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needles needling needlessly with little thread... or much of anything else...

(foolish dribbles to be written at uncertain times, on an irregular basis, from uncertain sections of the ever expending universe, and from whatever dimension I-We-Us-Them might find ourselves/ myself in …)

Sunday, November 27, 2005

AFTER THE GOBLING 


Times are getting busy. This Thanksgiving was insane at the store. Pretty much non-stop from the minute we opened the doors till the time we closed. We all worked a double shift that day. We had a couple of slow hours in the early afternoon, but that didn’t last long. Thanksgiving day was a mixture of trying to recover from the previous day of work, and forget about having to go back in on Friday. I woke up on my friends’ couch sometimes in the early AM of Friday with a massive hang-over. Which bring me here, this beautiful Sunday morning, at my local coffee shop having a green tea and a banana. I’ve got a paper due for Monday’s evening class, for which I’ve merely noted down a few ideas...I’m working on the manuscript for my book of poems which is all ready long overdue...am meeting with the current editor this Wednesday hopefully, that is, if she doesn’t flake out on me...basically, what I’m trying to say is that, with the holiday season taking off on a very busy Turkey day I’m guessing that it’s gonna be an uphill battle all the way till New Year’s (this Goble-Goble day was busier than both last year’s Christmas and New Year’s!) I’ve got to crack down on the school work, because I need a 3.5 GPA to get into U.T.’s R.T.F. program, and I need to concentrate on my book, it’s been almost there for way too long now, and it needs to be there before the end of the year. All that added on to the usual up and down mood swings, I’m guessing I won’t be on this blog very often.

I did have a beautiful flight this morning, though. Was in a little apartment complex somewhere south of here on the seashore. I was living a quiet friendly life in an otherwise trashed out complex, but trashed out in a laisser-faire way, a grungy we’re at the beach situation, nothing too grossed out, and at one point, I stepped outside and lifted off into the air, over the tree line and flew a great distance inland. It was fun. Now, I don’t know what flying dreams imply in all the psycho-therapeutic way. I’m sure there’s some underlying meanings, some frustrations and neurotic behavioral problems I need to deal with, and I’m sure they’re all right on and so on and so forth. I don’t care. I had a beautiful pleasant flight. I wasn’t flying away from something, I wasn’t taken by the wind without being able to control my whereabouts, I wasn’t experiencing any kind of fear or reproach or anything negative, I was just pleasantly floating way above the trees. I even started doing back-flips, or taking on different positions, to see which was more comfortable. I waved at cattle grazing down in the fields below. Little farm houses. The terrain looked more French than Texan, so I’m not sure where I was, maybe a mixture of both. I woke up needing to go to the bathroom. I’m not sure what that means either, and I don’t want to know.

The entries during the season of festivities are going to be scattered. Wherever you are, go and have yourself a good flight. It’s fun.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

16h44 


My brain is dead. My thoughts have rivaled death and lost. There is nothing left. I’m not even sick. I trod on, one step at a time. My sleep is deep and silent. I fall from wakefulness into unconsciousness nightly without knowledge. It’s beautiful in the sense that I’ve always wanted, or thought I’d always wanted, this darkness. Now that it’s here, I’m no longer sure. I wake up early in the morning ready for the world...at least physically. My body is wide awake, in charge, full of energy, ready to take on the world. However....my mind feels blank, dead, without hallucinations, without a past, without a future, just barely presently blank and awake, brand new, freshly out of the grind and ready to take on the shits, nothing doing. Without a past, imagined or real, my mind awakes like a babe newborn into the world and barely able to cope. The peacefulness is wonderful. The rest is bleak, like a post world war landscape of death. Memories are the bricks which build our consciousness into a palatable daily life. Without memories we are but babes unaware of the rest, monkeys with a slightly higher intelligence, bipeds horny walking around trying to copulate, feed ourselves, and get some rest. With our memories, with our parents’ memories, we are sad creatures still, but at least we are three dimensional.

Monday, November 21, 2005

COCORICO 


My friends in Portland, Maine, are opening a cocktail lounge in mid-December. Unfortunately, I cannot make it for the grand opening. J.A. asked me to think of a cocktail they’d name after me. I think he was kidding, but here it goes nonetheless. (I finally tested this cocktail on several people last night after trying out several versions on myself the last couple of weeks, and for the most part, it was successful.)

My version of the Chocolate Martini, use top-shelf ingredients only:

the COCORICO

One shot of citrus flavored vodka
One shot of straight vodka
Half a shot of chocolate liqueur
A generous splash of kirshwasser

Put all ingredients in the martini shaker with lots of ice – made from distilled water of course, no tap-water rocks in my house! – shake rigorously for 30 seconds, and filter into a martini glass.

(Cocorico is the sound the rooster makes in French, and Coco is how the Americans pronounce Cacao. The rooster is a very French symbol. I’m both French and American and since this is a chocolate inspired drink, I think the name is perfect.)

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

FALLING 


My eyes were open. I was walking up a staircase. Very tired. Disgruntled. Wanting only one thing in the world: to take a shower and renew myself. Up the stairs, I knew, there was a public shower I could use. But for the life of me, I couldn’t make it up the stairs. There was a person sitting on the stairs leaning against the wall, having a smoke. This person was a woman mid way up the stairs. Sitting and smoking. I couldn’t see much else, it was all so fuzzy. I was in some sort of a fog. There was no fog around me. There was no fog in the house I was in. There was no fog on the staircase going up. There was lots of fog in my head. My head was heavy. Very heavy. I was literally falling awake. A horrible sensation, whether falling asleep or falling awake. It’s unworldly, it should be done automatically without having to think about it. It’s as if some inexplicable forces are trying to pull you out of your body or out of your consciousness. It’s unpleasant. She said, “you’re doing just fine, you’re almost there.” She went back to her cigarette, not moving, just looking at me. And I crumbled on the last stair. I had made it all the way to the top when the fog became too heavy, and I could barely understand what the girl was saying. I held on to the wall and sat down, sliding my hand melodramatically down the grey wallpaper. I awoke.

(Snapshots. Snapshot after snapshot. Watched the movie by Chris Marker in class last night. La Jetée. Going in and out of consciousness, or time travel, whatever you want to call it. When I was a teenager, I used to read about ‘out-of-body’ experiences, trying to explain the sensations I felt almost nightly going to bed. It’s all about the moment it takes to fall asleep or to fall awake, what level of consciousness you might find yourself in at any one point in time or in space. Sometimes, things get messed up, and the boundaries between time and space get messed up, or they simply change to a time / space relation you’re not used to. Call it hallucination, out-of-body experience, time travel, abduction by aliens, hardcore dreams...it doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s a trick of the mind, electrical surges slightly off beat.)

Monday, November 14, 2005

20h51 – MELANCHOLY 


- That, too, is part of who I am. Not every facet of my personality has to be pleasing. Yes, I CAN be a shallow, selfish, dick head. What of it?
- I don’t know. You tell me.
- I’m not telling you anything else. This whole conversation is boring me.
- So you do admit, in the instance that we’re talking about, that you’re using clichés, being selfish, and not even remotely thinking about how others might feel about your actions or about your words?
- Sure, certainly.
- That’s not very nice, is it?
- So what? Who says I’ve got to be nice all the time? Albeit, most of the time, I’m this nice guy who goes out of his way to be Mr. Nice Guy, but every once in a while, I just want to let loose, and sometimes, this means becoming a selfish asshole.
- That’s not a pleasant thought.
- There’s nothing pleasant or unpleasant about it. It’s a fact. Most of the time, I’m a nice guy, most of the time, I try to be fair, and all that other stuff...
- You say that, but who says that except for you?
- So?
- Then who says it’s true?
- Does anybody other than myself need to say something to me to legitimize what I feel about myself?
- Sometimes it’s helpful.
- Bull shit. I’m a pathetic individual. And I can only speak for myself - personally, I think we're all pathetic individuals to some extent. I write about myself as truthfully as I can. That means describing myself as a selfish shallow asshole merely interested in plastic beauty and getting pathetically drunk being this selfish prick...that is, if that’s who I’m being at the time. I could very well be the completely opposite person another time, and whoever I’m being, as long as it’s me, then that’s whom I should describe myself as being...
- And you want others to read about yourself portrayed in this manner?
- What I want doesn’t matter. What’s funny is that people actually read about my pathetic little life.
- You think it’s funny?
- Funny and even more pathetic than myself, which reassures me that I’m not as pathetic as I sometimes think that I am, which reassures me that I’m not the only lonely asshole out there, which reassures me that after all is said and done, I’m merely human. Like my good friend says: monkeys with car keys, that’s what we are, not much else.
- ...
- I’m pissed at life, I’m pissed at myself...that’s what it is...
- From...from the other day?
- What? No. No, lets not be silly...I couldn’t give a monkey’s fart about the other day...I’m...I’m pissed at my inability to move, however hard I try, however much energy I dispense, however much I struggle to strip myself away from myself, I can’t move. I’m stuck, like an iron statue rooted in a cement socle. A boring statue, to boot.

The following planet was inhabited by a drinker....
“What are you doing there?” he asked the drinker, whom he found sitting in silence in front of a large collection of empty bottles and of a large collection of unopened bottles.
“I drink,” answered the drinker dismally.
“Why do you drink?” Asked the little prince.
“To forget,” answered the drinker.
“To forget what?” insisted the little prince, feeling sorry for the man.
“To forget that I’m ashamed,” confessed the drinker lowering his eyes.
“Ashamed of what?” said the little prince who wanted to help.
“Ashamed of drinking!” concluded the drinker, closing himself into his melancholic silence for good.
And the little prince left, perplexed.
(badly translated by myself. The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry.)

- You’re selfish.
- Sure, all melancholic people who make it a point to point out to the rest of the world how melancholic they are, are selfish. Real selfless people are those who can suffer the pathetic melancholies of everyday life without going on and on about it. Specially those of us who don’t have it so bad, but think they do, and go on screaming it non stop to anybody who will listen.
- Are you trying to be...uhm...serious...to say something...uhm...deep?
- (Laughs) “Deep” ??? Give me a break.

(Am I, or am I not being sarcastic, that’s the question....)

Monday, November 07, 2005

181 - THE WEEKEND 


It’s Monday. It’s morning. The weekend has rolled over and petered out and a new week has started. A rat has once again died somewhere underneath my kitchen. As I walked into my house early this morning, the smell hit me with its nauseating stench, and I nearly vomited right there and then. Not to mention my head pounding away from non-stoppable good fun since closing the store Saturday evening. It’s all a bit of a blur right this moment.

It started at my neighbors’ belated Halloween bash Saturday night. Lots of fun. It’s not quite clear to me around what time I stumbled back to my humble abode, but Kari said they’d left around three and I was still dancing away...dancing away like fools. My outfit was that of a French Cowboy. Basically my usual attire with Glenn’s cowboy looking straw hat he uses at work. It’s a very smelly dirty thing which looked perfect on my head. I could have tried a little harder, but I don’t particularly care for dressing up, though I enjoy dress-up parties. Glenn and Kari went as a priest and nun couple.

At some point Sunday night I was in a hot-tub somewhere in South East Austin, frolicking with three other people. That is, until the guardian of the apartment complex came by and nicely asked us to please step out of the whirlpool as it is not to be used past 10pm. We kept going from the hot-tub to the much colder water of the swimming pool. I’m not sure what time it was, but it was certainly much later than ten in the evening. He was very nice about it. I’d even lost my glasses during one of my dives into the swimming pool going after one or both of the two ladies in our little group. The guardian found them. They were at the bottom of the swimming pool. It took us a good twenty minutes of searching before he finally found them. He took out his flashlight and was very patient with us. All four of us very drunk, all in our mid-thirties, groping around in the dark in our swimming apparels, looking for my glasses. There’s something to be said about hot-tubs and semi naked people drunk out of their heads very late into the evening. It’s kind of fun.

Saturday still at the store, I sold a bottle of scotch from my personal stash. I keep a stash of bottles I want to buy for myself in the back room. The customer is a young fellow in his mid twenties. He first started coming to the store a few months ago, and said he wanted to learn about Scottish whisky, that he knew absolutely nothing. He couldn’t buy anything that first evening he talked to me, but said he would be back. I’d told him to come over whenever he wanted, and that I’d try my best to walk him through the various regions and styles Scotland has to offer. He’s bought more that half a dozen since, and Saturday he wanted something special, something he’d never had. After a little perusing of our Scotch section, I decided on the bottle. I took him to the back room and showed him the bottle. A 22 year old whisky distilled in 1978 by the Macallan – Glenlivet distillery. Raised in sherry oak, and bottled by Cadenhead at cask strength in 2000. Pure nectar!

“You’re killing me, man,” he said to me. I was showing him the bottle, giving him the low-down on what I was showing him.
“That’s the stuff here, my friend,” I said. “Look at it!” I was holding the bottle in question next to another bottle, also from the Cadenhead bottling company, so that he could see the difference. The 22 year old whisky was much darker than the other one. “Look at this stuff, man. Look how thick it is, this is the kind of whisky you have to chew, it’s so thick. This ain’t for you and your buddies to pour down your gullets without thinking, this is the stuff that you respect, that you pour in the glass and you take it in with your eyes, with your nose, you take it all in, man, before taking the glass to your lips...”
“That’s not going anywhere near my buddies. Nobody’s touching this except me, and you, since you were keeping it for yourself, I’ll invite you over and we can have a drink.” He held the bottle in his hands, then set it down, and placed his head inside his hands. “Dude! you’re killing me, here.”
“I’m not forcing you. I’m not twisting your arm.”
“Yes you are,” he said as we were walking back to the front of the store. “You’re the whisky expert putting a bottle in my hands telling me this is the shit, what am I suppose to do?”
“I don’t have a gun to your head.”
“You just about do.”

We made it back to the counter, and my colleague was looking at the bottle as we took our respective positions. Me behind the counter, entering the skew code of the bottle into the computer, and him in front of the counter awaiting his new purchase.

“Dude, that’s the shit! That’s some incredible stuff!” My colleague said, “how much more of this stuff we got?”
“That’s it, man, there’s no more around here, probably not another bottle anywhere in Texas.”
After the customer left, he said “What are you doing? You should have kept that for yourself.”
“Yeah, I know, but I like the guy. I had it stashed away to buy later.”
“Why’d you sale it to him?”
“He’s bought so many bottles of scotch in the last couple of months. He’s been trying every region, every style, and he wanted something different. Anyway, it’s fun to sale a great bottle to somebody who appreciates the fact that you’re selling him something special. That’s part of the fun.”

And so I started my weekend on a good note. All the evil shadows and demons were closed out. Good karma. I was sitting on top of the world, going home with two six packs, getting ready for a festive weekend completely unplanned for, other than my neighbor’s party.

At the party, there was a young woman visiting from Bombay. Her brother lives in Phoenix, and they were in town visiting my neighbors. I was absolutely entranced by her beauty. We were about five of us sitting around in a circle of chairs talking about this and that. This young woman’s dream is to become a star in Bollywood. She’s certainly beautiful enough. She’s in dancing school, acting school, taking singing classes and all the other stuff, and she’s planning on finishing her university studies in the States. So there we were in a circle, discussing such things as you do. One of the fellows, who was dressed as Zorro, is a stand-up comedian, and is currently writing a screenplay about being an Indian living in Austin trying to make a living as a stand-up comedian. He wants to direct it himself. I told him: good luck.

So I say, “tell you what, we’ll write a screenplay together, I’ll call up my buddy in Bombay who’s a cinematographer working on some big stuff, and we’ll let this young lady star in our movie. We write, I direct, she stars! My buddy shoots the movie, and you, the Grime Reaper over there, you can be the producer.”
“But I don’t know anything about being a producer!”
“That’s all right, you’ll learn as we go. We can’t make a movie here in the US, because it would be an independent, we’d never get the financing necessary to make a proper feature, and it would be too ‘quote unquote’ ethnic for American audiences, and we’d never in our wildest dreams get a distribution deal because distribution companies are bastards that way. No, we need to shoot an Indian movie in India with a ‘quote unquote’ international appeal. It’s cheap as hell to make a movie over there. I know the guy who can get us anything we want, the best crews, the best studios. We’ll make a beautiful picture, we’ll make millions, we’ll make her a star, and we’ll have a blast doing it. We could go to Cannes, the French will love it, and that always looks good on your resume, when the French love you in the film business. I can see the headlines all ready: French-American man directs his first picture in India. They love that kind of shit in France. They’d have some patronizing bull shit about French Indian relations going through the centuries, what the two countries have in common, what they’ve shared and so on. They love that kind of shit over there, as long as the movie critic slash journalist feels superior to it all. All we need is a story. It has to be very simple, yet be some crazy love story with lots of dancing and the whole village going off into choreographed dancing and singing at the most inappropriate times.”

I was off on a wet dream, talking, thinking, not sure whether I was thinking out loud, or talking to myself, dreaming, or actually communicating. The alcohol, the dancing, the loud music, were all starting to take effect on my brains and my ability to make any sense whatsoever. The young woman had me completely mesmerized. She was appropriately dressed as Cleopatra. She had the most perfect set of teeth I’ve ever seen. I’m a tooth fetishist, have I ever mentioned that? Her lips were about as sensual as any I’ve ever seen on or off the screen. This young woman is a star in the making, all she needs is to meet her Fellini. And she needs to find him quickly. That’s what this girl needs. A guy who worships beauty. There’s not even any need for a story in the Hollywood sense of storytelling. What we need here is some Italian post-modernism, some Freudian fantasy with a twist. A man living a mid-life crisis falls in love with a girl he cannot ever have. Her destiny has all ready been completely planned out by her family, and he’s not any part of it, but he must have her at any cost, even at the cost of both their lives. That’s the whole story. Lots of tracking shots, endless discussions that go nowhere, flashbacks, flash-forwards, coming in and out of fantasies, nightmares, and various levels of realities. The guy is in his late thirties, early forties, an Indian who has lived most of his life in the States. He’s a wall street type, or an engineer, or a professor, and he’s very successful at what he does, except he’s not happy. He’s a highly educated man, very Americanized, and is traveling to India for the first time in years for family business. His father, who also lived in America, has asked in his will to be buried back in India, and that’s what he’s doing. He can barely talk Hindi or Tamil, and he really doesn’t want anything to do with the whole situation. Then, he meets this girl half his age, who blows him away, and he can’t do a single thing about it. He can’t have her, he’s got a wife and family back in the States waiting for him to get back home to, and he’s crazy in love with a girl his daughter’s age in a country which might as well be a foreign country to him. That’s a movie. That’s a damn good movie. Anybody out there want to write it? Somebody who knows and understands both Indian and American cultures, who can write a good story without the stereotypes? I’ve got both the girl and the cinematographer. All I need is the male star and a good screenplay. I can direct.

There was also the Romanian Mathematician with whom I danced for a while. She had this accent as if she would chew you up like a banana at any time. Rough, yet soft. She was wearing a bright red hair piece, and wasn’t really dressed as anything in particular, she said, just last minute grabs here and there. Algebraic geometry is her field of studies. Great escapism, is how she described her work. She couldn’t be bothered with reality. Everyday reality bored her. She kind of looked like a crazy artist type, except she’s a scientist. We danced, then at one point, I was off to get another drink, and she had disappeared. I’m not sure what happened to her.

And then there was my neighbor’s lab techs. Two more beautiful girls. One was quiet, didn’t drink a thing, was dressed with a sheet wrapped around her, and hung out talking with Cleopatra most of the night. The other, a crazy girl dancing and drinking, was dressed as a post-modern Cinderella. By the end of the evening, she took her costume off, and changed into a cut-off t-shirt and some blue jeans. I’m not sure how I stumbled home, but what I do remember is staring at this girl’s navel. She had the most incredible navel in the world, and there was no reason to look at anything else. I was plastered drunk sitting in a folding chair, staring at her navel. She was dancing, and her navel stretched, tightened, moved about her stomach like a contortionist. It was amazing. Needless to say, there were way too many beautiful young women at this party, and my overall senses were overwhelmed by all these beautiful female forms moving about in my surrealistic universe. This was a Fellini movie, all these people dressed up in all kinds of crazy costumes. All these beautiful women dancing and being crazy. My imagination taking the better hold of my person, and me incapable of concentrating.

And now it’s Monday, and a new week is upon us. Tomorrow, I must go back to work. Tonight, I must go to school, though I’m currently thinking about skipping. I’ve spent way too much money this weekend. Somehow I went through forty bucks...oh yeah, it was the door fee to get into the Celtic festival Sunday afternoon where we got drunk on dark beer and various bottles of liquor we snuck in. That’s me and my friends who called me out of the blues, and forced me into their car Sunday midday to go to god knows where and drink yet way too much. I’m not sure what I’m going to do as far as food is concerned till my next pay check, which is still a long ten days away. There’s always the credit card.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

EARTHQUAKE DONATIONS NEEDED 


You can visit Chapati Mystery and buy some t-shirts, or learn more about what you can do, also on Chapati. UNICEF says it's having trouble raising the necessary money. (Thanks to Moorishgirl for the link.)

"Despite dire warnings of a looming calamity, the United Nations has had difficulty raising money for the quake victims. As of Friday, it had received just 20 percent of the $550 million it needs for the next six months. Officials have warned that the shortfall could force U.N. helicopters to stop flying as early as this week."

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