my beard has turned from ordinary to shaggy to to amish john the baptist in the desert a couple of months and its brigham young-ive always wanted brigham young, just hadnt the pateince.

i wrote this for raymond, and he called my self indulgence. he also called it one of the most techincally sound peices hes seen.

I had a drink with the Arts and Entertainment editor for this paper last
week, discussing my position in that particular section-during that
meandering conversation he asked me why I wrote and avoiding any emotion, I
gave him a flip answer, something about being bored.

I’ve stewed over the question for a good week and a half, figuring if my
ambitions ran to writing I should have an answer ready to give people. The
first response that came to my head was that I am pretty lousy at most
things I’ve tried- the list of things I cannot do is lengthy, and the list
of things I’m good at is relatively short. I am a fairly decent writer-if
other peoples feed back is anything to go on, good.

Why I’m good at it is another matter-I’m good at it because I love language,
it’s an honest love given to me by my parents, who fought about grammar at
the kitchen table, had more dictionaries then most small town libraries and
would tell us to look things up when we asked rather obscure questions. I
grew to love English’s nooks and crannies, which other languages had words
that were absorbed by my mother tongues-as well as how often it mutates into
thousands of variations including cants, jargon, patois and Creoles. To move
caste in English, form high to low and from technical and theoretical to the
languages of the streets and gutters is easy and effective.

There are other reasons I write, aside from my hard on for the word. Writing
is cheaper then this months antidepressant, in fact I can start writing for
the cost of one tablet- and that’s if I had to buy pen and paper myself.
It’s also almost as effective, writing helps puzzle things out, allows
ambiguity and allows you to note progressions. To write every day is to
develop a pattern and order feels better then chaos.

But I write even if doesn’t make me feel better, and I often write when I
feel my worst-especially for the public. Wouldn’t a journal be better then a
belly draining that could be seen by all and sundry? At heart, I’m a
neurotic mess, I don’t like myself, and this should be obvious to anyone who
speaks to me for more then a few minutes. Writing gives me something
tangible to point to, something to hand out to those who ask what it is I
do.

There is something-deeper here then therapy or self-esteem or the love of
the word. The writing that I love the most, the writing that allows the
writing that touches me and the writing I am best at is poetry. But
everyone writes poetry when they are 14; it’s the dirty little secret and
something that your supposed to give up post adolescence. Saying you write
poetry and want to write poetry is akin to saying that masturbation is still
your preferred form of sexual activity.

So there it is why I’m a writer. No really good answers there, and maybe
that’s the point. I have often thought it would be easier if I threw it out
the window and never looked back. But I cannot every time I try, the next
day I make my grocery list rhyme or blog about how much I love Jesus. That’s
why I really write, it’s a compulsion that verges on addiction, and I don’t
really want to be cured.

today, i smoked weed on wreck beach with winnpeggers, after making my first motion at plenary.

we went thru broadway and commerical taking photos of me, we bought a glass bottle of choclate milk,i sat in on three hobos playing foggy mountain break down. we went to a nice irish pub where a band was playing and there was cider on tap but there was not enough kidney in the steak and kidney pie. we drove to an electroclash party, on the way there i tried to convince him to play bowling at a 24 hr joint, at the party there was a man in lederhosen, another man in a lavender fencing/cowboy type shirt, i had shots of cinammon schanpps, and half a beer. i danced a bit, and made a clever comment about electro that i forgot, then we drove arround, stopping at broadway and commerical again for blueberry crumble. the we drove to the beach at kitsalno, after driving down davies. i took my shoes and socks off, and then rolled down a grassy hill, we had fun.

first day in Vancouver:
i8 galleries,( some good art- esp. at tracey lawernec, with a drawing show that looked mike kelly la and murakami toyko and cancuckleheaded all at once) a fist fight ( i watched a 20 yr old flatten a man), sushi(salmon roll bento box-4.99) one dollar pizza slices (3), a Danish 1950s teak credenza that cost 120 dollars and 300 to ship
taking the bus with a boy that looked like a missinoary i once knew except the missionary didn't speak fluid French
meeting a girl on the street from Queensland, Toowoomba-reaizing her (Jane Carisle and her sister(Sarah Carisle) knew Geoff, went to school with him- talked about his writing,
how confident and independent he was.
the phrase Geoff is Geoff was used, which is a phrase that was used to describee me often.
5 cassette tapes of obscure anglopop,, bow wow wow, housemartins.

last night two hours of drinking beer and smoking weed and gossiping about papers, the Ubsessy still uses light boxes and wax.

http://ilx.wh3rd.net/thread.php?msgid=3110863#3110984

people think i should write about country for the village voice.

off to van tomorrow. i got fred astaire happy.

One of the side effects of Remeron, the new tricylic i'm on, is slight drowsiness-which i can deal with if it means slight drowsiness. What it means is that I go to bed tired and frustrated ca. 19:00 and get up groggy ca. 10:00. I have a 9 am class, I have deadlines, I cannot sleep for 15 hrs a day and still funcution. But if I go off my meds, it's a miracle that I get up at all.


The trip to Van. starts at 7 am on Thursday, with four other people. Fuck -14 hrs in a car with four other people, can you say claustraphobia and panic attacks-why am i going to this thing, i am so anxious about it, im thinking of just giving up.

yesterday in class, tom got angry about the tulip formation in calvinsim, i was not sure what it meant. i realized that i am so stupid when it comes to hardcore protestant theology.

So campus food drive, two hours trick or treating, this time for food for the food bank, every house i went to had food for us- on one house there was a note that said that this is all she had because her mom was in a nursing home. in others they gave us candy or words of encouragement. i feel like god has blessed me with this experince, reminded me that although depression often leads to solipism, if you can extend yourself it will be alright.


ballet tomorrow.

toms in vancouver, and im there next week and i am looking forward to it immensly.

It was a rather modestly sized audience that gathered last Saturday morning at 11 a.m. in Cooper Union's basement Great Hall to see newscaster Peter Jennings interview the 47-year-old New York artist Jeff Koons. The morning repartee kicked off the annual Art Walk NY fund-raiser put on by the Coalition for the Homeless, so everyone was full of a charitable spirit. Except that Jennings seemed not particularly sympathetic to Koons' work. "How did you like being called a 'master of kitsch' and a 'self-promoter'," he asked early on. "It was very painful," Koons answered earnestly, a tone that he maintained throughout. "I just tried to keep my work pure to my objectives."
Koons is a good salesman for his own work, and he explained what he was after in some of his more sensational pieces (in the vacuum cleaners he sought "the darker, masculine side of consumerism," and his explicit color photos of love scenes between himself and his ex-wife Ilona Staller, otherwise known as Cicciolina, an Italian porn star, were meant to express a romance of everyman and everywoman. "My work has always been collage, so I thought I'd collage myself into my own work." For those who look for secrets in an artist's childhood, Koons noted that his father had run a furniture showroom, and that he was always seeing things displayed.

The conversation had several bizarre highlights. Jennings asked Koons if it was true that he admired Michael Jackson more than anyone -- Koons apparently made such a statement in the past -- and Dan Graham asked from the audience whether Koons thought Jackson was gay. Jennings parried by asking to reserve the question for later. (Later never came, though a slide of Koons' ceramic sculpture of Michael Jackson and Bubbles, which sold last year at Sotheby's for $5.6 million, did eventually go up on screen, and Koons said something about it representing the speed of evolution.) Koons volunteered that he admired Jackson because "he would do anything for his work, but ended up a tragic figure."

The artist also brought up his former wife and spoke at length about their divorce and child-custody dispute. "My ex-wife has a borderline personality disorder," he offered by way of explanation. "All ex-wives have borderline personality disorders," joked Jennings. Koons remained serious, and told the audience that his son Ludwig, now 10 years old, was "abducted" by his ex in 1994, and that in a "tremendous injustice by the Italian judiciary" he is not allowed to see him or talk to him on the phone. He hopes that his son will look back on some of his recent works with childlike imagery and realize that "my dad was thinking of me."

Koons also said that as a result of the clash, he had sought out and destroyed "60-some" works from the "Made in Heaven" series, the images of he and his wife having sex. He also talked about the 200-foot-long backdrop he made for the currently touring Rolling Stones stage show, which included images of female underwear stretched across the stage ("to create tension"), a trash can flying through the air, and a cascade of oversized corn kernels. Keith Richards was to be positioned in front of the corn, and had Koons remove five kernels from the mural, since he didn't want to be completely surrounded by corn when he played.

From artnet, we all love mr koons.

and joan mitchell

Thats a prince, a print though, not a painting and not the one i thought of.

joan mitchells in all the latest magazines, first major retrospective since she croaked and really i dont see it. ive read the theory and looked at the paintings, thought about it, looked some more, seen some live in london and nothing. its the stuff i usually like, the colours at least, and thats all a boy expects from abex these days- maybe tohugh its the incompleteness of the field or the failure to intergrate certain lines, or the messy scrawl- there are v. few messy scrawlers i enjoy (twombly), hmm- no idea really.

i do like the new richard prince joke paintings though, they look so serious- buff on buff, black on balck, white on white. silly henny youngmen style one liners.

its for of course. ive read this text book twice and i cannot think of anything but churlish thoughts. due on wednesday. trying to reconstruct an essay for adam, failing. tired .

an odd do nothing day

wrote for nyplm and this blog at &;30 , meet jess from newman

class at 9 am, talked about hellenistic athens, one class short

did about 50 pages of reading fro class

treid to talk to raymond about a gateway article

had a drs appointment for mens stuff- have you ever had a test for stds (i havent had pentrative sex for at least 6 mo. but my scrotum has been hurting for about three days) anyways they stick a swab up yr urethra-unpleasent in extremis.

got an email that some of my "fiction" would be published (50 bux american)-email me if you want details on that one

went to mass where the priest talked about depression

went home did some more reading

back to the gateway, tried to revise the saint albert art peice, my email decided to stop opening attachments

left gateway, bumped into daniel for a bit and we talked about the german new wave - wenders herzog fassbinder- along with the ldsers, sceintologists, orzon,punch drunk love et al

newman or my sisters games tonite- not sure which i want to go to.

thomas is speaking at campus crusade tonite, but i talked to him on tues., had class w. him on wednesday, and dropped by his work yesterday-where we talked again an hour and a bit-do i want to see him again?

fearsomes bitching about my lack of comments, but my nyplm writing has them and it makes me a wreck when there are none.

list is queer novels, written for ilx

Top Twenty

01) Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

02) On the Road-Kerouac

03) The Immoralist by Andre Gide

04) Billy Budd-Mellville

05) Symposium-Plato

06) Confessions of a Mask -Yukio Mishima

07) The Talented Mr Ripley-Highsmith

08) Cities of the Red Night-Burroughs

09) The Berlin Stories-Christopher Isherwood

10) Death Comes for the Archbishop -Willa Cather

11) Head Hunter-Findley

12) The Persian Boy - Mary Renault

13) Funny Boy -Shyam Selvadurai

14) The Coming Storm-Russell

15) Aimee and Jaguar-Fischer

16) The Naked Civil Servant-Crisp

17) Other Voices, Other Rooms-Capote

18) Myer Breckinbridge-Vidal

19) Collected Short Fictions-Saki

20) Maurice-Forrester

2/4 of thomas's roommates have started blogs. including one on shit. back to sleepless nights. midterm back today.