This is a story I want to talk about

This is a story I want to talk about quite a lot, but it’s late, so I’ll just post it, and we’ll all talk about it later.

An Italian Tourist in Baghdad.

appreciating the finer points of disaster

“The economists didn’t just single out the U.S. for criticism; 70% of participants said the response of governments around the world to the global recession has been inadequate. “The Europeans or Japanese don’t seem to be doing near enough to kickstart their economies,” said Nariman Behravesh of IHS Global Insight. “It could be we’ve done all the right things, but the rest of the world goes down the tubes.” (WSJ)

Even as the numbers rise, the numbers fall. As the numbers fall, so the numbers rise. On one side, too little is being done. On another, too much. Between all of them, I sense a fog disappearing, a growing perversity—as if, secretly, this was starting to look more like an opportunity than a disaster.

A love letter from a killer to the world.

Light coming in the color of ocean, through

the window, through the crossed panes,

onto the tile floor scattered with

shapeless mounds of cloth. The two

beds, low and narrow, one empty.

 

The silence. Not a bird or insect.

The distant rocking of boats

at the marina. A sense of desiccated,

exhausted peace over the house. An interlude

of rest before drama and trouble

resume with the waking hours.

 

Insane drunkenness. Leering and collapsing

Comments on the Second Presidential Debates: 8/7/08

The debate tonight was an inspiring experience for me, and I have found it, maybe out of a sense of perversity, to be a largely uninspiring period of time. It’s been so long that I’ve heard any public issue addressed in a reasonable, honest way, that when it happens I want to slap my hands and thank whoever is responsible for having the simple courage to say what is true.

This is the most important lesson to be learned. That it is possible to say things that are true, and that anybody can say them. Truth has its contexts, and it has its nuances, and neither the world of politics and business-the macro world-nor the even larger and more finely nuanced world of personal life-the micro world-can be helped by anything but a fire to accomplish something good.

The problem with saying something like that is that you, the reader, and myself, the writer, both immediately question ourselves, saying “Is that naïve? Do I have any fire to accomplish something good?”

You create effects of quality in all moments of your life. You experience the world-its breakups, its defeats, its sunrises and snowfalls-as good and bad. This simple acknowledgment, of the universality of complicated experience, signifies in any of us willing to step forward a fire to accomplish good.

Maayan told me about seeking “balance” in the visual design of her magazine.

Experimental Lectures: Still Representin’

I gave a lecture two weeks ago. Originally, I’d wanted to talk about what I call “automatic art.” The term refers to the process of using operations of chance (or mathematics) to create works of art. John Cage did this when he composed “12 Radios, 24 People,” which required the performers to adjust radios to predetermined frequencies on a predetermined schedule. While all the performers operations are controlled for, the location of the radios is not. Since different locations receive different combinations and strengths of radio stations, the piece cannot be the same in any two locations. Location, then, rather than any action by the performer, is the creative element in the piece. Cage’s algorithm simply permits location to enact its effect.

As I was preparing the lecture, I realized that to deliver a controlled, linear, sequentially-organized lecture on automatic processes and chance operations was sort of hypocritical. Or at odds with itself. The lecture had to be the product of a sequence of chance operations. Yet I still wanted it to function as a traditional lecture–providing facts and interpretation to the audience. So I rounded up all the concepts I’d considered for the lecture (including “Light Speed Travel,” “Finnegans Wake,” “Early Polar Expeditions“–I go for the gusto with these lectures), wrote them on little scraps of paper, and put them in a hat.

Adventures in Food and Drink: Pinikpikan

Fair Warning: This post will offend some of our readership with delicate and/or vegetarian sensibilities. It’ll offend people with normal sensibilities. Hell, this post offends me. The immoral fourth edition of Adventures in Food and Drink continues after the jump. Enter at your own risk. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.

what happened to me last night

There was a man on the balcony. I watched him standing there. Feet shifting on the cement, flickering light from the tiki torches. Two feet, black shoes. The bedspread was damp from humidity. It was a hot night.

 

–You fly a lot, right? Cheky, you fly a lot?

 

I wiped my forehead with a crumpled paper towel I’d just blown my nose with. It smeared a little of the blood.

Think of this a picture of life.

–Dedicated to my self, with whom I have
an ambivalent relationship.

Think of this as a picture of life. You can walk in it, you can speak in it, everything’s the same. The difference is that this isn’t life. It’s a picture.

So, how does that make it different?

That’s a good question. How do you think it makes it different?

I guess that different things matter—or have different kinds of importance. Like, in paintings, pure form is a powerful idea, and probably takes away the importance of emotional concerns.

How would that affect you?

…It’s hard to say. It might be a relief. Imagine all the worries that would just… go away. Seeking satisfaction, being loyal to people, being meaningful to people you don’t even know. The world progresses visually, in shapes, but there’s no sound. Or if there is sound, it becomes a secondary sense, like smelling is for most people.

These burdens.

Oh great.

I knew you were going to say that.

How?

Because I’m looking at you and I’m listening to you and that’s what the clues tell me.

You really do look at life as a picture, don’t you?

Everybody has some version of that. It depends on how you interpret the effects of different metaphors. For you, looking at life as a picture—at least, the way you interpret it—relieves those burdens. It might not do that for somebody else. Buckminster Fuller used the analogy of a bunch of different ropes tied end to end. If you tie a knot in one end, and roll the knot down the rope, it eventually passes onto the second rope. How? The form and function of the object are still intact, but it shares absolutely no material with itself. Is it the same knot? You didn’t tie a new one. Anyway, the knot moves down the ropes, recreating itself. Until you get to the end of the rope. You roll and roll and it recreates and recreates until—it’s gone. He called knots “pattern integrities,” and he said life was the same thing.

That’s like saying being alive is the same thing as being dead.

Exactly. Those problems, those concerns, don’t exist. They never existed. No moment shares any material. It’s constant recreation, constant disappearing, nothing but a form that gives it a sense of constancy.

It sounds just like the picture idea. They’re both systems for making problems go away. But some systems make even that step unnecessary. If you step face forward into the stream of life, those lingering concerns start to feel natural, and relentless, and all the things you fear most. But on the other side of that is something more powerful, which is a clear-eyed view of the world. The more you see the world as it really is, the fewer questions you have. The fewer answers you need.

How would you make decisions?

Why couldn’t you? Isn’t that a part of it?

So, just, total acceptance of all you witness?

In essence, it’s permission to act naturally. There doesn’t have to be a sense of dissonance between how you perceive reality, and how you feel as though you are supposed to feel about the world. You feel like you do because it’s natural, because that’s what happens. In fact, you can’t even do anything naturally.

So, am I a slave to my biology, or fate, or…what?

No, no, you get to decide what “natural” is, just as much as it decides about you. Being natural and being alive are the same thing.

That’s an awfully permissive policy. Would you tell that to everyone?

It wouldn’t make sense to everyone. It doesn’t have to. It just has to make sense to me.

Wait a minute. I think I see the difference in how we approach this issue. I sort of run my ideas by a self-created audience. I discuss things with myself, debate them with myself. It’s the side that tries to understand other people, and oneself in the context of other people. You don’t have that. You are the audience. That’s probably a symptom of psychosis.

The diner closes.

A Short Exploration of the Possibilities.

Sometimes I forget that I don’t have to write poetry. I can tell true stories, transcribe those phrases that are flying around my head all day, tell untrue stories, reenact important moments in history, forget history, try to forget history, get bogged down in history, or simply be paralyzed and staring at paper all day long. All of these are possible. If I want, I can write a series of words that don’t make sense. If I want, I can do that all day forever.

But that isn’t enough! One needs a sense of purpose. Something to stick to in dire times, something to keep in focus.

“But our trip was different. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in the national character. It was a gross physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country-but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that.” (H.S.T.)

Life lived as a demonstration of life’s possibilities. Intriguing. To seek not only the novel and extreme, but also the total spectrum of insane boredom, terror, nostalgia, mysticism, and hilarity.

Confusion, the disappearance of money, the presence of money, the question and inconstant reply of money.

Do we lose our memory when we fall asleep? Do we reconstruct our lives from the clues we find in waking?

The French people in the living room. The stripped lines of rain on the window. The door cracked open, the light creeping through. Dust on the floor. A whisp of petrol in the air. Dregs of wine. The leftovers of a forgotten celebration.

Capgras’ syndrome.

http://www.psychnet-uk.com/dsm_iv/capgras_syndrome.htm

These sorts of things are carefully philosophically regulated by relegation to a simple malfunction of the human system. And perhaps this is true. As a not-doctor, I am forced to examine and understand it using different methods. I must try to put myself in a Capgras mind.

Read the two paragraphs of that link.

(pause)

Now, notice below, where it notes that “The person is conscious of the abnormality of these perceptions. There is no hallucination.”

In other words, this is a way of thinking that can be observed and looked at. A Capgras mind’s first impeachable offense is that it has no excuse, I suppose. It cannot rid itself of the nagging but inexplicable impression that its home, its pets, its very mother, have been replaced by identical doubles. There is no hallucination. In other words, no distorted perception. Total objectivity.

Again, as a not-doctor, I have to question sincerely if it is possible this is simply a brain malfunction. Isn’t it a philosophical malfunction as well? Or maybe not even a malfunction, if we’re speaking philosophically. And then on what level does abnormal electrical activity in the brain become abnormal philosophical activity? If this idea leads to psychotic behavior, does that make the idea incorrect?

At the other end of the spectrum are people concerned they are psychotic, but without able to summon a single reason for being thought of as such. (http://www.medhelp.org/posts/show/268200)

Let’s examine the spectrum of self-awareness in interaction with psychotic behavior. Possibilities accorded thus far by medical science and self-reported surveys:

1) The subject exhibits psychotic behavior without realizing it.

2) The subject exhibits psychotic behavior, but does realize it (Capgras’ syndrome).

3) The subject exhibits what it considers normal behavior, but others consider that behavior psychotic. (the juror)

4) The subject exhibits what others consider normal behavior, but which it itself considers psychotic. (everybody knows what I’m talking about here).

It begins to seem like the origin of “psychosis” is actually a disconnect between a person and his or her social culture.

I guess I don’t know where to take that next. It was a short exploration of the possibilities.