I was about to put this on, something I found on the last page of a notebook written about two years ago, written after I made this delicious resin ball, was about to put it up when I read JoJo’s story. Read his first, if you haven’t first — it’s better, and doesn’t seem to be written in such quite stoned sophomoric glory as the following rabble of plotlines.
Told by the last page of his notebook he leapt to the purple gloom of fallen death. In open apathy of all past ties he joined his countenance and confidant in the swallows of the earliest of earthen cave. By a fire, a caveborne fire Promethial and tremendous, he sits in meditation. He hypothesizes the far daylight and renounces solitude. He in the direst reaches renouces soliloquy and takes from among his elders. But these, these renewed and fabled, they are the devils of trickery and prescience, they devour the very souls of the young. Our friend is in difficult straits.
He asks the bearer: “For what is this wrought?” No reply. He asks a second time, “For what is this wrought?”
“Upon your existence,” answered, “is this very substance of contingency provoked, relentless and turpid. You bear now young one; go out.”
The soul now hollow exited to the world, a vast Conoran outback flawless and horizonical. He mopes. He knows not his casual origin, nor his record of descent. Wrought has he become unto his burden that he can conceive of no retreat. To progress he must, to understand he must not. Linger in dreams, unforgiven by a year in between two decembers. A sun above to guide him north through the dusty firmament to a grafted line, a line cut furious and without irony to a final point, a cabin deep in woods, a slipped through hole in fence, an iron gate.
He meets a man. The man holds harm extended, palm out. Our friend stops, hesitates, and spits on the ground. The man turns and faces the east, his outline silhouetted by the sun. He disappears from our friend’s sight in a golden flash and our friend sits down. He is dizzy from the journey and he sits crosslegged slumping forward. He wishes for the bottle, for the fire and the dirt. He prays for the mother, the gross sublimation of each untold memory he can no longer see. And he raises his head to the vision, the silent tasteless epiphany of redress and calm, he is ready, he lays back to rest. His knees slacken, his eyes close one last time. He folds his arms over his chest. He lets slow his pulse, he breathes one eternal breath, and furtively, he slips away.
First of all, let me congradualte you on getting to the last page of your notebook. I’ve never ever filled up a notebook. Pinko’sPoll: how many of you have? I always get to a major break in Time and feel the need to start a new one.
But I like this. It’s the kind of thing that you’ll find yourself copy-and-pasting into lots of other frames and pieces. That kind of writing is convenient to have around; it’s the basis of a lot of my work (witness: ahistory of violence)
After reading, last night, I wrote this, not quite in response. This is totally raw and unworked with. I don’t think it’s going anywhere, so if you can take it and go somewhere with it, that would be sweet.
puddles of desire lie stagnant on the surface of the land. ought to have been out rolling around inside concrete-mixers, ought to have been out rebuilding what they had destroyed. At least flowing through, eroding the land, drawing its own map for once. But no, a puddle now, and when enough joined it to begin to trickle, its course was predetermined. There simply wasn’t enough excess energy in its system to design its own course, might as well follow the one that’s been built for it. A bowling ball rolled down the gutter. A blinko-ball on a rigged gameshow.
puddles of his desire lay stagnant on the driveway. His body seemed to drain it out on the front stoop every. It had trained itself to feel deflated every day as he entered the empty kitchen, full of energy friendly fluorescent light, because he had left it on all day. Couldn’t turn it off now, he just entered the room. Who’d enter a room and turn off the light. But all that energy lost, and global warming. He turned the light off and opened the fridge, island of light in darkness, to see empty shelves and a single stalk of red kale. Seemed to be too much of the stuff at the beginning of last night’s stirfry, so he had saved himself this much. A big, imperialist leaf of kale. Not enough to stave off the inevitability of leaving the apartment.
he switched on his Machine. the screen’s light filled the room. he slipped on one of those puddles full of his addictions, and didn’t re-emerge for another three hours.
ignorant cowboys continued to ride their way westward, fighting off evil and danger. they continued until they were all the way around West and had ended up at the East, so they lost their hats and became Buddhists. one stayed there and became fat, eventually returned to California—he is the fat buddha that americans love to worship in bamboo express—and the other continued his path, became ascetic, then vegetarian, then ascetic, then anorexic, then vegan, and then, finally, when he reached Europe, Hip. As if hip was his reward for his journey. Lost all his cowboy man-mass. Lost his lungs to smoke, his family to the darkness behind him.
feeling entertained, he reconsidered eating.
(This feels too stagnant and cynical for me. I used to produce a lot of writing like this, and I want to get beyond it. I want to be uplifting and revolutionary, which these ideas certainly allow for. When I’m stagnant at my computer, so’s the words. Almost, but not quite time, to hit the road, that means)
January 10th, 2008 | #
scoobie doobie doo, where are you, we got some things to do now. scoobie doobie doo, where are you? it aints some tractor free cow.
bird gird trid yur humvee. yu oktopus high-er for dover wert yamsen. makayalik poo. uh nan jav career kick, and grim tums juh meat, it’c berr fan je mima and ya mas kan na tcheat.
44556 that’s my number.
gh gh gh, trtrtr. u7 made a 40 hit to party second day!
faven haven trakey blakey smick da micker mac aladdle back: if seven hungry maker-dos, a kickin at your shack.
but yesterlady the midsamp, and colonel to the beach, it’s not what you’re looking for, the skinly or the leach.
January 19th, 2008 | #