + check into the weather for this weekend family holiday on his estate out on Montauk ... We focused nearer + saw that the volume had landed in the plastic flower pot in the window apartment just below us, 7D. Being less petrified by whomever lived there, than what would happen to us if we reported the lost book, (yes, stolen!) we ran down + stood there, before the door, listening intently to the quiet + what lie beyond thinking; who would have a plastic flower pot on Union Square?

• Oh yea, + setting something on the floor so it won't spill — is not always a good idea.

Exhibit E / Burdensome Keychain

It has occurred to me that we all carry some form of keychain around with us on a day to day basis. The object itself takes on different forms, having to do with need, want, + what happened to be our last fob gift. The object itself notwithstanding, the emotional + physiological weight of the keychain is often heavy duty. This is what i need to carry in my pocket: a charm of subtle nagging, + the simple, yet unforgettable people met along the way.

Saying very little, as they were practiced in the art of omission.

Paying in cryptomnesia arrears. Is there room for another life in here somewhere? 

Where do those numbers come from? Why can’t X be just X. Why does it have to be something else? To be a good Mathematician you have to really want to find the correct answer. i just never cared that much. i'm okay w/ not knowing, i'm okay w/ unshaped-ness of bits, i'm okay w/ open wounds for spirits to come and go. You okay? 

Well, here i am … + in this huge vastness of nothingness, again astounded that we are anything, at any time, at anyplace … but here we are together.

Open a can of worms, what do you see? 

i mean, besides worms.

And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, 

till the Devil whispered behind the leaves 'It's pretty, but is it Art?'

- Rudyard Kipling.

I am still learning.

- Michelangelo

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

- Ray Bradbury

Beauty and the devil are the same thing.

- Robert Mapplethorpe

Metta: Loving Kindness Illuminated

Pages 8 + 9 w/ insert - Above words extrapolated from the Metta Sutra.

All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle. - Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with, the Mock Turtle replied, and then the different branches of Arithmetic Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision. - Lewis Carroll 

Erase yourself – i mean, brace yourself.

IDEA:

Shoulds walk in a wide open field - where do they meet? When do they pass on parallel paths never touching? This type of falling is almost a complete time change.

i saw a man of two minds. One wore a hat, the other carried his. Two women balanced baskets on their heads. One full of branches, one full of empty. Though they all walked w/ care + caution. But the empty basketed women walked w/ a bit more confidence. 

i admire Bruegel's way letting the viewer discover camouflaged themes in his work. He seems to be busy w/ the embracing the whole catastrophe thingy. The device undercuts the importance of what he believes is important, + so, drives home the importance of what he believes. The smallest detail becomes a crashing glissando that will not be ignored. He has this perfect way of dismantling our minds, to ensure them being built up again w/ crisp sight + fresh response. 

Okay, yea, well — i think he's pretty cool.

The inner palette of decay...

His paintings were but the thinnest films of oils and pigments, easily scratched, easily rubbed out, easily smeared, upon wood panels so easily broken and burned. He himself but a sack of blood and bile and choler, fit to burst and leak at any time. And out in the world, evil piled upon evil, with no end in sight. 

-Rudy Rucker / Bruegel 

Paint what you know is there, not what you see.

- Pablo P

Taking random shots at important questions.

Free Will or Working Cause?

Cause seems to be a push — pushing you along w/ what comes next. The because.

Will is a pull, pulling along what you want to happen, making it go a certain way. 

Which wins out most of the time?

Biting the proverbial coin to see if it's real. 

Having a mental filibustering afternoon.  

Over-thinking till the final hour. 

The way hard boiled ideas, get kicked to the curb.

W/ me, cryptomnesia wins most of the time. But i may have figured that before now.

Dream of  an art opening. The room was totally empty, very well lit + the walls were washed warm white. It was entitled The Power of Omission.

That which you mistake for madness is but an over-acuteness of the senses. -Edgar Allan Poe

Random thoughts + foolish notions:

What would you think of a person who said, I'm an artist, but I'm taking a year off.

Rilke - still living the questions / living questions.

Is it always hard to relate to a complicated person. Nothing as always.

Feeling like i need to be where i’m going to end up. So i can be there a while. 

Assumption flying into heaven vs. assumption religious. Everyones guess.

System vs. Goal. Stick w/ a system + you will attain the goal.

i realized everyone has a thought process that spirals in + me not being able to untie a knot doesn't mean it can’t be. These days i tend to turn everything into a Tarkovsky movie. i jump to explore the spiritual + metaphysical at a slow pace w/ long looks, using the imagery of dreams, nature, + memory.

Jumping into the story - i’m presuming it must be the integral part of a more complete corpus.

The ongoing challenge is to create a something that will make me turn the page, yet keep me looking back to see if i got it right.

Rest on that.

Muse 2 / The Fallen Beginning 

Muse 1 /  If I Could See People's Fears

Directions slow to cresindo.

i had lost my notebook, shoes + mis-placed my fancy math text. Frustrated, all i could do was glimpse down the hill over the trees to see the web of streets i needed to navigate to get to the University, + the dreaded class i was late in attending. i ended up cutting through yet another building. Moving higgily-piggily, outrunning my sight i slammed into Andy Warhol. i pardoned + asked him for directions. He responded politely saying  this was the symposium building + that they, too, were searching for answers. i inquired if he + the rest of the students were using the correct accent.

Recreation 
re-create-ing

As soon as i realized i did not have to play tag, i didn't.

There is an entire 
generation
that 
has
never 
seen 
shag carpet.

Open space is unlimited. Guilty. Who will be paying time, paying penitence? Is penitence what any of us need? i just need a few simple things to trust. What will stop time slipping through my fingers?

All minds meet in the center void where they separately awaken w/ core energy filling the room, re-dreaming someone else’s dreams left behind. Collective thought lay somewhere near. It is unique to them. The small i + the big I. Where do i to find the fitting pieces?

Parts have been measured out in mugs of paint + cans of coffee + in the breaking of a porcelain toothpick holder in the shape of an iron, in the bondage of short days wishing for spring while savoring winters work.  Measured by helping stray animal + orphaned colors no one else would give a second look to. Dying the fabric of results + covering the wounds that the product exposes even as the processes’ pain is hidden from my view. Finding others to hold up even as i kick aside my own work + lose myself for moments at a time only to round the corner to find that i never left my own private studio. Creativity has never been a convenient thing. It does not enable super human strength, assuage the need for sleep or automatically come with a paycheck.  It dwells in the deepest part of the pile w/ its head + hands exposed, ever waving for attention w/ a slow burn that is never exhausted nor satisfied.

Is someone haranguing salvation really what we need?

How do you figure?

The fugitive kind, the ones that got away. A fish story? Everyone’s got one. Surrender is a powerful tool. Surrender physical, eventually the mind will follow.

i do go on.

muse 9

RoM - Ghosts in Daylight

I grab my Mr. Rodgers sweater, my hall pass and my laundromat access card without loosing the heading that is turning into ascension.

When you are dealing with inward reality, unreality, and non-reality any muse will do to fold into the slipstream of the whatever. In a wide-open field they meet; where do they pass on parallel paths that never touch?

The most exhausting part is becoming clear. The shadowy mounting push did not need me. Delusion of reprieve doesn't. All I needed was to move aside from my tiny existence to make my way up a bit further onto the plateau and walk into the sunset. The great egress. I heaved and will powered the paralysis to lift. I pull to the left, out from under the huge boulder I had created, whisking my hands of loose clay. All of the voices hushed as I scramble toward the ledge and hoist myself up and into the black blinding light.

Having no pen nor paper on hand, I mentally impressed upon a page a note of confidence and reform. The paper folded and nested close to my neck for someone to find. I exhaled and swooned wondering after all if I still had the gold loop through my earlobe for payment.

It had been months watching him wither, hands cramping, and toes slowly curling. The room had transformed into a daily camp, a cafeteria, debate forum, a rumpus room, a vigil. They stood around in now hushed tones and witness his release. His body relaxed and there was an undeniable letting-go of the body as it relaxed, deflated and stilled; then a re-gathering wistfully above, moving willfully and purposefully. They felt the familiar, now fade into the near next with a clip of shine singing from his ear, and conversation remorse on the tip of their tongues.

-30-

muse 8

 RoM - Drop Back and Punt

… redirection is in order. Not exactly a new direction, but a mental turning around. Okay, not so much a mental turning — as a looking past. Past options, those were long ago voided out by other reasons and decisions that were uncontrollable. Control suggests need or want. Good thing everything is not controllable. We’d each have bloody hands and be dragging around Santa bags full of dirty rags all of our lives. Who’d be friends with someone who sounds so familiar?

Why not grab hold of hyakutake? Every once in a while it comes looming by, which means it comes closer every day, even when it is leaving.

It comes by from another goldilocks zone, within spit distance … close enough for communication and trade. Boons.

 I glide toward the meeting place, my feet dragging scooping up sludge into it grows like a snowball in front of me. Dodging and skipping along the street that seemed to have a theme of pot holes. I saw a stranger watching me from a noir shadow.

He gave me a nod, Yes, watch out; plot holes.

I meet up, join and follow others feeling the series of events, twist and blind turns currently eluding me. Noticing the writing on the walls, reading an interior dialogue on a one-way mirror. You know how your mind jumps to this hither and thither thing while you are in deep concentration with the other? Hypnogogic hallucination, involves seeing or hearing things just as you fall asleep. This is that. If this is a severing with reality the break feels natural, though wondering how to decipher. No telling, not knowing.

 It’s not the nightly happy phantoms charmed by a conducting Orpheus. This is an uncontrolled waking dream of comatose, passing the pearly gates of how cliché.

muse 7

RoM - The Past is Practice 

Excitingly new hearkens to the past. Three score and ten and overnight; here we may be. This brings up the cycles of the cosmosium. Confound it; I am aware it is impossible to move petrified legs. I feel the warmth of an intense light, the voices in the rotation of returning and retreat. Sometimes whispering amongst themselves. Sometimes lifting sentences as inquiring. I could not quite make out to answer, and do not need to, as they seem to answer for me in a condoling tone.

I enjoy the silences as it means we are all listening for who will say something next. More voices fill in the pauses until the party became an ambush. Wood paneling and wainscoting everywhere, spit flying. I image another rendezvous. Where did you learn to fly? Well that assumes a lot. Bluesy with a taste of twang, ready to get reckless?

A dear friend is smashed but alive. He rocks back and forth in an invisible cradle, a bottle neck loosely hooked through a ring finger. The bottle always slips first.

Sawdust on the floor soaks up the weather. One hundred year old grime on the walls fuzz up the air at McSworley’s. College buddies, now dressed in business suits, meet at the crowded circular tables. After a few too many pints they throw arms around each shoulder and rise swaggering to their feet singing the alma mater. Once ending, now quiet, they look at each other knowingly and sink back into their seats as one shouts, another round! for the glass littered table. This was the first year men wore Gray Flannel. That fragrance and sweat fills the room.

I instinctively look for hides, and escape routes. But instead of escape…

muse 6

 RoM - Occam's Razor Dulled

Backing away does not work. The disembodied and the hysterical pursue me. They take my hand and turn on the hot water works. I feel used and put upon. 

Shuffling through the entities with complicated causes I am able to pull out one recognizable voice. His spiel is selling train tickets to a spiritual pilgrimage, or, charging for the indulgence of your choice. You had a choice. You actually had a choice. He could sum up the present situation snappier than an Oscar F. O. F. W. Wilde remark. He was from NYC, was anywhere anything important happened, had an old guy ponytail, and his every other word was a bomb. 

I need to get this puss out of my system, as my mind is too foggy to tell truth from fiction, assuming fiction exists. My mind is as dull as a butter knife. Willie’s razor would be chasing down these negligible trivialities with a bulldozer in high demand if the human condition wanted simplicity of reasoning. But alack and alas, it has never been so. Some people simply chose to have live strangers in the trunk of the car for ballast.

Nephew, what means this passionate discourse, This peroration with such circumstance?

At some point the voices from a lifetime cycle back through and seem well known. We search and appreciate the kindred on un-familiar territory even within our grappling to find the excitingly new.