Dumping Ground

Seven Seas

2010-05-22T16:46:00.000-07:00

A hundred years from now
that old mixture of acetate with hope
infuses us with a desire to dig.

And the trip starts clumsy amid
the aluminous crackle of depreciating
latches and LED's,

With the benches inside glazed with a patina
set into the fibers with the impenetrability
of opaque black on black.

The sheen caused by condensation
drips all around us, reminding us
of the futility in mourning
the fact that heaven's been found
lying thick on the ocean's floor;

Or even the sages up there
who tried to remedy our infatuation
with this drug that's the deep.

We are a bulb of madness
in this immense darkness, seekers and saints
bolstered by the inebriating faith of
all true drug addled pioneers.

Behold the hope of mankind in this vessel,
the unexpected reversal of light travel --
a viscous luminosity, sounding the depths.

state of affairs

2010-04-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

Being plain before the mechanics of love
served to disencumber the weight
from the back of the believer.

Farm out the tough jobs to the underlings and be on the lookout for an emergent system

2009-06-20T23:58:00.000-07:00

When I'm in the crux, I can feel the braille of your thoughts on my skin.

Yet this stuff that I feel here billows,
breaking the gelatin contours
of our mother tongue.

Some notes for a piece on Karl Wallenda

2008-06-03T19:25:00.000-07:00

On March 22, 1978 Karl Wallenda, patriarch of the fearless family of high wire walkers, dies after plunging to his death from a wire in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was 73 years old.

El Condado, Beach front hotels, the wire tethered between them

“Life is being on the wire, everything else is just waiting.” – Karl Wallenda

My introduction to the legend of Karl Wallenda was simple enough: my mother told me about a circus man who had died after falling from between the two buildings we were walking by one day. Since then the image of this sky magician plummeting to his death with the gruesome grace of a shot dove stuck in my mind. As a Puerto Rican boy having grown up in the island and outside of it, the event and the solitary man as its protagonist has been archived in my mind for no apparent reason, like so many details that are sponged by our unconscious. Now that the event has been reactivated from my unconscious, I seek its meaning, I want to find the series of coincidences beyond the apparent facts that brought this strange and spectacular convergence to my neck of the tropical woods.

A Puerto Rican boy is born on January 6, 1980 in Massachusetts, thousands of miles away from the street where two years prior, Karl Wallenda dies on the pavement, in a city, on an island that he would know and he would leave. It’s not that this boy, now a man living far from that island, has a direct link to the event being related. At least not one that he can pinpoint before these reflections. An image, a recollection in a book by a German author sparked an interest in the high wire. The performer mentioned by this author was Blondel, the legendary Blondel. From there the link was established to Wallenda, a name the boy remembered from adult conversations on the island, a name mentioned in a conspiratorial whisper by those who remember the images on television and the corresponding narration provided by a local journalist—a news bit which led the evening news broadcast on March 22, 1978 the world over. After the memory is activated by this passage in a book, he digs up the footage on Youtube and watches the two minute clip for hours.

Wallenda comes across as a strong elder, walking the wire as on a pilgrimage, calm and determined but bearing the marks of a lifetime of near fatal close calls. The 30 year old footage is grainy and, as is to be expected in the new form of our Internet age, the fall, the money shot is the focus. Thus we see Wallenda teetering halfway across the stretch of wire tethered to the sea side hotels, the wind shakes the wire and he begins to crouch, his left foots slips, then he falls, then nothing, the clip is over. The voice over by the journalist, Guillermo José Torres, is cut short just as he’s about to collect his thoughts and improvise an explanation to the viewers watching at home. The context is missing; there seems to be no context. Clearly it was an accident, clearly the man was old, clearly he died. Yet what of the boy who years later unearths the memory of that man falling. The boy who grows into an educated man and has the words to explore this convergence and use it to speculate on the meaning it has for his life. Karl Wallenda died on my island, of all places, he tells himself. Here he finds a place to begin assimilating the event in the specious and often times contradictory trajectory of his own life.

Miguel "Micki" Delgado

2007-09-06T09:39:00.000-07:00

My cousin Miguel "Micki" Delgado died this year. He was a Puerto Rican man in the fullest sense of the word. He loved a strong drink, he loved the natural beauty of our women, he loved the lush landscape of the island, he loved music, and, above all, he loved his family.

My girlfriend and I went to PR a few years ago, when we were living in DC, to take a quick vacation during a long weekend. When Micki found out she was from Hawaii he told her about his best friend from Hawaii who died in his arms during Vietnam. It was the first time I ever heard him speak of Vietnam. I knew he was a medic during the war, but beyond that I could only rely on the polaroid photos that I would see in his albums to give me a sense of what he went through. The photos that he would let me see with the brash young men posing with their guns and their cigarettes, clearly concealed a nastier reality.

At the funeral, Micki's casket was draped with the Puerto Rican flag, symbolizing not some political stance but who he felt he was to the very core, a Boricua. I left Puerto Rico when I was 12. I took with me many memories of Micki, his humor, his fluency with any instrument, his endless supply of herbal remedies. Through the years as I returned to the island to visit my father, we would always visit Micki or he would come see me. When I struggled with feelings of inadequacy when I ate a word or two in Spanish he would encourage me by telling me that I spoke with clarity and conviction.

I felt honored that a Puerto Rican man like him reaffirmed my own roots regardless of the circumstances of my life. I will miss him.

2007-08-03T02:00:00.000-07:00

... Pornographic Delights (Cont.)

2007-05-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

My neighbors are cops and I suspect they’re also lesbians, but in the worst politically correct rejoinder characteristic of meek liberalism, I must add here that that’s ok with me. I wouldn’t call myself conservative either, because I can’t stand to be associated with all the rabid claptrap that spews from the mouths of the shock jocks and pundits from the right.

It’s an interesting time to be living in this country, the glorious U.S.A, of streets paved with gold fame, with the statue of liberty welcoming in her putrid, oxidized arms all the world’s famished.

I was there, just like all the rest, passing through Battery Island on a foggy day and there she was, beaming with all the promise of redemption for the world’s slime, just like in the movies. The statue of liberty, liberté, a tedious gift from the french.

Sometimes I want to be careless about my future, resigned like a head in the torturer’s vice. Matter of fact, I want to revise the rule book that reserves torture devices for sterilized chambers located in the no-mans-land territories where enemy combatants are strung together by their genitals.

I would break into my neighbor’s house (the cops, the lesbians) and put these contraptions in the middle of their living room, where else? All those machines, some big with levers, gears and pulleys, others as small as 2 inch by 2 inch metal cubes with red LEDs that blink sporadically. The cops, the lesbians are my neighbors. It’s an interesting time to be living in this country, the glorious U.S.A, of streets paved with gold fame.

...Pornographic Delights (Cont.)

2007-04-30T13:03:00.000-07:00

I knew it was ending, I just didn’t want it to stop. That morning I walked out of my therapy session with Dr. Olivia Samson with the feeling of futility that accompanies recognition of a problem and the lack of desire to make it stop, or do anything about it. I was feeling obsequious so I dropped the fifty cents I always carry in my back pockets into the tattered cup of the homeless guy on the corner of 9^th and Brentwood. A few more years and that will be me, I thought, as I always do when I come face to face with the subculture of the homeless. This is my second therapist. The first transferred me because for all of her avowed professional detachment, she could not conceal, or overcome, her disgust with me and the specifics of my case. Her demeanor always betrayed her sense of being a model citizen, a care taker of two kids, a respectable wife for a respectable husband, matriarch of a sturdy, colonial house just outside the city with a neighborhood watch placard stuck in the ground next to the bougainvillea bushes. I, for one, couldn’t stand the veneer of disdain that contorted her face when I talked about my supposed “aberrations from the standard moral code.” Dr. Samson, by contrast, has an interpretive bent and relishes (at least that’s how it seems to me) the opportunity to apply Jungian principles of the collective psyche, medieval myths and Freudian Oedipal melodramas. I am taken by her mode of explanation, laced with pop culture references and even some personal anecdotes, her attempts at making the standard divide between patient and therapist more porous. The police showed up at my door in late June on a rainy Thursday afternoon with a search warrant in hand. Apparently all of my efforts to hide the industrial sized equipment and other “sexual paraphernalia” were for naught, some neighbors claimed they heard screams from my basement and that sealed the deal. At the police station, at the courthouse, and during my first few therapy sessions, I thought often of the cliché that freedom of expression means nothing until you lose it. For my part, I always knew that freedom of expression meant that you are free to express yourself as long as the ever present we is able to watch you. The constant surveillance that I’m subject to now is only the logical conclusion of my actions, but in a deep sense I wished to be watched, the screams I manufactured where muffled but were there nonetheless. I’m like everyone else in “real” life, as they say, only I was forced into breaching that line that separated my hidden life from the miniscule figure that makes do on the day to day. “Perversions and pleasures are insidious,” says the Dr., “two sides of the same coin.” Another session ended, I leave to continue my dance with the other that is in me out of plain sight, in plain sight.

A Smorgasbord of Pornographic Delights

2007-04-29T03:58:00.000-07:00

1.

A small mound of onyx pebbles, fifty to be exact, arranged in a pyramidal shape. Another mound of onyx pebbles on the left edge of a skinny, rectangular table. Two more pyramidal mounds of another fifty pebbles, one in a spot lit corner of the room, the other on the middle shelf of a bookcase adjacent to one of the walls. The door opens, fluorescent lights flicker on, and he stands half in the room, half out. He takes a quick look at the set up then turns the lights off. He guides her, thirty-five and buxom, onto the chair in front of the rectangular table with the onyx pebbles on the edge. She sits. He takes a chair and sits across from the table, across from her. They stare at each other for a while. She gets up, takes a pebble from the mound on the middle shelf of the bookcase. He opens his mouth with his tongue touching his upper palate. She puts the pebble beneath his tongue. He closes his mouth. He gets up, walks to the spot lit corner and picks up a pebble. She opens her mouth and takes the pebble which he places in the dip she makes with her tongue. Each pebble adds up and morphs their faces, they start to drool, and they repeat ad naseum.

2.

Hello?

Hello.

Hello, yes.

Yes, baby, this is Destiny. What’s your name?

Stuart.

Stuart, honey, how are you feeling today?

Kind of humdrum, pessimistic, shitty, lonely, crappy, miserable.

Damn, baby, is that all? What can Destiny do to change that tonight?

Well, I just wanted to talk.

That’s fine by me baby, anything in particular you’d like to share? I’m open.

I figured you could start.

Okay…It’s been a long day for me, but I’m looking forward to tonight, I may get a bottle of my favorite Shiraz, light some candles, play something smooth, and ease into a little silk number that I got yesterday…

Where’d you get the silk number?

I got it at Nordstroms, why?

Just curious.

You into silk? Well, I have this nasty little craving for strawberries today, maybe even chocolate dipped strawberries. I just absolutely love sliding that chocolate tip into my mouth and rolling my tongue all over that sweet goodness until it starts to melt…

I really like strawberries.

So do I, baby. What about you? Do you have any fantasies?

Umm…

It’s okay. What do you do for work?

I work at an IT firm. Customer Service. I’ve also been doing art at nights and I’m starting to get exhibited in some small local galleries.

So you’re an artist.

Sort of.

No, baby, you’re an artist. What kind of art?

It’s kind of complicated, but mostly conceptual and performance type stuff.

Anything I might’ve seen or heard?

I’m kind of embarrassed about this because of the huge turn out, the performance was to start at 10, but by that time there were so many people that the neighbors called the cops and it was shut down.

Wow, where you going to have naked girls standing around like mannequins or something?

Well, the idea was to get people to go to a particular show at this particular gallery on a particular day and read out loud several random thoughts that came into my head. It wasn’t philosophical or anything, it was just my feelings about art, superficiality, etc. I took out a classified listing on Craigslist explaining the idea and asking for participants.

What did you get out of the whole experience?

A newbie reporter for my local paper was there to cover the event, or the non-event to be exact, and he wrote a small piece about a fight that broke out in front of this gallery and at the end of the story he mentioned that I was supposed to have a show there that never happened. I got perverse satisfaction from being mentioned in the press for something I was supposed to do but never actually did.

That sounds kinky. Do you have any other art fetishes?

I’d like to fill the Guggenheim in New York City with the air powered plastic tubes banks use to send paperwork to and from the drive thru bank teller. I’d have people sending shit to each other all day and all night in those little futuristic capsules they have.

Damn, baby, you are conceptual, that sounds funky.

Thanks. Do you have any art fetishes, Destiny?

As a matter of fact I do. I’d like to write a whole book about the men who call 900 numbers just to “talk.” And then track down their wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters and aunts and send it to them free of charge. What do you think?

Beautiful.

Simulacra

2007-04-26T16:30:00.000-07:00

In the world of illusion, steeped with the simulacra
of sign upon sign, fact upon fact become the
monstrous contours of a slippery reality.

To see the truth of what's there is ungraspable,
unquestionable source that evades my thought
when I send it there.

And there it is, in its pristine original beauty,
once again a calamity inaccessible to me,
making me want it.

The sign playing me erotic songs, and I'm no dancer,
but if once I saw the relation of sign upon sign
I'd be another

And the other through me would yelp in a frenzy

To know this body infested with otherness,

to swallow you whole and then spit in your face,

to know what you make in your room when you
imagine someone is watching -

the truth of what's there is ungraspable, and I feel
I don't know there beside you

Brother Justin (nemesis on Carnaval, HBO series)

2007-04-24T14:04:00.000-07:00

For brother Justin, as he tallies with his self-awareness of always having been evil incarnate, the perfect scenario for his self-discovery is in a mental institution. In this way, he employs his telekinetic power to control anothers consciousness to write his manifesto, and so he finds himself but by using/hijacking anothers body/will/mind for the consolidation of his own identity. Thus, brother Justin is literally in everyone of his choosing, but everyone also becomes brother Justin in the orgiastic intimacy of being completely controlled by anothers thoughts/wishes/drives/desires. Brother Justin, quite literally, takes control of his growing self-awareness, and steadily relaxes his inhibitions as his quest progresses into the heart of darkness. He is the harbinger of evil and destruction in the guise of a priest, more than just a priest, an ascetic that realizes through a series of supernatural events that the holy power of the gospels and his nascent will to power are not incompatible, but mutually self affirming. It is in this sense that Georges Bataille's axiom, "future holiness will long for evil," is demonstrated through brother Justin's inner transformation, executed with great subtlety. It begs the question of whether brother Justin's priestly duties serve as fodder for his evil plans/nature/inner truth or if his evil nature/plans/inner truth where always informing his priestly duties?

Poetry

2007-04-24T13:59:00.000-07:00

The gift of poetry is lost, or, more precisely, the vanity associated with the idea of poetry is lost in me. What's left is a sort of push for expression with no rhetorical flourish (and this is stated using a rhetorical flourish). There's no need to persuade anyone through this written thing here. So I spend sometime at the beginning purging from myself the intent to communicate, and so, with hope achieved through neglect, encounter some effect realized through failed communication.

Why dont you tell me how you feel?

Okay.

So...

So what?

You haven't said anything.

That's because I have nothing to say.

Idioma

2007-04-21T18:51:00.000-07:00

I love and hate how my thoughts are thrown into disarray when I wish to express them in Spanish. It's a painful pleasure, a type of desire to constantly fail, or is itthat I enjoy how, retrospectively, my thoughts in English are laughable? Or, what is the language of my thoughts?

Mess

2007-04-19T17:49:00.000-07:00

Do I care if she finds out that I've been drinking all day?

Banality

2007-04-11T20:22:00.000-07:00

Everything that seems banal is true - like the moments in between, or staggering into a polished motel room in Bakersfield, California at 2 am. It's worth snatching at least one of their hand towels built to naturally exfoliate your skin from the many washings it has endured.

2007-03-03T15:07:00.000-08:00

2007-01-19T17:12:00.000-08:00

Year In Review: Fuck the Media, We're Going Mainstream

2007-01-09T13:22:00.000-08:00

The Good

Books: Didn't get to read much for pleasure this year due to academic reading lists. Here's some stuff that I squeezed in. The Art of Worldly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracian, ridiculous aphorisms by a sixteenth century Spanish academic, it continues to teach me how to live strategically. Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida, deconstruction at its finest and completely undecipherable. On Bullshit, great little book that explains the difference between lying and bullshitting.

Movies: Syriana, for its rendering of the language of power. Purple Rain, Prince owns everything in the movie, especially because he doesn't bend to social pressures, e.g., high healed boots in the country, what. Brothers of the Head, neat flick about conjoined twins kicking ass as a punk band. Footloose, for that move that I can't do. Lulu on the Bridge, trippy and lots of stuff to mentally munch on. The Science of Sleep, to see Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Food: Nothing new here.

Places: The Hotel California, 5 year aniversary with my sexy girl. Tequila shots upon check in, need we say more?

Music: Some reggeaton tracks by Tito el Bambino and Daddy Yankee are catching my attention. I got this mix of post rock instrumental music, one track by a band called Clovis is outstanding.

Funny event: A friend got drunk and stoned and believed he could balance his 250 pound body on a medicine ball. He ripped the moulding off of another friend's wall while trying to balance and crashed on his back. Well, you had to be there.

Bad Ish

Movies: Breakin, damn I was into that movie when I was 5, but when I watched it recently I noticed that there was a gay dude with blue spandex and sporting an erection during the entire movie, what?

Books: Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya, how a 9 year old brat thinks he's gonna save the world, that kid is not mexican. Mutant Message Down Under by Marlo Morgan, another white woman that is entrusted with magical, primitive knowledge; meanwhile she laughs all the way to the bank as a result of her well worded bullshit and I'm broke.

Events: The diversity conference, big excuse for stealing student's information in order to sell it to college recruiters. Spam filter bitches!

my life in six words

2006-12-01T15:08:00.000-08:00

Books, Coffee, Cigarettes - In That Order.

What should we title it? You should title it, "What should we title it?"

2006-11-18T01:10:00.000-08:00

"I don't understand why you have to play with your hair that much. It's annoying, like, really annoying."

"Well, I like it, it's like a sculpture"

"Just jackoff please."

"I'm gonna write that down, is jack off one word?"

"You gotta do it in meta fiction, so write: 'is jack off one word?'"

"Okay here's what I wrote: I don't understand why you have to..."

"I know what I said! Now you're adding stuff we didn't say."

"Do you want to read what I've written so far?"

"You know I'm doing my own work."

"'You know I'm doing my own work.'"

"Why do you have to put that in? You're like that annoying kid that repeats everything you say."

"Okay that's a good place to end."

2006-09-12T00:23:00.000-07:00

Did you ever think that this is their lot? That perhaps they were all destined to do this, to be other people's dreams and nightmares. You have discovered your lot out here, and yet you still cannot see that we are all outsiders, that we have never left the place we were born to occupy.

Snakes on a plane (Go see it)

2006-08-18T23:03:00.000-07:00

http://snakesonaplane.com/

Grim Beginnings

2006-06-19T22:03:00.000-07:00

Writing begins with no beginning
at the intersection slash cul-de-sac

such is the wandering that a you
may find an I with a glowing narrative

but mostly I am told that you are here,
that I should feel you in the hot haze

Thus you make me feel every statement
of mind like mortar setting me in place

The discovery of you makes an instant
wish for an I that will write the range

to finally assemble the pieces
blasted forth with the memory
of all your grim beginnings

Poe

2006-01-26T22:12:00.000-08:00

A closet full of bones
a pyramid nestling a sarcophagus
of thoughts
a line that doubles as a lantern
illuminating the way

the treatcherous pursuit
a taste from the wooden cup of redemption
the crack of a whip
the rugged cross

Ramses the 1st turning in his grave
the meaning opens up to him with
the smell of a rose
the call of the grave
the pull of the people

taking his life
making a monument, then they'll
unravel his mummy to discover
the remains of his body
regal to the bones

algo

2006-01-15T16:01:00.000-08:00

trek up the ridge to the palo gods
infused with Helena's prayers for
her son

heaney

2005-12-09T15:33:00.000-08:00

Augur those Irish marshes that
glean through in his poems,
the spewing dams, the torrential rains

I'd implore her to only retreat
a blastin' those suckers, thus
we're made into heavenly creatures

Once delicate murmur of song,
thrasher of osmosis confessions,
made clorophyl bodies, and the bog
women of Irish lore becoming

banjo, trombone, meadows, melody

freak

2005-12-09T15:31:00.000-08:00

So we began the pilgrimage
and it's a weird twist verse
following the line,
and I'm a freak
I just can't sleep

Bus Stop

2005-10-29T19:13:00.000-07:00

The greyhound stop in Norwalk, California has a fifties feel, with all the essentials to recoup for the rest of the journey, like old school cigarette and coffee dispensers. Stopping there somewhere in LA land is waiting for soldiers to come home, tearful goodbyes from lovers, and nodding at last minute motherly concerns as she gives her boy up to the rest of the world and the beginning of his life. Maybe just plain old waiting with too much to think about and woozy after those McDonald's double cheeseburgers.

Being at the station involves recognizing the safety of ground travel. In America it's also about being in the midst of the dregs of society, and when the ride is on you're part of it with no illusions of grandeur. The man or woman behind the counter doesn't give a damn where you're going or what you're carrying, it's the honor system of the down and out. Get your ticket and get on the bus, that's it. The drive to modernize travel hasn't, perhaps for financial reasons, hit bus travel. With the exception of the terminals in Boston, which upon entering feel like a museum of modern art. DC, however, has its bus stops out in a field where the building looks so incongruous that it ought to be demolished and put out of its misery.

Now all these bus stops have been desolate for some time. With the other, more efficient, modes of travel the bus journey is obsolete. There's comfort to the scene that plays out in the bus station, though. The bus stop seems to summon the transition in a way that the airplane terminal, or the train depot cannot. How we wait for that scratchy intercom voice to announce the next bus that's leaving, with a green Army sack full of our goodies, and always some sketchy characters meandering about.

God, cool parking lots and smoggy mornings. What a beautiful scene, baby (I’ll write), when I’m old and still wearing this ripped coat while riding for 10 hours, overnight to another restless stop amid the lonely.

Bradley Airport Past Midnight, 1992

2005-10-26T13:52:00.000-07:00

I was 12. We made into Bradley past midnight and the baggage claim was empty. I expected to find a whole caravan of family for us so I unpacked my point and shoot camera. Ma' had cried often during the three hour flight from Puerto Rico to Hartford. For years I couldn't comprehend what she had left behind.

We weren't wearing tattered rags, but we didn't dress up for the blizzard outside the sliding doors. While waiting for our bags I looked around the terminal and realized that we were alone, we had been let down. Here I was expecting smiling faces and hugs and no one was there to pick us up. After we gathered our bags, we put them in a little pile and my mother called my grandparents in Springfield to come pick us up. After an hour of waiting, my 21 year old uncle shows up in a small Toyota. The Toyota could only fit my mother's bag, so we had to call my other uncle to bring another car for the rest of our stuff. We were aliens to them, just objects of pity. Atleast my uncle had brought us some coats courtesy of the salvation army. We marched incongruous and frozen to the car. My 6 year old sister beside me in the back, my 2 year old brother on my lap, and my mother in the front.

Here we were starting a new life in Springfield, Massachusetts. Beaming down 91 North in a snowstorm on Christmas eve. I knew the name of my new home well in Puerto Rico and spared no opportunity to tell my middle school friends about where I was going. I remember many kids leaving school like that all of a sudden, and we called the United States "out there," because deep down we were not part of that place, whatever it was, and so we marvelled whenever a friend would leave us for that beyond.

Social Construction of Reality

2005-10-14T18:24:00.000-07:00

I told my sister that one of the first things I learned as a freshman was the infamous social construction of reality. She has just encountered a similar theme in her intro to women's studies course about the interpretation of history, which looks a wee bit different from a woman's point of view. So I said, think of the social construction as your house. You have lived in the house all your life and you think that it's been there since the ice age. One day someone walks up and says that your house was built in 1972 and proceeds to describe all of the materials used. Now extend the idea of your house to what we think of as reality. You see what I'm talking about?

2005-10-12T20:04:00.000-07:00

Easy Oppositions: The Rich vs. The Poor

2005-10-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

What happens to the poor? They’re stuck in perpetual gratitude while trying to eke out a few bucks from this job and that part-time gig. Social service people are jaded from having to tell the single mothers the same story for eight hours a day. The kids play with donated toys and sleep on decrepit mattresses, with jungle green wool covers courtesy of the U.S. Army. Ma’ gets food stamps every month, she’s a substitute teacher working a part time at a fabric store. It’s hard to see it while living it, but there’s a whole vibe of disdain that pervades the poor and those close to them.

The price of charity is giving up the moral high ground. They’re so proud that you’ve “made it,” that you’re not another “statistic,” and always, “your mother must be so proud.” But some get down on the poor for being apathetic or being crafty with the welfare help. What did we pick up from our welfare mothers? A fighting spirit. Even rich family members try to compensate for their poor past by making the poor family feel ashamed of their poverty.

Getting time to think on loan, or however, brings all these things up like a chugging freight train and one tabulates leisurely all the injustice. There’s a scene in the lives of urban boys where they have to comfort their mother’s cries over lack of everything, no money for food or for rent. Why is it that when the poor have a say they’re admonished to suppress their anger?

“Work real hard, son, get all the education you can so you can help your family. That way we’ll keep you focused and prevent you from being a tyrant like us. Here, we’ll even put these blinders on so you can’t see the panorama of moral relativity, but we’ll pat you on the back and reward you for sticking to your task: helping your family and being an example to your people. Just don’t demand anything else.”

Some of the main differences between the rich and the poor are that the rich learn right away how to help themselves, but the poor have to learn how to help others before they can help them themselves. The rich are experts at hiding their intent, but the poor play with all their cards on the table. The rich have documents; the poor have I.D.s. At one point they will ask the poor man, “why do you always say you’re poor?” And he will answer, “I identify with the poor because I’ve always been poor.”

It’s true that we don’t have a choice about the social situation that we’re born into. But that doesn’t mean that we are prostrate all the time. The game of interpretation is not one of the things the rich can monopolize, yet. So we reinterpret and through writing build revenge.

waddle like a possum

2005-09-30T16:03:00.000-07:00

Samy X belonged to a culture of consumption and he knew it. He probably made his rounds easily past 3 pm, since at that point he knew it was one more hour to be in the clear. He made it home most afternoons after the telemarketing gig at about 6 or so. Most nights his girl would put a frozen pizza in the gas oven for 15 min which they would eat by candle light.

One night after watching the late night shows, he opened the double doors to the miniscule deck and stepped out to have a cigarette before crashing for the night. He had just taken up smoking as a political maneuver of defiance against propriety and would occasionally experience bouts of nausea. It was an uncharacteristically cold night for northern cali. Sitting there half way through his Camel Light, he heard a rustle by the pots of plants on the far side of the yard. Looking on intently now, a sliver of porch light illuminated half a possum waddling into the shed bursting with the landlords junk. At that moment Samy X was all about crashing the possum's party, like some primeval urge against the night time animal. All this kind of mixed with a feeling of rage at the boldness of the animal. He knew that the stray black cats would slink around during the night, but here was this possum that clearly did not give a damn.

He remembered the time in high school driving down the backwood streets of Connecticut at night. In the middle of the road was a possum munching on some carcass. The damn thing didn't even look up. So he said, "fuck you possum," and clicked on the long beams on the headlights until the thing finished and sauntered on to the side of the road.

With these thoughts he took one last drag, put out the cigarette, and went inside. Inside he got to thinking about the possum. What kind of things did that thing know? How long has s/he been hanging out there? Are there any baby possums waiting to take over? Who rules the yard at night, the stray cats or the possums? It's a shitty predicament either way, thought Samy X, since both have to figure out how to survive everyday. But then again, he corrected himself, their survival is an instintual process which they do plainly without pomp.

So here are the possums, the cats, and, soon, the blue jays coming back to wake him up at 5am with their wailing.
All of them living and dying like the rest of us.

3

2005-09-26T11:44:00.000-07:00

The evening weight. The lost bell tolling her man to come to dinner.
Cologne scent edging its way to cliff her downfall, over drinks
and merry making.

2

2005-09-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

A resurgence of an evil gesture, or an empty settlement green way.
Do you question how we made it here? This is a replica of a much
loved personage, wax coast & blood sunset.

Serial writing inspired by the music of Siguros

2005-09-25T00:07:00.000-07:00

1

Music is a mantle. The sadest song. As if we wanted to skip town
in a boat wrecked fantasy.

Hard Pack

2005-09-23T00:40:00.000-07:00

Why did I start smoking? Mostly, I'm just bored, but I'll try
to explain. They say it's harmful and lethal and I believe
them. The surgeon general tells me with scientific proof on
every pack that I'm killing myself. But I don't know any
surgeons, I do know that my parents would worry. I also know
that both of them smoked at some point out of anxiety or sadism
against years of spiritual oppression. Most christian
traditions, more or less strictly, uphold the sanctity of the
body as the temple of the spirit. Having been part of several
tight nit church groups, I've had that notion instilled in me
for a while.

To smoke or not to smoke? The sanctity of the body is protected
by the church. But what if you leave the church? No doubt, the
scientific evidence against the dangers of smoking
is indisputable, so ignoring the pastors preaching means hewing
to an experts warnings. But what of these moralizing influences
in society, whether secular or religious?

Ironically, I light up to declare control of my body. The
mantra of most smokers may be that they are "quitting", or have
been hypnotized or patched up to do so. In the absence of
christian dogma staking claim to what moves through my veins, I
chose to dabble in a habit that will mark me as fallen into the
world. This is smoking as a political choice - making the
cigarette industry richer, no doubt. But what of it? I'm no
saint.

I think of Mark twain, who purchased cheap cigars by the barrel
because it was the one indulgence that brought the words out. I
think of Sigmund Freud, who developed cancer of the mouth
because of his 10-a-day cigar habit while courting universal
opposition by theorizing about the unconscious and sex. And,
more personally, I think of my best friend from Morocco and our
conversations over sweet coffee and curls of smoke that meant a
radical change of my perceptions of world politics and the
politics of the body.

Some may scoff at what they see as trading in an intellectual
liberation for a physical decadence. Well, it's a shame and I'm
guilty. It's just that I need to overcome guilt to serve a
higher master, and here's the first step in the journey toward
moral oblivion.

W

2005-09-16T16:47:00.000-07:00

The professor enjoyed playing devils advocate and checking our diatribes against the incompetence of our President. He pointed out that while in circles like ours, i.e., northern california ultra liberals, W. is unpopular (understatement), he at one point had a 50% approval rating. So what's up with Bush? Does he really speak to what most Americans feel, or is he Americas version of that age old Papa syndrome, that is, the Oeadipal machochistic desire to have a daddy/cowboy president telling people what to do?

Where are the Waltons?

2005-09-03T12:19:00.000-07:00

As most people in the U.S. watching the news must have realized by now, the government has failed to adequately respond to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. There's been a deluge of criticism directed at the goverment for, among other things, badly funding its own emergency relief agency, FEMA. Some of the poorest areas of the nation are indistinguishable from areas in the developing world, except now their plight has hit home, so to speak. Amid the growing crtiticism of the federal government, however, it seems valid to ask, where's American business? While news stories focus on the millions that are being channelled to victims through the Red Cross, the reality on the ground tells a different story. WalMart is a case in point. WalMart supercenters located in destroyed areas such as Bond, Mississipi, are strictly protecting their stores and allowing no more than two customers at a time to buy much needed food, water, and other vital supplies. Given that disaster relief efforts are strained to the max and are sometimes unable to help people in the most remote and poor locations, it seems criminal of this corporate entity to selfishly use this event to safeguard its profits at the expense of people's needs. WalMart should immediately open all of its supercenters located in these areas and organize its personel to donate all food, water and supplies to people in need.

2005-08-22T10:35:00.000-07:00

What do we advocate? Love for the machine.

Will Lettman, Trumpet

2005-08-16T22:16:00.000-07:00

He looks for the note
and you're a witness to the
process unfolding,
jazz keeping a low-down
time signature.

It's a phrase that recalls a groove
in the laundromat
in the heat of those people
and the change for cycles.

At the crux of it, he institutes a
generous pause that, as it goes,
amplifies the cadence calling on him -
so he'll lay it down, put it right,
dirty martini idling by his side.

And in the end, when they're packing
the instruments, he will whisper to me,
"It takes time to create the knewness."

Afternoon Limbo

2005-08-11T02:26:00.000-07:00

Some long ago shedding is
being ripped through time,
witnessed by the canopy
of trees.

Cambodia waves outside my
bedroom window, though I live
in a downtown suburb mixed
with ghetto strife.

Loner when I saw that scene
through my window, where
villagers scrambled from bullets
coming down in the rain.

I want to say: it's easy looking
out into a different country haze
when the fog rolls in,

But we live in a secluded town
surrounded by deserts.

The ding-dong cart makes its rounds
with that shrill ditty on repeat.

We spot a new fig darkening
on the tree,

And Cambodia knows we're priviledged
to be poeticizing fruit.

A Hamlet of Hip-Hop and His Pal, Dance Man

2005-08-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

NY Times Headline

Link to article

For The New Planet (Xena)

2005-08-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

Keep idealizing your lies in,
dear, and you'll find me
scattered interplanetary,

with some of Jupiter's moons rising
over rigid lilac seas
and the red dot that spooks them all
to hell.

Quell the desire to stop
and identify the one spark of
a pseudo-communist nation,

the revolving door of ruthless constellations
opening and closing for the bright stars
of tomorrow,

and me scatter-brained between two nations.

Don't stop imagining, dear, the wonders
of the other planets where God played
with clay and betrayed eve because
she stressed the moment of cognition.

Maybe you are her, and I just can't see,

a moment revealing the serpent
and all the regrets after creation.

'86

2005-08-03T18:46:00.000-07:00

We used to get upset in '86 when the guys ahead of us
would stick their lips on the nozzle of the water fountain.

Even then we were worried about the germs on our dry lips.
All for nothing, because our lithe bodies
took those waters and set them loose in hours of
scrambling through the dust clouds of our
saintly playgrounds.

The Change

2005-07-29T16:48:00.000-07:00

I saw him off, but this one stayed. I could've said other
things, it could've been better, a better goodbye for us this
time. The little boy in me got caught in that moment, that
yearning, he saw him fade through the rear view. At home, a few
thousand miles away, he got caught in a photo and it brought
him back.

Pops came back for a minute to share in the chores for a
minute, to shower and borrow my deodorant and gone in a minute.
The little boy in those photos, caught in there in a different
lifetime, never forgets the smell of that deodorant. There are
moments that he fears even before the hit comes, like it always
comes to this: us repeating the drama and getting caught by
surprise by the growth and changes.

Pops, we're never prepared to see the change.

garbage

2005-07-11T16:59:00.000-07:00

"garbage is the american artist's greatest renewable resource."

- from iahm

2005-07-06T13:57:00.000-07:00

"Pero yo me he esforzado incansablemente en justificar esta generalización sin límite, y creo que toda ruptura conceptual consiste en transformar, es decir, en deformar una relación acreditada, autorizada, entre una palabra y un concepto, entre un tropo y lo que se tenía interés en considerar como un indesplazable sentido primitivo, propio, literal o corriente."

-Derrida

El tiempo de una tesis: puntuaciones

http://personales.ciudad.com.ar/Derrida/tesis.htm

By Request

2005-07-04T01:28:00.000-07:00

By Roski and BOMA Lab

I wrote a thing and this is as thing as it could get. A teenage girl said that her strategy for catching her sexy boyfriend was to call him nonstop for a year. He nodded: all cool while standing in line waiting to order, kevin federline cap and fake gucci sun glasses. Look buddy, the consumerist critique of society is getting old. I know the product extends its intractable tentacles around me, my mother, and my extended family. Look, I was clueless while it did so, give me a break.
I know I'm supposed to hate consumption, but I'm from the west, no, the West.

As I say this, my colony is still there and a colonial heritage in me, plus all my striving outside the colonized mind. You see, the islands are built like Freud's manifest dream is built by the dreamwork in the mind. You see it in the mayhem of shopping center parking lots where you are intended to stay circling the lot. A whole society grows there like a hacked version of the Sims, but in the Caribbean heat. The colors grow dim, pastel down the breezy beach streets. How do you say it in digital?

Be giving you...giving her up in the active sense, and letting go of what? One, zero, zero, one, one, zero, zero, zero. Cut to commercial, it's Phillips, it's Oral-B, it's Serta.

Sell your kids. Get cats. The new novel is a play of intentions. We build the thing with the knowledge that the thing will be undone in the mind of the reader. The reader is destroying with her comprehension, in other words, we did not write it. This reflects a broader concern motivating our age (as freely as one can point to such broader themes, a thing which itself is in question). What is at stake is your belief as a reader in a certain fixation of credibility, where I as a fixed persona can reassure you of your own existence.

The key question seemed to be who is writting for whom and from where. That position is being discarded like a second skin, slowly and superimposed. Our age develops the idea of the Super, and we're going beyond that too.

2005-06-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

I am a monster in the morning, I am a push cart peddler, I sell my body, I sell my words, I am brown, I am an american's man's man, I flirt with teenage idealism, I am a born again christian, I am the talmudic preacher, I live the midrash, I shout the forgotten prayer, I am adam's repentance, I forgot my father's biblical passage, I feel like a business man, I have entrepeneurial faith, I worship the stockmarket, I feign ignorance, I construct bliss in buildings, I am the last cup of coffee, I get 5 cents for acres of raw cane, I want to know your name, I want to forget her, I miss him, I bring out the best for a fee, I am real, I am thought on pages, I fought for aristotle, I live for Athens, I am his son, I am weak before them, I forget myself, I want sidewalks, I lay asphalt, I dream train tracks, I smell mud, I stink, I windsor knot my tie, I shower, I speak japanese, I met her there, I grew the fields for the fight, I burned the plantation, I was involved, I found a better way, I blew up bridges, I made the plan, I used to live there, I hate those pictures, I admire muhammad, I am no servant, I grew up on the island, I learned from him, I saw us, I got in the water, I love his imagination, I have Africa in my hair, I am Spain's nightmare, I fished the coast of Portugal, I want answers, I stress understanding, I admonished him toward freedom, I believe in us, I want to see him grow, I have all the time to miss you...

-Roski
9/25/04

2005-06-29T22:09:00.000-07:00

"The master has to believe, otherwise he wouldn't understand what it really means to be a spectator. He has never stopped being surprised by us, we continue to extend his imagination with our every act and performance, and in that way he's very demanding, for he demands the sublime everytime."

- The Freaks

Propaganda

2005-06-27T12:11:00.000-07:00

2005-06-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

"I was very young at that time, and I certainly did not understand very well--already, I did not understand very well--what citizenship and loss of citizenship meant to say. But I do not doubt that exclusion--from the school reserved for young French citizens--could have a relationship to the disorder of identity of which I was speaking to you a moment ago. I do not doubt either that such 'exclusions' come to leave their mark upon this belonging or non-belonging of language, this affiliation to language, this assignation to what is peacefully called language."

- Derrida

Monoligualism of the Other; or
The Prosthesis of Origin

los otros

2005-06-24T13:28:00.000-07:00

Cada uno con su dios;
como dicen: la salvación es individual.

BOMA

2005-06-23T23:23:00.000-07:00

Beware Of Moralizing Agents

Opinión sobre el imaginario teológico-comercial protestante

2005-06-22T15:01:00.000-07:00

Me gusto mucho este ensayo tuyo. Creo que podrias profundizar en lo de Lacan y Freud. Me parece que mencionas sus teorías muy por encima y debido al peso que tienen sus ideas deberias de darle mas consideración. Alomejor puedes desarrollar las conexiones entre las 3 etapas de actividad mental descubiertas por Freud-id, ego, super-ego y tu análysis. Yo estoy leeyendo un libro de Freud llamado Introducción Básica al Psicoanálisis. El capítulo que acabo de leer se enfoca en la actividad del deseo en la formación de los sueños. Para Freud el deseo es el motor de casi toda nuestra actividad mental, consciente y inconsciente. En tu análysis no hay mención del deseo, creo que hay un potencial ahi, o sea, ¿cómo se modifica nuestro imaginario(s) mediante nuestro deseo(s)? Tengo que leer mas hacerca de lo que dice Freud sobre esto.

Me gusta tu pregunta planteada como conclusion. Me interesaría seguir esa línea de investigación. Pienso que la Internet ha asumido la forma del id de Freud, es un espacio amplio que lleva en si mismo creacion y autodestruccion. Dentro de ese paradigma coexiste la figura del entrepeneur del dotcom y el hacker. Freud dice que el soñador es como dos personas con una cosa en comun, su deseo.

El imaginario teológico-comercial protestante

2005-06-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

"Los imaginarios son entonces como unos códigos que pueden ser establecidos o construidos por entidades formativas sociales como la escuela, la iglesia y las leyes. Estas entidades a su vez, dictan lo que el sujeto debe entender por realidad; además de los conceptos de lo verdadero y lo falso, de lo bueno y malo o de lo lindo y lo feo. Se constituye de estas relaciones binarias las construcciones de imaginarios sociales."

http://216.156.52.42/producci%F3n_de_imaginarios/el_
imaginario_teol%F3gico_capitalista.htm

Shaved Soap and Other Motivational Absurdity

2005-06-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

NY Times 6/21/05

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/06/21/theater/reviews/21jack.html

2005-06-21T15:59:00.000-07:00

She wasn't, we named her, we made her.

Home

2005-06-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

"We went home, but it did not recognize us, so for a long time we avoided going home and we became the streets. My home became these freaks."

-Ringmaster

2005-06-19T17:25:00.000-07:00

Dad, we're anti-oedipus and we're still cool.

2005-06-18T00:09:00.000-07:00

No society where women could not show their tits for $ if they chose to.

-D

to the dryer

2005-06-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

you disturb the peace-
frantic in a screech protest
of clogged up vents.

what's up with the exasperating cycle?

really, just shut the fuck up.

Trust

2005-06-13T11:32:00.000-07:00

is when what you believe is there,
is there when you're not looking

Time Square

2005-06-11T08:11:00.000-07:00

Time Square, NYC

Who is who

2005-06-09T06:47:00.000-07:00

Ché is not your friend, hippy.

Mall philosophy

2005-06-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

Don't sit.

Carpe Diem!

2005-06-08T05:46:00.000-07:00

Are you serious? What a bunch of wusses.

from Sun Tzu

2005-06-07T22:33:00.000-07:00

You're already there-
no one will fuck with you.

from Nietzsche

2005-06-07T22:32:00.000-07:00

Walk like you belong-
no one will fuck with you.

2005-06-06T12:06:00.000-07:00

Escribo, me transformo, me escondo.

Corporate

2005-06-06T10:19:00.000-07:00

Time is money - is for the worker.
Time is time; money is money - is for the boss.

de donde somos

2005-06-03T18:51:00.000-07:00

En el corazón de lo moral,
lo inmoral a triunfado.

Operational

2005-06-02T19:37:00.000-07:00

"Did they feel that their highest aspirations
were part of a grand cospiracy designed to
keep them in check?"

Descartes

2005-06-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

...después de Descartes,
se complicó la cosa.

-JLD

2005-05-31T13:46:00.000-07:00

Don't stress, to be cool, buy a pair of Oakleys.

2005-05-31T12:29:00.000-07:00

Home is what we leave behind.

French thought

2005-05-30T11:03:00.000-07:00

You need time to enjoy money,
but you need money to enjoy time.

Question

2005-05-30T11:01:00.000-07:00

Do we want to be without doing?

Love

2005-05-29T15:42:00.000-07:00

Easy to feel;
Hard to do.

2005-05-28T10:43:00.000-07:00

..and he ate locusts and wild honey. Mark 1:6

Eastern Thought

2005-05-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

To be one, be many.
To be many, be one.

Star Wars

2005-05-26T15:05:00.000-07:00

"Evil is everywhere."

Tao

2005-05-25T14:43:00.000-07:00

Go with the flow,
work with the world.

Art is

2005-05-23T22:06:00.000-07:00

playing with the signifier

Buster

2005-05-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

"Buster, you have enemies."

Street Preach

2005-05-21T19:25:00.000-07:00

Sidewalk

2005-05-21T19:21:00.000-07:00

Voodoo

2005-05-21T12:09:00.000-07:00

Voodoo

On Cats

2005-05-20T10:18:00.000-07:00

I'd rather feed the strays

Current schema

2005-05-19T09:08:00.000-07:00

Not who has the best,
but who has the best scam

What we've been waiting for

2005-05-18T10:41:00.000-07:00

Pie in the sky,

We made it.

1844

2005-05-17T09:18:00.000-07:00

You can't always be waiting for the Second Coming

New corporate attitude a la Viva La Bam!

2005-05-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

Voiceover: "What will he do next?"

Bam: "Whatever the fuck I want."

Paris

2005-05-14T23:13:00.000-07:00

Who's in love?

Dr. Strangelove 2005

2005-05-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the brand

Two things not to fuck with:

2005-05-13T09:25:00.000-07:00

1. people's money
2. people's heroes

Blog?

2005-05-13T09:24:00.000-07:00

Euphoria in anonimity

revolución

2005-05-12T16:35:00.000-07:00

We want a neatly packaged revolution,
featuring well designed subversive icons.

decisions

2005-05-12T09:30:00.000-07:00

What we don't know has already been decided;
we walk in through the back.