2004
Wednesday, January 7, 2004
⇒ Narrative ecstasy: leaving the self to identify with others. The magnetism of wanting to assume another life, lose oneself in that compelling illusion, or at least warm oneself with it. But the challenge is that this self to abandon oneself to must be both familiar and brand new. The latter is the challenge of vitality without which art is nothing.
⇒ The most affecting disdain is self-reflective. We hate that greedy person only because the greed interacts with our own, augments it. This is the attraction of most judgment of others, and its corrosiveness to ourselves.
⇒ “I think you were once, and for a prolonged period, in danger of perceiving yourself as wretched. Am I wrong?”
⇒ If you are alive it doesn’t matter what I write. So aren’t I working against that with the abstruse, weakening you, making you only capable of breathing rarefied air?
Friday, January 16, 2004
⇒ I wanna be loved bayou.
Saturday, January 24, 2004
⇒ Today Sevi reported to me a dream for the first time. She was in the stroller heading for Grand Army Plaza in 17F weather and windy and she said she dreamt last night she went to the aquarium. When I asked what she did there she said she went to the ocean, saw a lot of fish and rode dolphins on their backs.
⇒ Man in the subway yesterday whining, smacking himself on the forehead hard, readjusting his baseball cap and hair, whining “Are you happy now?!” over and over again “Are you happy to be homeless? Are you happy now? Look at you, look at what you’ve done.” It really didn’t seem to be for anyone’s benefit, but was real, unmitigated pain. One of the only times in 18 years living in NYC that I was really unnerved and counted the seconds til my stop came (34th street) and I could get out of the train. In such a state I felt he could easily pull out a gun and start killing people. He was really someone at the end of their rope looking for any outlet, anything to relieve the pain.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
⇒ Tonight’s Mouth Story: Wink-em Didi, who did an art project with her sisters and started flinging glue, fell asleep, woke up with her eyelids glued shut. Fumbled her way outside on the sidewalk, met a cat named Simon who liked to lick glue, licked one eyelid open, she had to go to a restaurant to get the other open, they said hold your eye over the steam from the soup in the kitchen. That got it open but the glue dripped into the soup, so when it was served made all the diners’ mouths glue shut. She called in Simon to lick all their lips back open. One woman, upon having her mouth liberated screamed that she’d been kissed by a cat! That was the end of the story, but Sevi said “I want you to add more”. So I told her about Trolley Pete, Wink-em Didi’s little brother, who loved nothing better than to pretend to be a yellow trolley like the kind that goes to the Children’s museum. But he wasn’t prepared for the weight of passengers—he was tiny, only 3 years old—so when Galoshes Sue, a friend of Wink-em Didi’s tried to ride on him she was way too heavy, so he had to tie blue and orange balloons to her to make her weigh light as a feather. They went to the Bronx Zoo (trying to get her introduced to the idea of going to this super huge zoo, as we have coupon) and saw koala bears and real gorillas and lions and tigers. The end. Sevi said tomorrow she wants to hear more about Wink-em Didi. I was amazed that she remembered anything about the previous night’s story, which I had completely forgotten, about a butterfly who takes the nectar from many-colored flowers in a field to use to make the rainbow. I suppose it’s the very short memory I have of these stories that has given me the resolve to write some down. By and large they are hugely unremarkable and forgettable. But I think my memory is isdiscriminate, and I’ll forget the rare good one with the bad, so I’ll endeavor to write more down. Maybe I’ll get better at this, who knows. Maybe in my dotage, if I make it that far, reading these will be a comfort when I have nothing else to do…
⇒ Albert Ross—Albatross. An internet search revealed that this had occurred to quite a few people before me…
⇒ Although the internet has nothing to say about KING RAW HORSE – ROCKINGHORSE, my story in gestation that I have only a title for so far and some notion about a rockinghorse sore to be abandoned by his boy who turns into a ruthless tyrant over a magical kingdom, only to confront the boy again one day, now grown that he is older.
⇒ I started late so beg pardon
For all the air I must
Wade through
Half-prosecuted, this business
Is a criminal infliction on
Innocents I know.
Bear with me and I’ll try to be a genius
On my own good time.
⇒ If you’re going to inhabit a myth, it had better be water-tight.
⇒ You’re young I know you’re perceiving things that are no longer on my frequency. But I remember airports, the longing, the bursting with loving longing, the walking proud and cherished into some unknown
⇒ Counting the seconds til he offends me. Aggressively wanting that—to be offended.
⇒ Famous people should be nice to you, because they can so easily hurt your feelings.
⇒ If you’re too greedy, death too gets greedy for you.
⇒ She was always like a moth to a cautionary tale.
⇒ The more I think about feedback loops the worse it gets
⇒ There is plenty that people who are bitter are not permitted to say; call it censorship. People will nod knowingly and say it’s bitterness talking. But the bitter are uncannily insightful, generally speaking of course.
⇒ The kind of indignity that goes “wow wow wow” in your ears, that can’t be ignored it’s such an affront
⇒ The pedantic garden – botanic garden
⇒ Humility. Never taught it by my parents.
⇒ You’re just dumb enough never to get a handle on just how dumb you are. Take an IQ test for crying out loud—do you good, bring you down to earth, jaw some dirt and then come talk to me., self-appointless prick.
Saturday, March 27, 2004
⇒ Mouth Story: Was about a grasshopper named Googli who couldn’t see very well at night, so when she overslept in a late afternoon nap she missed the dinner-time hop through the meadow with her friends to the little puddle with the mosquitos and fleas where they supped their supper. Night had fallen, it was too dark for her to see and she was hungry, so she resolved to befriend a firefly who, if she could capture one, would light her way to supper. Fireflies are traditionally scared of grasshoppers, even though everyone knows that grasshoppers have no interest in eating them because their yucky (to which Sevi nodded). Nonetheless Googli had to coax one close with a special lullaby she sang to the fireflies (which sounded much like Brahm’s lullaby). A very silly firefly named Bimbo was just curious and incautious enough to come close, and Googli caught her by the wing. She was of course terrified, until Googli explained she was not prey, but simply needed to light Googli’s way across the meadow to her supper. So off they went. They were halfway there when Googli slipped on something slimy—turns out it was a worm named Stuart, who had just poked his head out of the ground asking if it was spring yet. They informed him that it was already mid-summer and he had some catching up to do! Googli invited him to sup with her at the mosquito and flea soup puddle, and he happily went along. They got there, she introduced him to all her grasshopper friends and they ate heartily. Bimbo’s job done, she flew off flashing ever smaller in the dark. After the fine repast the grasshoppers all went home and Stuart returned to his cozy wormhole.
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