030103 I�m such a dork. I live in a com pew ter. But it�s okay cuz it has windows thru witch hike ansi. * The element of accident is of utmost importance to the kind of �work� I do. When I finally get around to doing it, that is. Of course, this aspect of doing it involves a good bit of not doing anything. Or rather, doing just enough to let chaos�the order I don�t understand�do the rest. You fucking cock. Fuck my nasty shit E hot sopping pussy you son of a bitch. Lick my fucking cunt. Rip me open and thrust your hard cock in hard. Shove my face to the floor and pound my tight little ass. Make me beg. Make me fucking beg for it then rape me. * I�m happy to be alive. * This voice said to me: Come back to the body. You live in the sea. The sun is yellow. Remember the words without trying so hard. Tell the story. It�s funny. It�s okay to laugh. Get up & stretch, go in the water, do some cartwheels. You are so lucky and you don�t even know it. I love you. Fuck me. Fuck me. Please fuck me. Fuck my pussy please. Oh god, fuck me hard. 030203 Documents. I like documents. I want them to look and feel like documents. I want them to start out crisp & then decay or be protected & stay crisp a little longer. In a sheaf, in a binder, three-hole-punched, magnanimously anonymous, full of blocks, sections, that most beautiful stark rainbow : black & white documents. Fresh & tasty & practical as baked cookies. 030303 It�s ninesday. It�s not about writing, it�s about filling the well. Oh nevermind. I can�t explain it right now. Basically you just have to live. If words is what comes out of you, then good. If it�s something else, then that�s good too. Klepack said don�t say anything until you have something to say. Bukowski said if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently, and if it doesn�t roar out then do something else. Rilke said ask yourself in the depths of the night if you would die if you couldn�t do it, and only do it if the answer is yes. Joe Blow in that magazine I flipped thru said you have to take risks. I don�t think that means you have to go kayaking and have a square jaw and jump out of airplanes and shit. I think it could be just talking to someone at the bus stop or in the sauna. I think living could be having biscuits at ten thirty at night with your wife and your goofy screaming little baby daughter, biscuits with butter and rock salt on them. And being there, really being there. It�s a stupid thing to say, everybody says you have to be there. But it�s true. You do. Little kids do it, sometimes old people do it. People like me just have to get kicked in the groin by a poem that says, you asshole, quit being so pretentious and calling yourself a writer and just shut the fuck up unless you have to say something. Once in a while, and then I have a good talk with my wife and play with my daughter and laugh and act silly, and I remember what it�s like to actually be there. And, silly stupid hopeless ridiculous old me, I get right back to hoping that some words are going to come out. And maybe they will. They have before. I know, I have felt it. I have felt what it�s like when it�s not writing, when the words just bubble up and flow out of their own accord, unasked for as the man said. That has happened. And I hope it happens again. Because it turns me on. That�s all I�m trying to say. It�s pershidium, that�s what I need to fill the well up with. It gets empty, the well, and you can�t write it full. Writing is a result. Pershidium in the well is not exactly like gasoline in the tank. With gasoline, it�s pretty predictable�you put it in and then you can drive the car. With pershidium it�s a little more chaotic. You never know exactly what�s going to happen. But you know you need it, all the same. Yes. I think I would die if I never got to go on any more spaceships. But I�ve been looking in the wrong places for the spaceships. They�re in my kitchen. They�re in my bathroom. They�re in the dogs� pawprints in the snow in the back yard. And if I�m a zombie just hulking thru those spaces, I�m going to miss the boat. If I�m really there, I can get on board the next time one comes thru. 030403 Okay so last night I had another of my little attacks. Ann talked (maybe you need to panic sometimes, maybe it helps the fire. But this doesn�t feel like fire, it feels like a pile of cold shit. Well, shit�s pretty good fuel, you know....) and rubbed me thru it, and I concluded that I have to make stuff. Whether it be words, pictures, pictures of words, music, or just fucking whatever, I just have to make stuff. I can�t exist and not do that. She said, okay. And now I�m exhausted but I think I�m going to make it another day, for what that�s worth. Also I dreamed I was watching a basketball game from way up near the ceiling of the stadium. I was kind of disembodied I guess. Actually, the game hadn�t started yet and they were having some kind of pre-game shenanigans. This guy named Corporate Pinkington, or maybe his last name was Pricington, was out on the court, stomping around, and he shot at the basket and made it. The announcer said He made it! And that�s a free supply of diapers for Corporate...! He was wearing nothing but thigh high black stockings, and he was really white and really fat, and I was thinking God this is stupid, but at the same time, well, what the hell, if it works for you.... 030503 okay let�s try this again. i�m lying in bed with my wife, my wife, my wife. she�s cool. she�s like those horses on my wall that said �If you love something, set it free....� She also just said, �Look out for those ants that are coming, they�re going to suck your brains out.� I love her sometimes. So I was vavvling avout this stuff again: It�s an engine and a map. Okay? So like, it�s a map when you just put down the words for something that happened, something you saw, something you dreamed, whatever. No art, just saying what it is. It�s an engine when it takes on a life of its own, which basically means you look at it later and it is interesting to read. Or it reveals something you didn�t know you were saying the first time around. Now when I was a kid it was also a dynamo pretty often--I mean it was a circular cycle between writing down the report and seeing the thing I was reporting on. It happened simultaneously. That�s when I was most alive. They made each other become each other, the two aspects. That doesn�t happen as often now, it seems life gets in the way or something. I don�t know. One thing I can do now, though, is get fuel for the engine by taking risks. Even little (big) ones like asking Sruky if I could take his picture. If you go to interesting places and have interesting dreams, and take the step from phantom dream into actual dream travel, then it gets really easy to quit trying to write, and you have some interesting things to report. And sometimes, the reports take on that life force, and they become something else. And that�s how pershidium works. Sort of. And yes, you can go back and rewrite things, but not to make them better, not to stuff magic into a corpse. Just to make it a little clearer, just to tidy up a bit. Rewriting isn�t drugs, it�s tea. And just like those horses on my wall, you have to let go of the craving for pershidium in order to go out and get any pershidium. Pershidium has a way of looking the other way when you�re swinging at it with your grubby mitts. Don�t force it, is all I�m saying. You get a little bit. Hopefully you�ll get what you need. For the rest, we�ll have to fill in as best we can with silver, gold, tofu, floorboards, laughing just like any hardscrabble spaceman farmer Although, come to think of it, the desire to get the pershidium does play into this map-engine duality. Because pershidium isn�t merely fuel for writing, it�s fuel for life. And why should I deny that I want some more of that? Oh shit. I knew this would happen. It made sense, I tried to explain it, and I�m losing it. I�m more restless now than I was before. Fuck me. Good night. 030703 wine is the best all-around drink. and it sorta pains me to say it but white is better for just drinking because it�s lighter and doesn�t make your head as swampy. Here are some of things I�ve learned by NOT going to caf�s nor typing: 030903 capoeira has many things to teach me, such as movement (the opposite of death), but it can all be encapsulated as one thing: clarity What do I mean by this? I�ve tried to say it before; what harm in trying to say it again? It�s pretty conventional as far as wisdom goes. Only my understanding of it remains a fragile, verdant thing. 031003 wait. i take it back. i won�t encapsulate; that�s oversimple. it teaches me many things, including: giving up is giving up, no matter how you slice it. learning requires humility. learning is voluntary. i don�t have to purchase my right to exist. junk food too readily acquired makes you stupider. a right to exist implies a right to enjoy. the list goes on. i�ll keep you posted. 031103 Practice is as real and simple as the floor boards in the attic. It�s okay to throw stuff away. Here, this one�s probably the hardest one for me: you don�t have to be the best to still be drawn to play. Some old cliches are true: playing and losing is still more alive than pretending you didn�t want to win in the first place. All that �male heirarchical bullshit� is okay after all; it�s okay to madly respect someone because he can kick your ass�especially if you hug each other afterwards. Even if you don�t plan to give yourself little tests, you always know when you�ve passed or failed one. Art forms, games, and games that are art forms have this in common: eventually you have to do it with other people. I am a dolphin. I am not king of the dolphins. I am not the only dolphin. But I am a dolphin, and I want to swim with you. 031303 Everything in the house smells like hot oil. 031503 MELTWATER! the alley is a thin, fast river and the sidewalks are chains of lakes 031703 The grass is brown, and patches of mud show through. The sticks stick up into the sky; the sky is blanched. This is the first day of this year to open the windows in the attic: the little one in here, and the big one at the end of the great hall. Emptying the trash, I am reminded of last year, the year before that, the year before that, and every year that has had a Spring. 031903 Well, obviously the war started, because I can�t get any music on the frigging radio. 032003 Forgive me for saying something obvious, but money isn�t evil, people are evil. And yet, a war is more honestly justified by money than by falling back on �good� vs �evil.� * We have developed some bad habits. We don�t know how to leave each other alone. I have a hard time relaxing my jaw around you. Sometimes you let me come too soon. But it will come. It will come, or else one or the other of us will walk right out that airlock one cold cold night out here in space. * IDEAL: Everybody has a place, everybody plays a part. The text-based, reducible, simple, pleasing nature of the universe, however, says this: it is up to each to discern, enjoy, thrive in her own place, and it is software or hardware of the mind or soul which makes connections among places. What does this mean? It means Capoeira itself is the mestre of mestres! Why? Let�s see if I can get a handle on this thing I have faith in. 032103 Why write? It�s like that one girl said: to commemorate. Even tho there�s nothing new, also there is nothing old! Each NOW is utterly, perfectly, beautifully, horribly, meaninglessly unique, and no one can ever be reproduced. So you talk about them. You talk about them, and that makes you live. * Today is my favorite Spring day. It�s a day for lipstick and thick cocks! Let the sidewalk convey you towards your fate! Floppy wet clouds slide lovingly across an oh-so-crisp sky! The air, the air is juicy! Dress me in jeans, but a few bills in my pocket, put me on a lumbering bus, a dinosaur ride to the junction of old and new. Printing teaches me the song of the mechanical, and how to let go of fear of physical mistakes. Capoeira, well, capoeira teaches me how to be a dog. Writing hasn�t taught me anything (that�s why I love it). Packages of comfort in the body jog or stroll or drive, slow-no-wake, down the streets. Heart lunging toward them, I am still alive and horny as fuck today. My wife has sexy boots and likes to go out once in a while. Life is really not too fucking bad, okay? * Laura Prepon is so fucking hot. * That does it. I�m putting on her collar. My wife�s collar, my collar. I can�t believe this is working! It�s sending queasy juice right into my stupid little white boy cuck bitch peepee. 032203 Another anticlimactic climax. I wish I could feel good after fucking. * So many people, especially high-ranking officials of one kind or another, say when asked about their position on the war, �Nobody wants to go to war, but...� or �Nobody wants to go in and kill anybody, but....� That�s just not true. Some people want to. 032303 I am a tyrranical coward. A cowardly despot. I will remain essentially miserable until I learn to be what I am doing at any given moment. Until I stop yelling and clapping my hands at Meggie. Until I stop jerking the dogs around. Until I free myself from the bondage of this stupid computer. 032903 Contre-Mestre Mariano said and did a lot of things, but I�m going to encapsulate my memory thus: �Put a smile on your face, and respect your opponent.� But there�s more to it than that. �My life� is a study in humiliation. I am a turgid monkey. On any given evening, you have one last chance to really put your heart into something. Go ahead. Let the tea kettle scream! Let the water jiggle sensuously as it cascades toward the cups! PS: What if you really could just kill the leaders and avoid all the civilians? SPIRIT = people are hologrammatic. Each individual is a microcosm of the holy. There is no qualitative difference between one person and one million people. You don�t have to fight to choose between Capoeira and teh-dsa. When you say �Be totally honest!� as often as not you mean �Say what I want to hear�but make it convinving!� Typing here that Kate�s dispassionate, impersonal responses to my last few emails has made me feel like a forlorn slave isn�t going to make me feel any better, so I won�t bother. 033003 The attic air is fresh and green. Mutually nondirectional. From kettle to cup. The ritual of the one beer. All rituals are somewhat forced once they are recognized as rituals. And that�s okay. * Okay, this may sound a lot lame, but here it is: It�s so nice to have Microsoft Word back again. They really did right by us Maccies with the X version. It�s bigger, a little slower and more confusing, but it�s more like Word 5.1 than anything I�ve seen since, well, Word 5.1. Yay! Oh god, I�m such a dork.