servicey

friday, pretty day out. people watched at diner. drank too much and passed out early, slept 11 hours so didn't go to the beach. puttered around. melatonin, certraline and drinks. such a mess. went to the gym on saturday and played with the cats. loved it. then met everyone at alta. went to nowhere and met some new people. academics. ran into kenny. sunday was gorgeous. gym, park and then dinner on riverside drive. we all walked back along the park. that walk is gorgeous at night. lots of doggies you could see boats on the water.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara on saturday night, the yummy kind too. how awesome is the synergy going on. what?

Heat 3 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
Add 4 cloves crushed garlic; cook until golden, about 1 minute. Remove and discard garlic.
Add one 2/3-lb. chunk pancetta cut into 1/2"-long strips; cook until edges are crisp, 5–6 minutes.
Add 2/3 cup white wine; simmer until thickened, 2–3 minutes. Remove from heat.
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.
Add 1 lb. dried spaghetti and cook until al dente. Drain, reserving 1/4 cup pasta water.
In a large bowl, whisk together 2/3 cup finely grated parmigiano-reggiano, 1/4 cup finely grated pecorino-romano, 2 tbsp. finely chopped flat-leaf parsley, and 2 eggs.
Slowly drizzle in reserved pasta water while whisking constantly. Add spaghetti along with reserved pancetta mixture. Season with salt and a generous amount of pepper. Toss to combine. Serves 4

so good. plus, add two major drinks of sangria. i was dizzy and chatty.

things are still stupid busy here. gr. when are you coming?

"I just show up"

The boys I had over for dinner and Kiki liked Kiki. Said she had a real aesthetic. Which means that there were still comprehension problems. R had read the blog that day. Was touched by the way T figured into "Savage and Tender." Even playfully complained to M that he'd never talk about him that way. M has become my gym-buddy. We have fun chatting chatting chatting in between sets. Also went with me to listen to Judith Butler struggle with her French. I made a fan of him. We ate linguine alla carbonara. With chicken broth instead of cream. It's a weeknight standby T and I often make. And it's yummy. We usually do more exciting things for our guests. But since T is in Vancouver, I knew I was going to be alone slaving over the kitchen. And I allowed myself to take it easy. Plus we were going to watch Kiki and Herb. That was the main thing, really. I did some pausing, commenting, and translating for some of my favorite spots. Like? I told them I used to sing "Jesus loves me this I know" in Bible school. R said, "But not like that." For sure. Or how amazingly touching her monstrosity can be. Like when she sings "Boulder to Birmingham" just after missing Jesus and stopping her cat fight with Mary Magdalen. "But she's not grotesque," replied R, when I mistakenly referred to her beautiful monstrosity as grotesque. What did I translate? The moment when she says how worrisome it is that the fates of 12 million immigrants are being decided by 8 white men. Or when she talks about how Lilian Hellman stole her line. "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashion." I didn't have to translate the moment where she says, "I'm a socialist. I socialize." Because they got that and laughed. And I just had to repeat "If I could love, I would love you all" for them to get it. I did have to translate the moment where her sister Candy's station wagon did an about-face in the driveway. "Best Christmas I ever had." And the moment after she sings the bit from "Horses" when Herb says she wasn't there for him because there's only one set of footprints in the snow. And Kiki says "Those aren't your footprints, Herb. They're my footprints. I carried you, Herb." Jesus. I've got them singing "Boulder to Birmingham" on the tube right now. It still makes me cry. "The hardest thing is knowing I'll survive."

Can I indulge a little fantasy? Maybe, like, I dunno, five years back I remember saying to our Brooklyn friend R, not to be confused with the R I invited over for dinner and Kiki with M, that Kiki should do an Emmylou Harris song. How long has she been singing that song? Could it be that this somehow filtered back to her? It's a funny fantasy. I don't really care too much if it's true or not.

Happy Birthday, Po. I love it that you have a mother who can find the New Yorker cover card that'll make you weep. And, as if you couldn't tell given all I'm finding to say thanks to the fact that I'm saying it to you, I'm so happy we started up this gig. I can quote Kiki for its title. "I just show up." It says a lot to this crazy long-distance long-term friendship we've got going on. I had forgotten the bees in the deli! So much I forget. Fucking Atlantic ocean. Keeping us so far apart. Beautiful big traversable ocean still somehow full of all kinds of life. There's a quote from a fag who wrote about Glenway Wescott, who was a fag who lived a sustained three-way with Monroe Wheeler and George Platt Lynes that I was really interested in for a while. That whole scene. The art it allowed for. I discovered it during a New York visit. I probably even talked to you about them. I had this idea I'd write a play about them. And that I'd call it "The Distance Between the Stars." So gay! Anyways. Thinking about this whole project I came across a quote that I ended up writing in a card to my father and mother, telling them why they should come to my graduation as a doctor from that great school in California. Because at first they didn't think it was important enough that they should go out of their way to come. Anyways. There's this gay who wrote a book called The First Time I Met Frank O'Hara. And he says that "The thrill of The Pilgrim Hawk [the most beautiful thing Wescott ever wrote] is the knowledge, slowly and skeptically gained, that there is always a completely different way of living from that of the struggling and occasionally beautiful but foolish people that underestimate the value of the straightforward expression, the self-exposing gesture, and the humbling aspects of being in love and, especially, of being loved."

Jesus. Here I am typing that and it so happens that Kiki's on the tube singing "Moments of Pleasure." In other words? I'm a puddle of happy tears.

Snaxx

I'm eventually going to discern a constellation or two out of more than just my first day in Berlin. But there is one further detail from that day that might help me make them out. In the bus on the way from the airport to the apartment where T and I have rented a room enough times at this point to know the route by heart, I felt that heart of mine drop out of its cage into my belly. Something about the open sky. And the architecture and its wide streets. The different colors of the buildings. And my anticipation. And the fact that we've been watching episodes of Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz. And the different typefaces you see everywhere and only there. "Oh my God, I love this city." I said to T. Or something just as banal and inarticulate. Things get a little more complicated once we move into the next days. I think it might have something to do with that little ache I felt on my way in. Or the fact that the days between now and then are accumulating. And I've been great about gaping wide-eyed at the constellations as they emerge when I write them down for you. But. I started all this by talking about "Moments of Pleasure." "Just being alive/ It can really hurt." Sing it, Kate. Or Kiki. Or you or me. "They're in the same framework," you say Allen said Dylan had said to him. We do know these things. But I, at least, sometimes forget them. It's nice when you're able to wake up to them again. How long can I keep on waking?

So after Perverts. And D and T and V and I on the couch. And the cab. After sleeping in. Big German breakfast. With C and L. Our hosts. Cold-cuts, croissants, ham, weird sausage meat wrapped in plastic that's yummy when you mix it with spicy mustard on a piece of bread covered with grains and seeds and things. Quartz. You know that? Sorta like a cream cheese, but not so thick. Yummy. Jam. And chatty chatty chat. L is very chatty. In German! Lot to deal with early in the morning after a party. But nice. More resting. Going out. Walking around the leather shops looking for a hood. No hood. Too expensive. Or not right on my nose. And you don't want a hood that doesn't show off your nose. A coffee. Cruising. There's some good pictures of me and my haircut. A really good one of me reflected in a Tillmans violet at the exhibit on Tuesday. But I'm getting distracted. Bus back to the pad to rest a little bit before gussying up to go cruise some more. Chatting with the Frenchies. Like J-M and G. Members of BLUF club. Very nice men. Playpals of mine. On recent occasion. G starting new job. Independent. Free-lance. But French. And therefore nervous. Sweet nervousness in the midst of all his get-up. Cap and breeches and jacket all shined high. And J-M. Happy about his visit to a Schloss to see Watteau. Well worth the trip. Also lovely tense coexistence. Loving Watteau in a Muir-cap. Crazier things have been seen. Crazier people, too. Like the sexy skinhead whose dick I've sucked before and who, I didn't know, is a sous-chef and a disappointed Sarko-dolâtre and admirer of Mitterrand. T talked to him for a long time. The question on everyone's lips was: so what are you doing tonight? And, in general, the answer was: Snaxx. It was ours for sure.

We went early again. There were lots of stories about waiting hours in line. Previous years. And it was cold! out. So we didn't want to do that. So we took the U-bahn. And then the S-bahn for one stop. With lots of other men. Without advanced tickets. And we started standing in line at 10:40p.m. Doors supposedly opening at 11, but they were already open. Watched some little boys get turned away for looking too pretty. Not trashy enough. Without an identifiable fetish. It was cold. But it felt like every time the wind would blow, we'd move a couple of steps forward. Which says something about German efficiency. Big crowd in front of a former East Berlin factory. Waiting in line. Moving forward efficiently. "Maybe this is like the other side of the camps," I mumbled to T at some point. He didn't hear me. And I did repeat it. Made you feel weird. Also? Like you're getting ready to go into an Egyptian temple. Or Ancient place of worship of some sort. It's intense. The cold and the masses of men and the expectation and the memory of the space from our other visit. Some people leave saying it's too much. Like the couple we met while we were there. Later on in the night. More about them soon. "We thought the party in the Berghain was almost too big," one of them wrote me once I was back in Paris. "But I like it big!" I wrote back. With a ;.)-

But it sure is big. You should have seen the mass of recently closer to or further from naked people at the coat check. I stood in line first. While off to one side T changed into the chaps J had sold him. Somehow T found me in the mass of muscle and flesh. So I stepped off to one side to take off everything that wasn't my leather vest and leather pants with the zipper that opens all the way up to over my hiney and leather boots. Took T another half hour to maneuver his way to the counter. I ran off to go pee. And when I came back I made out his little bald spot amongst all the other little bald spots and occasional heads of hair. But it took him forever to check our bag and coats. "Some jerk who cut in front of me and proceeded to check the things of nine or ten of his friends," he said.

Meanwhile I'd bought two really big glass bottles of water. We'd already had some beer. I'm not sure I can describe the space of the Berghain to you. Did I mention it's huge? Walk in. Bar immediately on left. Behind that bar, lots of dark hallways. Straight ahead past the bar, a big double door, another little bar surrounded by playspace, and one of the two dancefloors with a big bar on the other side of it. Happy music. Not the dark electronic stuff on the main dancefloor upstairs. And there's lots of circuitous routes through the dark hallways to get from any one of these places to another downstairs. Including, this year, a whole lot of much wider open space that they hadn't opened last year. Which made things less crowded. If still big. And maybe a little dangerous. A skinhead I shared an airplane and metro ride with on the way back said he'd seen somebody giving a blowjob who ended up with a brick falling on his head. He said he saw him lift his hand up to his head. Saw the blood. And kept sucking. That is too much. One is often led to use that expression about this place. Upstairs--big, wide, regal feeling stairs that make you feel small, with a landing you round that brings you to emerge immediately onto the dancefloor. Great lights. Really high ceiling. This year they'd added bleachers so you could get a better view of the crowd. And a view from the dancefloor onto the men in the bleachers. Bars on either side of the dance floor. One sorta intimate way on the other side in relation to the stairs. The other stretches all along the dancefloor, is separated from it by high windows, and the ceiling stretches up just as high. Factory windows. Beautifully lit.

That's the short of the space. Not the long of it. Because there'd be a lot to say about any nook and cranny you end up in. I'll spare you all but the most important. The happy dancefloor was of course always crowded. But so was the big one for that matter. The DJ was perched on a landing under which you could stand. Like the guy with the really huge Schlange that T and I ended up with later. He had hair. Impeccably slicked back. And was wearing motorcycle pants. And was really beautiful. With beautiful tattoos all over his shoulders and arms. He became a little legendary amongst the people I ended up chatting with the next night. I'm getting ahead of myself again. But I found him on line the next day after T left. "Unbelievable. I've found you again," I wrote auf Deutsch. And proceeded to say to him that it was too bad that only my boyfriend got a go at his grosse Schlange. I sure hope I didn't just make up that word, which literally means "chain," as slang for what I want it to be. He sent me back a pic of his grosse Schlange, which would tend to make you believe that if I did make it up, it was perfectly understandable, and said that he'd had fun and was staying in for the night after Snaxx. Before doing an about-face and saying we could meet up at the Mutschmann's. So a good portion of Sunday night, anyone I'd end up talking to or playing with would be treated to my "I'm supposed to be meeting up with a German with a grosse Schlange" line. Turns out he was too tired to go out. And didn't show up. But it was fun looking for him now that I was alone and in memory of the moment T and I spent with him. I'd first spotted him at Snaxx under the landing on top of which the DJ was spinning. And then later T and I passed by him in the dark extra space that was not too much for me since a brick didn't fall on my head and since we ended up playing around with him there. There was a Frenchie we finally met after having seen him around a lot in Paris and on line. I ran into him at the Mutschmann's where he giggled and smiled and said something like "He sure was delicious that guy you were with at the Snaxx." "Which one?" I asked him. He laughed. But I knew who he was talking about. The sexy guy with the tattoos and motorcycle pants and the grosse Schlange that I watched with amazement as T knew just what to do with it. Meanwhile I just kissed him every once in a while.

T did a lot of his thing taking care of mine. As a matter of fact, that was pretty much the rhythm of our evening. Dark corner for T to do his thing taking care of mine. Which is sorta new for us. At least that it be so clearly defined. In that particular configuration. Then dancing together. Enjoying looking at each other. Looking elsewhere. Looking at each other again. Pointing every once in a while. A little identifying. Some friends that B has done photos of that I recognized who were there. It was while we were in one of the dark corners, though, that I saw the couple from Stuttgart. The ones who later said they thought the Berghain was almost too big. We'd actually seen them earlier in the day when we were having our coffee. I'd pointed them out to T because I'd seen them on line before. And they're marked as being friends with this couple I tricked with once. And they're sexy. And a couple on the prowl. There are some of those around but not tons. And I guess T and I are becoming one of them. And starting to know how to manage it a little better. Guess what? The letters for the couple's names are T and W. Funny, huh? So I guess we have to go all kind of elemental and call them T² and W². Since I is W. T pointed it out immediately. That we were the same letters. They've been together 19 years. And are a little older than T and me. Which means they must have met at around the same age. Like we're on parallel lines or something. Except that we met them. Like parallel lines never would. W² told me in one of our chats since then that he felt like we'd known each other for a long time. I told him that I might be an American, but that I felt like I had an old soul, or something like that. I mean that's exactly what I told him. "I feel like I have an old soul, oder so. Or something like that." Because it is true that something clicked. Parallel lines coming together is geometrically impossible, I think. So they're bound to make a click when it happens. They were there and so were we and then the next day I was there and they were, too. It turned into some kind of a settled configuration.

We had lots of long sex with them. In a couple of places. As it all was winding down around 5 or 5:30, I think, my zipper got unzipped all the way around. Not even in a very dark corner. I'm pretty sure it was all lit up. T² did me good. While T and W² watched. I was leaning into W² for this whole thing. And then we all went to the bar for water. And chatted. Found out then, I think, that they'd been together for 19 years. It was comfy. Part of the reason T was so sad to leave the next day. They left Snaxx at around 6. T and I stayed some more. The dark corners emptying out. It was hard because I wasn't totally, hard I mean, but T stretched out on one of the bazillion slings and I did him good. And we left around 8. But not before T got cruised by another Frenchie we'd had yet to see. At the coatcheck on the way out. Outside, snow had fallen. The sky was white. It was cold. And there was an apparently endless line of taxis waiting to take loonies like us home, lordy was it muddy. We went home. Caressing each other's knees and smiling. Evaluating. Kindly. Shower and ins Bett.

roar (hercules and the love affair)

i don't think you have any idea how much i scream like a little girl at your entries.

tillmans is my favorite photographer. i have his book with the little mousey poking his face out of the airmail package. my other favorites are jack pierson (i saw his sculpture in the late 80's for the first time, just simple recreations of his little flat in the east village. completely amazing). and ryan mcGinley so now you have a very clear idea of my major aesthetic. ok very busy over here. but i am working on responding. btw, i think this is the last time i'll trip out for awhile on allen ginsberg for a bit (i go through whirlwinds)—i have absolutely outdone myself on allen. he's amazing on prosody, though. he's sort of like rumi for me. a little too much and you get extremely uhm —they both just dive right into desire and go into something i imagine autism to be like, that happens to me too, i mean my descriptive qualities get very anvil-like. or like bam-bam. that's why i'm loving what you are/how you are describing right now. space and desire and smiles. tillmans has those wonderful snapshots of airplanes coming in for a landing or taking off.

i thought i'd leave you with this from an interview he did (as placeholder) it's a political thing for him (desire and love), the strangeness nesting in home, an uninteresting "i'm so high!" here and there rather than tenderness, there's exuberance, weirdly. lots of other facets of yourself we should be able to count on as lovely and as home. and that a tender heart demands vast amounts of tenderness, too. and consideration. not a life in death, but a death in life. remember when we were talking about transitional moments in language? rNA or little worker bees busy in areas of translation (observer, translator, subject/sensation of motion in time or language), or just getting blown and noticing and smiling. and of course i'm remembering one halloween when we were in a deli buying cigs and there were some ladies dressed as bees. YOUNG LADIES IN BEE SUITS IN THIS DELI. RIGHT NOW.:

AG: I think the text of the "Gospel of Noble Truths" hasn't been printed anywhere. It's a gospel style song, for blues chord changes one/four/one/five/ and next stanza return to one. There's another reflection of that theme in a poem I wrote along on the Rolling Thunder Review.

Lay down Lay down yr Mountain Lay down God
Lay down Lay down yr music Love Lay down
Lay down Lay down yr hatred Lay yrself down
Lay down Lay down yr Nation Lay yr foot on the Rock
Lay down yr whole Creation Lay yr Mind down
Lay down Lay down yr Magic Hey Alchemist Lay it down Clear
Lay down yr Practice precisely Lay down yr Wisdom dear
Lay down Lay down yr Camera Lay down yr Image right
Yea Lay down yr Image Lay down Light.

Nov. 1, 1975

PBC: Is Dylan the "Alchemist" in those lines?

{...}

AG: Yeah. He's said some very beautiful, Buddha-like things. One thing, very important, was I asked him whether he was having pleasure on the tour, and he said, "Pleasure, Pleasure, what's that? I never touch the stuff." And then he went on to explain that at one time he had had a lot of pain and sought a lot of pleasure, but found that there was a subtle relationship between pleasure and pain. His words were, "They're in the same framework." So now, as in the Bhagavad Gita, he does what it is necessary to do without consideration of "pleasure,"


OK ALLEN WE GOT IT! it's actually got a lot to do with what you've told me and what i'm thinking over. keep going pls. the word "highest" is used, as straightforward and we can't hope that "I" is a description of the person next to us, or even ourselves. i like to think that we dream together, and the hope goes so far into an idealised home. jack pierson's work did that at one point: "joe, French Guy". "Mark D. Model in Penthouse". "Guy who stole 6 bucks". "Jimmy M. Butch..." and then we can look at our own lives and constellations and know that the ideal is ridiculous, our idea of the ideal is less interesting then our true home, and those who take your hand and trust your heart.

what are you cooking for the friends you're taking to kiki and herb at the knitting factory afters? we're having drinks and stuff at diner. and tomorrow is my post birthday dinner at alta. because i've had a birthday dinner almost every night this week. because i am the birthday girl. even if, as you say, they don't quite know what to make of kiki, often because they have comprehension problems, i'm super glad that it will be pleasurable for them to see you writhing with pleasure on the couch next to them. and also, that's what we're here for. raw shards of everyday illumination, a place for friends. we might go the beach with the puppy, too. mom gave me card, an old new yorker cover, of a big red heart seen floating in the sky thru an open window. made me cry.

the other thing i'm newly fascinated by is "the spatiality of time". hello world worlding. seriously was i passed out my first few months in california? this should not be new to me. oh, that's right. i was in the WOODS. did you know i was a conservation & resources policy studies nerd? and then, not. i got fed up with gary snyder's son on a council of all beings retreat. he was sort of a fascist shit about poetry, obvs.

anyways, working on something for you. xoxo

Perverts

OK. How about a second effort at constellation in the wake of Berlin. Because really, I've only talked about the end of the first night out. And I have lots more to say. The stars were out and I really should remember how exactly they were arranged from the particular perspective of last weekend.

So we had our pills in hand as we walked into the "Perverts" party. We almost didn't go. Because last year, we were a little disappointed. But we were so filled with expectation, and I was so excited about being able to dance and fuck and fuck some more and then dance again that we decided we might as well leap right in. We had a little warm-up. Drink at Mario's. Where BLUF (Breeches and Leather Uniform Fanclub) has an annual get together. For Muir caps and cruising and beers and breeches ("a pair of trousers worn inside tall boots and with balloons on the side" dixit the BLUF website). And some sex in the backroom. This is not T's thing. Sex in backrooms yes. But not in aforementioned attire. It is mine. I was wearing my first pair. Of trousers that fit that definition. In high boots. T not into it. I knowing there to be with T. So a few beers. Marginal cruising. A couple of possibilities. Perverts? U-Bahn to Perverts.

Berlin has more space than it knows what to do with. Sometimes they get a little over ambitious. Like at Perverts, you walked in, coat check on your left, dance floor through a small door on your right. Dancey dancey dancey bounce across the dance floor and then there was a chill-out space before you got to a really long bar that was across from an even longer couch along the wall facing it. That's where T and D and V and I ended up sitting alongside one another at the end of the night. But we had to get through the night first. Which involved, first of all, negotiating the rest of the space. We got there early, so that's just what we did . Just before the beginning of the bar, there was a door that led to a stairway that led into a darkish basement playspace. Cold! at the beginning of the night. Just after the bar there was an ersatz wall that bound a little room with a cross in the middle of it, and just beyond that little room there was a kind of big platform where you could sit in or stand around one of, ummm, five or so slings. Just across from the little room, there was another bar, fairly spacious, that led to the space that was too much. Because it was really fucking freezing. There was a little heater in it. And there was a fairly constant cluster of people around that heater. Because, like I said, it was fucking freezing. And after your pit-stop at the heater you could go all the way to the space that really was too much and jiggle your butt with all of a maximum, at any time of the night, of maybe 8 people on a dance floor that had some great video going on on the walls around it. And the music was actually better, I thought, than the music on the main dance floor where there were actually quite a few people. So, like I said, those Berliners sometimes have more space than they knew what to do with.

The start of the night involved several chats. I think the first was with a guy we see around a lot in Paris and sometimes play with. His boyfriend lives in Geneva. And they were both there. I think they're the ones we evaluated the space with first. It also involved a chat with a very high and cute California sex-buddy of T's. It was funny, because before we left, I had written an email to T saying, "Is J going to be there? Maybe you should write him?" I think I actually blogged about or wrote you about sitting across the bar from T and J last year while they made out. And smiling. J's the one who sold T his chaps. And then invited him over to his place for fucking. And they've kept in touch. I've never really hung out much with J. He'd always been T's thing. Though related to me because a good friend of my sex-buddy R in SF. With whom T actually has quite a bit of static. Anyway, J was there with his crew. (And that's actually an issue: all these boys who have crews. T and I have each other and several sets of dispersed and very strong friendships. No crew. That's not all bad. But sometimes it feels like it'd be nice to have a crew. Or a kind of family). We chatted with J and his crew. Ran into them a little later on. At the bar on the way to the too cold space. Probably evaluated space with them, too. And then at some point we ran into J all alone sans his crew. And the three of us made out a little bit. J stroked T's hairy chest. "I love this chest!" he said. Before breaking away saying he had 30 or 40 German cocks to suck. I have every confidence he found them.

There was also a moment worth setting on the map of the constellation in the cold dark basement playspace. Darkness and moaning and a vaguely perceived mass of flesh. You sorta make your way around the periphery waiting to see if something snags you. Something did. And then that something became someone. Someone French. I mean I recognized certain features. And T seemed to be into it. And so was I. For awhile. I remember breaking away at some point to go stand at a little grid that was stretched out over a little window that looked out onto the water. Sorta like gallows. Meditating pleasure and smoking. T emerged. Later on, we saw the something that had became someone sitting on the couch with his someone else. Outrageously sexy someone else. They apparently met in Brussels. So we introduced ourselves. I forget the name of the outrageously sexy someone else. But the something become someone who was our entry into that someone else's periphery was named E. At the party the next night, just outside the bathrooms (apparently quite a space for meeting, since that's where we bumped into D and V, too) we ran into E again. I guess T had told him we'd been together 15 years, because I found myself being congratulated. I'm getting ahead of myself, but we chatted a bit with him. I was between them. I like being between things. And people, too. And at some point, I ended up propping my right leg over E's left, my left leg over T's right, looking at that arrangement of diagonals and saying. "Wow. That looks nice." E must have thought I was a little bit of a freak. Because at that point he wished us a great party and walked away. Maybe, though, being with us made him want to go find his someone else. That would be flattering. If T and I really had that kind of effect on people. Seems possible.

You know it's not all pleasure. There was a moment where I was standing on this sort of weird grid that was in between the back wall of the small space with the cross in the middle of it and the circle of slings. It was weird because the slings were on firm ground, and then you'd get to this weird grid thing and find yourself at risk of losing your balance. T was kneeling down in front of me doing his thing giving pleasure to mine. Which was nice. And apparently attractive to this guy standing not far away. Who I looked at invitingly. And who approached. And who every time I'd touch his tit would lift his eyes to the sky and emit a little moan. So I'd let go of his tit. And then I'd do it again because he wasn't going away. And he'd do the same thing. This went on for a little while. I think we're the ones who ended up going somewhere else. "Whatever" was our mutual comment about him.

And then there's also JF. I think I mentioned him in a blog or email to you last year, too. A conscious sero-converter. Which I can get my head around. Now. Sorta. It's taken a little while. But he seems to think we all should follow in his footsteps. Or at least that I should. T, too. *Sigh.* That's a little annoying. And can be a damper. In general he rushes up to you with a big smile to say how high he is. Or something else basically uninteresting.

Oh, yeah. One last shooting star. I was chilling out while T was in the bathroom. Appropriately enough in the chill-out space. I recognized a couple of Frenchies walking by. One of them had a big 'ol mohawk. Much more rad than my little one. He walked through the chill-space on his way to the bar but did a U-turn to prop his elbow on a little window between the two spaces and smile at me. I smiled back. So he came back and we made out a bit. Moaned about how many Frenchies were there and how happy they were to be there compared to their usual French gueules. Which can be awkwardly but accurately translated somewhere in between a grimace and a pout. I saw him later on in the weekend, but he remains a shooting star because, Frenchie that he is, he likes to complain about the gueules everybody makes but that doesn't stop him from making his own. For the moment, I'm primed to crack those Parisian gueules with a smile.

Home

I'm not sure I know just quite where "home" is yet. Although it is looking like it might be here for a while. But I think I'm pretty sure what it is. It's where strangeness finds itself shelter.

Savage and Tender

That title's the way I described the way Kiki sings "Moments of Pleasure" in analysis today. I know you like that one. And I think I know you like it like that, too. My shrink wanted to know about the "and." As I write you this, I should be asleep. Because I'm exhausted. But I'm not. Because I had a lot of fun this weekend. And I have a lot to think about. Like: Should we go to Madrid for Sleazy Madrid? One of the nicer moments of pleasure of this weekend happened on the couch toward the end of our first night out. T was sitting on the sofa next to D. And they started chatting. D was waiting for his (boy?)friend, V, to get done with his business in the backroom and was pooped. So he wasn't up for the action T was offering him. D lives in Madrid. V lives in Alicante. I was on the couch next to T, telling him D was pretty sexy. And then V emerged beautifully all of a sudden. V stretched out on the couch and put his head in my lap. I started massaging his head. Caring for the aftereffects of the pleasures he'd just had. And enjoying the contour of his skull. And the shape of the lids over his eyes. And the fact that we were in a place where you could just emerge from a backroom and stretch out in a total stranger's lap and take a nap. We shared a cab home. D and T texted each other messages for the rest of the weekend. And we ran into them briefly in the bathroom at the huge party the next night. Just tonight, I found out that Wolfgang Tillmans was there at that big party fisting someone. I found that out because in a chatroom I told B (you remember him from the other day) that I'd seen Wolfgang Tillmans's big retrospective at the Hamburger Bahnhof on my last day in Berlin. I think it might have been major. All his care for the world. And his care for the constellations of his moments of pleasure. The ones he's photographed. And real stars, too. It made me dream of a practice like photography that you could later fool around with and make make different kinds of sense. I don't know if writing can do it. Quite like that, I mean. I mean, look at that moment up there. There I was in this former train station with white walls staring at a picture I'd never seen that was part of Tillmans's Turner Prize winning installation. Lots of others I recognized from around. Books. Probably some exhibits. But there I was all alone after T had left me, after all my and our moments of pleasure, looking at someone who had the same haircut I'd had T give me before we went. Rolling around on the beach. Like he was happy he was born. Like he was being born. Like he was just rolling around in the sand having fun. And in front of that picture? Two lesbians in some kind of intense moment: because they knew him? Because they were involved in understanding their constellation thanks to all this? Because they'd remembered something they'd forgotten?

This is all only a first constellation of last weekend. It was a good one. The weekend, I mean. Berlin Easter seems to be becoming some kind of a ritual for T and me. Haircut and sacred substances and all. Up until now, I've been really bad about access to the substances. This time around, I contacted someone who contacted someone and we met up with someone at a train station in ex-East Berlin. I even understood all his directions in German. Good substances, I think. Did us good, at least. But they don't seem as essential as they sometimes have. For example the week before, when I didn't have any. And realized that what I really wanted T to understand was that the need for substances that I was forcing him to do something about, like ask around, was actually because I wanted to hear him speak. To have him realize how much I need him. All that was what fed the crazy sex from the other week I was talking about a couple entries back. There were obviously a few more steps. Like the way it hooked into my inability to allow him to seduce me like thirteen years ago now. That's what I meant when I said it was crazy the shit you carry around without even knowing it. Forgetting to remember that you'd forgotten. Last Easter, there was a moment at the same huge party we went back to this year, where apparently Wolfgang Tillmans was off fisting somebody somewhere, when T wandered away, as one does, and I had a little freak-out. I wasn't going to let him go alone this time around. So I didn't. We took our pill and clanked our beers together to staying together. For that night. And for longer, too.

And you know what? There's good people out there. I think that was my favorite moment of your radio interview, when you said something like that. The fact that one of them happened to be "me" was a merely incidental narcissism, I think. It's true that there's good people out there. When you catch them at the right moment. With the right amount of darkness and light. Letting go of their fierceness. Letting savagery be tender. I was able to say that that's what the "and"'s about to my shrink. I think I was maybe getting somewhere. Who knows where. I do know, though, that it's in this world. You just have to draw the right lines between the right stars and end up with the right constellation. It helps you remember what you've forgotten. And maybe? Helps you find your way home.

Guston

i mentioned Coolidge before so i might as well bring up Philip Guston. (and thank you for reminding me about the weather, everywhere. we can talk about responsibility, we could talk about Cervantes? Goya? "This I have seen." I went to the prado for a week or so, every day, and looked at the black paintings. everyday we would get up, have coffee and some fried bread and then head off to look at them. I looked at a tree recently, in it's complete and late fall glory, i came back the next day and the leaves had blown away. i was immensely grateful that i'd had the chance to see it at all.

so here's some thoughts from Guston himself. if i fail at explaining myself, he absolutely doesn't.

"I remember days of doing "pure" drawings immediately followed by days of doing the other—drawings of objects. It wasn't a transition in the way it was in 1948, when one feeling was fading away and a new one had not yet been born. It was two equally powerful impulses at loggerheads. I would one day tack up in the house a bunch of pure drawings, feel good about them, think that I could live with them. And that night go out to the studio to the drawings of objects—books, shoes, buildings, hands, feeling relief and a strong need to cope with tangible things. I would denounce the pure drawings as too thin and exposed, too much "art," not enough nourishment, and as an impossible direction with no future. The next day, or day after, back to doing the pure constructions and to attacking the other. And so it went, this tug-of-war, for about two years."

"I hope I don't sound sentimental but it is so that much of the time what I am painting seems like a mirage to me—a vast detour I am making and I am left with a sense only of my perversity. I must trust this perversity... and yet, who knows I may again be forced to penetrate that state of reduction and essence. But now, the vast complications and uncontrollability of imagery keeps me in the studio most of the time."

i was lying in the attic bedroom up in vermont this last month around 2 am in the morning and the wind was howling (it felt like the beginning of every meg and charles murray adventure, it was really exciting.) The moon was full and the light in the room ! wow. i'm pretty sure wild storms trump thought.) and i’m always watching unless i’m fucking, and then i'm not really watching or absolutely not experiencing any physicality of separation but rather breath, sweat, taste. power, ground, and playing. (also, i should mention the transcendent experience is not what we've been talking about. i believe you and i both agreed and established our hatred of the transcendent) so, fucking, dancing, too little sleep, the pills. There's a little space put aside, for the social, contemplative pleasure, (also? thought. because damn if you can think anything at all with the music inside, which is a practical thing, an awesome thing.) lately the unlawful pleasure of smoking at the club I've most often been to. The big guy at the door softly asks me to maneuver around the ropes, i smile and thank him, situate myself in the outdoors where if hazy memory serves it’s fucking freezing, the sweat on my body almost instantaneously icy and chill. There’s a pleasure in that, as much as the warmth, strobes and tongue, mouth that I kiss. Men are fun to watch. Kind of sloppy, kind of out of their minds, some have a tremendously awkward way of dancing, but it doesn’t matter, body types have changed rapidly in the last decade. i'm really happy when r. comes out to stand with me, did i tell you that. we just kind of stand together, it's comforting.

one time, mom and i were in the middle of the lake, giddy. i sniffed the air like a dog, "there's something coming."

She raised her paddle, "that's thunder."

the storm came in feet first, sideways, skidded all the way down the lake and literally pounded away the humidity in front of it. 4" inches of rain in 2 hours. (mother nature does not fuck around). we saw it come on like a wall of mist behind the wind with lightning bringing up the rear... I was like, "fuck. we're in the middle of the lake, at dusk. in stupid little kayaks."

then, the general vamoose.

mom laughed really hard all the way home. yes, i did have my trusty pasternak russian bear hat on. glad to know i get it from somewhere.

There was body & soul for one period of time, you could arrive at 2 on sunday and work it out with the most amazingly eclectic group of people, all colors, all types, men and women, really good music and then toodle off down for a walk on the piers, completely elated and exhausted before heading home to sleep and work the next morning, either hop a subway or get a egg sandwich at a deli and watch and listen to the city wake up. But that little area for smoking, just off 11th avenue well there’s usually someone out there who has very little hold on how killing the weather is, could be. Soaked, babbling, a baseball cap pushed low over haunted eyes. He just got off a bus from Los Angeles.

i'm currently listening to a kind of amazing cover of "The Boy With A Thorn In His Side" by Scott Matthews, btw. also, "The Longest Road (Morgan Page Radio Edit)" not by Scott Matthews.

Kerouac in Old Angel Midnight:

The wush of trees on yonder eastern nabathaque Latin Walden axe- haiku of hill where woodsman Mahomet perceives will soon adown the morning drear to pail the bringup well suspender farmer trap moon so's cock go Bloody yurgle in the distance where Timmy hides, flat, looking with his eyes for purr me-O Angel, now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party, & ah Angel dont paper-party me, but make me horrified in silken Honen honey-rubbed Oxen tongue of Cow Kiss, Ant Mat, silk girl ran, all the monkey-better-than secondary women of Sam Sarah the Song of Blood this earth, this tool, this fool, look with your eyes. I'm tried of fooling O Angel bring it to me THE MAGIC SOUND OF SILENCE broken by first-bird's teepaleep--

like clark coolidge says, "I guess you either hear the music of that or you don't." what kind of monstrosity meant that i ever thought i was something i'm not? and really, who the fuck cares? done. (oh, i'm kidding. we're not done with that term of being are we?) and certainly we've experienced so much tenderness and immanence. it's neat exploring how others did it. too.

meanwhile! this made me laugh.
"I can't believe you have done this to me! You have me using the word 'ridonkulous' four times! What the hell? I'll be saying fo-shizzle next!"

coolidge goes on in that talk or essay (whatever it was):
Then Kerouac says, in Old Angel Midnight: "The total turning about & deep revival of world robe-flowing literature till it shd be something a man'd put his eyes on & continually read for the sake of reading & for the sake of the Tongue & not just these inspidid stories writ in insipid aridities & paranoias bloomin & why yet the image-let's hear the Sound of the Universe, son."

update add-in: the redundant ‘it’ of ‘it is raining’

Quick Missive From Berlin

Ok. You can count on Jesus to rise. But you can never know what the weather's going to be like in Berlin for us to celebrate it. In the minute or two I've been contemplating this brief "hey," I've seen sun, snow, and hail. I have already seen several crocuses, and tulips, too, in some of the midways around the city. Poor things. They must be cold.

So Power is vulnerable. Way back when I actually kept up a blog, I had the vague idea that maybe what we needed were new slogans, May '68 style, mysterious and provocative. "What we need is ritual spontaneity." I probably did have sex in mind. Or at least sex as one of our overdetermined ways of getting to ritual spontaneity. But I think writing, and perhaps even especially writing a correspondence, is about ritual spontaneity, too. For me it is. You give yourself time to get to where you might generate something. I'm a fiend for generation. To the point that I sometimes repeat myself wildly just to get there. That's no doubt one of the reasons I'm stretched out on the couch three times a week now. That, and the fact that I had never really described my childhood in French, at least in any kind of sustained way.

It's hailing in Berlin again.

It's weird that feeling that something's over. Especially if it's some version of yourself. It's a good time for correspondence, I'd imagine. So long as the person playing "you" to you has at least a vague sense of responsibility.

The sun's out in Berlin.

I do have more than a vague sense of responsibility. Though it's sometimes hard to answer you because I get my head around a missive, only to return to our page and find that it's actually either not there, or is, but radically modified. No worries, though: I think it will become part of my skill set, the way I need to return to read you and the ways those returns inform the rhythms of my response. Everyone does indeed need that. I find myself often, these days, dreaming of structures for that rhythm. Our friend Barthes, with his appreciation for the "gracious and incorruptible," should be able to help out a bit. One of his last seminars, just recently published a year or two ago, was all about what he calls idiorhythmics. He, too, was dreaming of structures: structures that would allow each member of a group to go at his or her own rhythm. Structures that would encourage those idiorhythmics. He looks at lots of early-Christian experiments with ways of regulating them: eating, thinking, talking, walking, seeing... This virtual world, I think, has interesting potential for that kind of thing. But the structures need work. Themselves need to be created. I think for the last long while I'd assumed that the structures were just there and that I just had to work myself into them. They're not, though, just there. They are there to be created. Which has a tendency to create vast amounts of anxiety, I think. We just need to breathe in and get some work done.

I really like the citation from Lewis Hyde. Maybe what I'm calling rhythm is"the thing in motion" he's talking about. And maybe he's saying we should just keep in good faith that its movement will give us, and the other ones, what we need. I guess the structures I'm dreaming of would seek to regulate the capacity for fulfilling certain needs. Because these days it's just hard to imagine that in letting things go in their motion, those needs are getting fulfilled.

I've finally slept a good night's sleep after two nights of parties. I can't yet guarantee that I'm all there for the rhythms of the response you need. But I'll run the risk and publish this now. Knowing there'll be more soon.

"I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen."

i think this conversation sums up everything i just wrote to you on friday. like, without me stressing the fuck out about it.

me: do you guys have any suggestions for where you want to eat? happy easter!
him: i love jesus.
me: isn't it cool? he dies. he comes back. so reliable.
her: as reliable as a crocus. did i mention i can't meet earlier than 8:30? but y'all can start without me.
me: that's beautiful baby.
her: ha

gracious and incorruptible/anyone she's ever played "stone whore" to

ha ha ha ha wouldn't it be awesome if the stars and their alignments had horoscopes related to individual consciousness' down here. "Riga's a hot tranny mess. nothing goes faster than light; there is a hard-coded limitation on the transfer of information in the universe. any given event in space and time, its possible effects on the world can be seen as a 4D cone in space-time; as time moves forward, the sphere of influence of the event explodes at the speed of light. xoxo z. Look at him go trailing spacedust."

we're amazingly directed and put together animals, it turns out. just ask your (not "your" but everyone should feel free to ask that of those lucky people who you picked out of the dark, or who picked you) last trick. like, "hey i just had my fingers in your ass/pussy/my cock in all sorts of places. it was crazy! what's your overall gestalt of the aura going on, in the world, in general?"

someone, a long time ago, during a reading, came up to me later and said, "it's like the ecstatic cloud of unknowing, except not so sure what you said?" so maybe i should read some clark coolidge. HE knew a crystal.

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit! - Allen Ginsberg

When you've understood this scripture, throw it away. If you cant understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom. - Jack Kerouac

we know that, we're not sure about it, leaves you with a graciously annoyed, resplendent fuck you. as soon as one feels astonishment at one's own broad, generous experience there's an immediate move back to utter nonsense, and by utter nonsense i mean, ridiculously, love. no matter how relevant the unveiling has been, there's that moment of no idea again. and we tell a whopping good, true story about tenderness, and we believe ourselves.

(ritual spontaneity)= what sex is? it's def. between wandering and already home. one thing i do know about myself is that if i say "i love you", i am damn sure i am. i'm really stubborn on that point. i work so fast that any facet of that question has been answered by my soul. quickly, methodically, finally. what that means in the quotidian is to be determined.

in other news, on march 19th, 2008. all of my stories ended. the end. you get a sense of meter and music from it, a sexuality, a way to make yourself invulnerable and broken at the same time. wounded, reckless and demanding, infinite, unending desire. i don't really lock in to anything that came before. there are hurts, and beauty. what do the letters i'm pointing to have in common? affinity.

consciousness is a living thing, there is a language, a tentative set of building blocks that are alike and not. the habit is to keep to images and word-images that block the sun, or birds?, rhythms really, of what you think you are and meanwhile you're holding close a willed death of being, stopping the flow at all costs, can you hold anything otherwise, one little dribble at a time if you can stand it? of course you can. it means both cosmic and grounded awe instead of pushing all that violently back into the self (how will you hold your eyes, these cigarettes, look someone in the eyes, out of mortification, anger) total feeling, total being, everyone knows about it. mark and claim yourself there. the possibility that this joy might be wiped out. it's got so much sweetness to it, that choice: fix your inner mind to the truth of what is, very human to human, at any moment, as it is. who i am and who someone else is. there are different reverberations of the same vision, awareness: kind of blissful in an awesomely practical universe of love.

no real disjunction in the variation of the length and accentuation of a series of sounds or other events. or great angels smacking you around in the night and all the stories i've had (all the things that have happened to me, in their grandiosity and helplessness) about it dissolves away. bankrupt, realizing all that creative energy misdirected. and of course i am sobbing, happy, having a great time feeling all of this, as it comes down. i manage to be all very complicated about it, idiotic. this deep, passionate adoration. maybe i could get a little love. or help. (on good friday i chirped, as if just remembering "oh, it's good friday!" and r. nodded his head and said, "yes. jesus is dead.")

i, and everyone, merit it. nothing can take it away from me, except my own authentic will. and even then it doesn't really take away from itself. that felt separation is false. no one really knows anyone else, but we can ask, beg and plead everything of each other. that's amazing. i love you. i'm sorry. please forgive me. thank you. "in the ruins of thought"

"The gift moves toward the empty place. As it turns in its circle it turns toward him who has been empty-handed the longest, and if someone appears elsewhere whose need is greater it leaves its old channel and moves toward him. Our generosity may leave us empty, but our emptiness then pulls gently at the whole until the thing in motion returns to replenish us."
Lewis Hyde: The Gift

i'm totally just going to pronounce things at you now. we should make a list of things i could pronounce at you.

honestly, i have no idea what you mean by ritual spontaneity. did i say that once? did you? wot dat? what did we mean?

i'm being pedantic. also, did you know that most domestic disturbances happen in threshold spaces? like, doorways. again, you can thank my shrink because she told me that. and she's totally aware of the crashing metaphor too. and i used the word quotidian and she blurted out that it was her favorite word. "i love that word". she said something a little more complex than that which i can't remember because we were both being adorable.

i've used that word twice already in my posts. next time i think i'll use "binding agent".

Can you believe this shit?

Look at my horoscope for the next couple of days!

Daily Overview for March 21, 2008
Provided by Astrology.com	Daily Extended Forecast

Quickie:
Have you been flirting with someone a lot lately? That sassy situation will heat up.

Overview:
You wake up feeling great and need to share that good energy with just about everyone you meet. Flirt with the barista, smile at that one grumpy coworker or just let your aura brighten someone's day.

Daily Overview for March 22, 2008
Provided by Astrology.com	Daily Extended Forecast

Quickie:
You're going to have the high energy that you've been hoping for today -- have fun!

Overview:
You may get caught looking once or twice, even if you're out with your mate. You can't help it -- your appreciation of beauty in all its forms in pretty much out of control right now!

ah no. no. the full quote is from dune. c. wrote about the same weekend. i loved that weekend. one of the echos that reverberates from an awakening world. i'd forgot i'd responded to him. he read that to me at some point on the porch of the beach house. that's amazing to be reminded. i guess that we were listening quietly then, too. thanks for that.

Loose Ends

Btw. There may come a time where calling me a piece of shit is just what I'll be asking for. But I probably won't do it directly. Feel free, though, if things come to that. I think I can take it, and I'm up for a challenge.

"Desire ends in satisfaction." I love that. Is that you, or somebody I should know?

And it does seem strange if your shrink is talking about the fall of the Roman empire. But who knows? Maybe she's right.

Ritual Spontaneity

So a while back now, you asked me:

"wow. 15 years?! may i ask? how did you negotiate the ride (rides, and riding other people), was that something that evolved and changed? was it hard to bring up?"

I started writing what could become a novel to you about it. And then I stopped. Distracted by other things, people, tasks, and words. It probably deserves a novel. Lol. All these people publishing fake memoirs, and I need to figure out how to even write the real shit down with enough fiction to protect the love I still have for the people involved. Funny thing is, I ended up writing the Reader's Digest version of that novel, sans fiction, to a recent important encounter.

Let's call him B.

(Barthes loves a letter for a name, and I love the fact that Barthes is all over the first entries of this blog. I've spent a good portion of my morning looking for where R.B. says why all the friends he refers to in his work, starting especially with the Fragments, are referred to with letters. I don't think I found it, but I did find this. R.B. is apparently pained by the fact that he often makes certain spelling mistakes. Letters all alone console him. It's from an essay on Erté. "Before or outside the word, the alphabet achieves a kind of Adamic state of language: it's language before the fall, because it's language before discourse, before the phrase, and yet, already, thanks to the substitutive richness of the letter, absolutely open to the treasures of the symbol... Erté's letters are happy objects. Just like the good fairy who, with a touch of her wand, bestowed a gratuitous gift upon the child and made roses fall from his mouth as he was speaking (instead of the toads that were brought about by her evil rival), Erté gives us the gift of the pure letter, not yet compromised by any association and therefore in no way tainted by any possible mistake: gracious and incorruptible.")

We, that is T and I, met B thanks to a mutual sex buddy. The four of us had a lot of fun. And then, later that same week, the three of us, T, B, and I, had a lot of fun again. And then, maybe like not even a week later, B kept saying he was too busy, but he ended up having a cancellation just as we were chatting on the internet (he's a graphic designer, but has a couple of interesting photo projects on the side). And it was naked night at our local sex club -- a naked night T often goes to because he likes it like that -- and I somehow finagled B into the idea of the three of us meeting up there. It was a little crazy. We attracted the boys like moths. It was, as you've quoted me elsewhere, our joy again, in a kind of hectic contagion.

There are many more delicious details (I love the resonance that has here), but I'll spare them for now. Because the main thing I wanted to say is that in the wake of all this, and faced with B's provocative mixture of, on the one hand, resistance to this becoming a thing and, on the other, his ability to ask me, in a chatroom but point blank nonetheless, "what do you want out of a trouple?" I wrote him a letter. T and me recounted in precisely three pages of lucid French prose. All leading up to a lovely paragraph of how this might relate to him. He has yet to respond directly, and maybe he never will. But it was a good thing to get down on paper. In a brief form. (And at this very moment I was able to refer to it in further chat with him without feeling needy or downtrodden or abused. This, after the last week or two, is a very real accomplishment).

I could translate the letter, but I don't think I'm there quite yet in the publicity of my desire. Though apparently, if you hadn't noticed, I'm nonetheless quite far along. Because, as you say, all else does seem to be bullshit. And all the apparent craziness of our desires is what we have to somehow make our way through to get to things like the birds in the tree in Berlin this time last year that really were beautiful. I'm glad that came through to you on the blog. What I didn't describe was the echo that reverberates from an awakening world. That's not bullshit, nor was the sex T and I were able to have the other night just after you and I imagined and set up this blog. That sex was so great thanks to some things I was able to understand thanks to B, and a really good mere ten-minute session of psychoanalysis. "Power is vulnerable" is actually one way of saying what our sex was helping us realize. And if I remember correctly, what comes next is "what we need:" "ritual spontaneity."

wow. i found that entry. "wave, thou art pretty"

uhm. wait. did i miss something? do you want me to call you a piece of shit?

i wrote this on 5/27/03 and actually much of it is not important in the slightest except for the two quotes i used. the first one is just a point by point (almost a whiteboard) of most of my lived experience in the batshit crazy years. i do not think i was more interesting then. low-grade psychosis in childhood. neat.
***

...the nature of the AI TechnoCore which built gateways through space-time and which the Church now fears may not be as dead as was thought; and the nature of what the TechnoCore discovered in the non-space: ‘Lions and Tigers and Bears’ as Aenea say... on the doorstep of a miraculously preserved Fallingwater, the house Frank Lloyd Wright built over a river at Bear Run, Pennsylvania. Lloyd Wright, with his belief in rationalism and the perfectibility of the built environment, and Teilhard de Chardin, for whom human knowledge (ed's note: in other words, i was that human knowledge. yay me. and Taliesin was my imaginary friend. We, together, created a story of lineage = Jesus. i had another soul in me, another companion. i ultimately really did not like that, at all) might one day literally create God...

'Tendrel are signs,' said Rachel. 'Divinations within the shamanistic Buddhist tradition prevalent in this region of the Mountains of Heaven. Dugpas are the . . . well, the word translates literally as 'highest.' The people who dwell at the upper altitudes. They are also the Drukpas, the valley people . . . that is, the lower fissures ... "

so i realize you're not getting the full on nerd sandwich of the post. let me give you an updated version. what is the name of this book? if it's in the states i shall pick it up and read along with you. i have a habit of rereading favorites, so it takes a while for me to actually, you know, branch out. denis johnson has a new book and i am on the fence about it because ONCE AGAIN, it's nominally about the vietnam war and special ops, so i am not so interested, or at least i'll wait until the paperback. one of my favorite lines from on the road is, "we know time." so i am sort of waiting to see if i can get to that voice. d. johnson kind of went all over the place in "already dead" plus he had a scary extra layer of completely lost to the world, rather than engaged, but you know he's discovered higher power, so maybe he has a plan?

i know that backing away from revelations. that's what it feels like, or an odd, unwelcome sense of boredom with them. you just have to wait it thru, i think what's actually happening is that it's grounding you in the other direction, although it feels like total stasis, it's not. it's kind of like mindfulness in that you pay attention to really seemingly random quotidian elements and you're like why? immersion in this stuff is what sent me off to freaking therapy in the first place. i want to think about butterflies.

also? did you know that the old moon question is an old one? like, stonehenge old. there's some geometry to it where the circle is the "unmanifest" and the square is the good old earth and all that implies so it's circling the square or squaring the circle‹ either way it's balancing heaven and earth. bringing those two together. i'm thinking of your curve, or hill and of course glastonbury tor. ha ha.

the friend i was yakking about in the previous post wrote this, and it kept running thru my head, as the storm built and abated outside, as i sat with s. on the little dock, when c. came out to sit with us and the puppy stood guard.

i've abandoned poe. i'm grateful for the vocabulary strengthening, don't get me wrong. and some of his stories? pure juice and mania. i like that. his descriptions. rapture found in little things.

but more often than not, now that i've strayed away from my favorite eight or so stories, i'm finding that i get all insanely built up and then let down. severely. he's all "and this fabulous thing and wow look how resplendent can't forget the paralyzing beauty of it all and what about the grotesqueries many of those and the people good god let's not forget them and then they all died or the ghost came or they lived but not happily every after.

i mean damn dude. get a grip. it's not that serious. i mean. it is. and it's not.

brilliant. just like the lady who wrote it.
***
Desire ends in satisfaction. Happy travels to all travelers.

my shrink said her money guy (re: last week's financial markets and fire sale) was all, "it's the end of the roman empire".

she's not supposed to say shit like that?

antony is all over that album/jason

To endow the writer publicly with a good fleshly body, to reveal that he likes dry white wine and underdone steak, is to make even more miraculous for me, and of a more divine essence, the products of his art. Far from the details of his daily life bringing nearer to me the nature of his inspiration and making it clearer, it is the whole mystical singularity of his condition which the writer emphasizes by such confidences. For I cannot but ascribe to some superhumanity the existence of beings vast enough to wear blue pajamas at the very moment when they manifest themselves as universal conscience.
roland barthes

are you listening to the new album by hercules and love affair? it is so fucking awesome. minimalist disco revival. but it's specifically related to you in my mind right now, because the last song on it is called "true false/ fake real." (which is already an awesome thing to sing over and over and over again to a disco beat). but also, i saw a youtube interview with andrew butler, the guy who's behind it all (antony's also all over the album, even singing some kind of bass on a song called "easy"). and? "true false/ fake real," he says, is indebted to his love for the muppets! we are not alone !!!!!... or this photo by idris kahn of every page from barthes's camera lucida?

why don't we ascribe that to everything. for instance, tonight i'm going to order really good matzoh ball soup and possibly the best pastrami sandwich on the west side. i, personally, like red wine. lately syrah. i do like steak underdone. he has what to say about rare steak, somewhere. he's dazzled the way poe was blown the fuck out, like we are dazzled. the beauty and gorgeousness of it all. a friend of mine called that out a long time ago. i'll have to find that entry for you. that's why i burst into tears at the weirdest moments, because there's still things as they are. that's more than lovely. and i'm wearing plaid pajama bottoms and my uggs. which are in serious need of being let be. huge holes in the sole, they're wrecked, but comfy (like in nautica). did you have a good session last night? did you do things that blew your mind? did you listen to the threat of rain? that's what i meant by that song lyric hold my love me or leave me high i black out sometimes during sex, so does she, my mind just assumes various polarization states. and i've lost my body, i've become something pure. it hurts. it's gone beyond hurt. or the pleasure. probably both. i certainly know, at points, that we're the locus of a vast energy. it's weird too, because i'm also massively human in that. i need so much and i'm angry. and there's the joy. onwards in the sense that you're feeling a power vacuum. power is vulnerable, remember?

hearing the birds in the morning is a respite. how far do we go? why do we black out? what would jason do?

fucking gets deeper, more scary, more unhinged, less known and it's a bitch to talk about. for me it is. i'm usually at a complete loss. and when you come "home", and i love that image of you leaning out the window smoking, that's beautiful. so you hear morning come alive. how the hell to talk about it or write it? because all else seems to be bullshit. especially in the quiet of the morning. i've had so many mornings like that, coming out onto the street still high after dancing or fucking all night, whatever kind of club (you in paris, berlin, me in san francisco or here). i want orange juice. the air feels warm. i don't want to talk. a walk by the river, it's quite beautiful and vast in the morning before the flattening light. spent, tired, happy.

Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. Our Lady Joan of the Didion.

i was clearing out my emails this afternoon and came across this. it is awesome...

oh my god so cool it's like a celebrity junket. and here's what LL has to say about it:

"I think it's crucial to maintain eye contact when you're discussing complex matters with the likes of John Updike, Doris Lessing, Bill Bradley, Mark Morris, and Francis Ford Coppola, all of whom are return guests..." says LL.

so remember, don't break eye contact. drill into his head with your eyes.

you love it

ok, queen. I fixed you.

"Portrait of Jason"

I'm gonna have to work on my name. Anonymous just isn't going to cut it.

Which reminds me. Titi and I saw this great movie this weekend. "Portrait of Jason" (1966) by Shirley Clarke. Knocked me on my butt. Jason Holiday was the name given to him by his friends in San Francisco, and he liked that name much better than his real name, which was Aaron Payne. His father was known as "Brother Tough." And it sounded like he was. Tough. Didn't much like his queer son. But there his queer son is, in front of a camera, talking about the night club act he's going to do, about the women he's been houseboy for, the men he's played "stone whore" to. Kiki must know the movie. Jason is just too much, just like her. Just keeps laughing. Until one of the people behind the camera tells him that he knows he's just a piece of shit. That brings on a tear or two. Before he starts laughing again. Maybe you're a little like Shirley Clarke. Turning on the camera, or in this case the blogger page, getting me to give up some of what I've got that's too much. Jason oscillates between saying, "Oh, I'm going to tell it all" and "They're never going to get it outa me." And keeps laughing.

haha, honey. did you want it in dingbat? wingding? wtf? whee.

Just what I was looking for. Only different.

You are essential to this blog. “You” is, I mean. So many blogs stuck on that “I.” Let’s say one of the things this blog will be doing is breaking that – that “I” – open. With an address.

My “I.” And yours.

Search for Delicious is a good song by Panda Bear with a particularly good title for a blog. We had an email chat (I’m on a stupid PC, so unfortunately no i-chat with cute excited bubbles) and it wasn’t really a favorite on that album for either of us. I said “Bro’s” was mine, because I just couldn’t get over that sobbing. That’s probably significant. That I can’t get over the sobbing. You said “Good Girl/ Carrots” was yours. I leave it up to you to decide if that’s significant. But I’m listening to “Search for Delicious” right now, and it’s a damn good song. I sent it to you on a CD for your birthday, or something, around this time last year. It was Easter time. I know, because there are lots of parties in Berlin at Easter time for creatures of my ilk. I’m getting ready to go back. Last year, Panda Bear was my early morning company, after a shower and before settling into sleep. You know what? I remember weeping. I think I got an email from you saying that you were loving Panda Bear. And I remember answering, “You know, I thought you would.” And I was weeping because apparently I like to, but only for particular, and particularly good, reasons. And my suspecting you’d like the music and your actually liking it and telling me so, along with the fact that I’d been out all night dancing and having sex and had come back “home” to birds atwitter while I hung out the window to smoke, watching the shadow of the tree on the building behind the pad where my boyfriend and I were staying in Prinzlauerberg – well, actually, there are a lot of particular and particularly good reasons to weep with gratitude in that series of associations, which I find writing you about searching for delicious.

“We” might be integral to this blog, too. Now there’s a pronoun we’ve got trouble with today. I’d be willing to bet that we are having so much trouble because I forget how to talk to you. (In this instance, those are abstract entities, nobody’s pronouns in particular, just pronouns). But what we’ve been discovering, or what I, at least, have discovered over and over, is that there’s a voice I use when I speak to you. (Here, the pronouns couldn’t be more personal). Just writing to you recalls that voice. Gives that voice to me. As mine. Only thanks to you. I’m interested in that series of circumstances. They are circumstances that bear repeating. Because when I write to you, I find just what I was looking for. Only different.