so yesterday i went to campus crusade(which i am trying to rename cavalcade) for christ, to return some books to andrew, give him the reading list he asked for, and then split to write an essay thats already a week late, we got talking, and i stayed for the first half of it, and then wandered out, i hadnt eaten for a couple of days, cause my landlady fucked off to viking and she is supposed to providrr board, and andrew promised me dinner.

wandering out of the meeting i saw dana sitting on the couch- dana is the one who wrote a letter about my celibacy article, and who i thot was a protestant asshole, and he thot i was a catholic conseartive. we met at cavalcade last week, and he is smart, funny clever, reads hebrew and greek, carries arround a greek critical translation of the christian scripture, grew up as a catholic... anyways, interesting fellow, and we got talking about nahum, reality tunnels, the connections b/w the arc of the coveanant and YHWH, wherether god was really in their -andrew came out afterwards and we all went to wendys- where i had a classic single, biggie sized at his insistence, and then andrew, dana, stephanie, me and john (another buddy) talked about cannocity of the pauline epistles, cosmology, catholic theology, evanglical fundementalism, the uses and abuses of the jesus seminar, desim, where we were on our "faith journeys", the entomonlgy(sp) of the wd cunt, femminism etc- then andrew left suddenly, and dana and john i and his gf - steph, walked to the stadium car park while i explained queer theory- i never wanted it to end, i am amazed at how smart Thomas's friends are, and how religous, or howq much they cared about god, i t hink that when i find people like this i tend towards the compulsive, mainlining them until everyones exhausted, esp. in winter- i hope i hadnt done that, when i got home i phoned andrew and told him thnx, ott and inapporite most likely.

ase

was going to go to the twin cities in dec. but taras wedding is on the 16th -so heading there in may

asked to speak in la in august

the gateway feature on bdsm offended me, making us once again extoicized sexual others, and i want to read narnia again.

aside from the v. odd break, i have spent most of my time from thurs. to today writing 7500 wds on nahum. i am proud of the lenght, and the work that went into it, but am unsure of the qauilty. thnx to thomas for the lap top and to thomas's roomate andrew- who got my head thinking and called me on my bullshit.

dinner with my hebrew scripture class, glad that its over, sad that its done. emotinally realvent, and timely- with a bunch of evanglicals who found something vaulbe in me.

gift basket from the X's folx, contained processed cheese and meat in a tube.

i started writing poetry again today, for the first time in two months, i spent the day in a library, and started thinking of other things, took a fresh sheet off my white pad and sketched/free formed. its not finished hasnt been edited, it comes from reading the dickinson poem wild night, whose last three lines i have always thought balanced between love and lust, b/w bawdy pun and vital need.


so this is the unedited free form , not all going to show up in the last draft, anthony poem

linen hankerchief

cotton sheets

the snow that grounds pine forrests

cold

last year, he would be with me

he was with me last year

to have him beside me

was warm



that's what i miss

was the warmth



the crescent of his belly

where my hand would (could) fit


the nook of his shoulder

where my head would rest



the curve of his body

o'er me


the exhausted sleep

the twinned hearts


the stillness



rest his arms 'round my belly



cling close to him

practical concerns


warmth mostly, and the wind outside the window and being inside and seeing snow fall,


to be protected; to be loved

the sheets, and his flat firm belly



the snow out the windows and christmas coming, and im alone, and he isnt here

i thrash so much, a slat comes undone, and i can hear my heart beat but not his

i talked to adam today, asked for forgiveness, and he asked it of me.

had an aletory drink with trevor who writes for the gateway- we started talking and my goal of researching nahum went down the drain

now trevor and i hadn't really talked, but tonight we spent an hour together

hes pure- catholic, altar boy, boy scout, valdectorian, popular in high school, a pysch student getting out of engineering. he hadnt been to the plant or ratt.

he says heck uironically, and listens quietly.

he seems to like me, and hes funny- and a grate writer.

i thot something, i have talked to a bunch of these consveratives lately, and maybe im disneyland- a loud brash faggot with little social skills and a tendency to ask all the wrong questions in all the worst ways has got to be adventrous- but im not dangerous, im really sort of gentle.

so its like space mountain, a rollicking ride but no real danger.

40 bux from 53 for a lecture review. would be it undecorus to go to adam and say fuck u u cunt i dont need yer stinkin' paper. off to vv to buy a land form.

The Rogers media mogul just delviered a 300 million dolalr gift to the Art Gallery of Ontario, well it s more then that if you include a 50 million dollar bribe to Frank Gehry and a 20 million dollar endowment.

1/3 rd of the 300 million dollars is taken up by the purchase of a Reubens (well 117/300 million). This painting was just recently refound, and its authourship is heavily debated, mostly b/w those for auction houses and real art historians- the real art historians mostly in agreement that it was a student and not the master.

Aside from the "Reubens", there is the usual Kreighoffs, Kanes and Group of 7ers

Kane is a v. v. v. minor history painter known mostly for his sentimanetalizing portraits of natives, which I guess is better then killing them off whole sale.

Kreighoff is a 19th century dutch immigrant to Canada, who painted cloying scenes of life in Rural Upper Canada, which was as unrelated to life as could be possible (ice skating vs freezing to death-which makes a better picture ?)

The group of 7 pictures include a handful of good to great Harrises and a bunch of other shitty landscapes.

Harris paintings do not have the tennous of JEH McDonald or the whole sale rip offs of post impressionism or the cake icing thick impasto of a JEH McDonald.

What they do have is serene and glorius color, lots and lots of whites and greens and blues and blacks, , with large bimorphic shapes that vaugley resemble mountains or icebergs.

his last paintings were done in the Bahamas and oh my god, the color is amazing, parrot greens, corals, crimsons, pinks, oranges, just land evoked with swirling lines and elegant shapes. –an undervalued period, none of the moguls collection contain any of them .

the oddity of the collection is the huge amounts of unremarkable English pottery , mostly English and mostly made b/w the 16th and 18th Centuries, it’s the sort of polite collectible that smacks of hummels for the upper classes.

its boring, and all comes on the tail of auction results from vancouver0 where Kane sold for a new record (17 million)- a similar auction in Toronto will sell of half a dozen Kreighoffs and expect similar prices. Both of them are safe, dull and prestigious, sold more for patriotism then aesthics. And Harris, while Brillant and Shamelessly unknown outside of Canada, is over compensenated within because of it.

Why Cant we get decent results for unknowns- the recent Covilles are all about Death and God, somber and photrealsitc and almost exenestial in their misery.

or Kurlek, whose religious paintings are as plain as a Methodist hymn and as gory as his native Orthodoxy ( he did a series of paintings on Mathhew- one of which features a farmer, whose field is half plowed, crucifed on a fence post. )

or the stern potruitre of 19th century Quebec

or even the most recent workers, Jeff Walls massive often ugly Cibrachromes, o whose violence seems nesscary, or Stan Douglas's video peioces, who show the method of their artifice, and are all the more moving because of it or Robert Attila Lucas's connections b/w the cult of the body and the cult of body politic or Joyce Weilands quilts, or Agnes Martins scared evocations of light or hundred of others.

im sick of the boredom of the canuck establishment and how they buy art.

i spent an hour and a half, maybe two- talking to thomas last night-mostly about god, b/c thats what he and i talk about. we talked about attachments and the doctrine of christ, the fear of obdeibnce, the emptiness that comes after mass, my exhaustion, why im religous, essentialism.

im not sure, it feels like their are two people in me- a boy who naively belives in the glory of god, and a cynical adolscent who belives in nothing

he went to mass w. me, and afterwards fr. bittner called me a man, which always throws me-b/c i dont feel like one.

walk into an internet cafe and a friends art is on the walls; havent seen her for 6 mos. and the art in question is about the violence found in her native chile, sad &sombre stuff.

i am watching a memeber of the u of a golden bears still sweaty from practice, walk down the hall singing nelly. i have a hard on that could open beer bottles.

> For a while this year the British Royal Family was forgiven for all >of its misdeeds. Prince Charles went public with his consort, introducing >Camilla to the Queen after a summer where she was his constant companion. >She also spent much time with the princes-along with Charles who was >working PR to be portrayed as a good father, from disciplining Harry for >smoking dope, to giving William polo lessons, to attending parents days at >Eton and taking them fishing in Scotland.>>There were other indications that Charles and Company were recovering well from >the death of the popular blonde at the hands of drunken chauffeurs. For >example, for the first time in years, the Italian gutter press no longer >calls Charles Tamponcino and the London dailies take his organic gardening >and jeremiads against contemporary architecture seriously. This is a shame >really because offering to be Lady Parker Bowles tampon was among the most >romantic things a member of the Royal Family had uttered ever, and his >pronouncements about buildings resembling carbuncles need to be mocked, >mostly because he used the word carbuncles.>> That said, it wasn¡¯t only Charles who got the media love, the Queen did >not suffer the indignity of punk anarchy during her jubilee, like she >suffered for her twenty-fifth. What she did get was a series of concerts, >including one featuring "hard rockers", including a drug addled Ozzy >Osbourne. There was also the wonder sons, the most English monarchs in >line for the throne for centuries, who are threatening to date Pop Stars >and going to London clubs with cocaine on the table- all around, the >Windsor¡¯s seem to have loosened up and become popular. The scandals under control, and the queen being treated as the great colonial nana was refreshing for her, but truly dull for the rest of us. >Which is why it was so refreshing to have Paul Burrell start talking, this was the man who was >Diana¡¯s servant and "rock", who cried loyally at her funeral. He was charged >recently for stealing dozens of items ranging from the banal to the intensely >personal. Between being forced to testify by the courts and being >encouraged with a six-figure pay off to spill by the Tabloid Daily Mirror- >whole epics of scandal have been unearthed.>>The Oprahfied therapeutic confessions of victim hood that Diana specialized >in, the moping and weeping and gnashing of teeth, the awkward confessions >of adultery, bulimia and self-harm have been extended way past the operatic into camp. What Mr. Burrell told about the royal family is brilliant because it¡¯s new, and because it shows how hermetic those who lead us is. For example, Diana pretended to be an American with the name Ms. Armani so that she could date a prominent Anglo-Arab heart surgeon. These dates included having the gentleman smuggled into Kensington Palace and meeting him while clad only in furs and diamonds. The discussion of this Arab in British papers concentrated heavily on his race, as did the discussion of Dodi al-Fayed. Diana was good at photo-ops with the worlds disenfranchised, concentrating on them as an effective tool to win her battle against the Windsor¡¯s. It seemed ok to use Arabs as tools in an extensive campaign of her public image, but not okay to use them in bed. To make sure that it is not only a racial other included; there are other >stories of what the butler saw, mostly about what he saw about himself. >Apparently he and most of the staff enjoyed buggery greatly. Which isn¡¯t a surprise, really, it¡¯s been the most popular sport among upper class boarding schools- though cricket comes a close second. Depending on whose reports you believe, the incidents of homosex in and some shenanigans in Burrell¡¯s native Australia. And Burrell awkwardly portioning a prominent just out of the closet television presenter, There are also things that he told second hand, or gossip that has arisen from this new crisis just because it seems to be the right time. For example the he crew and some servants watching queer porn on the royal yacht, Britannia the anal rape of a servant by another servant- a rape that apparently everybody in the Court new from the queen on down to Scotland Yard. And then there is the fun stuff to do with the royals themselves For example Prince Andrew being caught receiving oral favours from a footman.So the Butler was apparently insatiable, the princess fucked outside her >race and station, and some of the Windsor¡¯s and their hangers on like to fuck ass, sometimes with out consent. What is the point of us caring about this? Aside from the >pleasures of schadenfreude, there are archetypal elements- the unhappy >princess is a required element in every fairy tale, and we expect racism >and exoticism from the ruling classes. There is the hope in the heart of >every Republican that this may be the latest scandal to break the royal >family but they¡¯ve lived through Oliver Cromwell and they will survive >this. Perhaps the fascination is just a fascination with scandal, a proof >that those in power are more insane and inbreeds then your average trailer >trash.

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.