030204 the most dramatic thing i’ve done today is take a shit I was on my way down to Engineering to engineer a magnetic bottle to hold some antimatter (which we were going to use to blow up a giant one-celled viral organism that was sucking us in) when i stumbled on a floor-level lighting strip and fell on my face. i got carpet burn on my cheek. We had this system whereby all the high commanders had to serve as slaves for a period of time before they could command. Service was supposed to make them compassionate. Unfortunately, before we got the rest of the selection criteria worked out, more than half of the high leaders ended up sullen and bitterly vengeful. Is it smokey time? The MSN (Minimally Satisfactory Narrative, also known as Minimally Sustainable Narrative) model of the universe suggests that the universe will continue to expand just up to the point at which we all get tired of it, and then whatever happens next--the Big Rip, the Big Crunch, whatever--will provide a crisis or peak in the long strange story, during which we’ll all be tested, chagrinned, and ultimately redeemed, and after which we’ll have a charged but peaceful opportunity to look back and reflect on the picaresque journey that has been the cosmos. 030304 This battered old StyleWriter (they used the JammedTogether syntax for naming even back then!) on my desk in the Basement.... It’s slow, misaligned, dirty, low-res, and the output smears like a sonofabitch! But it’s so RETROCOOL, I think I’ll keep it! Couldn’t use that with OS X either.... Next comp definitely=Pismo. A good power boost, firewire, etcetera, but STILL 9 BOOTABLE!!!!! (And still relatively cheap and getting cheaper!) The French are notorious killers. I never thought Christ was all that funny. All in all, my marriage is pretty good. All the angst bullshit I’ve propagated (to myself, of course) about it can be de-bullshitted down to one simple complaint. And I’m not going to mention that complaint here now. Okay I will. After all, if I can’t be even a little brave “here,” how can I expect to be a lot brave “out there?” The complaint is: I wish she were hotter. And then the obligatory discrepancies, attenuations, apologia... she could say the same about me, etc, etc. But that’s not the point. Anyway, not the one I’m getting at here, with the complaining and the FLUBBER!!!!! Well, whatever. We eats the meats we gots in the pantry, hey? I’m going to go to the beating. The terra dancer will approve. I will be exhausted, shaky, flatulent, pale. And yet, and yet.... Rhythm is such a powerful river it outlives the stagnant sea. River. Mountain. Word. Those are the old things that disguise the new in loving anachrony. I wish I had rememberd the atubak. Rochambo. Hi Fi. Fuel. Comet. Eighth Note. Alterra by the Lake. Steamers. Even grisly Starbucks. Penultimate nodes of dream-life Survival! Happening! Take a Picture, as it will Last Longer! Probably! 030404 COOL WORD THINGY OF THE DAY: the difference between “pablum” and “pabulum.” 030504 The old man only lets me out to play when he’s STONED! I’m known all over campus for my class-A farts and my INAPPROPRIATE EMOTIONAL RESPONSES! 030604 It’s crowded in here. Duh. I took the only remaining table. There was a guy in front of me, bronze, rather squat, balding, who took so long at the creamer and napkins and stuff that i didn’t have to rush to get over here before him. but i feel a tad guilty. but if he wanted he could come over here and pull up a chair. i wouldn’t care. i’m not going to get up and ask him to, tho. Anyway. There’s a guy in here reading. Sitting at a table on the mezzanine in the wan winter light. He just rolled a smoke from my tobacco. He said thank you. He seems like a nice guy. I don’t have a point to make in this paragraph. I just thought I’d provide it in case you wanted to download it, use it as an exercise in color adjustment. Make the winter sky a summer one. Turn blue ducks red, red roses violet. See what you can do. If color adjustment doesn’t provide the results you want, undo. Anyway. I don’t have much battery juice left, so I’ll make this brief. Ann and Megan and I were at some kind of weekend (or longer?) festival. It was based around but not limited to Capoeira. Things were just starting to roll. There were several old buildings, in a rambling red-carpet-inn style. The frontmost mansion was where the owners of the land lived. Our relationship with them was somewhere between acquaintance and friendship. I was wandering around, trying loosely to find Ann and Megan. Megan was a little older than she is now, but still in the single digits (I don’t recall anything about any other kid(s)). I had something I kinda wanted to tell or show Ann. In my wanderings, I passed where the roda was getting set up. Some young woman was starting to play on the drums a little. It was sunny and dusty. I heard some voice saying, “If you don’t want to play Capoeira, you can...” but I was planning to play, after I was finished looking around and so on. I felt good. I thought, “This is perfect. This is just what I needed.” Also in my wanderings I went into a little pub. It was dark but well-lit (?), pleasantly crowded. The serving girls were very young. One was probably around ten, the other maybe twelve or fourteen. They were shirtless. The 12–14-year old caught my eye and smiled very coquettishly. I was moved. Her small breasts were arresting! I felt a twinge of taboo-guilt, intensified by inability not to associate her with my own daughter, but she was very seductive and comely, so I looked and looked again. Back outside, I was confronted by a bearish man, dark-haired, bearded. A little like a non-cartoon version of Bluto, only taller, not fat. He attacked me. I leapt into the air, retreating, stayed aloft in a graceful arc over about twenty feet. I knew how to do this because of Capoeira. I noticed that some people saw me and I was glad the move had come off well. The guy kept coming after me. We exchanged a few moves, some feints and skevas and footwork, but his advances were a little more forceful than I was prepared to handle again. I kept up the jumping retreat. When I started thinking too much about flying, the flying didn’t work so well; I kept barely out of his reach. Finally I was up against one of the larger buildings, maybe it was the main mansion. There was a wooden structure, almost a fire-escape, with scaffolding, flights of stairs, small landings.... I tried flying up it, but again the flying just barely worked so I had to supplement with climbing. I did manage to gain altitude over the bearish guy, though, and finally turned around and bore down on him with high energy. I drove him back down to the ground. Thinking about what I did next, imagining it, made it work: I pulled a knife out of seemingly nowhere, brandished it, but while he was concerning himself with that I pulled a smaller one, a pocketknife really, with my other hand, and threw it, with inexplicable expertise, right into his right eye. He died on the spot, I think. It didn’t seem like a terribly big deal, not highly dramatic nor particularly criminal. Just part of the whole scene. I was glad I had won, but not flabbergasted about it. I think I found Ann and Megan shortly after that. Then, after waking up, I went to Saturday class at the Southtown. Wayne told us to loosen up our upper bodies in the ginga. He demonstrated, and I saw that his hips were leading, and the junction between his hips and his torso was very loose and free. I tried it, and actually started to feel it this time. He said you can be more ready to move, out of the way for instance, when you do it like that. And I thought about flying. I realized that the key to flying AND the ginga was relaxation. With my hips relaxed, the ginga felt good and not tiresome. And I imagined that had I had that attitude in the dream, I probably would not have had trouble at all getting airborne. It just felt like it was exactly how you would fly if you could fly. Maybe you can. Maybe I can. I can. It’s like, you’re not forcing anything down. You’re not nailing anything down. Even if you’re trying to fly, and you try to force yourself up, you’re still forcing yourself down. It’s not forcing, it’s releasing. You can apply quick quips of force, then, at your leisure, when you need to. INVENTORY: laughter relaxing bringing your dreams with you, across, over to here, wherever love Love of course makes anyone great, as great as they can be. Love is the great extractor of the essential contribution of anyone. I have one of those rings in my earlobe. Not a piercing, I mean the kind that opens a space, diametric plane parallel to your upright axis, in your earlobe. I started small of course, incrementally increasing the diameter. Fortunately, my ear has not developed any infections. My hole is now about three-quarters of an inch across. I hope to get it big enough that someone with a modest-sized dick can fuck me in the earlobe hole. I think it makes me look tough and strange, even though I am secretly neither. I am holding a styro cup of coffee and talking to my friends. We are working something out. We’re going to meet up later and do something. Right now I think I’m going to have a smoke--another affectation I’ve adopted in imaginary self-defense. Ricardo (Agula) (is that how you spell it?) told me my favorite song, Marin Hiero Seu (I don’t think that’s exactly how you spell it) refers to a sailor or a sea-man, who is alone. “Basically you’re singing about a shipwrecked sailor,” greasy David added. No wonder I like that song so much. It turns out that song is actually a song in its own right, in Brazil. Some of the songs we do are specifically Capoeira chants, others are adaptations of “real” songs. Cool. You’re really, really existing right now, man. I love drums. Conditional: Repeat while (“in love” or “alive”) continue living End repeat * It bears mentioning that “in love” effectively equals “alive.” Both values are included in the code for purposes of clarity and backward compatibility. * Looking at my old Zip disks now, in the era of the 80GB HD, is a little like looking at my old floppies was, when the Zip was new and huge. Gives me a little of that Classic Mac OS nostalgia, a little of that remembered smoke and floorboards, that oh I was young then and entranced by a virtual country more real than the real. And it still is. That’s the amazing thing. Even though I have to keep reinventing it, keep surrendering to it, keep remembering how to forget to outthink it, it still is the Place of the Way after all. Granpa was right. Bless him. La vem, la vem! 030704 Theft poetry. The poetry of theft. Marcus Ajufa this week released his third volume of poetry, “Stolen Moments.” “They truly are,” he said, looking wistful. “They truly are stolen moments.” Then he went back to whatever he was doing. 030904 It’s almost time to go outside and contemplatively smoke. I hope it’s not too cold to relax. I hope it’s not too cold to appear nonchalant. I hope the little firefly lights string up and down the boulevard, turning everything into magic soup. I’m a pea. That’s why I hope. Dreamt last night of Ann giving strangers blowjobs in public, showing me the ropes of that game. We were running around, mischief was afoot. We had the secret, we were on top of things the way a train track is when it is alive and thrumming electrically thru the night. We were having a good time together. Woke up, fucked her sideways from behind. Came right away when she said SHE had been dreaming of picking up some guy in a bowling alley while I looked on. Laughed. It was the shortest fuck I’ve had since I was in college I think. But it felt good. Actually a decent orgasm for a change. Probably because I wasn’t so worried about it. 031004 Emergency repairs at my Wednesday night hant force me to go someplace else. This is an older place. A residential place, a place with painted balconies and homemade clothespins. This place has seen the hazy sun of dozens of wars. In this place I am a stranger. I sense no immediate danger, but the veil is thin. Protocol is both implicit and important. The uniform of the officers is a grizzled face. The scouts have glasses, are missing teeth, and bring you coffee in a plain china cup. 031104 WORD OF THE DAY: “photoshopped” The best way to get free (if ephemeral) pix of hot butch girls is to go out and about and watch for them. INTERNET REFERS TO SELF AS “I” 031204 I stink like cigarettes and coffee and ink and my feet ain’t pretty. 031304 A very small man once said, “It’s all about creating a space,” and I provisionally believed him. I wish I had something juicy to read. That’s why I’m etc etc It’s the same old story. Lucy asked Snoopy. HIM asks ME: there’s so much pain and suffering (“pain and suffering”) in the world (“the world”). How can you sit here and write about trivial violets and coffee and creating a space? How can you sit here and be satisfied that that young couple two tables away is in love, is the picture of perfect beauty? What do you know about anything? I still don’t have of course an answer. I wish (even still) I could write a good haiku embodying this though: paper tube imperfectly round full of tobacco awaiting fire Well. Maybe later. Dreams fulfill functions “writing” cannot, or anyway might not. Watching that old red flannel guy over there. Him face is old sun. Old lady with him and they smile patiently. He has FOUR PACKS OF CIGARETTES! Him hairy arms dirt outdoors 1970’s good morning. Touch. Read. Investigate. I can’t (or at any rate might not) “write” “about” him, but I will see him later in a dream, and for that I will be grateful, and by that I will be incensed! Men like him are the real poetry Pretend you’re looking away off left thinking about something profound or profane, while the exquisite trivia of that girl with the black leather boots is about to catch you looking at her. I like this fuckd-up old town Mil waukee . It’s got Capoeira Batuque (at least a little frond of that), old buildings, weird pictures, sexy people, grizzled people, people on the bus, people in the streets, people with guns and drugs, people without same, people with stuck-up dogs and their big hair-dos, people who build porches in front of their old houses, industrial waste, a lot of tall banks and stuff like that, a lot of pretentious fucks sitting in cafes with their stupid little laptops, too many orange lights, girls with soulful eyes who know exactly how beautiful they are but they don’t know why. Bookstores. Libraries. Schools. Fish. You know, fish. Old crusty Italians. Young slick Puerto Ricans. Gray streets. Tentacles of frost on the zillion bifurcations of the trees. A big fucking Lake. People who’ve lived here longer than you, and know places to sneak into. The slip-slop-slip-slash of the water in and among the boulders. Bugs. A zillion cars with no-place to go. The way the light comes sideways off the touchable texture of that girl-with-the-black-boots’ legs. Family, for better or for worse. One way. Farwell. North. Janesville. Video adventures. Switch. Bad bands and good times. Plenty of smoke and alcohol. Even some tofu. What’s not to like? The perfect couple has left the building. Good luck, them. I don’t think I really have much more to say this morning. Damn. I The smartest thing I ever read about the Internet is, “It’s just people talking.” Of course, that understatement belies the complex organic life-form that it implies. Does that make sense? Oh well. Is “organic life-form” redundant? Again, oh well. 031504 It seems as though overnight I have become unable to blend in with college folks. Unable even to procure a cup of coffee in the normal way. I stand and I stand at the counter, but no-one comes. Not even the shiny black girl sitting back there eating a whopper. Biotch. You know any Hendrix, man? I can’t believe someone just asked someone that with a straight face. That could be Taelin over there at that table of geeky gamers. In a white sleeveless ribbed cotton T. Because he never got any older, after we parted ways, of course. He was always a little older than me and now he’s a little younger. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. GOODBYE, GOODBYE, GOODBYE. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. GOODBYE, GOODBYE, GOODBYE. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. GOODBYE, GOODBYE, GOODBYE. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. GOODBYE, GOODBYE, GOODBYE. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. GOODBYE, GOODBYE, GOODBYE. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye. Done my duty. Semi-erect. Hazy randomness in the pants. OMSATIGo. Oh my god I know. I know. Totally. Oh my god. the longer you delay the (luscious luxury of) OMS, the more stretched out your ATIGo. Shut. Up. Oh my god. Shut. The fuck. UP! These two things: Willfulness and Willingness. And a third thing, what is the third thing? The she-stone? A twig? A little bag of something? These three things tell stories. That is all. It is enough. For now. Maybe next time I’ll sit there and do random what-happeneds, without trying to censor their alikeness. Just to see what happens. I’m still a child, so I can still say, about that and other things: YAY!!!!! 031704 I want to piss but I am doing the Work so I can’t his little pieces of fluff “The false exclusivity of genius is, in the opinion of this court, redundant.” INSTANT ANALYSIS: What you have to understand is, when someone says they would love to be able to poke around inside your mind, they may not mean it metaphorically, in the sense of being able linguistically to explore your inner creative secrets. It’s possible that they want to literally open your cranium and scramble your actual brain, with a stick. Right. Which of course would kill you instantly. Instantly. Right. Lick dick dicklick. Click. Click lick. Lick click click lick dick. Dick click. Virgin version. Version aversion. Verge an virgin. Virgin version verge an aversion version. Verge. Verge. These are all so old. Trees. Macaroni. Sauce. Please. That’s weird. Hullabaloo. Is that how you spell that? There is so much noise in this head. This head. This head. This red red red monkey head. Cut to the Sorry to be so tired. But this is summer: sideways; folds of gentle female flesh; someone with a face like norah jones only a little sharper, a little more acute, comes on in and sets down; her things is it ever difficult, to be so beautiful? she changes her mind and sits at the other side of the table. in this manner the fish, the creek, the fish in the creek and the creek in the fish, are reborn like glo stix. i sincerely thank god I sure like it when a hot girl ganks onto my hair and forces my mouth down over a hot dildo. Don’t you? Especially when I’m wearing my manly watch and my wrists are tied so I can’t even look at it. Is magic defined as defiance of probability (define defiance)? Probably (ability). Magic is what you remember, remember? Oak grove in center of urban strange. Guileless strategy for firewood. SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Suck that dildo, kid. 031804 Isn’t this a great county where we can have popcorn almost any time we want it? I think I’ll have the popcorn and meltwater (MELT•WOT•UR) special, please. 032304 As long as I am alive, I will play [that is the sum of my notes from the workshop with Amen this weekend]. I would have I just can’t think of nothing to say. And the cracks in the basement stairs to say that Fuel is probably the least sexy of all the cafes. And the cute mole on the perfect right breast of Metina thinks so, too. I’m not making much sense lately, and I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way. look good in the sun, the moist dick is not necessarily the opposite of pussy i wouldn’t mind getting stoned right now. just escaping into the sad, watery Wisconsin spring. I can only see her knees In memory of Dekna on the floorboards. Brief flash of actual boring autobiographical info: I was sitting here, “it” wasn’t working, I went (feeling sad) to the park, played my (Tamandua’s) berimbau for about 15 minutes or so (it was cold but I was warm), listened to some crows and some anonymous hoots down by the river, came back, sat at the very same table with a new cup of coffee, and now whether “it” works or not it’s not going to make me sad. Ta-da! Capoeira! The backwards-forwardness of it all! Capoeira is magic, even by Clarke’s formula. It is “sufficiently advanced technology!” People when looking for technological power often make the mistake of blinding ourselves to anything “before” the present. We peer into the myopic future, hoping for a visitation by an infinite wisdom. We may as well be peering into a paper bag. Speaking of which smoke tastes good some comfort a prop for your neighbor’s feet an old gentle ghost a ponytail hanging down someone’s flannel-shirted back the arm-length tattoos of the not exactly unfriendly coffee girl the specific shades of gray “it” is outside and getting grayer by the moment all my little pictures; i love them all; i don’t keep track of them any less than the river keeps track of all her little stones tomorrow is class again. i am excited for that. i hope we do get our own space. the Y is nice, but our own space could venture into the sacred. imagine! sacredness among the local capoeiristas! the humble milwaukeeans making unpretentious (because semi-aware?) sacredness! i dig! it’s sweaty and muddy and familial. i want to stay in this town because of capoeira batuque. weird, huh? weird but true. I saw myself in the window of the tracker, after playing the berimbau, and i saw a guy with a beard and some wrinkles and a black sock cap on, and i saw a capoeirista, and the memory of his limitless limitations was but a grace note, a humorous detail in a riverine storybook of love. that’s right, asshole, i said “of love.” amen. maybe i’ll get to build on what i’m learning after i die this time. maybe next lifetime i’ll be as good as, say, sapo (although i hope i get to keep my sense of rhythm and pitch--but then again maybe that’s a trade-off. to get good at each element, you have to take turns? who knows), and then maybe in a few more (a whole bunch more?) lifetimes i’ll get to pretend to be (and therefore be) a mestre. who knows. i’m giddy. forgive me. ranks, belts, booooo! but it’s not a big deal. it’s kind of fun. I am practicing not explaining things. these perfect colors i know you the relaxed tension in the young smoking woman her happily vulnerable face the bobbing sea of picture frames on the glossy wall the berimbau is indeed healing some old van morrison guitar round as brandy a kiss one table away always being nigh and it’s always being nigh--i’m not at all religious but i have to thank just have to thank i just have to thank god * blink blink her skin’s so smooth so smooth 032404 There sure is a pack of cute girls in here. The Sun of Smiles. The Andro of Gynes. The Black Lisa. The Wetfaced Matilde. The Punch of Penguins. Strawhat. Stra-What? StrawHat! I have this awesome poem for you. Hang on. It’s in my wallet. (and those were his last words) He lurks. He perches on a promontory two miles away. Then, when the hens leave the roost, he swoops. He spreads out his flesh, radiates his zaniness. He plies his rhythms with weird strength. Apparently, it’s what makes him go. Sruky. You need to love yourself. You need to finish learning to love yourself unconditionally. With the voices of your past you have achieved a concord in a state of arms. Now is the time to take the negotiations further. You are the Captain, believe it. You have everything you need to go to the next level. I can tell you, have told you, and will again tell you, you are beautiful. Now you have to decide to be beautiful. Allow yourself that summertime luxury. When you relinquish your attachment to bad luck, you will cease to be dominated by it. You need to believe the things you’ve taught me. You need to love yourself. You need to love yourself. You need to love yourself. Whatever that means to you. Learn what that means to you. I love you. I love you. I love you (I tell you three times). Now you. 032704 hIfI has the best coffee of any of Npydyuan’s intellectual centers in the new century. That’s all I really have to say. After all, the Npydyuanese (sometimes transcribed “pYdyuaneis”) have a saying: “The same spit that sticks the glue sticks the paper without any glue, in a preparatory stance.” What the fuck? I keep waiting for a chance to slip in sideways, but the chance never comes. So I change my strategy and bowl straight forward. A great boulder abrades my face, hurls me bodily back the way I came. Two years ago I would have, without a doubt, cried. Now, with a plenitude of delicious doubts, I laugh! A-te-de boutou...! Fuck Latin, I’m a learn Portugese! Funny thing about calling “it” an art: instead of intimidating, it releases. Because it makes it a thing way bigger than me and my aging musculature. It makes it so big I don’t have to feel self-conscious about getting in and getting wet in it. There are plenty of creatures, leviathans, behemoths, to do the amazing things that make me amazed. And I can amaze my little circle of nanobiology without disturbing anyone, maybe even helping a few. Fuck, why not? Did I mention a starfish is easily as amazing as a whale? So is a wave, so is a wave, so is a wave.... HIM and ME seem to materialize whenever I need them and can use what they have to offer. If I try to pry them out at other times, they present grotesquely bland caricatures of themselves, that aren’t very funny at all. I welcome them now, I’m glad they’re here now. We are having a good game. Here in this fifth season, pYdyuaneis Calendar, ABADBACB!!!!!