fantastic iconographs for the song all hail mighty jesus


9 minutes of Hurdy Gurdy

the americans lie about this sort of thing, all the fucking time, but apparently good news in iraq.

100s of strange images of historical anoatomy, including this:

the pulling the skin aside like theater curtains seems to be a popular trope thruout italy, this one is by Jacopo Berengario da Carpi residing in Modena, near Bologona, but I have seen Roman, Florentine, and Venetian examples, in etchings and sculpture. From the 15th to the 18th centuries

a thwack of primary documents about same gender interaction in 18th Century England. uses the word homosexuality, which is dicy.


From Grindhouse
(is this image misogynst, she is on all fours, but she is shooting up with a large machine gun, oh qt, yr sexual politics are so edgy and difficult to parse)

the web makes pissingi n public safer for genderqueer folx (and people tricking, im assuming)

glenn beck calls hilary clinton a bitch for "not what she says, but how she says it", i think that becks problem is that what is being said is that it is being said by a woman.

lorena barrezuetacermaic remaking of the ubiqitious new york taek out continaers is conceptually breathtaking, and gorgeous to boot.

a new york post film critic posts the vitirol he got after panning 300, i am not sure if this suggestss anything more suggestive then the readers of the new york post, but its hard not to view this as a general american conserative response to criticism.


i keep finding more things for the deer show, three things in this months art forum, the photos for gallinoas dior show, and this little masterpiece, but i already have too much! got to send the package out soon.
Korut Aideyh Distys
The Costume II, necklace, 2006
glass beads, fresh water pearls, metal, plastic toy, line
the rest of her work with its lux negotion of kitsch and finery, deconstructs class and glam in really fantastic ways.


Bob Fossee, ca 72, around the time he shot cabaret.

Ratzinger bitched at his predecsseor for letting Dylan in (who is actually a fairly profound theologiacal thinker) and has invited Tom Waits (who isnt)

this collection of homosocial photos, and the discussion of the charged realtionships between men, that doesnt nessc. connect to a sexual text, and cannot be read as we read it, suggests the constant negotiona of bodies, and their inherent instability, it seems well worth reading. doc wooten collects dozens of images, and like many amateur taxonomists, posts them on flickr. i find these photos erotic, to the depths of my bones, but i also find them wistful and sad, the kind of ambigious bonding of this sort:

I sought them far and found them,
The sure, the straight, the brave,
The hearts I lost my own to,
The souls I could not save.
They braced their belts about them,
They crossed in ships the sea,
They sought and found six feet of ground,
And there they died for me.
which is Housman

or Whitmans Lines:

WE two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going—North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying—elbows stretching—fingers clutching,
Arm’d and fearless—eating, drinking, sleeping, loving, 5
No law less than ourselves owning—sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming—air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.

the assumption is that it is about fucking, and not about commradeship, or fraternity, or honour, or friendship, (or that it could be about being a commrade and a lover, or that it cannot really be found out--i think that i call myself queer, because i recognize that the bonds, fondness, love, and attraction one feels for people refuses to be contained by societal stricture, and for every time that we go forward, into some classified identity, we lose some of that ambiguity. (i read both shopshire lad and a penguin whitman in sjsa, when the concept of the mascluine became nessc. and clear, and was taught several hausman poems unironically in grade 8 lit class, and the gay rescuing of him, james, wilde, and other 19th century figures, excludes the liminal spaces they occupied in the academic anglo-american underground)

some fantastic photos of the Curragona Courthouise, oen of those american temples to justice, that they used to build, before conveience and expense got in the way.

Matthew Kangas the v. regional seattle art critic, is a bully, who steals art for good reviews.




Sometimes Kiki Smith Descends into little goth girl kitsch, this is one of those times.

not only does Rev. Dr Coakle thread the needle b.w liberal justice and conserative tradition, she ties the sex panic of the RC's with the lack of Mercies of the Anglican conserative,s and the arrogance of the liberals, workign towards some kind of equitable, real conclusion. Though called a Bullentin, this discussion of recent issues of sexuality and the bodyis a difficult, prayerful and graceful wander thru the mienfield, highly recommened.

the blog is called monkey punch dinasour, do you need to know anymore?

i love mesome americas next top model, but the photo shoot where everyone is violently killed, and the crime scenes are so pretty, is perhaps the creepiest thing ive seen all year.

jerry saltz one of two reasons to keep reading the voice, leaves for new york magazine, which leaves musto.

one of the things that i learned or had to learn in groups, or am learning, aside from my casual dismissal of my gifts, is that i speak in always or never...for someone who is so ambigious with the language, and careful avoidnig statements of truth, i tend to pronounce negativley

Reading Ram Dass’ book on the Gita, which is problematic, of couse, because hes an old hippie, and hes not a scholar, a hobby hindu, but early on in the book, he tells a story:

Krsna, at one stage of his incarnation as an avatar, was a beautiful young boy….there was a great student of the Gita, an old man. He was so intent on studying the Gita that he had stopped doing all of his work…soon he and his wife were w/o food. His wife was v. harsh w. him saying, “you have a duty to go out and bring food home for the family.” She kept pressing him, making his life v. difficult, but hed just go off into the woods and study the Gita every day. One day, as he sat in the woods studying the Gita, the old man came across a line in the book in which Krsna said, “If you offer all of your devotion to me me, you need worry about nothing in the world. It will all be taken care of”…

Ram Dass, Living the Bhavagavad Gita, 3

I am going to paraphrase here, because paraphrasing is a way of indiciating that one understands the process,

The man, underlines the line, with pencil. At the same time, in town, a young man arrives and delivers months of provisions to the mans wife. The mans wife notices that the young man is bleeding, straight across the chest, one line, like the line that was undercrossed in the text. He had write on the body of Gd, w/o realizing it. His writing on the body of Gd had done damage.

I know that this is a trust story, a do not doubt that the providence of Gd will take take care of you, and I could write about that, but I wanted to think about something else.

I didn’t go to groups today, because I have been struggling with my role in them, and I am good at making stories up, at indiciating that history or traditon can be used to indicate what is really hapenning—so I told the scm story, and the compline story, and the excommincuted from the church story, and positioned it somewhere b.w not understanding and damaging in order not to trust…and the storis provided a refuge, just like the gita provided a refuge to avoid thinking of things, the doggy paddle in an ocean of doubt and exhaustion…you paddle in one place, because one is not convinced that action does anything, and because the boat will come.

Lent is next week, and lent is all about the violence that one does on the body of our lord, and the language that is used to inflict that violence, the lirturgy of violent text on living bodies renews itself, and because we are the living flesh of Christ, it is renwed on ourselves.

The stories we tell do not rescue us, they are place holders, the theories we use to build bridges, rot. What we do to the texts that save us, we do to the texts of the divine and the human.

Ignoring others stories, cynically dismissing others voices, being amusing instead of being hard, denies the real living power of words, the words that wound krsna or Christ. What happens if I use my words not as clever constructions to prove my cleverness but to express my regret or sadness at the violence of myself on others and vice versa.

(and i think the miracle, is not the full larder, but even wounded, even with that line of text bleeding the belly of a loving gd, he still feels obliged...)

Yellowbird detail

Yellowbird detail
Originally uploaded by PinkMoose.

im proud of this one

now public some kind of hippie sf thing, used one of my photos for a discussion of plastic shopping bags. no money, but a link. i am sure you are all thrilled.

how come some days everything works out, and its all okay, and you succeed, and you think that you have a grip on the lirtugy that undergirds the structures that you are now living in, and somedays you fail so spectaculary, it would be easier for you to just go...

jesus, endless stories of women raped, abused, left alone, verbally abused, broken, and just wow, i dont have the energy to handle it most days

here is a large online catalog for twombly as sculptor

reading barthes essay on twombly and i will get back to this, but he points out that what makes twombly most like a child is the effort that is placed, to use freud, an ego rather then an id, the scrawls, etc are so deeply rooted in language that they can not be raw or random

the essay is among barthes best,but i think that he is wrong on a few counts

1) i think that the language thing is a dodge for twombly, i think his attempts at languge are parodic or cryptic to the point of on purpose indecerphability.
2) the effort question is not decided, how delibrate or difficult the scribbles are, esp with the use of sqaures, tumbling lines, white space, etc in the mid 60s amd 70s drawings, and his use of lacunae, all suggest the randomness as a cage like strategy, as opposed to the these are my emotions, raw and pure butch posturing that comes out of other gestural abexers or gestural abstractionists at all
3) he refuses to acknowledge twombly as a colourist--his work in the 90s, thick impastos of bruisey, ugly, brackish tones, or bright citrus/pop tones, or both in the same work, is v. much a colourist coming from the closet, but his chalk work from the 80s on french royal blue fields, or how he uses slashes of kelly or crimson in his drawings from the mid 60s, or even his evocotive use of erasing white, all suggest a man who knew and used colour well (cerebally, and barthes attaches colour to joy, and just joy, attaching himself to a chromophobic tradition, that is against the use of colour as an intellectual excercise)
4) he ignores the print and sculpture, the print work being impt b/c you cannot really make a gestural print, the minute it is mechincally reproduced, the primary artisthood is lost, or given to a process, his print work then, is a deconstrution of the gestrual excercise he is engaging in. the monochromatic sculptures, always struck me as a really clever white washing, shrinking of the importance of monumental objects--they are camp, but camp at its most wry/dry (ie he takes trash, literally discarded relics, and instead of celebratign them for their own merits, he makes v. careful neo classical manquettes, and until v. recently paints them one colour--and then names them after rome or egypt or whatever--so the whole david smith/tony smith/anthony caro steel cock show offs are emasculated, by the table top size and delicacy of the work, but the keinholz/johns/raushcenberg/pallazzo throw everything on the wall and call it america shitck is deconstrcuted, because the trash is cleaned and presented as an object of good taste--of spiritual rigour, even the idea of garbage as spirtual rigour is campy, and as john waters reminds us in art forum, some of them look like pigeon shit:
CY TWOMBLY, UNTITLED (1992):

I defy you to come up with a more cutting-edge piece of work than this shockingly beautiful sculpture I first saw at the opening of the Menil Collection's Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston. Rich people, art critics, and museum trustees never looked more vulnerable as they turned the corner and came face-to-face with this rudely witty, obscenely elegant piece that made everybody in the room look like they were trying too hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it's supposed to be about "time and meaning," "transformation," and "metamorphosis and myth," but to me it looks like a most confident and graceful depiction of Godzilla's discharge. Go see it. It's still there.

twomblys sculptures in the last little bit have gotten rid of the all white on white (and even his monochromoticism makes fun of the constant mastbatory techincal excercises of people like ryman, because they are not about the paint, or what the end of paitning means)

so anyways, i love twombly, he is awesome

(the interesting thing, is that in task lately, ive tried to paint like him, and i have some photos labelled twombly, but i still cannot manage to get close, the closest i get is my todo notebooks)

also, im hungry

Durer, Abuduction of Proserpine on a Unicorn, 1516, ETching

I like it, because the unicorn is angry and viscious and ray like. found in the musuem of fine arts, boston, catalog for Durer:Master Printmake. the book has two versions by durer, on different paper (you cant tell the difference in repro) and a version by the wonderfully named Hieronymus Hopfer (which i like better, because its cruder, and more manic, the paper size is smaller, the horse is turning in the other direction, and the scene is more concentreated centrally, so the picture looks that much scarier) and much detail of early 16th century etching techniques, and general formalist concern, but little about why this was printed, how it sold, what the story was, etc, which is frustrating.

(does anyone know a good social history of the market in 16-17th century prints, who bought them, who sold them, who shipped them, and any ideas of intellectual property et. al?)

looking thru the ctalog is oddly outsider, b/c of all the varation, the insane details, and the ocd level line work, its so precise, and so delibrate, i mean it fills a page like tintoretto or carraci, but its too clean and precise, and almost colourless...might be t he difference b/w the right and left.

(h hopfer was the son of daniel hopfer, also a print maker, from what i can google, his entire career seems to be ripping off durer.

i also want to know if there was an angry unicorn meme?

the article, while journalim, still contains bias, most pages feature a domestic scene, details of painting toe nails, or benig in the kitchen with a mother, the depecitions of the rape and harrassment are hidden in legalese (ie "generally limited to combat-support roles in the war", they are arguably witnessing a historic amount of violence, or often saftey words are used, encouring doubt for the victims story. the symptoms of ptsd seem oddly gendered, esp. in the discussions of her not being grandiose or emotional, that the "numbness" is placed obliquely in reference to the freudian history of womens hysteria, which the correction does as well, blaming the soilder as opposed to the (bad editing) the gendered readings continue with wording like "some advocates", or "mama bear verve" or

also, they talk about history or sample size when it talks about the research not being done w. womens mental health, while in the same ppgh talk about 160k women serving in this war, or women being in combat situtations for a century, in some formal capability,

Two years after deployment to the gulf war, where combat exposure was relatively low, Army data showed that 16 percent of a sample of female soldiers studied met diagnostic criteria for PTSD, as opposed to 8 percent of their male counterparts. The data reflect a larger finding, supported by other research, that women are more likely to be given diagnoses of PTSD, in some cases at twice the rate of men.

is the case like borderline or depression women are more likely to be diagnosed w. mood disorders, and is PTSD in women treated like a mood disorder?

(they also talk about ptsd coming in two varieties, women who were raped and soilders, they qoute Patricia Resick, director of the Women's Health Sciences Division of the National Center for PTSD for the tangle that can occur when women are raped as soilders. segrating it by gender, underplays the trauma of the rape.

''You're one of three things in the military - a bitch, a whore or a dyke,'' says Abbie Pickett who is 24 and a combat-support specialist with the Wisconsin Army National Guard. ''As a female, you get classified pretty quickly.''

i wonder how this connects to the intergration of the military forces in wwii, with AA soilders, they have had more time to intergrate AA soilders, and seem to be doing less w. women, the porn, the sexuality of soilders, etyc seem v. much engrained, can we fix this (ie the amazons and the history of that word to describe a dyke bitch)

(it goes on for another 10 pages, and i could qoute, but she keeps repeating herself, with depressing regulairy, anecdote after andecdote about rape, misogyny, violence, and the damage done to women soilders.)

the pictures, w. the woman in the kitchen, or in a playground, compared to on a dirty couch or laying on the beach, have a madonna/whore t hing going on, and seem to force women into a comfortable domesticity, which enters into the same territory/mindset of the supervisors who ignore rape complaints or the men who rape women.

because women cannot be "real" soilders.

Editors' Note: March 25, 2007


The cover article in The Times Magazine on March 18 reported on women who served in Iraq, the sexual abuse that some of them endured and the struggle for all of them to reclaim their prewar lives. One of the servicewomen, Amorita Randall, a former naval construction worker, told The Times that she was in combat in Iraq in 2004 and that in one incident an explosive device blew up a Humvee she was riding in, killing the driver and leaving her with a brain injury. She also said she was raped twice while she was in the Navy.

On March 6, three days before the article went to press, a Times researcher contacted the Navy to confirm Ms. Randall’s account. There was preliminary back and forth but no detailed reply until hours before the deadline. At that time, a Navy spokesman confirmed to the researcher that Ms. Randall had won a Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal with Marine Corps insignia, which was designated for those who served in a combat area, including Iraq, or in direct support of troops deployed in one. But the spokesman said there was no report of the Humvee incident or a record of Ms. Randall’s having suffered an injury in Iraq. The spokesman also said that Ms. Randall’s commander, who served in Iraq, remembered her but said that her unit was never involved in combat while it was in Iraq. Both of these statements from the Navy were included in the article. The article also reported that the Navy had no record of a sexual-assault report involving Ms. Randall.

After The Times researcher spoke with the Navy, the reporter called Ms. Randall to ask about the discrepancies. She stood by her account.

On March 12, three days after the article had gone to press, the Navy called The Times to say that it had found that Ms. Randall had never received imminent-danger pay or a combat-zone tax exemption, indicating that she was never in Iraq. Only part of her unit was sent there; Ms. Randall served with another part of it in Guam. The Navy also said that Ms. Randall was given the medal with the insignia because of a clerical error.

Based on the information that came to light after the article was printed, it is now clear that Ms. Randall did not serve in Iraq, but may have become convinced she did. Since the article appeared, Ms. Randall herself has questioned another member of her unit, who told Ms. Randall that she was not deployed to Iraq. If The Times had learned these facts before publication, it would not have included Ms. Randall in the article.

NYT 3/18/07

the article, and the photos, w. the sexualised imagery, and the concentration on madness, can be found here: i get the idea that w. this article and for example millers reporting, and some of the op/ed the ny times have proven themselves v. exp[licitly, not right wing, but connected firmly to the status quo.

what do you think rachel?

Ashley Wrote This About Me:

Anthony Easton is never away from his. He is probably the most ballsy photographer I know. His photos are stark and at times hard to appreciate. He hovers between art and documentary, favoring sometimes-subtle kitch, lurid lettering, colour fields and unnoticed ephemera in public space. His digital camera is essential to capture, and nobody will be as abrupt and immediate about taking a photo. He interrupts conversations just to snap one off, leaving everyone around scratching their heads asking themselves "why is he taking a picture of THAT?".

Crossroads: some thots about relationships, feelings, and communication, as an exercise for assertiveness group.
3/23/07


None of the questions seem to fit, or at least its been a long time since they fit, and I haven’t really worked out about other things, and im exhausted, so im just gonna free write here for a while, riffing on each of the questions, 100 words here or 200 there, inelegant little knots of lists and half digested working thrus.

Describe yr feelings prior to yr first date

my first date ever, or my first date with a new man…can I talk about sex here, because really, if you want my honest feelings, they center around, will I get laid, first tings first—its not does he like me or will he like me or will I stain my shirt on soup or sauce (those things come later, and I don’t eat soup or pasta at a restaurant for that reason, because im afraid of getting messes everywhere) but the first thing, is will I get laid…am I too fat, or too obnoxious or too boring, or don’t I fit well enough emotionally that fitting in physically wont happen. So, first feelings, sizing myself up, literally, metaphorically, sourcing history, sorting contexts, about the possibility of romance, and the pracitical elements of romance, do we have a place, a rubber, am I clean, will the conversation go smoothly enough that we can lead it into other directions…(and then there is the ambiguity of meeting handsome men for coffee, and thinking it’s a date, but its something else, hes not queer or hes only interested in a being a friend, so I mean, where you are going is impt too, movies, no chance, dinner, chance, coffee way to ambiguous. If its my first date ever w. a boy, then it was a click, a this fits and this will be okay, and an exurbance, like that morrisssey line I sing before going out every time now, date or not::
“im going out tonite/but I haven’t got a thing to wear/im going out tonite/and im too handsome to care…

prior to an impt exam.

I go to the washroom, puke in the toilet, sweat like its august in beaunos aries, sit down (any exam, pop quiz, or impt one) and blank out, I do t he short answer, the multiple guess, and then my stomach seizes up, I excuse myself, go back to the bathroom, and puke again. High school, university, thruout my academic career, exams would be puking in the beginning, puking in the middle, and then convinced I failed, black hole at the end, in uni that meant everyone went out for g and ts, which often lead back to the first question (I have also stood up in the middle of an exam or two and just didn’t finish, couldn’t finish, any idea that was in my head, left—I failed exams regularly, tose I studied for and those I was lasizez fair about.

Job interview.
I don’t puke, but I spend hours obsessing over my clothing to the detriment of anything else. I can b/s sufficiently to g et a job, or could until they ended up making you take elaborate pysch tests for stocking shelves at wal mart or being a wage slave at video update. Then the exam worry came in, I never knew how to answer them, negoiote the trick questions, not be too honest, the one at wal mart was 156 questions. Most of the interviews themselves, either way, were cursory, and general nervousness seemed relatively normal.. I didn’t really freak out until they started including pop remixes of the Minnesota multiphasic.

Try out for a team…
I didn’t. im not a joiner.

Prior to a confrontation.
Either I want to rip out their throats like a lion and a wildebeest in one of those mutual of ohama specials, or I want to run as far away as humanly possible, I try to get to the run away (physically removing myself from danger) before the lion stage, because im weak, blind, and end up hurting myself rather then vice versa.

Intimidated by someone
This one, I learnt just to suck it up, get the butterflies, and try to avoid it, but working thru curatorial tasks, finding artists for shows and things, you just gotta ask, sometimes it gets incredibly exciting though---theres this show im having based on a drawing by ed ruscha, and it took me months, and a few emails/phone calls, and I finally got permission, now this is the thing that you’ve got to understand about the ruscha thing, is that the work ive been creating professionally (the truck book, the saint thing, my photographs) are mostly about his work, hes my hero, hes the dude I want to be, its like a pond skater asking gretzkys agent for a favour, but when I finally did it, and it turned out well, all of my anziety about asking disappeared.

Rejected yr request.
I got 5 rejections this week, one gets used to it. Im disappointed, a little frustrtated at the lack of information that people give w. rejections, but right now, its just something that happens. (the information is a big thing, I don’t know what it is, but I like to know the answer, and I get angry at just because, have since I was a kid, and when its something that I don’t have to be professional, some puissant csr or something like that, then im a lot less patient, a lot less willing to engage on a human level…which most likely makes me a fairly major jerk)

Refused someone elses request.
Guilt, endless guilt, for days. A gnawing sense of obligation in my stomach, a little monster fed by my mothers deep beliefi n politness, and my grandmothers continued belief in the protestant work ethic. I will spend weeks working for free, for no beneifet, go out of my way, and then break down when I cant do something for someone.

Blamed for someone elses behaviour
I assume its cosmic justice, I mean it upsets me, and I feel sometimes crushed by the injustice, etc etc, tending towards the melodramatic, which is silly, and needs to be worked on, but I also think, ive done enough pretty heinous stuff in my life. That if I get caught for a, its kismet for doing b or c.

Betrayed you…
i give a lot of rope for them to hang themselves, partially b/c of jesus’ 70x7 commandment, partially because I don’t think that I’m worthy, partially b/c I have been forgiven so often for betraying others, and also because of much of what I assume to be betrayal is a paranoid fantasy…so caution, is caution a feeling here?

it is musical therapy week, which means every day the foyer of the grey nuns has the mentally ill playing yr favourite folk mass standards on acoustic guitar. my life is a never ending orgy of cheap surrealism.

11:59 AM me: hey hey
Rachel: ho-ho!
me: so i had this werid thing in group
and i wanted to ask yr opinon
we were talking about processing emotions
and history
12:00 PM i touched on trauma, and how the terror seemed so immediate that it would be beyond analysis,
and that it felt like zombies
popping up w.o my control
i wanted to kill those zombies
but they talked about the zombies presence in intergrating my wonderful self, making me me
but i was talking to raymond about this last night
12:01 PM i am unsure how functional the old ways of thinking are
i want to get rid of the terror of sjsa
i want to be less depressed
and i believe in a multiplicity of selves, that can be changed or killed, when they have lost their usefulness
does that make sense?
12:02 PM Rachel: I definately think so,
what you're talking about is a reaction agaist essentialism
not really multiplicity
12:03 PM but the notion that multiples exist but are also discarded.
kinda like flaking off skin and discarding/recycling dead cells.
me: snakes
Rachel: part of a larger unit but divisable and disposable.
me: im not sure i believe in a larger unit
12:04 PM Rachel: larger unit being you?
me: the self in general
Rachel: well, there is self simply because you say it is so.
self exists as long as its being considered, then it flubs back into the rest
me: the self isnt monolithic though
Rachel: maybe?
12:05 PM me: flubs back into the rest?
Rachel: nope, but its there as long as its being considered as a thing unto itself, its momentarily monolithic.
its like, kneeding dough...
12:06 PM you can divide the dough and focus on one bit, but then squish it bach with the rest of teh dough when your finished considering it.
12:07 PM shifting degrees of taxonomy and nothing more.
me: can the dough lump ever be made smaller, can it be cut away permenatley, maybe not surgically, but roughly the same way
Rachel: maybe, but it will always have its history with the rest.
12:08 PM me: how does one process that history out of operational status
Rachel: similar material will link it together, or not, depending on how its consideered
deductive reasoning?
12:09 PM me: tell me more
12:10 PM Rachel: I have this thing, lets think about what similarities it holds to other things...
... its kinda like archeology, semi-fictitious.
12:11 PM guesswork, comparison..
me: this is butler, right
Rachel: most organisation of information is based off of some "scheme".
bit of butler, bit of something old and greek maybe.
12:12 PM me: my scheme is pink and decorated w. unicorns
Rachel: nice.
12:13 PM me: missionaries just came in, and im wearing my pope shirt, and they were trying to figure it out, they called my shirt weird, the younger one looked like alfred ne newman
12:15 PM Rachel: Honestly, I think it all boils down to the creation of sorted sets, taxonomies. These shifting codes and grouping. "acurate" analysis comes when you manage to shift your thinking into that of the code-writer. I think thats what makes a good archeologist/anthropologist/sociologist...etc.
or literary/art critic.
me: and the old codes arent working, soi im in to learn new codes, but yeah its difficult
12:16 PM and im good at synthesis/analysis
12:17 PM Rachel: maybe think of the old codes in a historic sence (these are this way because of this context) and then "evolve" it
me: im just having a bugger of a time figuring out the new language, the new codes, the structures of what they are saying or not saying, and then if i agree or disagree w. that
Rachel: is this in psych?
me: yeah
and i cant drop the subtext, ray says i just got to play it as it lays
12:18 PM Rachel: I think you can chose to read it in a certain way.
or in teh most useful way to you.
me: i dont know whats useful yet3
Rachel: is the subtext of use, or is it hindering you?
me: hindering i think
12:19 PM (can i be an asshole, and talk to you tonite about this, im famished
Rachel: okay.. I'd also really need your help with teh camp thing.
12:20 PM me: can i blog this?
Rachel: sure. as long as I dont look like too much of an asshole/idiot.
me: you dont at all, love you

things I want

1. a blow job from someone who loves me
2. to know if blowjob is one word or two
3. to avoid charity
4. to be less anxious
5. to be stable
6. for the new ssris to work in such a way that my dick functions
7. to stop jerking off to the men I loved at 14.
8. a father
9. to disentangle the father/lover primal freud scene
10. to take a perfect baltz scene
11. to keep curating shows, the fords, the deer, the grid, the others
12. to finish the saints piece
13. to have a clear and unassailable relationship with Christ
14. to choose a team, any team (this time it seems to be Anglican)
15. to quit trying to kill myself, not to play lady lazarus
16. to be able to read people better
17. to be selective in my reading, to not have foucoult follow me into the clinic, or aquanis into the chapel
18. to know what I wish I was a mole in the ground really was about
19. to maintain an obsession for longer then 6 months
20. to know how to drop an obsession t
21. to pray, in a way that would make crammer and smith proud
22. to pay my debts
23. to not depend on other people
24. a good proper history of group therapies history, tying it to transactional analysis
25. to understand the appeal of jane austen
26. to be frank o hara
27. to write free and direct, w/o the odd droppings of names and places
28. to be happy
29. to be content
30. to be a husband
31. to be a father
32. to write
33. to paint or draw, even if it isn’t v. good
34. to do my taxes every year on time
35. to be a good, upstanding citizen, in all of the usual ways
36. to be a bohemian in a grey flannel suit
37. to go back to Toronto
38. to go back to Vancouver
39. to go back to new york
40. to go back to London
41. to go to Halifax
42. to go to inuvik
43. to go to Holland
44. to go to brazil
45. to be able to live on less then 20 dollars a day
46. matt damons cock, pounding hot and lurid into my fat ass
47. to lose 50 lbs
48. to be less lonely
49. to sleep from midnite to 8 am.
50. to not stay up worrying w. existential angst that cannot be cured
51. to learn to break bread
52. read more then I am now
53. read the collected works of swedenborg
54. to take the careful, measured, systematic, and silent approach of the qaukers
55. to take the raw joy of the pentacostals
56. to contribute to ongoing discourses
57. to eat dim sum on Chinese new year, latkes at hannukah, and pancakes on shrove, with people.
58. to be less hungry
59. to be less raw.
60. to push and contain my rawness into something productive
61. wombats, I totally want a million wombats
62. to not cry so often at really shitty movies
63. for the world to realize my talents
64. I don’t want my life to be like an annie prolux novel
65. to live on my own
66. to be able to fill out forms, talk to beurocrats, to live w/o a translator all the time, talking me down from the edge
67. read more hume, kant, wittengensiten, kristevia
68. work in Africa
69. realize the importance of canals as well as oceans
70. meet and seduce tilda swinton
71. to trust that people like me, and that I wont fuck up, that people will stay, that it isn’t a constant scale, where they weigh each inconveince on a scale of is this enough.
72. im serious about the wombats, and llamas, totally want llamas.
73. to be comfortable with the chaos of creation, w. not knowing
74. to move beyond taxonomy
75. the power of camp.
76. several bespoke suits in a variety of tweeds.

lunch&library ramble w. john,who always suprises me w. how wise he is:

j:cities are boring
a:well, i would say the country is, but i never spent any time there, small towns are.
J:esp. ones made by oil money.
A:or the ones w. plants

also

cbc 3 liked my phots enough to invite me to submit them, its no money, and its a flickr thing, so kind of hit or miss if they will actually use them, but to be noticed (and invited to submit) is always nice.

roy k is working for folkways about a boscum box set, who did i wish i was a mole in the ground, which i wrote about for sukrat, here is where we talk:

I love your reading, Anthony. You made me think about the song in new ways.

I'm co-producing a big box set of Bascom Lamar Lunsford's Library of Congress recordings (should be out at the end of the year, or beginning of the next). I'm not an expert, not hardly; however, I can say that Bascom learned the song from Fred Moody, a Haywood County, North Carolina banjo picker, in 1901. He says in the introduction to the LOC recording (some 20 years after the version on the Smith anthology) that "the bend referred to is the bend of the Pigeon River in Haywood, North Carolina." He also says that the song was the last his mother ever asked him to play for her before she died.

Now that doesn't mean you're not right; it's entirely possible the song, or some version of the song, alludes to a prison, and perhaps there are imprisoned overtones to the lyric and to Bascom's delivery. But Bascom didn't understand the song that way, or at the very least he understood "the Bend" as a river, not a prison.

Also, I'm pretty sure the name of the woman is "Tempy"—at the very least, there is a folk tune ordinarily called "Tempy," which probably pre-dates "Mole" and shares the lines about "Tempy wants a nine dollar shawl."

(Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: "the bend"
anthonyeaston
2007-03-20 02:58 am UTC (link) Select
i got the prison stuff from marcus, taking him at face value, and there was a prison near that place in tennessee, no? (marcus, and smith were both smart mythologisers who used the text to their ideological advantage, and are as such deeply unreliable.)

in my gut, bend always goes w. river, and that river though, is b4 hiways a v. real, natural way to escape, like eliza jumping the ice in uncle toms cabin or huck finn? (are those earlier or later then boscom)



(i wonder if w/ frank and maybe edd i could swing a mutual essay in the linear notes of said boxed set?)

ten artists/ works i would use for a show based on the theme of "the postmodern grid"
(need to re read the kraus essay of course, but lorna has gotten this in my head, and i need to get it out) (i posted it as a three word entry in 2006)

1) anne appleby

Camellia, 2004
Oil and wax on panel

2) eric glavin:

Parkhaus 1
2003
c-print, 23.5" x 49.5"
edition of 3
(and more of his computer generated manquettes)

3) lewis baltz

Tract Houses (8, from a seires of 20), 1971, gelatin silver print
14.4 x 21.6 cm.

4) christopher pratt

Wall Facing West, Serigraph on illustration board, 1980

5) jason polan
found here
custom grid, variable

6) ed ruscha

L.A.S.F. #1, 2003
Color soft ground etching
Paper size 37-1/2 x 30-1/2"
Image size 30 x 24"
edition 35
From a Portfolio of 7.

7) suzy lake

A Genuine Siumulation Of...
90 Photo Storyboard
60x74 inches
1974

8) uta barth

Diptych of color photographs
Edition AP1
35 x 90" (88.9 x 228.6 cm.)

9) louise lawler

You Could Hear a Rat Piss on Cotton # Charlie Parker
1987
Cibrachrome
h: 66 x w: 99 cm / h: 26 x w: 39 in

10) gregory korcea:

TEMPORAL RELIEF, 2002
Polyurethane and resin 23.5 x 23.5 x 23.5 inches
(also his eyeballer seires)

video/film im missing?

Went to a movie last night, with a new friend, and her friend. Steph I met at the josh ritter show, and eric works for nexopia. Steph is deeply enmeshed in the Edmonton art scene, which either changed significantly, required someone less jaded, or had an underground I wasn’t welcome at, because she seems deeply happy, and knows people that i dont know, christ she likes todd.

we saw factory girl, which was interesting, because the story was really well known to me, and the warhol story, i assumed was ubiqitious, obviously commerical, porny w/o being v. good, with symbols that were both glaring obvious (the silver cloud peice repersented edie, floating away or being tied with warhol; his realtivly minor homage to the mona lisa, the plane crash peices both featuring heavily) or really confusing (the most prom. work though, shown in shot after shot were the brillo boxes). there were some great scenes and shots (esp. some with illena douglas as diana vreeland and edwaard herman as the finical manager) though, and it did deserve an oscar for costume design. (not only edie, the dylan and andy costumes were perfect, esp. the oblique references to the album covers of the free wheeling and blonde on blonde)

other problems:
the idea that "doing" andy is all verbal lacunae and sad skin.
several odd scenes contrasting andys realtionship with julia warhol with edies realtionship with her father, fuzzy (ie the edie scenes were primal and opedial, edie walking into fuzxzy fucking the mother,fuzzy fucking edie, edie being sent away, the brother turning into a homosexual, both killing themselves)
the depecition of the v. nice (c/c elenor mytle(?) a semester at mcleans) silver hills as a bedlam style, as opposed to something much nicer.
the mess of cinematic trix (inc, but not limited to 8mm/16mm, b and w, sped up double time, lens that were vaselined out, etc)
badly written, horribly acted, random tits, oddly misogynst.

at kims, things settled, w. the obv ldsdom, and the presence of alex, feeling more adoloscent then ever, halfway house etc.

AnthonySEaston (12:02:22 AM): my favourite lost classic is on at 1 .
ingreatcaves (12:02:36 AM): what is it?
AnthonySEaston (12:03:23 AM): Star 80, directed by Bob Fosse
ingreatcaves (12:04:13 AM): nice!
AnthonySEaston (12:04:39 AM): im reading this Joan Accocello peice on Fosse, let me find it
AnthonySEaston (12:08:29 AM): Though his motivation often seems naive, he was nonetheless interested in who we actually are. What is forbidden? What is true? Almost everything he did was unpleasant. His work was tacky, pushy, obsessive. He was a hophead. Yet he was a moralist, of a generation that had little hope of innocence.... With all artists, we have to deal with the business of personality versus art, neurosis versus imagination. With Fosse, the imagination is smaller, the neurosis bigger. Still, he was an artist.
AnthonySEaston (12:08:36 AM): she seems to miss the point
AnthonySEaston (12:08:54 AM): the genius of fosse was the refusal of good taste, the burlesque
AnthonySEaston (12:09:05 AM): being tacky, pushy, obsessive, was an amazing gift,
AnthonySEaston (12:09:39 AM): look at the liza special, where she falls apart and reconsitutes herself, does warhol, and judy and everything inb/w
AnthonySEaston (12:09:52 AM): or the sexy nasty fascism of cabaret
AnthonySEaston (12:10:03 AM): Fossee's bad taste saved broadway
AnthonySEaston (12:13:37 AM): opinons?
ingreatcaves (12:17:45 AM): I don't know.
ingreatcaves (12:17:58 AM): I think it's something of it's time, and came to define it
ingreatcaves (12:18:08 AM): and that I'm glad it suceeded.
AnthonySEaston (12:18:08 AM): tell me more
ingreatcaves (12:20:52 AM): I think it's funny that she points out he's a "hop head"
AnthonySEaston (12:21:10 AM): he wasnt really into uppers was he
AnthonySEaston (12:26:38 AM): it got easy to do after a while didnt it
AnthonySEaston (12:26:44 AM): clichey
ingreatcaves (12:27:07 AM): it may have, but maybe not, mayb eit was all one story to him
AnthonySEaston (12:27:45 AM): what was the story
ingreatcaves (12:29:02 AM): people have got something to prove, and they do.
ingreatcaves (12:29:07 AM): it's all about them.
ingreatcaves (12:29:14 AM): they know the world.
ingreatcaves (12:29:28 AM): but it's strictly external.
AnthonySEaston (12:29:31 AM): but they dont really succeed
AnthonySEaston (12:29:42 AM): the chicago girls go to jail, the nazis win
AnthonySEaston (12:29:48 AM): stratten is murdered.
ingreatcaves (12:29:55 AM): in the terms of the show, they're true to themselves.
AnthonySEaston (12:30:40 AM): that doesnt mean they win
ingreatcaves (12:32:54 AM): what do you think they tell themselves?
AnthonySEaston (12:34:41 AM): i think they think they can stop moral decay, that there own moral decay doesnt mean anything about a soceity at large
ingreatcaves (12:36:35 AM): I think that's true.
AnthonySEaston (12:37:33 AM): which is interesting, because they all seem to be having so much fun, like he is a moralist, but he doesnt want to give up on the fucking and the drinking etc
AnthonySEaston (12:37:35 AM): you know
ingreatcaves (12:38:12 AM): "seeming to have fun" is such an obvious "good" not.
ingreatcaves (12:38:54 AM): ...
AnthonySEaston (12:39:08 AM): well most of the 70s seems to be making that mistake
AnthonySEaston (12:39:13 AM): he made that mistake
ingreatcaves (12:40:01 AM): well, you have fun, whether you like it or not, when you're the smartest objects in the universe.
AnthonySEaston (12:40:34 AM): what do you mean
ingreatcaves (12:41:11 AM): there is a strain of "is that all there is?" under the fun.
ingreatcaves (12:41:48 AM): they choose what they want for themselves, and this bob fosse production is it.
ingreatcaves (12:42:51 AM): it sucks a bit, being so self-centered.
ingreatcaves (12:43:37 AM): at least from the outside perspective!
ingreatcaves (12:43:54 AM): ...

Some things Griel Marcus missed while writing about I Wish I was A Mole In The Ground (A Song that I have been listening to lately, as an attempt to hadnle my depression)

1) Marcus claims that Lunsford who sings it wants to be "changed into a creature insignificant and despised" (lipstick traces, 16), and claims it as a beginning of mystical negation, moving thru Elvis, to Dylan, and of course the sex pistols. He misses that it’s a prison song, and a mole in the ground, is not insignificant in this metaphor. Its the only animal that could dig deep and efficiently enough to let him escape. The mole here, then, is a metaphor for hope, an escape from the Bend.

2) When Lunsford says, in those first few lines, root that mountain down, the way that he sings it, is Appalachian, so the end consonant is dropped. So root the mountain down, thru deliberate and specific work, sounds like rue that mountain down. Rue as in repent: feel remorse for; feel sorry for; be contrite about. I like that idea, implied or not, that the mourning itself, the worrying and the guilt, of being in prison, of being unable to even provide necessities can be so strong that it can take down one of those mountains, that seemed so eternal.

3) The reference to the Bend, later on in the song, is a reference to a prison in Tennessee, the song cannot be dated from this, because folksongs add or subtract details, and the big red box often retains the most commercial, or most expected reading. Having it be a prison song makes it part of a recognized genre, but also a mystical exploration of transfiguration into something painfully literal. That’s why I like to think of it as not Bend but Bin, the Bin, “with the Rough and Rowdy Men, “ because the next words make a little more sense. Being in the Bin sounds like being in a chain gang or a hollow hiding spot, or something hidden or metallic, something where men told secrets and stories about women. It reminds me of the Last Supper, which seemed to be the first place where those stories took place.

4) Marcus talks about “an almost absolute negation, at the edge of pure nihilism, a demand to prove that the world is nothing, a demand to be next to nothing…” (Lipstick Traces, 16). But that’s not what the song says. Every time he wants to be something, a mole in the ground, a lizard in the sun, escape from the railroad men, he wants something larger for himself. The mole wants liberation (from the Bend prison, but for all men everywhere), a lizard in the spring because he wants finally to “hear his daughter sing”, and because the railroad men are literally out for his blood. Is it nihilism to want to escape those who are destroying you?

5) The railroad men, “they'll kill you when he can/
Drink up your blood like wine”. He sings the song low and steady, so every word is enunciated. Every word is spoken. I wonder if he hears the railroad, or if they didn’t provide him work, or what makes such a clear, vampiric image. But it is not only a vampiric image. The whole song (and I know that I say everything is about Jesus, but keep w. me) is so holy, because it traces the parables. The mole is the meek, its small but it inherits its mountain. The lizard basking in the sun, are the lilies of the field: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:24–33 (KJV)) The workingman, here becomes the saviour, but of what? Is it just of his own martyrdom, like when in Folsom Prison Blues, Johnny Cash sings: “I hear that train coming, Its rolling down the bend, I’m stuck in Folsom Prison, But that train keeps rolling, down to San Antoine”

6) The problem is, that he is dying for someone, or escaping for someone, or wanting to be that lizard for someone. Marcus starts his essay on the song, saying “It was an account of everyday mysticism, a man dropping his plow, settling onto the ground, pulling off his boots, and summoning wishes he will never fulfill.” It is an account of every day mysticism, a man in the pen or the bin or the bend (that’s why it reminds me mightily of Johnny Cash, the Bend being what you cannot see beyond, and maybe what reminds Marcus of Elvis: “Train train, comin round, round the bend/Train train, comin round the bend/Well it took my baby, but it never will again”). A large portion of the song is about him wanting to buy a shawl for his lover (Smith id’s her as Kimby, other lyrics say Tippy, Marcus doesn’t mention her name at all). He has 90 dollars (in 1924); the immortal shawl that would make everything right was 100 bucks. He was arrested before he had the chance to collect that extra ten dollars. But the shawl was ever beyond his means, like the 16-coach train was ever beyond the bend, and Folsom Prison will never move those tracks.
7) Then the song is about escape. It is not about death, or obliterating the self, of anything else that seems hip now. It is about hope, even though hope will never be achieved. It is about praying for redemption and that extra ten bucks, for the mountain to come to Mohammed even knowing it won’t. It’s for a woman to love you, even in prison (of self, and of literal prisons.)

8) I’ve in the hospital of late, because I wanted to kill myself, and now I want to be that mole in the ground. Not because of self-destruction or suicidal tendencies. Those have passed, but because the mole ever blind, keeps sensing. He digs tunnels, makes passageways, seeks the light and seeks to escape from the ground, a small creature moving large earth. I want to be a lizard on the wall, because like the lilies of the fields, I am reminded that the sun shines on all of god’s children, and I want that extra ten bucks, because maybe things might be a bit better. Maybe Kimby will stay.

Shoe, Balenciaga, 2007.

They continue the tradition of the avant garde, adn the shape is classic balenciaga, bu r im confused by it.

Nathan Lee in the Voice:
On first glance, the terms couldn't be clearer: macho white guys vs. effeminate Orientals. Yet aside from the fact that Spartans come across as pinched, pinheaded gym bunnies, it's their flesh the movie worships. Not since Beau Travail has a phalanx of meatheads received such insistent ogling. As for the threat to peace, freedom, and democracy, that filthy Persian orgy looks way more fun than sitting around watching Spartans mope while their angry children slap each other around. At once homophobic and homoerotic, 300 is finally, and hilariously, just hysterical.

link dump

high performance spears, from coldsteel.com, for all yr huey newton needs.

its good to have all of yr enemies in one place, its just bad they have insurance.

thousands of sound effects, searchable, including such categories as birds, humans, holidays, and my favourite mayhem.

a truly creepy mickey mouse comics that teaches soilders about sulfa drugs.

the australia defense ministher says they are fucked in iraq.



matthew moores artistic dissection of the suburban take over of his family farm, is a fascinating, explicit discussion of rural and urban issues, that needs to be talked about ,but is ignored in the omnipresent of the urbanity of the art world, and attaches to the similar issues of the truck book. really worth spending some time w.

Embrodied sonic patterns, gorgeous.


Dita Van Teese, Underwear Ad.

Larry Clarke talks about his films and photos for the gaurdian.

one of the best things about flickr, is that collected, almost random ephemera, can be easily adni mmediately seen by millions, and sorted electronically, with much ease. This collection of 19th Century Shipping Labels is a perfect example. the sheer level of detail, in the drawings, the fonts, the over packed concentration of competing visual signals really talks about what the continued modernist history of stripping ornament was about. (from Loos to Helevetica), and also, how the reclaiming of this kind of aesthetic in the 70s, ignored the wonderful use of colour, esp, the blues and greens.


From 1970s.

emily payne tight, domestic, recreations of 20th century modernism, in easily identifable forms, esp the v. small, v. orderly recreations of gego wire work, and the almost tile sized noland lites, are incredily beautiful.


Fin Juhl, Pelican Chair, mid 50s, reulphostured.

Freida Hughes is an awful poet, and crazy.

the marines really love 300.


Betty Hutton, Im A Sqaure in A Social Circle


Betty Hutton, Cant Stop Talking About Him.


Betty Hutton, Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief

Prayer Requests at a Mennonite Church

Pray for the Smucker family. Their son Nathaniel's coat and shirt were
caught in the gears while grinding grain. Nothing would give, so now
he is gone. We made his clothes too well. Perhaps this is our sin.

Pray for the Birky family. Their son Jacob fell to his death in the
granary. He was covered in corn before they could stop the pouring—
chest crushed by the weight, seed spilling from his mouth. We hope
something will grow from this, besides our grief.

Pray for the Hartzler family. Their youngest has left the church and no
longer believes that Christ died for her sins. She buys clothes at the
mall. Tongue pierced, nose as well. Her shirt shows her belly where a
ring of gold sprouts. We pray she will remember that her Lord's side
was pierced, that His crown held no gold, only the dried blood of His
brow.

Pray for the Miller family. Last week their daughter, who lives in
Kalona, lost her baby at birth. Child only half-formed: head turned the
wrong way; heart laid on the outside of her chest; one leg little more
than an afterthought. Lord, help them know that life may come again,
that we are all made whole in heaven.

Pray for the Stutzman family. Their son fights in the war. We call him
back to the Prince of Peace, to our Savior who knelt to gather the
slave's ear, brushed the dirt away, lifted it to the side of his flushed face.
May we leave no scars. May we ask no blessing for the killing done in
His name
Todd Davies, Some Heaven.

a woman tried to kill herself last night, but not discreetly. loud wailing, positioning herself on the center of the door, so the lighting would be properly cinematic, and blood everywhere, a carrie, medea. lady macbeth vibe. i didnt spend the night on the ward.

discharged this week. day patient. living w. rays mom for a month.

i wonder if (not the theory, or the thinking, because those can be changed or challeneged by books and talk) but the practice of sexuality stops when one has been abused.

i wonder if my sexuality hasnt grown since 15, b/c of sjsa.

i once again wonder if theory is praxis.

rays here, and we t alked about it last night, and didnt really come to any conclusions...but he suspects andi it may be the case.

(other note: rachels gift, a pink plastic saints bracelet, three magazines, one of her pocket pusssies, ruby slippers and other camp artifacts were deeply loved.)

What Would A Unicorn Do, Via Boing Boing

joe came last nite, picked me up from the hospital, ca 7 pm, and we drove d own the whitemud, to 99th, stopped at the diner, had fries, a burger, milkshake, and talked. he said latin grace, translated easily into english over the g ood, and talked about how when you try to kill yrself the long term demons of self destruction become banal little things (almost like the black dog, has stopped becoming a hound of baskerville and has started becoming a lab), he has a grace, joe, an intelligence, and a connection to the holy spirit, so talking to him, letting the conversation flows, even at night, in a diner w/o the collar, has a feeling of spiritual work, father confessor, spirtual direction, but rough and tumble, earthy non-office kind of flexibility. we talked about the gifts of the spirit, and the problems of gender , and sex--of the inability for either the right or the left to be flexible, and the femminist/gl blocks to be as gaurded of their own power as the consertives one. he makes me feel comfortable and calm about his frankly borgie life, of the kids, the house, the wife staying home, which is kind of a miracle, and i feel like i can open immediately, that our conversations move quickly and seamlessly, over plath, augustine, church politics, the holy spirit, soul music, toronto, and other things--laughing, making improper jokes, and serious asides. my concerns about who i am, maintaining personae and personhood next to him disappear, into a great calm.

hes awesome!
(he's reading this too, so its going to be mildly embarrassing when he finally comments)

towards a deft:

the center axis of queerness is not a sexual one. it is not the sexual taste, practice, ability, praxis or theory that makes one queer, but how far from the hegemonic center those tastes, practices, abilities, praxises, and theories are (so gay and straight are closer then downlow or other msm potentials, the theatrical, almost liturgical rigour of formalised #### communities is closer then casual, unregulated, but still consensual pain/pleasure scenarios, etc...

so the estrangement from hegemonic norms is what causes (sadness/frustration/anger/rawness) as opposed to something formalised, from a freduian context like homophobia.

back in England, he took himself and his mistress off to a cottage in the lincolnshire village of Horkstow/ There he proceeded to bleed selected horses to death from the jugualr. He then injected the cadavers with warm tallow to perserve the form of pulsing veins and arteries (hence their perfect rending in his paintings) Finally, he suspended them in a standing or trotting pose from a contraption of hooks and tackles bolted to the celling and, amid the vile slop and stench, worked his way through the flayed carcass, muscle by muscle, bone by bone. It took eleven weeks to get through a single horse, and there were many of them.

Simon Schama on Stubbs, nyer, 3/5/07

Disorienting Sexuality : Psychoanalytic Reappraisals of Sexual Identities by Thomas Domenici (Editor), Ronnie C. Lesser (Editor), Adrienne Harris

Arguing With the Phallus: Feminist, Queer and Postcolonial Theory: A Psychoanalytic Contribution (Hardcover)
by Jan Campbell

Sex, Paranoia, and Modern Masculinity, Ken Paradis, SUNY

THE WORLD OF PERVERSION Psychoanalysis and the Impossible Absolute of Desire
James Penney

i asked for post its from the nurse so i could make notes in ariel, and they gave me bright orange ones branded for wellbutrin.

i am amused.

With Mercy For The Greedy
Anne Sexton

for my friend Ruth, who urges me to make an
appointment for the Sacrament of Confesson

Concerning your letter in which you ask
me to call a priest and in which you ask
me to wear The Cross that you enclose;
your own cross,
your dog-bitten cross,
no larger than a thumb,
small and wooden, no thorns, this rose --

I pray to its shadow,
that gray place
where it lies on your letter... deep, deep.
I detest my sins and I try to believe
in The Cross. I touch its tender hips, its dark jawed face,
its solid neck, its brown sleep.

True. There is
a beautiful Jesus.
He is frozen to his bones like a chunk of beef.
How desperately he wanted to pull his arms in!
How desperately I touch his vertical and horizontal axes!
But I can't. Need is not quite belief.

All morning long
I have worn
your cross, hung with package string around my throat.
It tapped me lightly as a child's heart might,
tapping secondhand, softly waiting to be born.
Ruth, I cherish the letter you wrote.

My friend, my friend, I was born
doing reference work in sin, and born
confessing it. This is what poems are:
with mercy
for the greedy,
they are the tongue's wrangle,
the world's pottage, the rat's star.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot ------
The big strip tease.
Gentleman , ladies
From Lady Lazaurus, Sylvia Plath

thinking about this, while driving thru malls and parking lots, burger kings and taco bells, pointing out to mikhael the value drug mart i bought the codeine and the liqour barn i bought the booze and the sobeys where i took the pills, and thinking, how much of this personae of madness is required, a sort of entertaining side show for others, caught not hating myself, but as an entertainment. people come to visit, present me with gifts, they fly out, and they drive across the city, visiting me in the ward, in bed, and i wonder how much of that is having to prove people love me, a narcissitic story made for ready audiences (the aesthete defense for rachel and ray; the jesus offense for mik and john)...i keep thinking about the imaginary invalid by moliere, im not rich of course, solidly middle class, tending to poor, but the doctors, the system, convive to convince that the sadness, the low grade ennui, the meloncholy is a offense that can only be cured by faking or feigning death...

did i really want to kill myself or was i just trying to find toinette (even the name...toinette, antoinette, anthony) (did michel write on the ii, it seems his play)

(or maybe it is the opposite, in the sense that i want none of it, that people should not think of myself as valuable, that it would be better if i was well or its equivlents, because the show is tedius, and kind of tawdry, the strip tease is ghastly, and im just exhausted)

im on a 4 hour pass, at the millwoods library, typing this among other people, sort of told to do something, whuch explains why im not on the ward.

bored, tired, frustrated, feeling indulgent, but ive felt indulgent for months, so thats nothing new.

its like you know, new therapy, new shrinks, a new god, new friends, new drugs, new art, wanking w. yr left hand instead of yr right, new hobbies, nothings gonna get me out of this mess.

ya know?
ase

one last thing, never try to explain to the ot nurse performative/conceptual work, and well dont let her convince you to teach taking pictures (here is my class: here is a camera-shoot, did you like that, there good, you have a picture)

sometimes its really subtle, and sometimes its really fucking obvious (like a therapist saying women suffer from depression in way x, men in way y) but all of my foccoult/laing/butler/kraus/gilbert/ruether is coming straight into the surface, and its not really helping me interact w. people... (that and being worried that peoples problems are much worse then mine, and so what i am doing whining when x or z happens)

(and because im drugged into docility most days. all of this shit is internalised, and so the the anxiety comes out unprocessed. (i used the word estrangement, and i really do feel estranged)

(its weird being in a group, and having them talk in ways that are so different from yrs that you cannot keep up, and you worry about being dragged down the rabbit hole)

(im starting to kind of meet people, say hi to them, that sort of thing, and the task group, where i sort or pound or shape, body things unrelated to thinking, relaxes me in a way the drugs cant)

(ever since ive been in the double, ive been on serequal to sleep, which makes it worse)

(i also really dislike the affirmation nonesense, every day its something like say something good about yrself---it doesnt fucking matter how good or bad i feel about myself as long as the work is getting done, and it sure as hell isnt, i dont need this to be some kind of teddy bear lets all hug kumbaya bullshit)

(and you cant really t alk to the nurses about it, because you are labeled oppostional, except my day nurse for the last couple of days, who has a habit of being both patronizing and obsessed with small rules/authority--i fucking loath her.)

also, ray, yr getting an ashtray.