If My Stomach Could Speak

Get Weird Or Go Home

2011-09-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

Nicole de Ayora and Carina Johnson have put together this fine edition of Get Weird Or Go Home! A piece I wrote entitled "This Was Meant To Be The Summer Of Our Contrition" will be featured in the zine. For five dollars a copy, there's no reason you shouldn't get at them!

Email getweirdorgohome@gmail.com for a copy.

Miguel Covarrubias' Missing Mural

2011-07-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

This article was written for the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco blog about a recent acquisition.

You never know what you have until it’s gone. This axiom rings true for even some of the most impressive art works. Although making impacts in many aspects of art and culture, Mexican “Renaissance man” José Miguel Covarrubias—while celebrated widely in his own country—remains virtually unknown to the general American public. Perhaps because of this failure, on the part of American officials, to recognize Covarrubias as one of the great artists of Mexico, one of his anthropological murals has been missing for almost fifty years.

Covarrubias began his career in New York City speaking very little English, but soon his caricatures and paintings were frequently featured in Vanity Fair and The New Yorker magazines. He designed costumes for various theatrical shows including La Revue Negre starring Josephine Baker. Then, having made a name for himself in the art world and in celebrity circles alike, Covarrubias returned to his home country and settled down on the edge of Mexico City. His home came to be known as a nest for intellectuals, celebrities, artists and business magnates including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Amelia Earhart, Georgia O’Keefe and Nelson Rockefeller. Covarrubias also found time to cultivate his passion for the culture of the Olmecs, a pre-Columbian people living in south-central Mexico. He even developed theories about their culture that preceded professional archaeologists’ discoveries.

Having gained a significant place in the art world, Covarrubias was asked to produce six large murals for the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island—meant to celebrate the completion of the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge—depicting natural history, art history, culture, economy and means of transportation. Each mural would serve as a kind of introduction piece highlighting each concept of the fair’s “Pacific” theme. After the close of the fair, the murals were packed up and shipped to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. However, when it was decided that the murals would occupy the newly built Ferry Building eighteen years later, one of the six maps was reported missing upon their return to San Francisco.

Since the reported loss of the mural, the five remaining murals have similarly received little to no attention. Covarrubias-enthusiasts have accused the Bay Area public and San Francisco officials of neglecting and showing a general apathy for the murals. In 2001, for instance, the, by then, grimy murals were removed from the Ferry Building and put into storage. Part of the problem is the sheer size of the murals. Art critics have raised the theory that perhaps a board of nonprofit citizens furtively disposed of the sixth mural merely because the Ferry Building could only house five; but it has generally been thought unlikely that anyone would so carelessly throw away a work of art that has been appraised as worth over $1 million.

Fortunately, the murals have been restored in Mexico City under supervision of conservators of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The de Young has recently acquired one of the murals, entitled “The Fauna and Flora of the Pacific,” which currently hangs in the Art of the Americas gallery. The mural’s huge size only gives a taste of what the complete set must have looked like all together, yet the whereabouts of the missing sixth to this day remains a mystery.

Excerpt from "Net Art and the Agency of Things"

2011-07-20T08:45:00.000-07:00

This is an excerpt from a paper entitled “Net Art and the Agency of Things.” It was written for a class at the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU. I presented the paper in April at the 2011 Critical Themes In Media Studies conference at the New School. Feel free to contact me if you would like to read the whole paper.

When we approach the face of the desktop [of a computer], as Shulgin has labeled it, the shifting perspectives wrap us up in cyberspace. As we traverse the internet, we move around a space constructed for our engagement, and this space mediates all that we come into contact with, just as the wood and color of [an] icon mediate the spiritual experience of engaging with the icon. As Slavoj Žižek explains, these mediations occur while inevitably eluding our consciousness: “I ‘browse,’ I err around in this infinite space… while the whole of it—this immense circuitry of ‘murmurs’—remains forever beyond the scope of my comprehension.” Jordan Tate’s work New Work #30 brings this mediation to the forefront. The piece refers to the internet directly, but does not rely on the characteristics of the internet as do the other works we have looked at so far, but rather the process that happens once we incorporate the oscillation of perspectives into our interactivity. Tate uses the Graphics Interchange Format (gif) to create a repeating animation of a Mac desktop with a Safari browser window continuously loading what looks like an image of a sunset. The picture never fully loads; as soon as the blue sky starts to show the pink hue of the sunset, it restarts. The frustration at never being fully aware at what we are looking frames the time we spend in front of our computer. And yet, the image that never loads is only the centerpiece of the art work—we must remind ourselves at a certain point that there are other windows presented to us. Because of the ordinariness of the Safari browser, and behind that, the Mac desktop, we initially forget that it is not our own desktop and browser, but the desktop and browser of the art work. We could remind ourselves of this if we tried to click the close button on the browser, as though a “Do Not Touch” force field surrounds the piece as it would in a museum, stopping us from engaging with the operating system as we normally do. Instead, Tate’s work reminds us that the iconography of the computer constantly mediate our experience of clicking around cyberspace. It dislodges the image from the frame of the browser, and finally, forces us to visually step back from the piece: the GIF is of course framed by our own browser, which is in turn framed by our own desktop, and finally, the final frame of our computer.

A similar engagement of the viewer appears on the first page of a version of the Book of Hours by the Master of Mary of Burgundy. The Book of Hours was a popular illuminated manuscript in the Middle Ages, constructing a daily schedule of devotion consisting of prayers, psalms, texts framed by religious icons and décor. The medieval viewer would have seen the first page in a similar way: his eyes would jump immediately to the central image which shows the Christ Child on the lap of Mother Mary in a Gothic church setting. Various figures kneel at her side, led by a female figure, possibly Mary of Burgundy herself, who genuflects toward the divine couple. The viewer would have recognized this image as one that deserves our own admiration and devotion—of course, this is in a Book of Hours, so this is its designated purpose. And yet, like the sunset image that never fully loads, Mary and Christ are locked into a position of always expecting admiration and devotion. They are never fully “loaded” because their deserving of our attention is unending.

The Master of Mary of Burgundy makes a surprising move by framing this scene within another: the church setting is merely a window through which Mary of Burgundy, sitting at her desk with an opened Book of Hours, looks out upon. Or rather, she does not look out the window, but at the manuscript in front of her. In fact, we are led to believe that these two acts of looking are one in the same. Reading the manuscript, she imagines the scene upon which her window looks: in effect, constructing a daily routine according to the Book of Hours is just as good as paying homage to the Virgin and Christ as though they were there in front of us. And of course the Book of Hours in the miniature refers to the Book of Hours in our hands. As the first image that greets us as we open the book, this one serves as a kind of users-manual about how to treat the following images and texts: we are to allow them to help us construct a virtual world, which we should see ourselves entering. Because these manuscripts exist at a time when they were rare and new, tricks like the one used by this artist would have been important in educating an audience not used to juxtaposing the act of reading flat words to the act of seeing three-dimensional images. Just as Tate’s work takes us out of the virtual world in which we have engrossed ourselves in, the Master of Mary of Burgundy leads us in.

The Spire, The Spike

2010-08-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

On a clear day, the spire of the Empire State Building casts a dull sheen against the crisp blue sky. It calls attention to itself, asks that it be considered over and over again as views are offered and just as quickly withdrawn. The metallic feature reminds me, on a day like this, of something from the cold-war: like a massive vestige of an era that has for the most part been effaced from this city. It could be the handle of a Jedi light saber. Its elements are many and their uses uncertain, as though the signals it transmits are frequencies from the distant past, nothing tangible to the many human consciousnesses that see it every day.

Suddenly, examining the spire from West 20th, I see a white speck of a plane passing behind it, much farther in the distance. Like looking over a massive cliff and seeing thousands of feet below a river, I am momentarily overwhelmed by the space between me, the spire, and the plane. I want to throw myself into this space, and yet I am aware that there is no space there to jump into, no abyss to speak of. Although we can perceive space in three-dimensions, something like the distance between the subject and the top of a skyscraper must inevitably be projected upon the world from the mind. It is impossible to fully comprehend whatever fills the space, and a mind that attempts to grab distances and quantities such as this is overwhelmed and perhaps seeks a quick end to its functions, then, shedding the responsibilities of such a

2010-08-20T16:55:00.000-07:00

Hand in hand, we scattered our leftovers all over the city

Pieces of places we had been together

Noodles and Chicago style pizza

And slowly, shedding bits of our past

Settled down into the city

As dust settles down after a catastrophe

Willful and silent, the occasional honk of a car

That says something, something indefinite

Heat Waves, Tidal Waves

2010-08-12T07:15:00.000-07:00

Stepping outside after a fresh rain, I am taken back to numerous occasions in other towns where I have done the same. I recall playing video games during the fall in Davis while it rained, smelling the wet pavement and the damp trees in the cluster of dormitories we lived in, feeling that still new, fresh feeling of living on my own, of sharing a room with a someone. I recall taking the bus in Bordeaux down the boulevards to the tram stop which I would take to Pessac to school; walking across the deteriorated campus; the reflection between the cobblestones. I recall similar mornings on the way to the train station in Nancy. All those places seem so far off and unreachable that I currently doubt I will now ever go back. What’s the use of letting the rain send me into a nostalgic state when I am in such a beautiful neighborhood myself. I am sure, somewhere down the line, be it in France or California, I will recall a similar morning when I stepped outside after a fresh rain, smelled something like celery, wet bark and pavement and walked to the coffeeshop down the street. The walk has become, by now, iconic. There are usually people on the corner where I turn on Cumberland, by the two adjacent bodegas. I walk past the French Quarter styled building with its white columns and never-used porch, past the brownstones. I look down Lafayette to see a wave of cars behind the stoplight one block away, and as I scurry across the street, they are just behind me as I step onto the curb. Then the park comes into view. On a day like today, it is empty, or, maybe a few joggers brave the chance of a second morning’s rain. During hot days, the bespectacled bald man—who occasionally is seen talking Spanish to neighborhood friends, but usually sits there silently—sits shirtless on his stoop. His pug dog, leashed, yet sleeping sits on the lowest step. But today it’s too early and not warm enough. Is all this good enough not to take my mind off the prospect of far off countries? Why can I never enjoy the neighborhood I am living in as I can enjoy the ones I once lived in?

It makes me wonder whether I need to move to France again. For what though? I could see myself studying there again. It would have to be some southerly township, if not Paris. Do I need to burrow into foreign cities, further repel myself from the familiarity of California and that which I’ve developed here? It’s as though my mind is propelled toward a foreign country during times of hardship, like the farther I am from the source of my sadness, the less apparent it will become. 3,000 miles is still not enough.

In the mornings I tend to wake up listless. I imagine when school starts, I will feel better about the mornings as I was when I first moved here. I need projects first and foremost, then I will start cleaning more thoroughly, maintain an orderly desk and kitchen. I will probably start waking up earlier when school starts. But as of late, these mornings I wake up with little reason to do so. Why not keep sleeping in, I think? Job applications will be there when I wake up. But I’m no longer tired. I had been dreaming of Oliver (the cat) and perhaps pigeons—I remembered this just before stepping out as I spied a white pigeon from my window: I decided to take this as a sign of luck, or of good things to come. I live closely with the pigeons, for they commune on the roof outside of my window, and in the early morning, I can hear them through gauzy dreams and they enter my consciousness without my seeing them.

The cicadas: I have been aware of them ever since seeing the Japanese play at the Lincoln center with mom. To set a scene, the first sound heard is cicadas, but then they quickly fade away. The implication is that it is a summer month, and that it is hot. I was fascinated with something I hadn’t thought of before: that a sound indicates a temperature. What’s more, you literally felt the heat hearing the hum of those insects. Well, every now and then a cicada can be heard from my window, or on my walks down to the coffeeshop, and I will think similarly of all the hot climates I have been to in addition to this one, not to mention the heat waves.

A Shea Away

2010-07-10T10:33:00.000-07:00

All I know is certain things will happen and certain things will come of it. Certain memories will fade, never materialize, others will pop up much later. And this is what the summer consists of. The summer consists of the constant drone of the air conditioning. Truly, I’ve forgotten what silence is. Silence now is the hum and buzzes of the air conditioning unit. If it’s not cooling it’s fanning, and if it’s not on and the window is open, consequently all I can hear is the larger air conditioning unit outside the window to the building next to mine. The summer consists of the buzz of the humidity, white clouds making developments into the air within the patch of sky I can see from my room, beset upon a varied sky the color blue. Blue is a color which is constantly in flux. There are various blues, but at its root they all are blue, the blue of the skies above. And today the blue is the absence of blue, there is no such thing as the opposite of blue there is just the absence of blue. Today the clouds are heavy and enceinte with some foreboding materials. They carry the blue of the rains that empty into the streets, where the blue of the self is reflected into the heavy puddle, especially the one just outside the church where a three-dimensional triangular slope in the sidewalk collects enough rain so quickly that as soon as it rains people are having to step around the sidewalk, sometimes are even briefly forced into the street so as to not completely submerge their shoes in the rainwater.

Upon my tongue I taste the hamburgers of the summer. The people feed off it, are fed on it, and enough burgers and you can put together some semblance of what a summer is supposed to taste like. Last night we journeyed far into Queens, farther than I have ever gone before, where the subway no longer is sub, but becomes within one fell, sweeping motion, a superway. On either side the city and the graffiti that decorates it. Below the superway deals are being made, rhymes are shouted, cadences observed quickly and then shifted from two-fourths to fifteen-sixteenths quickly like that back and forth between standard tempos and exotic tempos that you only hear in Middle Eastern or gypsy tunes. In the superway, here too glances are exchanged, and conversations follow a certain tempo, and words spoken upon quarter, eight and sixteenth notes. There is the beat of the track that is felt through the pulse which echoes through the bars where you put your hand, among other hands and the backs of people lying against them. Looking at the people I was conversing with who were sitting before me, something else was going through my head: the feeling of the very few strands of black hair of the girl standing next to me, looking out the window forlornly (she seemed so severe and unhappy that I was sure she was European), and occasionally her green long-sleeved shirt and imagined briefly the effect of those same slight exchanges of touch laying in bed with her on a lazy Saturday afternoon. Temporarily looking up from the faces of the people I was talking to, I saw her reflection in the scuffed chrome of the frame of the window and wanted to know if my hand touching her back now and then affected her in a way too, I sought some minor confirmation in a glance exchanged in the scuffed up chrome, although the metal was almost too dull to allow me any access to her blue eyes. I could never be sure if we made eye contact, but I could tell that her eyes were blue.

The superway gates opened up and we briefly walked in step but soon we were swallowed by the crowd. We were led through a series of backways and tunnels and elevators, having to produce a ticket now and then to be sure we were allowed access to these secret passages. The Shea stadium seemed smaller than most stadiums, but then it’s difficult to tell when you are led almost blindfolded through its intestines. It seemed fit that in a subterranean tunnel within the belly of the Shea we were given a brief history of the Mets institution, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the newly minted stadium. A man wearing a beige suit the color of peanut-butter taffy, a light blue shirt, and thick-rimmed prescription Ray Bans assured us that this was not only a baseball diamond, but, he was proud to say, a place where guys came to pick up girls and girls came to pick up guys on a Friday night, which made me think two things to myself: could guys pick up guys, and secondly, where could I pick up these girls? Finally we were led to our skybox suite, just behind homeplate, probably the best seat in the house as far as I could tell. There was food of all sorts and all kinds of drinks. As we went on a more thorough tour of the stadium while the game progressed slowly, we were offered various perspectives of the field. The green of the field called out to the eyes every time it popped up, whether from behind left field or on the screen of the thousands of TVs throughout the building. And then there I could see the hamburgers that made up the summer, the way the people at the Friday night baseball game carried them proudly to their seats. The food which churned a nation, gave it happiness and a feeling of success. I saw a girl lead her boyfriend to their seats and both their hands were filled with food, pretzels, drinks, a Mets-colored item of paraphernalia. And I saw on their faces the same glib sense of accomplishment that a cat wears as he carries a dead gopher that hangs limply from his mouth. It was the same dead thing that lingered in my mouth the next morning, today, when I woke up underneath the nonblue summer sky rainclouds.

June 4, 2009

2010-06-29T18:20:00.000-07:00

A violent sky drifting over a white moon that seems to have some dominant power despite it’s diminutive status lately. As though I’ve never seen the moon to begin with. The weather must be privy to its own mythologies, but not to our own: the horror movies associated, for instance, with the windy evenings, the balmy nights, the cloudy and clear dark skies—to the sky they mean nothing, but somehow they mean something to us. Half my vision is orange, just below the powerlines of the buses, and above, just above the man leaning ominously against the wall there is a purplish blue a bluish black that permeates all other thought.

Sous La Plage, Le Mort

2010-06-27T20:03:00.000-07:00

The beach is a kind of gloomy graveyard for various flora and fauna. On the beach hundreds of thousands of horseshell carapaces come to rest, unburied, empty, rotting. Seaweed washes up on the shore, sagging jellyfish carcasses. There is hardly any room to step. And as we sit there, the gentle waves caressing the shore, I look down the beach and see this massive graveyard which seems to extend forever. How fascinating that we can ignore such a clash between the idyllic and death sitting silently, contentedly, reading our books and sunbathing.

I wanted to write a short story out here. I would ease a complicated plot into the setting that I am in. It would be easy, and if I ever ran out of things to say about the setting, I would just have to go on a walk to get some ideas. So, when I came here, I attempted to cast a writer’s eye about me. I explained in my head what I was seeing. I searched for words for the stillness of the land, for the death that lingers on the shore. On the first few days I noticed a theme: how one’s body is not one’s own when ravaged by flies and heat, unnerved by the animals that brush up against a leg or foot standing in the murky ocean. Rather than think of a murder mystery or an investigation of the nature of time (I told Afro that during a walk along the beach, Xha-xhi and I were catapulted back to 1915, we saw the houses disappear, but as soon as we turned around, we were back in the present time) I started thinking of her and Sihanoukville. I thought about writing about that, but it was nothing in particular that captured me. Finally, this morning I woke up with some lyrics in my head and thought I’d start with that. Before writing, it all seemed to envelop me, and as soon as I begun the task, it didn’t necessarily disappear, but rather revealed itself to be folly. When set to stone, it seemed to crumple.

Two Mistresses Meet

2010-06-21T13:16:00.001-07:00

"Not long before the delivery of [Guernica] [his mistress] Marie-Thérèse walked into the studio to find Picasso up on his ladder and [another mistress] Dora at his feet. For Picasso, it remained 'one of his choicest memories'...

"'I have a child by this man. It's my place to be here with him,' said Marie-Thérèse. 'You can leave right now.' Dor said, 'I have as much reason as you have to be here. I haven't borne him a child but I don't see what difference that makes.'

"Picasso refused to intervene, preferring to watch the two women fight it out.

"Finally, Marie-Thérèse turned to me and said, 'Make up your mind. Which one of us goes?' It was a hard decision to make. I liked them both, for different reasons: Marie-Thérèse because she was sweet and gentle and did whatever I wanted her to, and Dora because she was intelligent... I told them they'd have to fight it out themselves. So they began to wrestle."

-Guernica

Gijs van Hensbergen

The Parable of the Coryphaena Hippurus

2010-06-01T10:16:00.001-07:00

A fish--a mahimahi--is swimming in the ocean one day, enjoying life, thinking to himself, "Life is good, the ocean is endless, and everyday my only obligations are to myself and my own well-being." Suddenly he spies two small anchovies shining brilliantly in the afternoon sunlight. They drift statically: two precious gifts offering themselves unto the mahimahi, who, at the moment, is so content with life and the ease with which he will be able to eat the anchovies that he can't help but think, "Lo! here god has proffered two veritable confirmations that indeed I am blessed. Life is wonderful." He swims up to the anchovies and swallows one of them whole, betraying an assuredness. In doing so, a sensation instantaneously spreads over his person , a sensation that can be summed up in a single word: "food." However, something stymies this feeling from blossoming fully, from completing its essence. The fish feels a hook pierce his mouth and burst through his lower lip and right cheek. The hook, already pulling the fish to his imminent doom, produces such a sharp pain that the fish contemplates: what began as an unassuming fulfillment of a desire proved to be avarice. As he wildly resists the hook, oscillating back and forth, he thinks to himself: "God damn it! Truly, this is the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life."

Meanwhile, the fisherman, or the doomsayer, feeling the tug on his fishing pole rejoices: "Then I am blessed after all!"

2010-05-20T14:09:00.001-07:00

when you get a chance, so i have your number

your numb hands all in my face

full fronting forward steering, rear-view mirror

the sweat of leather, closer than a feather

or a fortnight of foreskins

within foresight of Appalachians

the bare ridge reveals a glimpse

and then at once

conceals

thought i knew air as sweet as this

thought i knew the sweet river bliss

but one who claims to know a man

knows not the design of his hand

the wrapping paper sentimentality

torn off to reveal the gift

the gift which is one-sided

which pierces the skin and spouts blood

i had no premonition of this moment

strange that i had none

and yet the unspeakable is spoken

the stagnant moment broken

a piece from the sky

got on your shirt by the bottom button

staining it forever, i thought

until i realized you never washed

never washed jeans

three years in and inside out

they wear the stories of your early adulthood

in third world sidewalk cafes

or the pepsi for which you didn't pay

let's look at the menu first

i dunt wanna get sucked in head-first

oh that place?

i heard they have forty dollars worth of it

and i had some yesterday

Letter to the Artist

2010-05-12T12:05:00.000-07:00

Dear Marina,

In those first moments, like the rest, I admit to being unsure how to approach you. Where to glance first, how to take it in: there in the atrium there was not one way to do it. At first I reasoned that there was no point in looking at you, for there was you and there was the idea of the piece, which I could reflect on without looking at you. So I drank up the atmosphere and listened to the crowd, thinking about the borders of the piece and the technology that also made itself present. But I noticed that I was looking more at the cameras looking at you then I was looking at you myself. I realized that my first momentary reasoning betrayed the kind of shame at perceiving the artist so directly that perhaps you wished to conjure. Was I supposed to look at you looking at the other person, or the two of you together? Or the two of you looking at each other with the backdrop of the audience looking at the two of you? I knew that if I was to understand this piece, I would have to look at that which embarrassed me most: you.

It did not scare me to look at those who sat down opposite you, in fact, I could look at them for a very long time and not feel a thing. Finally I stood on the other side of the person you were staring at, as close as possible to you as I could get. You were still looking at the person opposite you, but behind him was me, as though, if you lifted your eyes just slightly, you would be able to see me. I feared momentarily—professional though I knew you were—that my presence would shock you out of your mission to stare at the person sitting in the other chair, as though my gaze carried so much weight (doesn’t it?) as to force you to notice it. The feeling was fear because: A. I didn’t want you to notice me since you were the artist and your presence carried a mythic proportion, kind of like the feeling someone feels in the presence of a celebrity; instead I wanted to remain anonymous, while still pushing toward the boundaries that my embarrassment constructed; and B. I feared that if my presence, as I assumed in an instant, was as compelling as to force you to stop staring at the person in front of you, then I shouldn’t be there, for if your job as artist was to stare at the person in the other chair, and you did look at me, then the spell would be broken, then I would have been the sole cause of the ruin of the piece. In a way, it was a bit like fearing that I would trip and tip over a Faberge egg, which would then fall to the ground and break.

All around me I could hear children shouting to their mothers, “Look mama! She blinked! Did you see?” And suddenly I realized how simple a piece as this broke down the boundaries of art, so that peoples’ conception of it, their immediate reactions were obvious. Some of them would wonder aloud what was going on: “Are they trying not to blink?” and they realized that their theories were disproved once they saw one or both of you blink. Others discussed which one was the artist in the piece: was it you or the person opposite you or both? A father of a family that passed through the atrium, without stopping to examine you, explained to his children with the kind of fatherly wisdom one seeks to wants his children to believe him to possess, “Look how still he is,” referring to the man sitting opposite you at the time. And this simple misunderstanding made me want to yell at the father, say, no, idiot! The one who deserves the attention is Marina! The simple misinterpretation hurt me personally because whereas normally, standing in front of art works, the artist isn’t present, here you were, and they were speaking of you ignorantly in the same room as you! And what’s more, I had been there with you for a long time by now, had started to wonder what kind of emotions, or lack thereof, were going through your head. I wanted to tell this father how he had passed down a lie to his children: the one who deserves the attention is not the man; it’s the woman in the blue robe. She is still, even stiller than him and she has been here all day and will be here all day for the next two months!

Others did not linger as I did in front of you, and they would shrug their shoulders, dismiss it as a “staring contest,” or say simply, “It’s art.” As though they were resigned to the fact that art encompassed all that they did not understand. As though there was nothing to be said of examining art and pinpointing what one didn’t understand about it, how it made one feel, perceiving what made one not want to stay too long looking at it. As though “art” had one meaning that could be summarized in a few sentences, and, lacking an education in the subject, one did not have access to those kinds of sentences.

Suddenly, hearing all these quick hypotheses, explanations, musings, I felt that I was protective of you. I wanted to present myself to the audience as a docent, to put on a red frock coat, something that would distinguish me as “Explainer,” “Interpreter,” “Educator,” one who had answers, not all of them, but at least some, that would shed some light on this troubling piece of art. It was suddenly important to me that they at least somewhat understand what was going on here. And that was when I realized that I was falling in love with you.

Maybe in the way that a brother looks over a younger sister, explains her nuances, interprets her idiosyncrasies to a public that would otherwise mock her because of them. And my position in all of this was woeful, yet necessary. For in an ideal world, I myself admit, the public would accept you with open arms and let yourself be the artist. But in this world, there is you: the artist, silent, acting your art without a means of speaking to the public (even though there you were in the same room as us); there is the public: who can understand or not understand your work in any way they choose; and there is the mediator: me, who knows at the very least histories, if not an acceptable method for examining the art work, explaining its purpose to the viewer, to the artist and within the context of everyday life. However, a mediator generally sees his duty necessary for reasons having to do with the general education of a public, whereas in this case, it was my burgeoning love for you that made me to want to explain.

Still, I kept quiet and fixed my eyes on you, your body, your flowing robes, watched as you bowed your head when one person decided she or he had had enough, and noticed how you stretched ever so slightly, perhaps still trying to hide something from the public: a discomfort, a fatigue. I wanted to understand this, as one perhaps wants to understand the puzzling forms in a Dali or Braque painting. This yearning for information in one way could be linked to the quest for knowledge that an art historian seeks—a problematic element of a painting through which one can enter into a discourse—but in another way, now that it had to do with you and your body, it suddenly linked itself to the kind of knowledge I yearn for when I admire a girl in class. In my younger days, for instance, graduating from a boys-only high school and moving on to a college with girls, I would spend quiet moments in class when I had drifted from the lectures thinking about the girls with their backs to me. I would see the outline their bras made and marvel at how their undergarments were so present that I could see them and think about them, and I would wonder what these girls’ histories were, what their parents were like, what worried them when they woke up late at night, what strange figments pierced their dreams.

For the long periods of time that you would stare at the person opposite you, there were blinks, there was a tilted head and there were your hands folded neatly in your lap. But in those moments that the person had had enough and left, when you bowed your head as though genuflecting, these were the moments that my interest was piqued because now finally I could see some strands of an emotion, something that might be akin to fatigue, or stress. Certainly, you had done such a fine job so far of maintaining your disposition for about a month now, and you were testing the limits of the body: the limits to stay still, to look without displaying emotion, the limits to control hunger and restlessness and bodily functions. But if there was some place where I was to enter a discourse with myself about how you were a real person and not just an art object, then it was these moments when you shifted slightly in your seat and it made me wonder what else required shifting, what else wanted to stretch a little? How did you start your mornings then? With a cup of coffee? But the caffeine would certainly wane and make you tired not far into the morning, still with hours to go. Also, the coffee would make you want to pee maybe a few hours later.

In fact, was there anything that you ingested in the morning? Were there any routines at all? Or did you keep your preparation as devoid as the performance that followed? That seemed to me the best method of all, at least for me. When, after I left the museum a few hours later, sitting in a café reading a book before me, I remarked my posture in the wooden seat. I straightened up and glanced down at the book and thought how soon I would certainly, without noticing it at first, slouch, and eventually I might be almost slumped over the book. Then I thought of you and how in the same way that a painting stays with a spectator hours, days, years after one has seen it, you were there in my thoughts. At the same time that you were still sitting straight—no, slightly, almost imperceptibly to the right, with a head tilted just a bit like a shaman’s—I was here miles away rereperforming, imitating, copying, reinterpreting, reassessing, reembodying your plight as an endurance artist. The few minutes that it would take me to, without noticing at first, slouch, let my mind wander, glance around me, sniff, feel restless, want to leave, abandon my work, shift my legs, listen, scratch myself made me realize how much of an artist you were.

And in this I perceived my, dare I say, “contempt” for the others that sat across from you, because, respectful though they were, none were going through what you were going through. Of course, I understood and appreciated the boundaries that had been broken down by allowing the audience to participate in the art work, but still I felt, as a jealous ex-lover might, that none were worthy of your gaze, of sharing the act with you. Here was a piece that seemed to cast aside so mockingly any presumptuous spectator’s claim who dared say about a modern work of art, “I could do that!” Perhaps by seeking to breakdown the delineations between artist and viewer, you have done the reverse (or did you do this on purpose?). Art is viewed in passing, on the way to work, in newspapers and magazines, on the walls of peoples’ homes, in museums, and there is an idea of spectator and art, but here you were displaying it in a full, vibrant light: in one chair is the artist, who has been sitting there for hours without budging, and in the other chair is the spectator, who is welcome to share the act with the artist, but only for so long, as long as his or her body can withstand. Certainly, it won’t be as long as the artist, has not been yet, and will not be, for in the end she is the artist and you are merely spectator!

And sitting in the café, miles away from you, where you were not present, you still were, because, as one learns to fully love a significant other only when she has gone missing, I learned of your stature, the power of your presence, while there with you in the room you looked sad, submissive, tired. Away from you, when you were not present, you took on this mightiness that I had not fully perceived in the museum. Suddenly I wanted to share this with you—for a second I thought of going every day to the museum from opening to close, and if I did not fix my gaze on you all this time, at least I would be there with you, experiencing your experience and allowing myself to love it, attentively, acceptingly, calmly, like a good lover would do, even if you did not notice. In fact, your ignorance of my presence would strengthen my resolve to be there with you, to share your duress! In the same way that a secret admirer lavishes anonymous attention on the cause of his desire, I would be there all day! But then I reflected my momentary disdain for the “spectator” upon myself. What made me think that I was, conversely, worthy of your love? For I, too, was spectator.

If all this makes me sound like a bumbling fifth grader proclaiming my love for a girl, perhaps in some way it is akin to that. Seeing you, there, in the museum, I suddenly recalled the vague, inchoate love I felt as a young boy for the girl squirrel in the animation The Sorcerer’s Stone, whose desires are eventually unrequited once she realizes that her dreamboat squirrel is actually young King Arthur. I pitied her and empathized with her woes, cast aside by the main narrative, she drew me into the movie and made me want to explore its characters more fully than it allowed. I felt a love for her that was all the more real because, in the end, like her love, I knew it could never be acted upon. In the same way, seeing you, separated from me by only bounds of tape, my love grew, turned from a boyish love to protectiveness to jealousy to agape to erotic and back to boyish love. This was all so new to me, this art.

Yours,
Alex

The Night Mrs. Washington Died

2010-05-12T07:01:00.000-07:00

The night Mrs. Washington died I had two end-of-the-year parties to go to. There was an appointment with my favorite professor of the semester, then, I thought, maybe I'd wander the village looking for something to eat. Then, maybe I'd go to the first party by myself, strike up a conversation with the first person who looked at me, or maybe munch on some humus and pita bread awkwardly in the corner, careful to wear a smile so as to not appear aloof, or rather pleased with my aloofness. These are the bodily expressions I have adopted since moving to New York City.

Mrs. Washington wasn't married, but perhaps by the sheer nature of her aura she gained the honorific. Perhaps no one knew what else to call her. "Ms." seemed inappropriate for a woman her age--what was she: 80 or 90? No one called her Betty. Betty Washington. Betty: a name from the middle of the previous century. A name that knew black and white television sets and civil rights movements. If you met a Betty today you would think, oh, that's quaint, your parents are nostalgic. Something like Edith or Peggy. When I got to the village I received a message from Arthur. "Could you, uh, knock on Mrs. Washington's door," he said in a somber tone, "I think she's dead."

It was a clear but windy day, and when I called Arthur back to tell him I wouldn't be back at the apartment until late that night, I had to duck into a doorway to protect the phone from the noise of the errant gusts. How does he know she's dead? If I was home, what would I do? Break down the door? Would I have been the first to see her dead body? How does a person who lives alone die? Does an old lady who rarely leaves her house, who's television can be heard at all times of the day die sitting on a couch, or does she collapse on the way to the sink to get a glass of water? Is it a slow process, does she know she's going to die, and sit on the sofa, listening to CNN ("She's a CNN junkie," Stephen told me once), awaiting the final breaths? Or is sudden, like she didn't know what hit her?

Each breath comes in pairs, except for the last and the first. In this way, the first inhale of a newborn pushed freshly from the womb is finally completed upon the last exhale of a dying body. At least, one assumes. The somber mood of the possible death of my next door neighbor put me in no mood to go to the first party. What good making conversation with people I didn't know when death was at hand? Not just death, but the smells of a corpse finding their way through the floorboards and under the cracks of doors. It was the night Mrs. Washington died, but since she was alone, it's quite possible she died a few days ago, maybe even a week ago. Someone reported strange smells.

When asked if I had smelled it, I said that I did smell something. However, this building is so often filled with smells. Even my own apartment greets me with a new smell every time I enter it, as though it's not my own. From the entrance of the building to my doorway, on the staircase, especially, smells are constantly shifting. The first level of the building is a restaurant, and depending on what they are cooking that day, the smells will change. Sometimes I smell a combination of old banana peels and the way the last sip of a glass of lager beer smells. Once I was sure that they were cooking salmon all day. Sometimes I smell damp wood planks. Other times it just smells like garbage. Sara said it smelled like a European apartment--that made me smile. To be honest, I don't know what a putrid corpse smells like, and I don't know if I'd know it if I did smell it. I smelled something when I got home that night, but I wasn't sure if I was smelling what I thought I smelled.

I didn't know Mrs. Washington well. The first time I met her, I ran into her at the doorway of the apartment. I always made a point of telling her to have a nice day, and from her voice she seemed to respect that. It made me feel good, but in a way it was probably empty. Stephen always was very generous to her. Sometimes I could hear him talking to her in the hallway. He would get her groceries when we went out shopping. Once, I helped her bring her cart of groceries up the stairs. Another time I found her struggling on the staircase and I didn't know what to do. She was out of breath, and she hadn't even left the building yet. Should I lift her? Carry her downstairs? What good would that do. I didn't bother that time to tell her to have a nice day. It would seem like a mockery in that situation. I asked her if she needed help and she said no.

I didn't go to the first end-of-the-year party, but I went to the second one. I had to wander the village for an hour before I felt comfortable showing up. I talked to people I didn't know well, about our projects, about school, about professors that we had academic crushes on. Most of it was meaningless. I didn't say anything about Mrs. Washington, and thinking back on that night, I had forgotten that she may be dead. It's funny how something that I know to be grave--namely, a corpse in the room next to mine--seems to slip my mind in the time of socializing. I almost want to rebuke myself for forgetting that she was dead, but maybe the mind purposefully let's go of a thought, depending on a situation, maybe it was best that I had forgotten about her, at least just for the moment. This wasn't the time to think of deaths; rather, it was the time of thinking of a different valence of an ending.

Arthur was there when I got home, coming down the staircase. I knew that Mrs. Washington was dead. He said they were removing the body. It was still in the room. The cops were there, otherwise, Arthur said, he would have taken down a whole army of joints, because he was loaded.

A Sidewalk Story

2010-05-11T06:23:00.000-07:00

I was on my bike somewhere in a residential part of Lower East Side and in the middle of the street was a fire engine and two ambulances. There were people standing around on the sidewalks watching the rescue workers do their business. One man was being hoisted on to a stretcher. I couldn't tell what had happened, but it looked as though he had a black eye. On the sidewalk someone was taking photographs with a telescopic lens. I thought to myself that that was rude, that someone was taking photos of this man at his lowest point. Where were the photographers when he was, you know, conscious? Perhaps it was a celebrity. Or, would someone take photographs of me when I was passed out in a stretcher?

To get around the commotion, I had to take my bike on to the sidewalk. There were people there, so I couldn't pedal, but I took one leg out of the strap and pushed my way slowly along so as to not hit bystanders. I weaved through people and suddenly ran into one old staunch lady in a blue t-shirt walking her dog. "Get out of the street, damn you!" she yelled at me. The interaction was quick. I raised my hand, gesturing toward the fire engine, "What am I supposed to do?" I said. I went past her and deeply pondered the moment.

I realized that at first, by her tone I assumed she was yelling at the photographer for taking photos of a man at his lowest. The interesting thing was that before I consciously took into account that she was yelling at me, my hand had already begun gesturing toward the fire engine. Essentially, my body took into account the old lady's intention before my mind could process the words.

I would have liked to say, "Chill the fuck out, old lady. There's a god damn fire engine in the road." I would have liked to say, "We're all human beings, old lady. We can share the sidewalk once in a while, can't we? For, if we can't share a sidewalk, what can we share? There are neighborhoods, apartment buildings, countries, a whole god damn world to share. One would like to assume that we have the right to do what we want, but in fact we have to take into account others' rights as much as we have to take into account our own. The idea of sharing a sidewalk seems inane, but in fact, it's practice for sharing the globe. Once in a while, you'll see something upsetting as a biker, and instinctively you'll think, 'Why the hell?' But take a step back, think about the idea of cohabitation, think about how you shouldn't kill others, even though it's really easy and might ensure your safety, you're actually taking precarious advantage of the fact that your life can just as easily be taken from you. In the same way, your place on the sidewalk is just as precarious as mine. I could just as easily yell at you go get off the sidewalk, damn you! Instead, let's agree to disagree. So, shut the fuck up."

2010-05-10T14:36:00.001-07:00

"I'm pissed because the green salsa wasn't the spicy salsa, so I had to get two salsas."

-man at flea market holding two tacos

Reperformance

2010-04-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

On a plane to San Francisco I sat next to a blond boy who was about four years old. As our plane began its descent, the boy started nodding his head back and forth really fast. He would do it for a few moments, and then remark to himself, "That feels funny!" This went on for about five minutes. He would shake his head, stop, take note of the sensations the shaking would cause, and, having proven that it still felt funny, repeat, "That feels funny!" It became evident that the remarking that this action made him feel funny was as important as the actual shaking of the head. If I was to reduce this scene to a few words it would be: action - pause - study reaction - remark upon reaction - continue action. What was it I was witnessing?

In the dawn of consciousness, man looked about him self and remarked, "The world is pretty fucking awesome." He took note of everything that surrounded him, gave it all names, made representations of it, wrote theories on why things were the way they were, imagined what it would be like if they weren't that way, or if things had changed, or what was outside the realm of what he could see around himself. Having done this, then he wondered, "Now what?" Then man discovered properties of plants and named it, in English, drugs. Upon ingestion, man remarked, "That feels funny!"

On the plane, I had witnessed a reperformance of the discovery of feelings outside the everyday, sober consciousness. It's simple! he realized. Just shake your head from side to side and it makes you feel funny.

The Inquisition of the Owl

2009-11-10T20:28:00.000-08:00

June 4, 2009

In the early morning hours the owl by my house began to hoot. Still in my dream state I understood why the owl has traditionally been associated with the virtue of wisdom. The owl's call is an unchanging sentence of three parts, beginning with an introduction crescendo: hruu-oohh-aah, forming the catholic inquisition encompassing all the questions that had arisen thus far in my dream. The call then answers itself with two "hoos" which express the duality of all life, that to every question two responses can equally suffice.

But I half-dreamt half-philosophized that still I was not satisfied. What did the owl mean to tell me? In my dream I hooted back, a call of my own: words, antonyms and synonyms, metaphors and analogies, a rise in tone and a final, vocal punctuation mark. A few seconds followed, as though the owl were considering my statement, turning it over in his mind. In that time, I realized why the owl conversed only in the morning, the only time of day when dream and reality are not yet separate and distinct: in the time when you may confuse what actually happened with what you dreamed, the owl has furtively gained its place into personification that seems superior to other creatures. It has gained its wisdom by subterfuge, perhaps simultaneously proving its own cleverness.

Now, the owl was ready for its final response. It answered in the same, three-part call it had opened with: hruu-oohh-ahh. But this time I understood what he meant: each answer can be found buried within its own question.

Atoms of a Lifetime

2009-11-10T19:40:00.001-08:00

A night squeezed into a small bed brews vivid dreams. Clutching my body at different positions, the mind forces itself into a place it doesn't normally venture. There is physical evidence of this in the morning: two fingerprints below my shoulder where they rested for the entire night, soft scratch marks all over my arms and stomach. And beneath that there is the memory that contains the night. My peripheries where the blankets couldn't reach, for instance, can still feel the intense cold. Deep down bubbles of a dream still rise, expand and pop throughout the day.

It's difficult to grasp why any part of my mind would not question myself as a vampire. Drinking tea with two other vampires, who called themselves des gomps, I knew only that I was socially uncomfortable with them. In the public square, their French was rapid and unrelenting. They made no excuses on my behalf, though I understood almost everything they said. It was the one sentence directed at me that I failed to understand. It was a phrase I knew that I did not know. It was said quickly, so even if I wanted to look it up later, I couldn't. I muttered a couple of friendly curses at them, so as to feign comprehension. They knew, however, that I didn't know what they said. They yelled at me, "You can't understand us! Putain, you're good for nothing!" I do understand, I tried to persuade them. "OK, then what were we saying?"

I couldn't answer, but luckily two plump blondes came up to our table and distracted us from the conversation at hand. A few sentences later it was clear they were hitting on us, and it was understood among the gomps that because the girls were not good looking we would be able to feast on them later. This was the arrangement we had worked out then, before the dream had started: we could drink the blood of unattractive girls who hit on us, but the girls who we mutually understood to be attractive, we would leave for each to develop natural relationships: one-night stands, friendships, or they might even become lovers, girlfriends, or wives.

Somehow or other I had made my way past demilitarized zones into North Korea. A mighty cold-war style stadium stood before me. Inside, Bill Clinton and Kim Jong-Il were meeting before thousands of Koreans. I knew that to escape North Korea I would have to seek Clinton's pardon and not his Jong-Il's umbrage. But to do this I would have to approach the center stage. I went around the stadium only to find a mansion that brushed up against the elliptical walls. I went through a few French doors, windowed, empty rooms to the backyard where there were five American girls playing frisbee and barbequeing steaks. I asked them the way to the center stage and they said they didn't know it. I looked over the fence, which was more like a huge wall with ramparts and was about to make my way toward it when I thought to ask the girls: "What the hell are you doing in North Korea?" The answer seems to have escaped me now, but I do know that they offered me one of the steaks on the grill.

Dinner was just being set when I remembered my way back home. I scrambled towards the fence and climbed over it. The steaks were getting cold, but I knew I had to get to Bill Clinton or else I would be forever exiled in a country stricken by famine, poverty and international isolation. There, just over the fence, was a vast, emptied stadium that, at once, symbolized my depression. It was so large and empty as to be impressive. I saw the gray, worn-down stage, the entrances and the bleachers. Not even a piece of trash graced them. And, hopeless, I wearily turned around towards the five American girls waiting for me to eat their dinners.

Childhood and Drugs

2009-09-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

On a warm Sunday afternoon, a mother lets her child move a toy car along the top of a low wall. As the mother stands there casually regarding her son, the child's face is full of bliss and expressive enjoyment. He is concerned with nothing else other than the car in his hand, which is a crude wooden handcrafted construction bearing no markings or elements other than four wheels. His intention, I gather as I pass the mother and son, is to run the car along the wall from one end to another. He is in no rush to hurry this process; rather, he savors the moment. His enjoyment possibly comes from playing out the act, perhaps, or recreating what he has noticed in the world. Perhaps he is reenacting a dream he had of a car driving impossibly along a small wall. Perhaps his enjoyment stems from the independence he feels of doing something without his mother's help. Whatever makes him smile in such earnestness, he is completely involved in the act with no knowledge of what else is going on outside of this moment with the car or how silly he seems to the outside world, deriving so much enjoyment from the car. He is so involved in this act that it makes me a trifle jealous.

Oh, to be this child. To find such wonder in such a mundane activity. I imagine being born is something like being extremely high. To burst through the womb with no knowledge of anything except warmth and nourishment and all of a sudden have outside elements pierce your skin and perception, you would feel in an intense daze. I've often tried to imagine what the world looked like in that moment, and I believe that the world spinning all about you so suddenly would not be as we know it, but rather embedded with magical, neon colors, like an animated film. Still wet from all the juices of a mother's body, in this moment, you resemble a crazy person on drugs in public in the middle of a dead sober crowd. Just like the stoned man, you have no idea how ridiculous you look: naked, unkempt, crying hysterically. You are crumpled and your digits don't work properly. Your private parts know no clothe and they look pathetic. And above all, in the face of all this you have absolutely no shame.

But, unlike a high person in a crowd, to see you looking so pathetically, the crowd is beside themselves with joy. They all have taken part in a way in something even the most dedicated scientists have not yet been able to do: produce life where there once was nothing. They must feel like some sort of cutting edge biologists. Now they are given the task to instruct their being to understand such horrific facts of the world as genocide, natural disasters and overdraft fees. The child will one day understand the implication of paying $250 for a three night stay in a hotel in Upper West Side Manhattan. But if you tried to tell that to the pathetic being after just being born, it would be unheard of.

In a way, the child playing with his car was in the process of learning all of this. He had demonstrated his knowledge of automobiles and transportation. He was demonstrating play and pretending. He showed that he had noticed that to go somewhere requires four wheels and momentum. Maybe this is why he looked so happy and involved in the act: he knew that in moving the car from one end of the wall to the other, he had learned a vital part of the everyday world around him.

To age then and to learn is like the descent from a high. Coming out your stupor, you realize the world is a harrowing place and so to put this out of your mind, you seek once again the drug that got you high in the first place. To be sure, there are some good drugs out there if you can find them, but none are as potent as childhood, naivete and innocence.

"The dishes aren't even put away!" Because of the nature of the apartment I live in, I can often hear the conversations and ejaculations from the family that lives in an adjacent apartment. I have never seen them, but I have gathered some information from them. The family is african-american, I can tell that by the way they speak. There is a boy named Jamal and a girl named Maya. They leave for school at exactly 8 every morning. They have a small dog that the children sometimes torment.

Admittedly, my perception of them is probably a filtered view of their true lives because more than anything, I can hear the mother yelling at her children, and it seems to happen often. I don't mind the yelling because it makes me feel part of the world without leaving the confines of my private room. When the mother yells she reminds me of family life, and her expressive voice reminds me that, despite all the terrible news these days, mothers are still forcing their children to put the dishes away.

The mother's eye requires order. A mother in general categorizes and compartmentalizes the world. The dishes, after having been used, must be cleaned, then put away. To a child, the dishes are equally useable clean as they are dirty, and that they be "put away" seems superfluous. What matter if they are in the sink or in a cupboard. But a mother does not see it that way. In her point of view, dishes, when not being used, are to be clean and carefully stowed away in their places.

A child will play outside in the dirt with his friends and wouldn't mind to approach the dinner table without having washed. For him, there is no cleanliness nor filthiness: those two concepts are one in the same and therefore nonexistant. But the mother is the authority and she begs to differ. Wash your hands before you eat. So the child learns: cleanliness is good, filthiness is bad. And then, as an adult, that same person will perhaps live out the rest of his life without playing in the mud again.

There are many factors that go into making a person who he is. Raising two children in a similar matter might produce completely different people; one, for instance, a serial killer, the other a prolific writer. Take for example the loving mother who never once thought to yell at her children to put the dishes away. With the best intentions in mind, after dinner every night this mother clears the table, washes the dishes quietly and relishes in the sounds of her children playing. A child in this situation might then eventually age and become independent and move away and he would, not having been told to clean the dishes, never do it for himself and live in squalor. But another child in the same situation might have appreciated the orderliness and cleanliness that his mother maintained for him and, in his own home, follow suit.

Unfinished Treatise on Star Trek

2009-09-26T13:26:00.001-07:00

June 1, 2009

I saw Star Trek last night and while I do have many things to complain about and praise, the only aspect that I feel worth mentioning is the difference between the star ships. I thought it was interesting that the Romulan ship is this intricately organic ship, like a petrified ivy plant, or a many tentacled octopus counter-intuitively moving with its appendages at the bow. There is hardly any sense of technology in there, and electronics seem like stumps and foliage buzzing with bright lights. At certain angles, it looks like the heroes might fall to the depths of the ship—which begs the question, who would build such a perilous form of transportation—and when one of the Romulans does disappear into the dark abyss, the depth seems so bottomless as to resemble the pit of a planet.

By contrast there is the USS Enterprise, whose shape, of course, is well known. The electronics in it remind me of a Swiss town: clean, with an emphasis on glass, light and soft angles. And--unlike the Romulan captain, Nero, whose face peers out so often from no-place in the bushes of his ship--the captain of the Enterprise sits dead in the center, at a contraposto as he makes his decisions. The USS Enterprise is classicism in its truest sense, with a postmodern sterile orthogonal look: you would be happy to wake up there as an invalid if this was a hospital, for instance. This is the architecture of the future. It is organized, clean and absolutely nothing is accidental.

Needless to say the organic shape of the Romulan ship embodies evil, although you can't deny it also captures the height of technology, though we're not sure why. Torpedos and lasers shoot from the ship, but we aren't sure who is pressing what button, or where the screens are located or how they are held into place. This ship is a dark place, much like the underworld of Blade Runner. The pit of the future L.A. where shops and storefronts and residence brush up against one another haphazardly. One man sets up his noodle store and so another man uses the adjacent corner to decide where the boundaries of his shop will be. There is no planning in cities like this; this is a shantytown, and it serves to set the tone of the movie so well, in a familiar yet displaced city. One we recognize but is somehow estranged from us because, yes, it is the future and Replicants do exist. On the other hand, the abode of the creator of the Replicants is geometrical, futurized yet so classic, a pyramid rising high above the ghetto. The perfect form of his building shuns the tortuous, twisted form of the city. As a pyramid could not be found in nature, as trees and animals tend to prefer asymmetrical shapes, the pyramid thus belongs to the hand of man and, possibly, the hand of god.

The ideal structure and the ideal city evidently is one that is mapped out completely. Everything has its place and nothing is accidental. The city began quite the opposite, one could easily imagine: someone builds a house, and someone else builds his next to it or even on top of it, with adjacent walls, and this continues until you have a city. It is no surprise then that one of the oldest known city Çatalhöyük, in modern Turkey, with around 10,000 people living there at one time, has no obvious public buildings and no streets. Does a city like that embody evil? Hardly, but it does seem outdated now (How could they not think of streets?). Then by deduction, the most modern town is the opposite, not haphazard, but planned and constructed and only then occupied. And indeed this is how houses are made, and sometimes entire neighborhoods. That's why Levittown was so great at the time, the first suburban town must have felt clean, perfect, ideal in some way to the families that first moved there. But now, not even a century later, it's outdated. Perhaps even the most ideal city requires a bit of organic growth.

In any case, sometimes this is how I feel about my house. Although you climb up a flight of outdoor stairs to reach the door, the rest of the house rises high above our corner. And scraped up against the side of our house, as though imposing and threatening our building, towers an apartment complex. In the evening, when the bathroom window is open, I go in there and turn the light off and open the blinds. A distant light pierces the window in split lines and a few voices can be heard in apartments not able to be seen from ours, but the voices drift into the room as though the bodies from whence they come are nearby, almost talking to us. My room, the bathroom and my roommate’s room share a common shaft and sometimes, when people in other apartments converse, it seems as though we are in the true underbelly of the monster that these buildings form, pressed up against one another, where voices can be heard muted and tampered by the skin and tissue of the monster’s organs.

There are windows below, and I am not sure where they lead, but at times in the morning and late at night (always at the extremities of time) I can hear the hum and soft clicks—like the distant engine room of a freighter—of a washer and dryer tumbling clothes. The kitchen window over the sink shares another space and there are staircases and other anonymous windows that I can see from there. Black stains have dripped down the walls of this shaft and I wonder who, if anyone was supposed to clean this shaft. The conclusion I have reached is that it was never supposed to be cleaned. It was built haphazardly with cleanliness nowhere near in mind. Only perhaps 1. structural support, 2. ventilation and maybe, 3. natural lighting, though it is so dim, I highly doubt it. Over time the air shaft has taken on its own qualities and has gone way beyond what any designer or architect had ever imagined the original look of these buildings to be. I don’t imagine the house I live in was supposed to be pushed between two other houses, but they are. Much like the floor of a rainforest receives no sun light because the trees have over so much time grown, competed in height and, as a result, shaded sometimes completely the floor below, our apartment is bested by the proprietors above us.

And now sometimes, when I wake and my eyes first light upon the shaft, the belly of the center of darkness of the air shafts and I see a clouded light coming from the windows and I drift back into sleep I envision myself falling endlessly, like the doomed Romulan, into the depths of the earth.

Annals of an Old Religion

2009-09-26T13:03:00.001-07:00

During his rigorous research in the early seventies to prove that all philosophies and religions could be classified as either East or West, the late Dr. Richard Brume, professor of comparative religion, came across a strange book detailing a religion hithero unknown. The practicers of this religion evidently went by no name, but Brume--having abandoned his original research and devoting himself wholly to documenting this new faith--began referring to it as Archacultus or, Box Worship.

The most enigmatic ritual of the archacultans, Brume found, was a lengthy sacrament in which adherents crafted a box which, once completed, could never be opened. Although examples of the box have never been found, the annals of this strange religion carefully instructed archacultans on how to build the box from distilling the small amount of gold required to hammering the box into its true form. The process took weeks, and archacultans understood that in creating their relic, they were also undergoing a form of worship in itself. Once the box was finished, they worshiped it as well. They believed that once the box was sealed up permanently it then held what they knew to be God. The archacultans, Brume was careful to note, were not so disillusioned to think that there was something in the box; they knew it was empty as they had sealed it themselves. But to them, God existed in the box's very emptiness, in its lack of content.

At first, Brume was baffled by this belief. The book he discovered seemed to have roots in no other religion he had studied. His early conclusions were that the book was a parody or the product of a sole person's insane visions. But as Brume peered deeper into the book, he came to the conclusion that this was a sort of hybrid atheism/theism religion. The box, Brume explained, for archacultans held nothing, yet in this nothingness it held everything that existed in the universe, and thus god. In the archacultans belief that God did not exist, God did exist.

Turkish Holiday: Part I

2009-09-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

My slim knowledge of Turkey at that time was limited specifically to one man, whom we referred to as Monsieur Kebab. We happened haphazardly across a small kebab restaurant early in our stay in France. The fall days had just been receiving the surplus of a lengthy summer, and we were able to eat outside late into the evening. Monsieur Kebab sweated profusely behind the small counter that was his workspace, and, after taking our orders, quickly prepared huge, foot-long kebabs that dared us to finish them in one sitting. Back then we were able to do so because 1. we were younger, and could digest such a massive quantity of food while still remaining skinny and 2. we had little idea of how unhealthy the food we were eating was, even the vegetarians among us, it being so foreign and new to us, and 3. France, with no concept of a "to-go box," commanded us to finish the meals we had ordered.

It was the second day in a row that we went to eat chez Monsieur Kebab (I never bothered to learn the name of his kebab café, for though there were many in the city of Bordeaux, Kebaberies they all were) and perhaps for this reason, he sent his wife to pour us tea after we had finished our meals. The tea was served in small glasses, hot, just poured from the boiling samovar and it was saturated with sugar. Up until then I had naively believed sugary tea to be my own guilty pleasure. I had thought all tea by tradition was meant to be served plain and had expected that later in my adult life I would grow accustom to its natural taste. Never did I imagine that a whole country preferred its tea likewise.

We drank the tea thankfully--considering the donation of this tea an attempt at friendship--and from then on nurtured the limited kind of relationship that one can have with a foreign restaurant owner, being ourselves foreign. The conversations we had were short, and mostly practical in nature: sauce blanche, avec frites, et une tasse du thé. And Monsieur Kebab always remained distantly stoic. The one time I asked him about Turkey, from which I eventually learned he had emigrated, he demurred any sort of emotional response and replied simply that it was a big country, and strife with misfortune. He had aged photos of Turkey's best sites all over his small restaurant.

In that time I was surrounded by foreign countries and immersed in one, so my journeys would naturally be a matter of luck or chance: any country I visited would be as foreign and new to me as any other. I had a friend, Reid, who was studying in Cairo and, looking at a map, we decided that if we were to travel together over spring break, the best place to meet up was Turkey. We corresponded by various means of internet and eventually planned to meet on April 20, 2005 in a small square in Turkey. There was a new internet site called Couch Surfing which allowed people to find others who were willing to host them as they traveled for no amount of money. I myself was a bit hesitant about that, but Reid did all the legwork and arranged that we would stay in an apartment with some engineering students in a district of Istanbul called Beşiktaş.

A few nights before I left for Istanbul I went to see Interpol outside of Bordeaux in a small suburb called Gradignan. The big concert halls there were always on the fringe of the city. I went alone but knew I'd see friends once I arrived. On the bus ride there I noticed two girls drinking out of a bottle of Schwepp's tonic. I knew they couldn't be French, drinking so overtly. I approached them and found out that they were from Manchester. They let me drink their gin and tonic with an apology of appearing so bluntly English. The blonde of the two and I stayed outside the venue and subsequently missed seeing British Sea Power. We chatted about our lives and, then, I was just so fascinated by someone who fit this stereotype I had formed in my adolescent life about girls overseas. This one liked Manchester City and hated Manchester U. This one, back home, worked at a record store outside of Manchester. She liked the Smiths growing up, liked Blur over Oasis. She had seen them all in concert. It seems cliché to me now, but at the time I was thrilled to meet a girl like that. I had a mind to take her away from the concert, dispense of our 19 euro tickets and have her fill me in on every detail of her childhood and adolescent life. Instead, I never saw her even during or after the concert, just told her I would see her later and headed into the crowd and was lost.

Years later I would take up the oeuvre of Orhan Pamuk. In its totality, it is clear that Pamuk's plots are really background to the setting, a reversal of the rules of literature in order to play out his relationship with Turkey. Writing in New York, the idea of "exile" blossoms in his depictions of Istanbul, a city that has been ingrained so intensely into his memory that his relationship with it is borderline obsessive. In this sense, Pamuk is allowed to never resolve his murder mysteries, for the act of chasing a character who actually never appears in a novel is actually an excuse for wandering the city, searching its darkest alleys and most rundown cafés. Similarly, a lifelong love affair can be loosely referred to in a short story, since it is less about the love affair than the woman's boutique in Nişantaşı, where he grew up, and the lineage of the girl he meets there, how she is connected to him through family. Resolution and character development are cast aside; Pamuk's writing is more like a crazy old man who takes you by the hand in order to tell you truncated stories and conspiracy theories, then leaves you suddenly stranded in a street you have never been down before, and suddenly you realize the old man's intention was never to fill you in on his thoughts, but rather take you on the most in depth tour of the city you could have hoped for.

Having lived in one place for decades, a city takes on a new, fictive role once you cast yourself away from it, or are exiled. All of Pamuk's work resembles serial fiction, not in the sense that characters reappear and plot lines are picked up and end with "to be continued," but in the sense that throughout his books and stories, elements and themes of Turkey appear again and again: the Milliyet newspaper; the overprotective and controlling Turkish family; incest in Turkish genealogy and relationships; the umbrage of Atatürk, Father of Turkey, and how the Turkish people seem unable to tear themselves away from it; the lines for dolmas; and the "New Life" caramels, cigarettes, tabacs. As he says often, memory is a garden, and if anything, for Pamuk, the act of writing is his way of walking down the streets of his childhood, reliving the quotidian activities in Turkey that, as a child, he took for granted.

But for me, there has always been a second kind of exile. This type of exile happens before birth, and in a way it is just as tragic, if not more so. A new, fresh city can only be digested once you have left it and it has always struck me how, even a place I have only visited for one week can stay with me more indelibly than any memory I have of the town I grew up in. When you feel strangely at home in a setting that you never knew existed until you got off the plane, when you can almost see your younger self playing in the cobblestoned streets with the other boys of that region, when you feel as though a pastry endemic of the nation you are in has been the pastry you have breakfasted on every day of your life, just out of habit, then when you have to leave and return home, you truly experience a sense of exile. The most tragic part of this exile is that even if you decide to make that place your home by learning its language, taking up a job there and living your whole life there, even fully immersed in that place, you will never truly be a part of it, only the outsider looking in. While, like Napoleon, exiles can be pardoned and welcomed back, the second type of exile is eternally banned.

When the concert was over, it was raining. Outside the venue some of my friends were drinking whiskey and I drank with them. Then, soaking wet, I had to run as fast as I could to catch the last bus home, thinking how if I didn't catch it in time I would be stuck forever in the rain. I reached my stop and decided that I should call Reid in Cairo before he left for Istanbul, so I walked to a payphone nearby. The rain had stopped now and the soft ground beneath my feet felt content after being freshly watered.

As I dialed the numbers--which were strange series of country and area codes, and led to a strange dial tone--I thought of the girl from Manchester. I imagined briefly what it would have been like if I asked her to marry me, if I moved with her back to Manchester and how as a couple we would be City fans and share our hatred for Man U. I wondered if I would ever see her again, and if, years later, I wrote about her, then whether she was also thinking of me. Then Reid's voice came on the line in a manner that suggested he was picking up the phone in a vastly different setting than I was.

We talked briefly about our plans to meet. He told me to meet him in Beşiktaş in front of a grocery store called Tanşas. He said it was the only one in that district and that the taxi driver would know where to go. When I went home that night, I felt a kind of vertigo, as though I had momentarily touched upon multiple parts of the globe all at once allowing me to, in an infinitesimal amount of time, realize the vastness of the world.

Jimmy Aaja and His Silent Confession

2009-08-31T12:54:00.000-07:00

In 1982 an Indian film directed by Babbar Subhash debuted, titled, Disco Dancer. In the years that followed, the movie became a cult classic, notably in countries as Russia and Turkey. Predominately because of the disco music featured in it, it is now an archetypal Bollywood film. The most famous song in the soundtrack was "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja," which can currently be viewed on the link below.

Disco Dancer - Jimmy Aaja

Isolated from the plot, the musical number becomes enigmatic and it is interesting to speculate about what is going on. At first, there are two forces at work in the video: the puzzlingly immobile male figure, wearing white robes, and the disco belle with spectacularly long hair. They are situated on an intensely lit stage. The lights blink schizophrenically, as though to the rhythms of their own, internal song. Occasionally the figures on stage are even engulfed in these lights, as though superimposed over their person, and the effect is overwhelming. It is almost as if the lights are part of an organism overjoyed by the music, and could be possibly considered a subcharacter to the principal plot. They jump out from every object on the stage, often as pointed spears propelled from the disco ball, the electric background and the sequins on the lovely disco dancer’s vest. Jimmy, only, in his drab white robes seems to emit no electric-lit fanfare; although often neon lights dance upon his face, the same way flames stick their devilish tongues from a fire.

The song’s lyrics feature mostly the male’s name—Jimmy Aaja—which the dancer repeats as a bird chirps to its lover. The name is repeated so many times one cannot help but think that perhaps she is attempting to remind Jimmy of his name, and on a deeper level his past and history.

This theory becomes increasingly appealing as the video progresses, mostly because of the saturnine look on Jimmy’s face. His expression cannot be described in one word: it is at once bewildered, distressed, glum, deeply depressed, confused, disoriented and ashamed. His pose is statuelike—the video occasionally cuts to Jimmy’s face to show his reaction to the female’s singing and seductive dancing, but, as though playing with our expectation (“surely he has changed positions or emotions by now?”), his expression never alters, unable to be persuaded or even reminded by his counterpart.

Our Jimmy seems lost, confused, not sure why he is on stage with this beautiful woman who attempts in vain to remind him where he is, who he is—it is as though her words mean nothing to him; they even send him into deeper confusion and despair. And to the viewer, this is mystifying and even uncanny, for, out of anyone that this gorgeous woman could have decided to seduce and spend her time bewitching, it is this sad fellow.

Suddenly, during a bridge in the music, a third force enters the scene: the audience. Of course, we were aware that an audience might be watching these two people since the setting is a stage. An audience is also shown in the beginning of the video and often the camera pans past silhouetted heads gazing toward the stage, but one might assume that is just more setting the scenario than character development. We assumed just as any play--or film of a play--is depicted on a stage, that we were meant to use our imaginations to dissolve both theater and audience and imagine the torn lovers in any scenario we might wish: in a field, a private room, a ballroom or even in a discotheque. Very rarely during this kind of theatrical moment is the eye turned upon the viewer.

The first figure we are directed to is a medium-set male figure who is dancing glibly in his seat. Behind him a few females are also bouncing to the music, enjoying themselves. Meanwhile, the female on stage jumps around, performing a hybrid of western and Indian dance moves. She seems unaware that of all the males in the frame, her beloved Jimmy is the only downcast one. Yet her gaze remains steadfastly fixed upon him alone.

The point that allows us to speculate deeper into this, at first glance, simple music video, is that Jimmy’s stone cold pose, his peculiar glances and furrowed brow contrast so starkly juxtaposed next to the carefree female figure. She smiles and curls her fingers seductively at him as though she has taken no note—as we have—that Jimmy is not amused by her blithe movements. It seems unfair, doesn’t it, that out of all the males in the theater, the most beautiful woman has chosen Jimmy to dance around? Why does she not give up after a few seconds? How can she dance and sing for the whole song before realizing that Jimmy is just dead weight? And meanwhile, the rest of the male figures are left to watch enviously this lover’s scene. They are perhaps all thinking what I would if I was in the audience: “If I were in Jimmy’s place, I wouldn’t react so forlornly as he does. I would show her what a man I was and I would love her as such beauty deserves.”

Love is like that, isn’t it? For reasons known only to those involved in the relationship, people fix themselves to one another. The outsiders can view these two in their vacuum, they can listen to the conversations they have, they can watch them walk through a park, arm in arm, and yet, just as the audience would never dare overstep the bounds of the stage, you are completely incapable to transcend the role of the viewer between two lovers. Sometimes, as is the case with the disco dancer and Jimmy, you think, “I really don’t see what she sees in him” and often “why is she wasting his time on him of all people?” and even “he does not deserve her.” And yet these thoughts are more often than not useless, for nothing can convince a woman who has so resolutely chosen a lover, no matter how foolish, cowardly or depressed he is.

What we have tapped into at this point is the mysterious force of love. It is perhaps all just chemistry, and some might say foolishness and primitive baseness—and it probably is just that. That our bodies and minds can fall for some person who, for all intents and purposes, does not deserve our caresses. You can trace this back to a mammalian reflex to procreate; or it might be some unhealthy product of society today whereby a woman must choose one man and love him wholeheartedly, even if he does not return her love. To the outsider this is frustrating: one might be so in love with everything about our voluptuous disco dancer and, as we have said already, think “I would treat her as she deserves to be treated” and yet you can do nothing to persuade her that your love would be more fulfilling. For love has, perhaps haphazardly, latched the two together and there is some invisible force at work that defies all logic.

The male/female dichotomy is pointedly at issue in the video in many ways. Of course there are the two main characters posed at separate sides of the stage. There is the malaise of the male figure, and there is the happy-go-lucky sentiment of the female character. One has perhaps seen too much of the world’s woes to go on dancing, no matter if he is on stage before a huge audience, no matter what they expect. The other fulfills the role she is expected to play: as a dancer, a beautiful, made-up, joyful diva; and above all she embodies a feminine naïveté that is more a product of nurture versus nature, in that as a girl she was perhaps sheltered and protected from the horrors that Jimmy was allowed to see at will.

There is also the men and women in the audience, which the camera fixes upon occasionally. It is not at random, as we begin to realize toward the end of the video, for by the seventh or eighth verse of “Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy/ Aaja Aaja Aaja,” Jimmy’s still confused and horrified look begins to influence his female lover. This affects no one more than the women in the audience, as they sing along with their heroine. You can see them mouthing “Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy” as though with their help, by a some sort of collective female force, they might wake Jimmy from his stupor.

This leads us to another male/female difference here: whereas the males looked on stage lasciviciously at the female, wishing they were in Jimmy’s place, the females feel a kind of bond in the struggle of the disco dancer. They care less about Jimmy than the sadness that the female eventually adopts by the end of the video. There is a sisterly connection here, where, in contrast, a brotherly one could be described as a familial competitiveness. Jimmy’s cold reaction toward his lover’s words and movements affects the women in the audience as much as the woman on stage.

As the climax and denouement of the video approach the joyful singing turns sour. Unable to avoid it any longer, the female is either suddenly aware of Jimmy’s horrified pose, or perhaps she is gradually dragged down into depression by his consistent glare, unable to sustain it any longer. We might imagine that now she has seen the horrors of the world second-hand through her male counterpart, and this is perhaps just as harrowing if not more—a man she loved and admired so much could not defeat evil after all, and in her love, she probably assumed him to be invincible. All of a sudden the singing is no longer singing, but desperate shouting as someone might shout desperately into a cavern that his friend has fallen into, as though shouting and crying would bring him back. The final few “Jimmy” verses decrescendo and the tempo slows. There is an increasing amount of alarm in the female’s voice, why does Jimmy not react to her?

She calls to him three last times, “Jimmy,” then the face of Jimmy who looks at her hoping that she can remind him of his past; another “Aaja” and he realizes that the whole song has been performed in vain, nothing can bring him out of this chasm he has been propelled into; he begins panting, fretting he is eternally lost; a final “Jimmy Aaja” and Jimmy has lost all hope, his head falls crestfallenly toward the floor as the disco dancer’s singing turns into weeping.

At this point, the disruption in the belle’s singing throws a cog into the scene. Jimmy’s depression has weighed upon everyone else and as his lover weeps into Jimmy’s robes, the crowd grows restless. The woman yells something in Hindi and finally switches to English, “I hate you! You’re a coward!” she tells him and she runs off stage. A male in the audience stands up and yells something in a mocking tone at Jimmy. When the audience laughs, jeers and pelts him with shoes, Jimmy’s only action is to shield himself from being hit. His uncanny moping is barely disturbed by the ruckus of the crowd, leaving us to continue wondering why he did not just leave the stage in the first place?

The puzzling nature of Jimmy’s place in the video is twofold. Clearly, he once was a performer and now has either forgotten who he is or what he does. His forgetfulness seems to cause him pain, and seeing his beautiful counterpart on stage with him does not soothe his woes but only causes him more suffering. It is difficult to understand and we cannot help but feel so removed from Jimmy’s plight as to feel disgust for him. We are at a loss to feel sorry for Jimmy because his pain and suffering are incomprehensible, irrational and absurd. And that which causes him to suffer—the stage, the female before him, the repetition of his name, the song even?—he cannot tear himself from. The cure to his suffering--the song, a reminder--becomes the cause of his suffering, and from neither can he tear himself away. Yet, perhaps, given his evident celebrity status, even if he were to leave the stage, he might still be on view. He is like a pair of lovers who are aware that they are constantly in the public’s eye, with never a moment of privacy.

Through his silence and obvious suffering, Jimmy in this vein is communicating a sad reality: that all our actions and thoughts seem to be part of a play, that we are just characters in some bizarre Bollywood film and all our joys, all of our thoughts and observations, all of our loves and relationships are but for the enjoyment of the audience who, once removed, can only enjoy them second hand, either with enviousness or solidarity. Jimmy’s steadfastness in the face of blithe persuasion shows he is caught in this cyclical vacuum, never able to enjoy life’s pleasures, nor left alone to ponder life’s horrors, for the public is constantly attempting to glean these for themselves, and even when they have them, they can never enjoy them as fully as Jimmy could have.

In Jimmy's silence, he confesses what his disco dancer lover could not have said in an entire song: that all of a life is an unescapable stage.

Notebooks #1

2009-08-29T11:19:00.000-07:00

Something about a summer heat that seems to be the catalyst of the spirit of a country. It's been chronicled as that, at least, so it has to be in some way true. Perhaps, in the same way that boiling water spearheads chemical reactions (water changing into steam, pasta becoming soft, etc.), the heat foments the interactions of everyday life.

Walking toward the launderette I see three girls dressed all nice in tight, form-fitting dresses. It is hot out and it's only 10 a.m. Immediately, it occurs to me that youth today has no boundaries in terms of night, fancy clothing and day, casual clothing. But on the other hand, what do I expect them to wear? Jammies? Well, what were women wearing in 1910? If they were privileged, they spent hours putting on dresses and make up. In fact, they couldn't be seen unless they had spent that amount of time on themselves. Petticoats and embroidered gowns require three maids to dress one woman alone. Is that true? And if so, were their true lives spent only indoors in private?

Why do some people just sit in the launderette waiting for the clothes? Do they look forward to the time to themselves? Or are they afraid their clothes will get stolen? Stealing from the launderette is a social taboo. It's just not done, although one easily could do it.

Shit, I left my wallet in my pants and it's too late now to do anything about it. It's evident that I am semi-out of my mind.

A family of african-americans enter the laundromat. The mother, who can't believe her children are so incompetent. The daughters, who don't think to come into the laundromat with a bin of clothing. A mother in this scenario must be tired of her incompetent children; her manner is so bitter and pissed off. The children react childlike, happy, carefree, naive in a way. Happily they realize their stupidity and run back into the car. I wonder how long they'll have to endure life before they become like their mother, or what seems to be the antithesis of themselves. Perhaps they have to experience motherhood first.

A kombucha seems the cure to ails as these, lately. But I have to wait for the washer to finish to get my money. I am literally useless at the moment.

"Do you have anything else? This is all wet." The attendant of the liquor store throws down my twenty as though it is trash. "Excuse me?" I am shocked out of my stupor. I wonder if this is one of those moments where I have to be assertive. "This twenty, it's wet. Do you have something else?" "This is all I have." I am thinking about how I should assert myself in a situation like this, so much that I don't even mention that the twenty had just been through the washer. "It still works," I say. I wonder if I should suggest, maybe snidely that I exchange the bills for him so he doesn't have to touch it. "I know it works. I just don't want to touch it when it's wet. It freaks me out." This catches me off guard and pondering the meaning of his statement, I laugh and put back the bottle of kombucha. It's not too much trouble to go one block down to the next liquor store, I know they have kombucha there. "Ok," I chuckle earnestly.

Halfway down the block I realize perhaps he thought I did something sinister to the twenty. The first possibilities that come to mind are obviously: semen, urine. Perhaps he thinks he is the butt of my sick fetish. Could he have really thought all that in the time that it took for him to feel that the twenty was wet? Evidently this pet peeve of his goes back further than that. But why didn't I mention it just went through the wash? It's an earnest mistake, and if anything, the bill was cleaner than he might have suspected. Was it me or was it him?

I also think that a good way to have responded would have been: "Here's how you fix this wet bill. Take it, wait, and then it's dry."

At the second liquor store there is the spirit of the summer again: the attendant is lounging in the middle of the aisles, watching CNN. Jesse Jackson is eulogizing on Ted Kennedy's life. I immediately mention to the attendant that the bill just went through the washer, so it's wet. He seems caught off guard too--I have to repeat myself. "Oh," he says, "as long as it's green, it's good to me."

The man behind me says that "that stuff" is good, referring to the kombucha. He has a cut on his face and looks a bit crazy. But I wonder if I too look crazy, having literally just woken up thirty minutes ago. Perhaps I always look crazy to some people in liquor stores. I think, in this heat, we are all a bit crazy.

Why does Jesse Jackson feel the need to speak after Ted Kennedy's death? Does he really wake up and feel that need or is just CNN? It seems that a person only enters our collective consciousness when he is dead. Otherwise, we pass through reality in a dream-like state. I think this state is necessary in going about our day-to-day business, or else we might lose our cool. When a person has died, we can sum up his entire existence soberly. It is a closed statement, ready to be examined. It is there in front of us, and there is no danger of being shocked or surprised. Ted Kennedy can do nothing else now to surprise us. If he was alive he might have done something utterly horrifying and arguably, had.

A bumper sticker reads, "Drink and Drive" in big letters. Below, in smaller letters, it says, "lose your license." But since the first statement is larger, it seems to be at first telling you to Drink and Drive. At first I thought it was a bumper sticker in defense of drunk driving. But, in their right minds, no one would willingly heed the advice of that kind of statement. This puts into question the nature of bumper stickers in general. No bumpersticker could really convince a person to do something, he must ponder the consequences first. In such a short statement, no one will be persuaded to vote a certain way or go solar. In other words, if this bumper sticker failed to convince me to drink and drive, won't other, more reasonable bumper stickers all fail in their purpose as well?

If I can go home, take a shower, fold my clothes and get ready all in the time that it takes for "Sister Ray" to play, I will be content. It strikes me that if I can conduct all of my daily chores in the time that "Sister Ray" can play, I will feel successful. "Sister Ray" will be my measurement of success.

Success is such a evasive feeling perhaps because the ways to measure it are elusive and subjective. Perhaps I might spend more time figuring out how to feel successful, rather than worrying how to be successful. I wonder if the idea of success, which seems to drive everyone to get out of bed in the morning, is what sets us apart from other animals. Or, I wonder if a cat who has thoroughly groomed himself, and has just perched himself atop a stairwell to survey the land before him, momentarily feels successful.

The african-american mother, bags under her eyes, has truly left her children to watch over the clothes in the laundromat. The kids wander the street outside and occasionally monitor the clothes in the washer. They don't play, or converse with one another, but rather seem to each be talking to themselves. They regard me peripherally, only when they happen to capture me in their field of vision. Once, I see the younger girl looking at me in the reflection of one of the dryers, but it does not bother her that I also can see her.

I do look insane.

The clothing follow a lose sense of gravity. They seem to be chasing each other, as though the best, most alluring position is to be at the bottom of the dryer, rather than the top. As soon as they fall, they are back at the top again. If the dryer was spinning slower, they would have a longer time to spend at the bottom and their flight would be farther. If the spin was any faster, they would have no time at all to fall to the bottom. At this speed, they have just enough time to, at the peak of their ascent, fall at an angle before they are swept up by the rotation. Their movement seems restless, never sure about itself. In a way I think poor people might feel about themselves. Perhaps this is how we are all holding on to the world: loosely spun about because of the earth's rotation, we may as well be clutching the equator with our backs to the ground.

The only decor in the laundromat is a framed puzzle. To be sure, the puzzle is unique and pleasant. A home with a straw roof in a Balkan peninsula setting. My mind is drawn to foreign countries, the countryside, the open landscape. I am temporarily taken outside of this shitty laundromat, but then I think how strange it is to see a puzzle framed as a picture. But what is a puzzle really? A passtime, a diversion? It is a puzzle in the sense that you have to put the pieces together, and not all of them fit because of their shape. It isn't a puzzle in the sense that you have to figure something out, like a word problem or a crossword puzzle. It is a physical puzzle, and not a mental puzzle. Because of course there on the box of the puzzle is the picture that the puzzle eventually forms. What kind of success, then, can you feel, having put together all the pieces? You might as well frame it and keep it forever. Perhaps whoever framed this puzzle did not mean to divert our attention from the mundane act of cleaning clothing, did not mean to call our attention to this beautiful domicile, but rather meant to proudly display his accomplishment of piecing all the pieces of this puzzle together. His sense of accomplishment required a calling attention to, to feel genuine.

Sometimes, when I am full of thoughts, hung over and fresh from a sleep, I feel like I have to grip the earth's surface, just to hold on to everything.

Marxism and Drum N Bass: Converging Paths

2009-08-08T08:27:00.001-07:00

Nov 16, 2008

In the evening when the people set their feet out the door, I crossed the Bay and fell into lights. X had just been babysitting and since she owed me some money, she gave me a small percentage of her earnings. R took us down the hill, around the lake, to this Caribbean-themed bar surrounded by painted palm trees and corrugated sheet metal. The place was sparsely populated and for the short time that we were there I watched the people facing the DJ booth moving to their own rhythms, in spite of the bass that enveloped us. When it came time to purchase a drink I understood the ghostly role that money plays in our consciousness.

I started the night with six dollars. After purchasing a large Tsingtao at a Chinese restaurant in the Mission, I had no money. I borrowed a dollar or two for an ice cream cone later on. When I crossed the Bay I had no money in my pocket, save for that tricky thing that's hard to categorize, the Debit card--often times it's as good as money, others it's completely devoid of value. By a turn events, as I mentioned, when I arrived at my destination I came into the possession of a twenty dollar bill, whose value, if you're used to carrying around a wad of twenties, feels physically equivalent to one dollar. So it was that we arrived at that Caribbean-themed bar and we were swallowed whole by drum 'n bass music. The bar charged five dollars entry fee, and perhaps out of a sense of guilt, R paid for both X and me: a total cost of fifteen dollars. I recognized the gesture and as we approached the bar I ordered a gin and tonic, which R and X ordered as well, and handed the barkeep the twenty dollar bill I had just come into possession of. The other two proceeded to dig through their respective purses and wallets and produce the five dollars that their drink cost, but I waved both bills off. Now R's gesture of paying for our entry into the bar had been recognized, returned, and arguably negated by my purchasing of the two drinks. It is American custom of course to tip, and since I tend to tip well, being in the tip-industry, this reduced the single twenty dollar bill first to five one dollar bills, and then to three as I laid out two bills on the drink-stained counter top: a sixty-seven cent appreciation per gin and tonic. The waving off of the five owed dollar bills was met with gratitude and uncertainty, including statements such as "Thank you" and "Are you sure?" These statements blanketed a tacit agreement that the purchase was my obligation in return for the favor of paying the cover charge. And although my gesture was met with a bit of uncertainty--whether out of concern for my lack of twenty dollar bills or perhaps as a suggestion that I didn't owe anyone anything--I personally felt as though I lost nothing. Perhaps because the twenty dollar bill came into my possession so easily, trading it for cocktails felt almost negligible, or, as they say, "Easy come, easy go." Had the twenty dollar bill been hard-earned, I might have thought twice about buying the drinks. Although if that was the case then the bill would have had friends, and I wouldn't mind losing it either.

As we imbibed the gin and tonics, I started to think about the lightness of money, how easily it is gained and lost. In this instance the twenty dollar bill almost felt inconsequential; in some other reality might I have not been simply paid in gin and tonics? Cut the "middle-man" out, so to speak. And yet not everyone prefers to drink gin and tonics, others like wine or beer or Campari and sodas. So in fact the money is necessary as a kind of pivot point to aim earnings, or work, at an infinite amount of goods. Meanwhile, now that I had made one purchase for each member in my party, since I'm not exactly on the greatest of financial terms, my sense of duty to purchase others' drinks had disappeared. In any case, I only had three dollars left, which is more or less worthless in a bar setting. We left after finishing the gin and tonics and we walked down the street to a more populated bar, featuring a dark interior and a wall of rustic stones that reminded me of the outdated decor of 1960's Californian chalets. It was so dark and crowded in there that I wondered if a normal living room could be turned into a bar simply by filling it with people and turning the lights off. Of course the customers would be searching for the place to buy alcohol, but if it was dark enough and they came drunk enough, they might not know the difference. R became despondent, and after a while, the void of despair was filled with delirious happiness and she offered to buy us drinks for the rest of the night, handing the bartender her Debit card and instructing him to "keep it open," which in bar terminology, suggests a potentially infinite amount of drinks, and very often, because there aren't the limitations that cash provides, especially when the cardholder in question becomes increasingly drunk, ends up costing more than originally intended. I, however, did not refuse the rest of my drinks to be purchased since a. the crowded bar and sisterly affection that R and X had for each other left me to myself and b. indeed, I even felt now a new sense of duty to help R get over her despair as though allowing her to spend money on beers that I alone would drink would somehow translate into her renewed good humor. So we spent and drank and were content.

Notes And Words

2009-08-08T08:26:00.001-07:00

Nov 6, 2008

For so much of my life I've struggled to close the gap between thought and word. When I indulge in thoughts and when I am inspired to record them, they seem to have all but disappeared by the time I find a pen and paper. Listening to too much music has spoiled me. I partly assume that, as a skilled musician knows exactly which keys to press on a piano for the desired chords, the words will be there when I want to describe an emotion. But so often, when I attempt to write it's as if the chords that I used to know so well produce a horrendous cacophony, and it leads to a kind of anxiety in me, like I never know what's around the corner, a kind of paranoia maybe. Then when words fail us more often than not singing is the mask of our emotion. It's all too easy to turn to a song to represent the emotion we are feeling. But then, when you listen to music professionally, what happens? That's when I start to wonder what if we lived in a completely textual world. What if every word meant one thing and one thing alone and to walk down the street you literally, in some kind of literally-figurative way, would have to climb over letters, words, accents and punctuation marks? What if looking at a set of directions was the exact equivalent to driving to the grocery store, and then, what if the printed receipt in your pocket was truly the bag of groceries in the trunk of your car? Perhaps in this completely textual world, we would keep journals in arias and shanties. We could choose to send emails in chants or percussive beats. But I am truly neither musician nor writer, and instead I walk a delicate line in between the two categories, a pariah to each. So, falling down on the sidewalk's curb to hold my head in my hands, I heave a sigh that in some universe is both literally "sigh" and a d flat chord.

The Various Architects

2009-08-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

1. The Dreamer

I've always assumed as bizarre as dreams can get, there is still some part of them that must be based in reality. Upon waking and having analyzed and considered this dream I was surprised that at no point while dreaming did I consider that this to be ridiculous. It begins somewhere in Europe. In France I am assuming, although the building in question was called The Parliament. The Parliament was a set of many, which made the act reasonable, if it could at all be called that, perhaps I should say "considerable" instead. The Parliament was not neo-gothic like the Houses of Parliaments along the Thames, but rather a Beaux-Arts style with a kind of Mansard roof--a typical French federal building, with the foyer at the front and two wings that expanded symmetrically on either side. Nonetheless it was well known that this building once belonged to the United States, somewhere in the midwest, such as Detroit, or perhaps Washington, DC. Yes, now that I think of it, the heist had to have its end in an easterly city of stature of the United States. Of course it was Washington, DC.

Somehow my friends and I came across the idea that this building could be unhinged from its foundation using explosives appropriately placed at several positions in the back and on either side. With enough force, we could uproot it and launch it from its de facto quarters of Paris, France to its original birthplace, Washington, DC. There were a few problems with the idea, although the thought of unhinging the building with explosives was, in my mind, unquestionably sound. For one thing, this was no doubt illegal. But here the heroic quality of the deed outweighed its illegality, as I reasoned. It was illegal, but so are many other acts, and although they are against the law that doesn't mean they shouldn't occur or that they don't take place. If the building was returned to its rightful home successfully--and it was imperative that we be successful--then all question of law would be absolved in the fact that we were heroes and a wrong had been made right.

The other problem with this was the question of success. As I said, I was without doubt that we could release the building from the ground and catapult it into the air (it never crossed my mind, for instance, that by using explosives, the building would simply crumble); the difficulty was getting it to land in its true birthplace, Washington, DC. If it were to land in, say, Detroit, then our efforts would be in vain and surely we would receive a maximum prison sentence--one of those sentences that almost seems laughably, impossibly long.

Nonetheless, the risks were not so great as to stop us from attempting this feat, and finally the day came that we had the explosives in place. We parked ourselves toward the top of the ceiling of the building, using the clerestories as our windshields. Once the building became unhinged, we could use the architrave as a steering wheel by gripping certain parts of it. What followed was not so much the actual event, but the video that had been taped, edited and later on viewed many times while reminiscing about this heist. The video was in color, but the quality had that old-timey feel so for instance, car chases were humorously sped up almost as a reminder that the viewers are not watching reality, but perhaps "taped" reality. There were long shots of silence that gradated into the sound of increasing RPMs of an engine as the building sped past the camera, down avenues and boulevards, skirted trees which exploded in a mist of foliage and, turning corners, nearly careened into other buildings. As was expected, the police and the military were eventually involved and we were trailed by not only government agencies, but angry French citizens protesting the heist of their beloved Parliament building. Our explosives were effective however, and though we came dangerously close, we finally reached the Pacific Ocean without being apprehended.

The car chase video was over and now, as evening set in and a full white moon lit the calm waters, there was a feeling of imminence. Our course and destination had been determined in two ways: the building was headed for its final resting place and it skipped gleefully over the ocean as a flat rock skips over a calm river with long, graceful bounds ; secondly, we were also bound for either imminent doom or legendary status. Once the building landed, there would be no more avoiding apprehension, and it was just a matter of how we would be perceived by the public, as heroes or grand-theft criminals. If the majority of the public thought what we had done was right, regardless of the law, by returning the building to its rightful owners, then we would be free and celebrated. If not, we would certainly spend a lifetime in prison, the more likely fate which I was now carelessly resigned to. I considered all this as we moved up to the roof to look out at the ocean beneath us.

Still, I became increasingly frightened as we neared our destination. Day came with troubled thoughts: I was now convinced that the idea that we could return the building with explosives was folly. If anything it would land in some random spot in the midwest. Even if we landed in the city, it certainly would not land in its true home, where the foundations remain buildingless. But then, it happened, and we landed, tinkered like a penny circling its final destination, and settled just a few feet from the original foundation. For all intents and purposes we had succeeded!

In my dream, weeks went by and to my surprise we were hardly covered in the media, neither as villains nor heroes. Except for a short, unimportant article in the San Francisco Chronicle, we were largely ignored. I made vain attempts to reach out to the New York Times, until finally someone contacted me and said they had already covered our story the day it happened. When I searched for it, I could find nothing. My dream ended as I was left to sift woefully through the stock footage that had now been long shelved and archived, the video that documented the chase through the French streets. Those times seemed long gone and now I had realized the ultimate punishment, not three lifetime prison sentences, nor hard labor, nor exile--but obscurity...

Gutter-life Motherhood

2007-09-01T10:36:00.000-07:00

This older African-American man at the bus stop, then bus, who was talking aloud. I attempted to jot down what I could:

This was before your time, it might have even been before my time; there's no way to prove it. There is no way for them to prove anything. There is no proof. So what they're saying is, "We don't need you. We don't need the black people; we can do everything without you, without your kind." They can up and walk away... She's got to take it from me in that cradle. See, the African mother she could do it. She could do the job. She's not able to do it. But the whole world of Africa: 1,000 years. The cradle of white has nothing to give to that child from the land from he comes. They never had a motherland like that... Our mother who made that possible. Mothers make it possible to do what now? Go to jail and smoke the crack pipe. Is that first-class mother hood? No. Is it second-class? Third-class? It's gutter-life motherhood. That's what it is. Our mothers, they living in the gutter and evil perpetuates evil. You grow up fed with a silver crack pipe in your mouth, that's what. And then it's mighty difficult to curb that kind of addiction. An addiction from birth. See, our mothers they cared for us. They cared what we was going to do with our life. Not just piss it away. But no, she can't give it to him. She got to feel sorry for them now... What if they had the Bible, the language? What if they ahd been that way, huh? No...

and he descends from the bus.

Kids These Days

2007-07-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

Y: I love how beautiful the ocean is. Look how beautiful... You missed that, also that, where Villy, where Villy lives. You should go there sometime it's fantastic. In Delaware.

A: The ocean's blue like that?

Y: Well, it's the bay, you know, I didn't see it that blue because it's more extended, you know. And everyday those freight boats going, it's like a highway there, I don't know where they're coming. Big, big freights. You know, ships, they transport things from wherever, China, wherever. It's like a highway, everyday, night and day. They go very slowly, you know. I think he's there this weekend.

A: I think, didn't he just get back from the Andes?

Y: Yeah.

A: He went back to Delaware already?

Y: Well they, you know they just bought the house, so they are anxious to go, summertime, wintertime you can't, right? And it's good, they're relaxing, for them.

A: And you spent a lot of time with the kids when you were there?

Y: In Argentina?

A: No no, you when you went to Delaware.

Y: Yeah I did. Very much.

A: What'd you think, what were your impressions.

Y: Stefan I think is doing good. Nicky has a long way to grow up.

A: He has to turn another leaf.

Y: He has to get out. Nicky is very smart, he's too smart for his own good, you know how I mean by smart, not intellectual smart, but he, smart smart, but he plays too many games, I don't like that at all. He doesn't have a life.

A: I think the best thing for Stefan is to let him, give him some freedom, let him breathe a little bit.

Y: Stefan is OK.

A: No but I think he needs more breathing space.

Y: Steffy?

A: Cause otherwise he's going to rebel.

Y: He's already rebelling. I don't think they give him any, I don't agree with that, Alex, about Stefan.

A: Cause right now what you need to do is trust that you, that they've raised him properly and that he'll make the right decisions. It's not about policing him.

Y: Well I don't think they police him. Actually, I tell you one thing, he's, if anything else, I think--well, that's stupid things, but he has freedom to go wherever he wants. Finally I got out of him to bring his girlfriend over he didn't even want to admit he had a girlfriend.

A: Did you meet her?

Y: Not--

M: Did you meet her?

Y: No.

M: Oh she wouldn't come?

Y: Well, I asked him, but well you know like I said, he, he had a hard time to admit that it was a girlfriend in the meantime he spends all his time over there I said, "I'm not saying you have any relationship in the other way it's a girl it's a friend, right?" What's wrong not to bring her over? So finally he said he said--

A: It's all semantics, yia-yia.

Y: Yeah, so he, anyhow, it takes him a little, he's not sure of that. He's young, he's only fifteen, Alex.

A: I'm not--

Y: You know, when he was, remember when you were fifteen, how would you react?

A: I know, but people, people are maturing faster these days.

Y: Oooh, they all were, you were not [laughing].

A: No I think they are.

Y: Nah, how you mean "these days," how far are you, how much older you think you are? Centuries older than them?

A: Well I mean I don't know. With technology and everything.

Y: The same generation like you, Alex. It's just in the genies [sic] of a person I think.

A: People are more, exposed to things differently.

Y: Well Al, xha-xhi was maturing in that direction at that age. Oh, are you kidding? Oh, at that age when you, when he was eleven? But even younger. It has to do with his genies.

A: The genies?

Y: Yeah how he, you know, how his body aged. And his brains too.

M: It's so beautiful, guys, the water, did you see? Do you see any whales, Alex?

A: No.

Y: Now, right now?

M: No I guess not.

Y: I think it's too late isn't it, honey?

M: Although this is the time you can see a blue whale on occasion. A big one.

Y: Uh oh. You see them around over there too, no?

Fitness Celebrity

2007-07-22T17:58:00.000-07:00

A: Who's Augie Noriego?

Y: Oh, it's uh Inga's son, ex-son-in-law. Karen's uh.

A: How come he's in the newspaper?

Y: Because he has Lou Gerian disease for many years.

A: Gerian or Lou Gehrig?

Y: Gehrig.

A: Geh-rig?

Y: Yeah. And he's been sick for, and he does, what he does, Alex, you have to read the article, because, he was a fanatical uh, you know, that's how he makes his money, with the exercise, a fanatic about that.

A: About what? Yoga?

Y: Everything, with the machines. I mean, he was so fanatic, you know. And he made, wasn't he at your graduation that day or only Karen was?

M: Only Karen--no, he was there too.

Y: He was there, Augie was there.

A: He's a fitness celebrity, mom?

M: Yeah.

Y: Oh yeah, he's become multi-millionaire with his enterprise. But where, did you read--

M: He sold his company for $360 million. He sort of invented the life-cycle kind of thing. Life-cycle, you know, the equipment.

Y: Yeah, he started when he, the exercise was not that strong. Now everybody does it, but when he started that it was, you know, kind of new.

M: He's really an entrepreneur kind of guy.

Y: Oh my gosh, but did you see all those, he can't use his hands, he's in wheelchair, and he uses the computer with his feet.

A: Really?

M: Well yeah, he's so loaded though that he can do whatever, you know, whatever it takes--

A: Just because he wants to, he has the money to have a computer he uses with his feet, or?

Y: He can't do it any other way.

A: He can't use his hands?

Y: He can't.

M: No, it's a nerve disease.

Just Like the Family Cat

2007-07-22T17:37:00.000-07:00

Driving in the afternoon down to Big Sur, conversations between mom, dad, yia-yia (my grandmother) and I. Yia-yia gets in the car and starts talking about her umbrella which was blown over the fence because of the wind.

Y: Anyhow, so maybe Alex can--

M: So the wind--did you want to, for us to go get it?

Y: No, then this guy was there, you know the guy that lives in that uh condo there, because I think they're uh.

M: Oh, you mean that way?

Y: Yeah. So I told him if it's, he will close it and hand it over, so he hand it over. You got a haircut honey, looks good.

A: Yeah, you like it?

Y: Huh?

A: You like it?

Y: Yeah, professional or your mother?

A: Professional.

Y: Looks like it [laughs].

A: It was cheap though.

Y: Huh?

A: It was twelve bucks.

M: It looks good, doesn't it yia-yia?

Y: Very nice. In the back especially see that's the problem when you are, not professional I think, the back always gives it off, you know, cause they have, the most difficult part of the haircut is in the back.

...

A: So what's up with you yia-yia?

Y: I don't know what it is, just kind of feeling yucka you know. Alex, I tell you the truth I think it's the old age. It's a cold or a bug, who knows.

A: Well I mean you went out to the movies last night.

Y: Yeah, well, like I said I work in the garden and everything, but I get tired and then I sit down wha-ever.

D: Hot. Heat exhaustion.

M: Well, it hasn't been that hot up here though. At our, our house has been pretty hot, yia-yia. Pretty unbearable.

Y: I know. But it's, over here, you know, it's not as hot as your house, but I was sitting outside little bench that I have, reading and boy I got really hot, cause it's the sun, heat, I got upset, you know. So what's happening with you?

A: Not too much. Trying to find a job.

Y: Are you getting ahead with that at all?

A: I mean I think so. I think by next week I'll have one.

Y: Hey that's good. Enjoy it while you are not doing it. You work the rest of your life.

A: Yeah.

Y: Huh. You know I, you know why I say that I used to work really hard you know and then I get a couple of days off and you feel guilty, I said gosh--

A: Sometimes I feel guilty.

Y: Yeah of course, that's normal. Anyways.

A: I guess.

Y: Sofi called last night. Very sweet of her.

M: Oh that's nice. What'd she say?

Y: She was working and then the girls went then, there, you know, Sophia and uh Kim. They're leaving I think today? I don't know.

M: Oh they're leaving?

Y: Or tomorrow.

A: Where're they going?

Y: They're coming back home, you know.

M: They had a good time, didn't they?

Y: Yeah, she, it was nice of them, and then one night they went and had dinner there. Sofi seems to like her job.

M: Yeah she does. The hours are not very long.

A: It's four hours a day.

Y: That's pretty long, for what she does. She's on her feet all the time.

A: I don't think so. Some people work six hours a--

Y: But Alex, for her the first job is pretty good for her.

M:--figuring out where the people go and everything.

A: I know, but I'd want to work more--

Y: No, not, but you is different, you're going to get a full job. You got to get a full job.

Two Types of Getting Fucked

2007-07-17T15:14:00.000-07:00

N: ...she was like, "Leave it up to Dan to find the subculture right away." I was like, "I know, like he's talking about No Helmet-bullshit, no brakes."

D: It's not No Helmet-bullshit I just wouldn't wear a helmet.

A: Yeah, you don't want to wear a helmet?

D: No, fuck that man. Nicole was like--like cause I was like [listing off the things we need]...helmet. I was like, "Fuck the helmet." She was like, "No helmet?" I was like, "I'm not going to buy a helmet." I was like, "I'll buy one, but I'm not going to wear it."

A: I mean I've seen most people wear helmets.

D: Yeah.

N: That's so true. I mean it's like me walking down an alley wearing a short skirt, high heels.

D: Yeah, you're bound to get raped babe.

N: Yeah it's like you're going to get a fucking--you're going to get it. I mean, no helmet--short skirt and tights, same thing.

D: Down a dark alleyway, like in the middle of the Tenderloin.

N: Yep. We're both going to get fucked.

D: At least mine will be by chance. You'll be asking for it.

A: But that's the point. You both are. But anyway I was thinking like, like you get this bike. But then you know, we like shop around, we take our time, get a bike, and like if we can do it, build the bike and sell it. And starting selling them.

D: Oh totally man

Fixed-Gears

2007-07-17T13:04:00.000-07:00

Dan: ...and what you see is what you got. And it's nice, man. Like he's got it's like a blue frame, and he's got like yellow like like like golden yellow rims, and then he's got like the same color wrap over his bars. And he has like ram-horns and he just hacksawed the ends off. And then he like flipped them upside-down so they like go up and it's it's so cool man.

Alex: That's pretty cool.

D: And it's super clean and I was like, "Dude, that's the fucking shit." And he was like, "That's mine, but I got this friend in Vacaville," which is like near Sacto like.

A: Yeah yeah, that's by Davis.

D: And fuckin' he's like, he just built he converted a Univega, stripped it down, he's like, "It's got a 45 millimeter front" like all this shit that I don't even know about yet really, and he's like "We built this thing, but it's too big for him." He's like, "You're pretty tall, right? How tall are you?" I'm like "6'4"" He's like, "Yeah man, this guy's a little bit shorter than me" and this dude's like, like just a little shorter than me basically, but it's the bike's too big for him and he's sellin' it. He's like.

A: How much?

D: He's like, he's all, "He wouldn't be asking more than two hundred for it." I was like, "Nice!" And he's all "Gimme like your email or something," he'll send pictures and shit. And I was like, "Thing is, with everything you got," I'm like, "I'm probably gonna buy that mother fucker." He's like, "And it's legit, like I helped him build it, so it's all good."

A: Yeah and it's funny cause like my friend he like built one himself too and he used a Univega frame.

D: Really? I would love to build one, but I just don't have the time, nor the.

A: Yeah but you don't have to like rush it.

D: Well true, but I do want to get a bike.

A: Yeah that's what I'm saying.

D: Like I got off last night late, and no buses run and the muni's closed down. Like Nicole came to pick me up. Like I'm not down to spend my money on a fucking cab to get home, you know. So I want to buy a bike quick so I can...

On How Jad Doesn't Speak Arabic

2007-06-25T18:22:00.000-07:00

A: ...and like you know everyone here is kind of family and yet they speak a language that you don't and you don't belong to that part of their life. Isn't that difficult? Like even with languages I just meet someone like some Spanish person who I don't know that well, and they just speak a language--I feel bad you know like, man, I'm never going to get to know this person.

J: That's why going home will be a good thing.

A: Will you have time to learn Arabic probably not.

J: I'm going to be around the house.

A: Yeah you'll have it in your mind.

J: I'd have to take classes. That's why I was going to move to Lebanon before this whole war thing happened.

A: It's even worse now.

J: My dad would love for me to have a wife like that like that girl in the green there.

A: She wears a lot of makeup.

J: She does.

A: That's what Lebanese women look like right?

J: Some Lebanese women like--

A: Oh wait are you talking about--which one the one in the--Zena?

J: Yeah. My dad would love for me to have a wife like that, have a little daughter. It's crazy to have--the thing about her, that daughter is going to turn out to be a really beautiful girl, but also really like well-behaved. She's going to be unattainable you know. She might be a little slutty you know.

A: Maybe she will.

J: No. They're not raised that way. They know better.

A: But sometimes they rebel.

J: Rarely. Not with a mom like that you know. Not with the dad, the dad's a kind of powerful figure. He has to--like a man's man.

Lava Lamps of Biology

2007-06-25T17:34:00.000-07:00

J: ...and so they use the power--the worm--you can see the synapse of the worm--this is taken from a live, living worm so all these are like synapses along the cell. Muscles right above it, but you can't see the muscles because we don't highlight it. And so you highlight a specific part in the normal worm. Then you enter a mutation to like a motor--a motor for it to--something that carries uh aspects to the synapse. And what happens: you don't get any of this. So it's telling you that normally it's established evenly and you can see the dots, but when you take away this it has such a profound effect that you don't get anything any more. So this guy was very necessary to carry out--or to establish the structure for this to be there.

A: Got it.

J: It might not necessarily carry this indivdual thing itself out, but it might have carried out like the like the skeleton--skeletal structure for it to reside in you know. So it's like a two-step thing you know: we don't know but this is saying without this you don't get any of this. So and also without this guy you don't get any early endosomes at the synpase, which is this mark, a specific structure called the synapse. And with this guy it's sort of different um it's smaller and uh--

A: It's visible.

J: It's visible.

A: Does that prove anything?

J: Yeah it proves that this guy is is it proves that in this background you still have this going on--normal. Whenever it's italicized with like an "e" or something it means there's a mutation to it. A specific type of mutation. So in this guy it's going normally so normally when this guy is active it's helping produce all this and when this guy is gone it's affecting like uh structures basically. It's like you take away one and the other and you get--you take away one and you see like the normal functions of what the other one normally does. Basically you know. But say you take away this one, "unc 104," you still have normal this guy, "unc 116" is normal in this in this background. So it's telling you this guy is really important you know, but if you take this guy away you still have a normal--normal this guy and so this guy is telling you how it's normally creating it, and they're a little bit smaller or bigger or whatever. If you take away both of them to see which one is more important than the other you know, it's totally gone, this guy's much more important than--

A: So what is your ultimate goal for the whole paper.

J: This paper? Is just to show that we can use this as a tool. In worms. That we--that different things are happening to all these structures given all these markers wrap 5, wrap 7, wrap 10, wrap 11, and which motors are important to do--or, to establish which structures you know. So like, creating a sort of like pathway you know. Cause like all of them kind of merge from each other cause like initially you have a thing called an early endosome. And from the early endosome buds this thing called the late endosome... if that makes any sense.

A: Kind of. I don't know what an endosome is.

J: Well--so think of a big structure like a big vesicle--you know what a vesicle is? A big like round.

[some old men start pointing in our direction and we move away from their pointing to make sure they aren't pointing at us]

J: Ok, so basically what is is you have this big like round structure like a big circle you know with a bunch of shit stored in it. We call that an endosome. The structure. And from that like basically the way these work is like things like bud away from it kind of like you know the--I guess the best analogy for what it looks like is you know those glowing like tubes? You know those like glowing uh hippy tubes? Like the--

A: Yeah yeah yeah.

J: That's like the--

A: You put around your neck.

J: Huh? No no no it's like one of those structures where you plug it in and it like glows orange or something and you get that big blob--

A: Oh a lava lamp?

J: The lava lamp yeah! That's what it is, an early endosome is like a lava lamp, a big lava lamp, and things move away from it you know, like a big like lump, that's like a vesicle. So a lava lamp is like a big vesicle and when things move away, small vesicles move away you know. So the main, the main structure is the early endosome. The big lava lamp is the early endosome and when things bud away from it they can go different ways. Like they can go left, like depending on the way. So the lava lamp can be like up or down. Up goes to another structure called a late endosome, that does something a little bit different where things get destructed. Or down: recyclying endosome: where things go to get recycled and can be reused.

A: So do we have these in our bodies?

J: Yeah every cell does.

A: Every cell wow.

J: And every neuron does. No work has been really done to see like which motors are really necessary to establish these structures.

A: So you're basically studying that.

J: Yeah we're studying--

A: You're studying white cells, stem cells.

J: No we're studying just neuron cells. The polarized cell. No one really knows what happens in a very polarized cell. So this the first like absolute, high, high analysis of what's going on. From this one image--these images I like do this, [flipping pages] I do all this, from this one image I do this and this and all this analysis basically, like three pages of analysis based on four images you know. But of course I take a bunch of these images and I do a lot of calculations.

A: So you--Ok, so it's interesting for me to actually see it visually because you always talk about it but I don't really--but now I can understand it more.

J: These are good images you know. All these are like--they're showing you that different things are happening like equilibrium you know of the like lava lamp if you will you know. Normally it's like this, you take away something and you're lava lamp is much smaller you know but you have to think about what's going on. So like this guy, his main importance is--so this is like the bottom of the lava lamp. It's interesting because this guy is important to make--he comes from basically this guy--they say, the path goes--uh it doesn't really matter. I think it's only in like the world of like endosomes where people really understand what's going on you know. It's a really difficult project, a really difficult project to talk about you know, it's like "What have you been doing?" Well I've been doing like this but--

A: How to put it into like laymen's terms.

J: I can't. Can't do it. I shouldn't, it's not worth it for like--I need to fix this.

A: I don't care. But I--I'm interested in like to know more but--

[as Jad reads some of his paper the Lebanese music swells and his voice becomes unintelligible]

Eyes and the Face

2007-06-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

Talking about a girl who was the daughter of a friend of Jad's mom's.

J: I can't believe she's nine dude.

A: Yeah that happened to me the other day like my mom's friend like uh said like "Yeah she's in high school." I'm like, "That's incredible, like I remember when you didn't have a kid." She's like driving and stuff.

J: Wow.

A: Isn't that crazy like within our lifetime that's already happened. That was like the first time I ever recognized that that's happened.

J: Like I have cousins now that are like eleven and they're all about LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers you know. And they're coming over you know. And I'm like, "They're eleven?!" I remember going to Canada and like picking them up when they were babies and like being scared shitless cause I grabbed one and hit it on its head you know and being like "Oh my god. Oh god." They're funny kids and now they're all tough and big eleven year olds.

A: Kinda scary huh? Now they're gonna kick your ass.

J: Yeah. Now they're gonna kick my ass.

A: They'll be like, "I remember when you hit me on the head."

J: They're like this big. They're probably going to be punching me and shit. They're going to be bigger than me like six three, six four. Huge boys. Huge.

A: So is like LeBron James like the Michael Ja--the Michael Jordan of their generation.

J: Yeah yeah like I think they like the Cavaliers because of LeBron

A: I thought he played for Miami or something.

J: No, that's Dwayne Wade. See they're--the NBA is looking for its Face right the Face of the NBA. There's no like--there aren't many leagues where you need a Face. And they've always needed a Face you know like.

A: That's true huh. Well cause Michael Jordan kind of set the precedent didn't he. He was just like so good that he--

J: Well even before that even before that the Face of the NBA was--

AR: What about Barry Bonds?

A: Yeah but people hate him. Nobody hated Michael Jordan.

J: Yeah. Well even before Michael Jordan it was like Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.

A: Yeah yeah there were a couple and then like Dr. J and like uh--

J: --everyone knew Larry Bird and Magic Johnson you know. And then the sport transcended into you know like the world with Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan became the Face of the NBA for the World.

A: You know the logo [of the NBA], how it was based on an actual person?

J: Yeah, Jerry West. They call him "The Logo."

A: I thought it was um like some some W his last name started with a W.

J: West, West, Jerry West.

A: No like--

J: Wilt Chamberlain?

A: Chamberlain yeah.

J: No he's--he's a big--big Black guy. Jerry West used to play for the Lakers he like set a bunch of insane records. An insane scorer yeah. He was like the original wide scorer.

A: Really? So they're looking for a guy who can be the Face of the NBA?

J: Yeah for the world really someone who's really like--

A: Alan Iverson?

J: --somebody you know. Yeah everyone--see, guys come and go like the actual--the guy who can take on all the pressure, is very charismatic you know, that puts on two faces, the guy who manipulates his own organization to win, but the guy who--he also is in front of the media and he's like semi-personable and they don't really get into his personal life. But then on court he's like an amazing player you know. LeBron Ja--

A: What about Wallace?

J: Ben Wallace? Rashid Wallace? No dude, that guy's a thug.

A: Remember that time when he's like, "We will win game 2." That was awesome. I like loved him so much after that.

J: And they did. They did. Yeah that was on their route to winning an NBA title.

A: And then they like--after the game they were like, "Will you guarantee another win?" He was like, "No." Just like shut down. Like, "I just wanted to guarantee game 2."

Watch out for The Pinochler

2007-06-24T21:44:00.001-07:00

Michael telling a story about how his cousin--while answering phones for the Pottery Barn--got into a long conversation with an old man who was a cop in San Francisco during the 30s.

M: ..."The Pinochler." And it was like he kept bringing up The Pinochler throughout the conversation. And uh--

A: The Pinochler? What does that mean?

M: Like he liked to play pinochle.

A: Oh.

M: And uh and apparently he like busted heads.

A: What is pi-nochle?

M: It's like a card game. I think a board is involved or something. I don't know the--

AR: Was he like a gangster or the like uh--

M: Yeah, it was like he busted head so you had to watch out for him. You know, he didn't like catch The Pinochler but like he was just talking about him.

A: I wonder if he was a cop during the Zodiac phase.

M: No. He was a cop during the 30s.

A: I don't know. Maybe he started off in the 30s--late 30s.

M: The Zodiac was like not that big of a deal except for like two guys.

A: So this guy calls up Pottery Barn and just like goes right into how he was a cop.

M: Yeah.

A: Like, "you got any of that--"

M: Like, "Thank you for calling Pottery Barn." "There's this guy, Robert--" "Yeah, are you sure you called the right number?" "You bet your ass I did, is this Pottery Barn? I gotta tell you about The Pinochler."

A: "Do you have any drapes with 1930s cops on them. Oh wait, that's me. Let me tell you something... bout that.

M: No he uh it was just like it happened in the conversation. Raza got into a conversation at the Aquarium where he was talking to some woman for forty minutes about his life. And at the end of the conversation she told she told Raza to buy--go out and buy his mom flowers because--

A: Oh yeah I remember that.

M: --she raised a great kid or something like that. And I was like, "I would feel like a million bucks if someone told me that."

A: He did it, right?

M: Yeah, he did it kind of shi--he was like, "Some lady told me to buy these flowers."

A: That's so Raza to like go through a nice gesture and like botch the delivery.

M: Yeah cause he wasn't--it wasn't like "Thanks for being a great mom." It was just like uh yeah so I got you these.

A: He shouldn't have even said anything.

M: Yeah.

Kissing on the Cheek

2007-06-24T21:33:00.000-07:00

Talking about people who have aged in your absence.

J: ...like, just like all like the years when you were young and abusing your body and they're still like part of your life.

M: Yeah, well they--you also get dead too. Like sometimes you're not alive any more--when you're seventy-five.

A: That's a problem.

J: It's a good amount of people that showed up.

M: Yeah, I know.

A: Too bad they didn't bring gifts dude you'd be a fucking millionaire.

J: I think some of them did.

M: How much you make--how much you think you'll make?

J: Off all this? I don't know maybe like five hundred dollars.

M: I'm thinking a grand. Shmooze it a little bit, you can make it happen for yourself. Yeah, no, seriously, make it happen with those people you'll get more money. They'll throw in an extra fifty and be like, "I like that kid!"

[Jad runs off to shmooze]

M: They're not really going to do that, I just wanted him to get the hell out of here.

A: Look at him--a little kiss on the cheek.

M: Someone was trying to pull the kiss on the cheek and like--

A: I had to do it with his mom.

M: --I botched the last time--the kiss on the cheek--the last time I actually kissed the girl on the cheek and she was like "You don't know how to do it." Cause the first time I didn't do anything I was just like--I went on this side and I was like "Whatever." And then I was like, "I guess we're supposed to kiss the cheek at this point." And she was like, "You're not supposed to actually kiss the cheek."

A: Who said that?

M: It was uh, it was ----------.

A: Oh yeah, she was kind of a bitch though.

M: She wasn't a bitch she just said she just said you should learn how to do that.

A: Yeah but she kind of rubbed it in your face that you didn't know and she did.

M: Yeah, yeah.

Tails about Airdales

2007-06-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

Michael was about to yell a compliment to some guy with a dog, "Nice airdale!"

A: Just do it.

M: Everybody would hear me. If I could do it without everybody hearing me I would do it.

A: "Nice airdale!" That's the kind of statement I'd like to hear from afar: "Hey nice dog!" Very happy about that.

M: A stranger. I don't know this guy, but...

A: Or just like run up to him, "[panting] nice dog. All right see ya guy."

M: Give him a handshake. "Dude, nice dog." And just bolt off in the same direction that you came from.

A: Vanessa has um this ringtone, that like ringtone like "duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh." And it was like ringing in public and some guy's like "Nice ring."

M: And it's like that's not a ring, that's the same ring everybody has. You can't compliment people on things that everybody has. It's like, "Nice... Honda Civic."

Talking About Boring People

2007-06-24T21:07:00.000-07:00

M: ...that's actually acceptable but like, sometimes I'm in conversations and I just like want to yell "Boring!" And like I actually did it one time and uh my dad was talking and it was like in a big group and I was like "BOOOO-RIIING!" and everybody liked it and like I think that everybody knew that it was boring and wanted to move on to something else but nobody knew how to say and I did know how to say it by saying "Boring" in a loud, boorish voice.

A: What did your dad do--

M: He thought it was funny.

A: --did he like go home and kill himself?

M: He probably felt bad about himself too.

A: He laughs and he goes home, polishes his gun, gets in to his like military outfit.

M: Looks in the mirror, takes a deep breath.

A: But like I think that kind of conversation is better for when you're trying to hit on a girl. You use that one, that will like really work. "Oh yeah, what do you major in? BORING!"

M: That was the situation I wanted to do it in, because I've been talking to a lot of boring girls lately. A lot of people are fucking boring.

A: Yeah, it's kind of funny how that happens.

M: It's like, "I'm a business major," it's like, "[short gasping sigh]." Like, "Uhh, you know, I'm moving in with my parents in Morgan Hill." Like "[exasperated snoring sound]." It's like, just dropping deeper and deeper. "You got any hobbies?" "I like watching TV." Like, "[whispered sigh]." But then it lift me up because we watched The OC together, so we're buddies again.

A: Who is this? Is it like--

M: Just like this girl

A: --a specific guy? I thought it was like a vague, general, faceless--

M: No, no, no. It was a girl I went on a date with two weeks ago or whatever.

A: Oh yeah, so are you kind of nervous--do you have to leave soon or what?

M: I have to call her I haven't called her. I was supposed to call her on Friday. So yeah, I do have to go soon. But I don't want to be rude, you know. But I came you know. Good work everybody, by the way.

A: Came to what?

M: Good work. Good work.

A: What do you mean, "Came?" Of course I came.

M: Yeah, I know. I was worried because it took you a while.

A: I was like nervous because I thought I was missing something.

M: Yeah, cause um it means a lot to old Jad there. He doesn't show much but he's got the--

Pretending to be a Carpenter

2007-06-23T23:23:00.000-07:00

M: ...and then they're like uh, "Wow!" and it's like, "Were you a carpenter?" And I'm like, "Yeah! I was a carpenter for a while."

A: But what kind of stuff do you know about carpentry?

M: I just know--I know enough to seem like, cause like I feel like I know enough about football--and that's the other thing, sometimes I'll claim I'm a 49ers fan.

A: You know enough about the 49ers to be a fan?

M: I definitely know enough about the 49ers. I probably like know more about the 49ers than some 49ers fans.

A: Why don't you just say you're a Patriots fan? Because that's true.

M: I kinda am, but I don't know anything about the Patriots. I know about the 49ers cause Jack talks about them all the time. Like, he could pass for someone in my family and I could pass for somebody who is a 49ers fan. Like, based on conversations we've had.

[Jad's mom approaches and tells us to take some food home]

M: she's kind of a little tipsy. She was like dancing around earlier.

A: I kind of wanted to speak french with them. Because last time I actually saw her I was going to France the first time, she spoke french to me and I was like "Whoaa."

M: Heh heh heh heh.

A: So I kind of like want to give it another shot. But it's funny like a lot of times all you have to know is like a name of like something and people will be like "Whoa, dude you know so much about it!"

M: Yeah, exactly. And like that's the same thing with casings and butt-joints and stuff like that.

A: I met this Dutch guy actually. And like I don't know much about soccer like national teams and stuff. I know names because I played a video game. And so I was like, "Oh," um, who did I say? I can't even remember who I said... you know anything about soccer?

ARLO: Huh? No, not like--I know how to play but not like teams.

A: But anyway it was a Dutch guy, and I said his name and this guy was like "Yeah!" And I said another name and he was like "Oh my god, you know!"

M: Well it's like if I talked to somebody and they knew who Bob Clampett was I'd be like super-attracted to him.

A: The carpenter guy, or--

M: He's like a cartoonist. I'd be like, "You know Bob Clampett? You and me are all right." So you just gotta find that with other people. And sometimes it's pretending you were a carpenter, or you're a 49ers fan or you lived in France.

A: Did you actually say you were in France? Because that's like--

M: I did once.

A: --that's like a whole life change.

M: Well, we didn't go into it, you know, we just hit it and I moved on.

A: Was it a class or something or like--

M: No, no, no cause it was just like, "Oh yeah" because I talked about something I did in France. And then I remembered--I don't know, but for some reason it was vital to the conversation that I had at some time lived in France.

A: Everyone's like staring you, "Did you live in France?" "Yes." It's so easy to do at that point. The tools are your hands.

[laughter]

M: It's like a council of five people like arms crossed.

A: "How do you know about this France?"

M: "Explain yourself." "I did live in France."

Thesis Papers

2007-06-23T22:57:00.000-07:00

06.23.07--Jad Kanbar's graduation barbecue at Whispering Pines Park in Pacific Grove. Mainly Lebanese, the old men playing Basra, children running around, old women sitting in the shade and a lot of Lebanese food.

MICHAEL: Well it's like, um--

JAD: What are you doing, you bastard?

J: Well the point is this: that you can't really say "I'm doing this and I'm doing this." I'm being extremely vague. An example is like a lab meeting. That's when you show off everything at one point. But it doesn't really matter what's going on. You're working hard and people see you're working really hard, you know? You ask for advice and you kind of piece together--

ALEX: It's like working on a thesis. You go, "This is what I'm working on."

J: --and with one shot you show everything. Then you reveal your hand. And another time when you're revealing your paper, you know, you reveal your hand and then you take a step back. Only one certain time you reveal what's going on. But through the whole rest of the time you should, you know, keep steady about your cards basically. That's what I learned. But, you know, it's important not to be secretive. If things need to be revealed you need to lay down your hand and not have tricks up your sleeve.

A: Did you do a presentation on your thesis?

J: No--yeahhh, basically. Not really. No.

A: Did anyone read it? How long is it?

J: No, it's in the process of being done. I can show you if, like--

A: Yeah I might like to see it. But the thing about the thesis is like, Vanessa wrote like a fifty-five page thesis, right--

J: On what?

A: Uh, well, it's like an english paper so it's like critical theory and stuff. And it's like one person read it. Not including me. Like, nobody has read it.

J: You know, the thing about this work is like if it's really good it's gonna be taken right out. And if it's really good it's going to be taken right out and put in to a book. As is.

A: That's cool. Like a journal?

M: Hey you think I should pi--you think I should pick Lee up because I know--he's gotta be asleep in front of Jad's house. He's not, you went to Jad's?

A: Uh huh.

M: You did? And the white truck wasn't there? That was my--that was my bet.

A: No. I thought I saw his car, but it wasn't it.

J: Oh. Dude.