Thursday, February 28, 2013

the love bar/3

(Meanwhile.  BARNEY is on a terrible bender and is making balloon animals out of condoms, and popping them with his formidable cigar.  The space should smell of that stuff they put inside those things.  And everyone should be a little sticky.)
(TED, meanwhile, has been on a spiritual pilgrimage, and has renounced his endless hunger for money, which has made all of his love so very vapid.  He started the pilgrimage to make room for the perfect match for him, but instead has found a deep serenity within, and no longer wants to attach to anything or anyone.  He wears long robes, and is becoming very quiet.)
(MARSHALL and LILY, meanwhile.  They have recently gotten back from their extremely expensive third honeymoon, where they spent three weeks in Rio, and joined a Furry cult on the beach there.  Now they wear animal clothes and hats with very long ears, and quote Japanese pop culture when they want to express anything other than furry sexuality.  It makes everyone very uncomfortable.)
(ROBIN, meanwhile.  Politicized by the Indigenous Rights movements in her native-sic-homeland, has also thrown off her desire for money and power, and sees that her liberation is tied to her involvement in the liberation of the First Nations.)
(Also, it's happy hour, and there are two for one shots.  Go.)

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

the love bar / next

ROBIN: I've been feeling so gloomy lately.
TED: Is it because you secretly know that you and I will get back together, and all of this is just a lie until then?
ROBIN: Hahaha, you're so funny and damaged, Ted.  No, it's because I met a wonderful guy and he's gone away, to Minsk, to work on some secret government program.
LILY (making one of her inimitable faces; she also sounds like she's trying to sound black most of the time, but it's not offensive at all): I think you are confused, my dear.
MARSHALL: That's a whole different show entirely! Hahaha! (He makes a weird goofy sound)  Uh-oh, I just laughed so hard a booger came out!
LILY (inimitably) Booger!
(They all laugh and they laugh.)
(Then the BARKEEP, a woman, comes over.)
BARKEEP: Why don't you call me, Barney, are you too busy with your penis?
BARNEY: My penis is salty, like kelp.
LILY: I don't know what that even means.
MARSHALL: I think you mean chard.  Everyone is eating organic chard in our neighborhood.
LILY: Oh, boy, and is it ever salty!
BARNEY: Salty chard,  salty salty.  Penis boobs and big screen tvs.
ROBIN: There's something in my soul that's wrong.  There's a lighthouse somewhere in me, something that goes on when it's very, very dark.  It's something like a light that recognizes things when they are happening, and when it's on, I can feel it, every time, when it's on, I know that things are going to become very dark, and the people around me who looked like they knew me will show themselves as nothing but phantoms, absolutely terrified and absolutely asleep.  And the world gets a little bit colder, because all of the things I ever wanted are not meant to be.
BARNEY: I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was sitting next to gloomy gus.  Hey, guys! High five, I just remembered my penis again!
TED: We were meant to be.
MARSHALL: No, you weren't, Ted, listen, sing a bro song with me.
(Top hat and coat, song and dance, a song about time escaping through the edges of our fingernails, and no one remembers when they felt young, because we all feel so old.)
Time escapes and death comes quick and beauty fades and we are all just phantoms. (and so on and so forth.)
LILY: I'm not showing anyone my boobs.
(Long pause, no one asked.  This is suddenly so very awkward, especially after such an amazing bro dance number.)
ROBIN: If he never returns from Minsk, I'll still wait for him, and grow so very old, and there will be nothing left of me to give, but no one will ask, time is not mine, it's all only borrowed, and I am heavy with the....
TED: ...with the hundred loves who crucified me.
ROBIN: Yes.
(Their eyes meet, they recognize each other, this is a moment, it's sudden and it's fierce and it's got them in its jaws, and it shakes them until all of their desire comes bleeding out and they fall on each other like wounded soldiers.)
BARNEY: My penis.  My white plume.  My jar of absinthe.  And my horrible angry soul.
(And LILY and MARSHALL look toward the future with hope, so unaware that they are already dead.  And so it is at the Love Bar on another cold night.)

Monday, February 25, 2013

the love bar

They're in a bar, a love bar, it's the bar, the bar, the bar where they love, they talk about love in the bar of love.

One

BARNEY: Check it, three twins last night.  High five.  There were five and then there was me.
ROBIN: Six.
BARNEY: I beg your pardon, hottie?
(Laughs)
ROBIN: There were six, if there were three twins, there were six.
BARNEY: Yeah, but one got away.
(Laughs)
TED: There's always one that gets away.
MARSHALL: Don't go there, Ted.  Getting all scheezie-meezie.
LILY: Schweezie-meezie!
(M&L make out on the table, lots and lots of tongue, it's so funny that they break character.)
MARSHALL: Can we take that again?
DIRECTOR: (He slaps his head, this is outrageous) Cut!

Two


TED: There's always one that gets away.
MARSHALL: Don't go there, Ted.  Getting all scheezie-meezie.
LILY: Schweezie-meezie!
(M&L make out on the table, lots and lots of tongue)
ROBIN (sings, like a bird): Schweezie, and meezie, a-schweezie and a-meezie.
(They all join in the song, like birds.)
Schweezie, and meezie, a-schweezie and a-meezie.Schweezie, and meezie, a-schweezie and a-meezie.Schweezie, and meezie, a-schweezie and a-meezie.Schweezie, and meezie, a-schweezie and a-meezie.Schweezie, and meezie, a-schweezie and a-meezie.
(This turns into a very elaborate dance number, one that O will have to choreograph, and the dance number is bright and glittery, but just for a moment.  Then, in mid-song):
TED: Every time I love, and lose, a part of me dies.
(Laughs)
TED: It's not funny.
(Laughs)
TED: It's just not very goddam funny at all.
(He gets so gloomy that they have to cut.)
DIRECTOR: Cut.
(The DIRECTOR is crying, because this is his story.)

Three
Dance number:
They Sing:
Schweezie, and meezie, a-schweezie and a-meezie.Schweezie, and meezie, a-schweezie and a-meezie.Schweezie, and meezie, a-schweezie and a-meezie.Schweezie, and meezie, a-schweezie and a-meezie.Schweezie, and meezie, a-schweezie and a-meezie.
(This starts off all glitzy but then becomes a very slow dance of death.)
(In the end, no one is laughing because death is coming to claim them all.)





Saturday, February 23, 2013

suits

and then i am haunted by dreams of men in suits.
men in suits at the airport, trying to push me through the security gates, because they are in more of a hurry, and they have to hurry, and there are men in suits around the airport who are wondering what i am doing there.  i'm just driving a truck into the airport zoo so i can look around while i wait to go to another country.  they're watching, and they're trying to push, but they don't do anything but make me aware of the men in suits.
and then i'm in a hospital somewhere, it's all a mistake, no one is sick, no one is injured, it's a mistake, and i try to leave but end up in a classroom, one i'm in a lot, one where there is a lecture going on about something i'm very interested in, but i'm not supposed to be there, and the man in the suit is lecturing and he is irritated with me and wants me not there.  more men in suits, they are all white men in suits trying to get me to do things.  this is why i became a punk rocker when i was young, this is why i'm all like this now.  goddam white men in suits.  

Thursday, February 21, 2013

on that night

when no one remembered any of the rules,
and time was running out,
and there wasn't enough space in the world to contain
what wanted to be contained,
and there wasn't enough time
to kiss like people do,
or a working methodology that worked
for the time that was running out,
and the only one who knew anything for sure,
was the wind.
and i fell asleep wondering how i
might learn how to trust the wind.
and the long nights that came after
that one night, the ones where
the sheets were wondering who was dreaming who,
and when these anxious turns might resolve
into something that resembled a story
that had a metaphor and a rhythm,
and the days were interrupted by
those urgent things that wanted to be born,
and the wind was turning it back,
poor imitations of seasons, floods that receded
before anything got really cleaned,
and snow that was only a pale imitation,
until the same wind went to sleep,
too embarrassed to admit that it didn't
know, had no idea, what the rules
might be, or how any of this would play out
after the season settled in on itself,
and let people start to make their homes there.
and on this night, in between seasons,
in between one wind and another,
i hear myself speaking in voices
that do not belong to me.  trying this
one out, to see if it fits, and throwing it
off to try another, they all have loose threads
that do not have anything to do with this.
and i hide in western philosophy,
diagrams of desire, and the threads of those
things that czech writer said, before his
country turned into someone else's.
before the winds changed the lines again,
and made this into something that it never
used to be.
and i'm discovered by spirits of western
africa, and the mothers of the waters,
who tell me that this moon in my fingernail
is more than just a reflection, and the one
who owns the wind, she tells me my blood
is being stilled before a peculiar sea change,
and everything is about to rise to the
surface, but first i'll have to lose my faith
in these things i cannot see.
and i pull the sheets tighter, and tell her
that i want to believe her, but no longer
think i do, even though i am always
wrong, and she never stops beating at
my chest, she wants me to remember
that she knows things that can only
last, the ones that start, that have their
birth, at the bottom of the river where
she used to live before she was born
in this place where we are all exiles.  

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

unbourne

It was something worth wondering about.  How this, this experience here, might find its way into something else, something written somewhere else, in another context entirely.  That idea that everything was some kind of raw material for art was liberating and troubling all at once.  It meant that he would have to pay close attention to everything, to think about it both inside a certain narrative (his own language structures in thought) and outside the narrative, in order to make it possible for larger connections with other narratives.  It also meant that the thoughts he lived in might become a part of that same circle of narratives, and that meant that he would eventually become a character in those same stories.
He wondered if it really made that much of a difference, or if it was just a question of revealing codes.  His narratives were constructions of several unstable identities, and, over time, they revealed a larger whole, something that occasionally coalesced into something like a singular persona.  That always made him enormously uncomfortable, because it was like being locked into someone else's language, the language of the one interpreting him, and once he was locked, things never continued in any interesting directions because he would spend his time trying to unfix himself, in order to allow for more possibilities of being.
That may be the whole point of it, ultimately, unlocking the structures of being in order to make them visible, so that there would be more liberation in the day to day experience of being.  He sometimes secretly, sometimes not so secretly hoped that he was doing the same things, allowing others the possibility of becoming, at best, or at worst, being conscious not to contain them in his own narrative structures.  No matter how much metaphor or hypertext or metatext, there was always a sense of limitation, because we are always trying to contain each other and are always trying to be contained, and there was never any lightness to it, because the base was always already much too heavy.
And if the art-image could be captured, something that was inevitably wound up with our own mechanisms of desire, then it seemed unlikely that placing them in a conceptual realm would do anything to diminish that effect.  Even if it were called an idea.  An idea that was like a tool that was useful.
On a larger cycle, however, one he couldn't possibly understand fully, there was always, at root, an uneasy suspicion that all of these things did become unhinged when there was something like love near the center.  Love doesn't necessarily reveal the codes, but rather complicates them, particularly when there was something like a spell involved, and all experiences of love, or sometimes just desire, carry a palpable and elusive aura that is very much like a spell.  All spells can be broken when the mechanism of desire becomes visible.  And what he was wondering most lately was about how liberated beings might move in space, toward or away from each other, or more likely a combination of both, after that initial spell was broken, and the hands pull the face closer anyway, and experience becomes something that comes from actions not taken out of reflex, but something even older than this particular instinct in this particular moment in time, something that language can no longer capture, and doesn't even dare to try.  Absence of writing is always already its presence, and the act of not-writing was starting to become the essence of his work, not as an artist any longer, but as a human being in an act of becoming, after a change of heart started to make that heart beat with the idea that liberation was not a lie, and not even impossible, but actually right there.  

Monday, February 11, 2013

bright sun

First, this was a rough weekend.
I can't say everything I want to say about it, because there are too many things I want to say about it.  Old ghosts put me in a strange place, and I haven't seen my thoughts go flying in so many directions since I was in New York, over twenty years ago.  But this is different.  Different things are in my head now, I've been through things, passed through lots of doors and gone into other forests, and I've been to the river.  Plus, I don't drink.  It all helps.
This morning I was cleaning my parents' bedroom.  My dad is sleeping on the bed with the beagle.  In a short while, his eyes are open.
He says, "Hello, bright sun."
I take off my headphones (Morcheeba, "Enjoy the Ride").  "Huh?"
"Bright sun," he says, it's all so soft.  He says, "You're so dark, I didn't know that, I never saw that before, you're so dark.  Come here," he says.  He is holding up his hand.
I hold up my hand and walk toward him.  The hands are together, and he says, "See? Look at that, just look at that."
I say that I think I have grandpa's color.
He says, "You do, I bet that's it, you do.  That's from the Datkas.  You have their color."
I say, "Datka, huh?" (somehow we're related to Mike Ditka through the Datkas, some misspelling at Ellis Island; Danowski is spelled 7 different ways on the boat records, you can imagine what happens to people who lose their names in a crossing).
He says, "They're the dark ones, and they're also a little bit crazy."
I think this must be good news, somewhere on the ocean, between one world and another, this is comforting.  It's raining, and we're in an ocean.
---
Before I leave, my mom wants to give me something.  It's a candle holder, it's on a stack of things by the door, things that she thinks I might want or need someday.  But this is important.  It's a wooden base, and a large glass bulb that covers it.  It's something that can hold a candle when you're not at home, if you want to keep a candle burning.  There are lots of things that need candles lately.
Then she goes on to explain how this was from her father, my other grandpa, the Irish one.  My mom wants me to have it, because my grandpa bought it and gave it to her and now it needs to be with me.  He bought it once, in this store, they were all there, him, his wife, my grandmother, and my mom when she was a child.  He wanted it because he liked it.  My grandma didn't want him to spend the money.  But he liked it, and he bought it anyway, so he could give it to my mom.
I don't know why, but it has escape written on it.  Like it's permission, to go to small extremes because it can make something beautiful.  And now it's useful.  And we all just want to be useful.  And small things are beautiful things.  And we can't remember everything, but we have to try, because that's what we're for.   

Saturday, February 9, 2013

exception

so there was this dream that i don't remember all of it only a part of it, i don't really remember any of it, the part after, the part when i woke up, i woke up and remembered that i just had a dream that i loved being in very much and there was a faerie spirit by my bed and she whispered how i am loved, and about how i have not been loved in a way that was not manipulated in a very long time, and that i would like the next part because it had been a very long time of knowing the other side and i would get to know the difference by knowing the other side for so long.
and there was a part of me that wanted to go to sleep to see what happened in the dream, so i could know more about the things that were coming, to see if my suspicions were correct or if it was something suddenly unexpected suddenly, but there was another part of me that wanted to go to sleep because this all sounded true, and it sounded like if it were as true as it sounded for as long as it sounded, then i must be exhausted, and how could anyone live with a heart as broken as that? it must not be that broken, but i wanted to go to sleep but i also wanted to find my lost friends because they might know things, and i started to look for them.
and if that wasn't enough (it wasn't), i went through the motions of opening the heart again, and making things sweet again, and thinking about the fond people i think about in fond ways, and see what i had learned about like attracting like, and doing that, and by the end of an evening i was sleeping with more questions than i woke up with, and those questions would remain unanswered for a very long time and that might be enough to make me fall asleep fast (it was), and when i woke up, i practiced openness and attracting the good and thinking about how there is a flow and a thing that is hard not to imagine as unconditional love, and if it was something i recognized then it was also something in me, and i practiced that, but in all these things there are exceptions.
there are small wounds that open up from time to time for one reason or another in ways we can't predict, and there are those peculiar ones that make us decide that everything else has to be put on hold, because this is an emergency.  i float around in a healing light and cultivate wisdom and visualize ballard because it really won't hurt anyone, not for very long, but there are emergencies, and that's when the silver in my palms starts to burn and my hands start to glow and there is a streak of white lightning that cuts me open from the chin to the belly, and this is on, this body is moving in time and it is mortal and it is biological and it is incapable of escaping from itself, and these times it needs itself, the body needs itself most of all, more than anything, because there are things that i have to do with my hands.
this is a hard season, this winter that comes back for another day or two, and keeps coming back for another day or two.  you want to think that this is the moment when you'll curl up beside that other one, with something warm in a mug and something soft that is your hands, but something isn't right, it's just not right.  there is a swinging chair right outside the door, and it's moving, inhabited by the ghosts of some children that you used to know.  they are restless and they are hungry and there is something that has been missing in them for way too long, and they're not leaving until someone answers their prayers, and they're not going to sleep again because they seem to have understood that comfort will not help them, not at all.  those are the lies that other children use to get through the night, but they understand more than anyone else, living or dead or somewhere in between.
and they start to take shape, their shadowy outlines start to take shape, and they are defining themselves as among the ones who are stuck in between, and they really just want to be one or the other, living or dead, but they cannot make up their mind.  and this is an indecision that is nothing new, and nothing strange to your family, it's something the bloodline has been trying to conquer since they were conquered so badly by every other surrounding army and nation.  and there is a violence in your blood, one that you did not ask for, and one that you don't want to recognize, because to recognize it means that you are part of this lineage, and you've experienced this violence yourself, and you didn't know that you could even call it violence, because it's just what happens when people want things they don't have, and you walked into that strange city by yourself under your own volition, because you wanted to meet the people who lived there.
some days, the lines on our hands are as light as feathers, connecting us to each other like we were all birds who are flying in the same direction, with the same idea of home.  and on some days, the weight of fingerprints is too much to bear, so you have no more choices, your back is against a wall, and you have to forgive the ones who lost their sense of direction, and cry for the innocence that got lost between one dream and another.


Friday, February 8, 2013

vanity, lines, marks, healings

This sea inside of me went away with me and I don't see me in any of these things.
That nervous twitching one who was me went off twitching and I don't know where he left.
I can't find the mark, I don't see the opening, I don't see the hole where he left,
& I'm not looking because I don't miss him, I don't know who he'll meet out there,
Or how we will deal with all these things he has to deal with, he is complicated.
I got put into the ground, a living tree in the ground beneath my feet,
And I like how this moves, how this feels, and how I breathe.
I did worship that Nicotina, same as you, same as everyone, in the same ways,
In the same rituals, and the world was my church, and the world is my church.
& I was afraid I would get fat like adults do when they leave, but I didn't.
I like these little lines on my belly, and I stop and stare at every mirror,
Every vanity belongs to me when I fill the space of those mirrors.
& I'm uncomfortable because it all means something, and I don't know what,
Like I just don't know what.  & my body craves, juice and fat, and then I'm full,
& I don't know what to say about that.  I think I met someone.
& I don't know what to say about that.  I don't know what it's supposed to mean.
I don't think this was planned, I don't think the goddess of love gave birth on
the edge of the seafoam and said this is born.  It's not really born, it's in a waiting
room somewhere, & I don't know if it's a false pregnancy, but I like it.
Whatever it is, I like it.  & whatever it turns out to be, I'll like it.
These days are full of mirrors and echoes, and coded messages from a handful
of lost loves, and I want to know what they're trying to tell me.  But not
very badly.  I want to find all of my old friends, the ones who were there
at the start of this birth, the ones who blessed it, I want to find them all
and tell them I miss them very much.  We all have things we do with our
lives, there are new families and new loves and new jobs and new dreams,
and our memories are starting to belong to someone else, that next generation
that will make our anxieties and struggles irrelevant.  And we get to live in the
ghosts of our old struggles, and find ways to make meaning out of these things
so that they might be useful.  And I sleep more lately, all of this points to
something, I don't know what, something about how this has suddenly
become something else.  My belly is marked with lines that I like, and I
find myself outraged just enough to get up again and start to work, I don't
know what it means, but I love the work.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

seanymphs

i've been living somewhere else for a lot longer than i thought, and i just got back here, and it looks like there's been a winter, and all the things look like they were dead but are just starting to come back to life, there is a tree in a silhouette against a grey sky and it looks like a hand with a lot of tiny fingers going in all directions but there's something else growing that looks like it might mean something in the spring.  soon enough.  but i can't tell for sure because it's a little bit too dark still, it's just a little too dark.    i might not be back all the way, i might not be back yet, there is still something in the way between what i see and the thing that is seeing me, like a layer of water, i don't know if i see you from right here or if i recognize you from somewhere deep under water, and it's deep enough that there is a trick of light, where the waves reflect and magnify you, and i want to say i recognize you all the way down here, but i'm not sure if i can really say that, it might just be what i want to say, or what i think you want to hear, i don't think you'd be fooled by that, i hope you wouldn't be fooled by that, i have a lot of tricks with my tongue, and i'm trying very hard not to show them to you because they are tricks and they are pretty but they are just tricks and i'd rather you were seeing something else, because i want to see this without all the tricks, too, because i have a feeling, i have a feeling this might be important, but that's already saying too much too soon, and it's just a feeling anyway, they don't usually stay for long, and they don't always mean anything.  but if i could tell you something from the middle of my heart, not near the bottom, not that deep, but still, not usually visible, there is this:  the last thing they told me, before i was drowned utterly, before i went under to get rid of all these layers of skin, the last thing, "don't listen to the songs of the mermaids, they will only confuse you." and the songs that i loved to hear all went away, they all went away, and the world got dark, but it has to get dark when you are at the bottom of the sea, because that's what the bottom of these things are for, and i like it there even when there are no songs, and i like knowing this, something i didn't know before, that there are things that happen, energies that happen, all the time, in the world down here up there everywhere, that have very little to do with how we feel or what we think we want, and at our best, we are following them in the way that we are trained, and do not worry whether or not they fit that trick mirror in the eye of the heart, the one that says, now this, now that, now it has to be this way, now it should look like this, there are these things that do not matter, have nothing or very little to do with who we are and how we are unfolding, and so.  it is important, at these times, to pay attention to the people you meet, some of them will pretend to know what they want, even though they don't, some of them will only want something from you, something that you can't afford to give, because they are broken and see something in you they think will fix them, and then there are always going to be those who are clear in the head and the eye and the heart, and they are the ones that are easiest to miss, because they do not demand your attention, they catch it but they do not demand it, and they know something important that will remind you of yourself so much that you will come back to the surface with your new skin and you will wonder why you just woke up.  but before all of that even can start even, you have to get past the mermaids and their songs, and you think you should go up, but you should not go up, not yet, you need to go down, and keep going further down, because there is another league of sirens altogether, and they are the ones who have all of the 16 lost pieces of your heart, and if you go deep enough long enough, they will put your heart back together again, and then you will be ready, but you have to go deeper to get there, you have to go deeper, you will think you have explored all of the depths, but you have not, not yet, there is something else there, you have to keep going deeper.  and i am not yet back, but i am feeling something very old pulling at the strings in my chest, something like stitches pulling it shut, and i am feeling something like surfacing, this feels very much like surfacing, but feelings go away and become something else, often enough, so i can't be sure, but that is exactly what it feels like, and even though it's too much too soon too deep, i talk from a place that is too deep, and am trying to speak through the siren songs, without getting my own tongue covered with their particular honey, because it will be hard to hear my words through it, and it will only sound like tricks of the tongue, and my tongue can even trick myself, but.  if i talk through these things, as i am feeling something very much exactly like surfacing, it might be possible to say things like, this is like being charmed, this is something like being charmed but not drunk, that is to say, this has all the appearances of something that i want, and something that i have wanted for a very long time, but gave up on wanting, a very long time ago, but did not know that i never stopped thinking about it because it was something i was supposed to have, but i was so busy for so long so sleepy for so long so busy sleeping for so long, listening to these mermaid songs, because they sounded better than the music i was hearing, which had grown dull and sad, and i thought that if i did not have their songs then i wouldn't have anything worth having, but i suspect i was wrong, and i suspect that i will know more soon enough and shouldn't say everything out loud, and in truth, i don't, there is always much, much more, because i am leaving the depths where i thought it could not get any deeper, and there are still so many things down there that i have not seen, and there is more than i could see in a lifetime, or two, or 264, and if this is all something larger than my feelings, my thoughts, my words, my desires, than i want to be a part of that and the first thing to do, then, is wake up, and i am just writing to let you know that i hear you and i am on my way.  

MANIFESTO OF CROSSED ONTOLOGIES Everybody (and by everybody I don ’ t mean everybody I think I mean one person, and I mean you, in par...