T H E A R T P A R T Y 

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Tuesday, May 15, 2007

 

dream collages





*The second one is a collaboration between Cadet-Lyric and I*

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Sunday, January 28, 2007

 

A Path of Good Intentions

The Actor and Actress lusted after each other for pretend. And then they lusted after each other for real, running circles in my mind as I sat on my hands and sounded my frustration with lips on vibrato. There was no camera rolling. They were brother and sister, for pretend. But aren't we all? Jesus spoke to me in a dream: I will burn the weeds with the chaff, and you my brother are more chaff than crop. Quit smoking weed, and live your life. That's all he said, then he turned into a lawn chair and I had a nice relaxing evening watching the stars plummet to earth. The Actor was there, but not the Actress, and we shared a cigar made of un-Canonized papyrus--the apocalypse of Peter I believe, or maybe the youth of Jesus where he killed a boy with his almighty powers. Either way, the Actress was not there, and this saddened me, so we smoked a cigar and talked about writing, the art of, which I know nothing of, since my best stuff writes itself in my dreams and leaves me a dull life in the morning.
Anyway, while they were lusting after each other, I was searching for a camera to take things down, or a pen, at least a pen, so that I might remember my place in society, which is as a set of training wheels I never got rid of or used to. I took a few anxiety pills and a soft pink lithium, and felt better about the situation, though there was nothing I could really do. When I approached the lusting I received strange glares, and yet when I stood far off they seemed to beckon me with their subliminal doublespeak. I lost the English language, or they did, and reverted to babbling. Finally, someone brought me water and I was satisfied. But this is not about "water" or "lust" but about "Jesus," if we can all keep these nouns straight for a minute (though they seem to elide), who spoke to me then not as a lawn chair, since I was awake, or mostly awake for that matter, but as a golden chain around my neck, pulling my head down in reverence. I had not smoked marijuana in four days, and so when he spoke I listened. He said, Do it. Previously I had been contemplating dumping the water all over the two lovers and drinking it off of their bodies. It had come to me from a comment an ex-girlfriend had once made. While searching for my name on the internet she had found a photographer who specialized in nude models, only that he poured milk on their bodies as the photos were taken. This brought me a smile, because I am lactose intolerant, which says something about my embarrassment over sex in general in a Freudian kind of way. Though every Psychiatrist I've gone to has disregarded Freud as a nut job, I believe there is more we can learn from him than from the current overly medicine oriented researchers. If they believe they can prove behavior through a mouse it is because they are acting like mice, constantly searching for the way to the consolatory cheese. I do not eat cheese, as I have stated, but at that moment I wished that it were milk I could pour on them instead of plain water. From the urging of my Lord and Savior I moved forward and poured the water on lust, whose fire quickly fizzled, and the Actor and Actress removed themselves from the scene.
Without subjects in my scene I took off my golden representation of Jesus and dangled it across my bottles of antidepressants and mood-stabilizers and photographed it with a camera I found on my back. I remarked on how I should have found the camera earlier, but life had been in a daze. John Lennon on a wall and the lyrics to "Imagine," left me wondering how I would get anything accomplished while in this bleak sobriety? I needed no signs, yet without them how would my actions amount to anything?
I blocked out my childhood at an early age and did not realize it until much later, watching Edward Scissor Hands with an old friend and her dog. The television mocked my artistic mindset, something I save only for boredom now. Both the television and my artistic mindset I mean. I emptied my bottles onto the floor, it was a hardwood floor, and photographed them in their somber-still state, and, realizing that I did not truly know where I was, I tried to frame the whole scene in front of me. There were the hard wood floors, but seemingly no walls besides a stage-like wall in the very middle, with a doorway in the middle, and if there were other walls they were of a perfect whiteness so that they seemed to stretch out into eternity. Very much it was like an empty mind waiting to be filled. I missed my Actor and Actress, both of whom had left through the stage wall, and I missed my Jesus, who no longer spoke since there was no more action for me to do.
Above spun a fan, counting off seconds with each turn. No clocks. No windows. No time. Much like a casino. I hated the spinning, like I hated conversation with a dull person, or sex with an unattractive person for that matter, for its monotony. Simple circles which lead to no end, at least not quickly, and I was reminded of Eliot, reciting to my self the beginning of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," just the first stanza, for that's all I really ever cared for. I flung my pill bottles at the uninteresting, unattractive and otherwise unlovable fan, but they did nothing. So then I flung my Jesus. And a voice rang out, and it said loudly as if from a Wal-Mart overhead speaker--and then I saw the florescent lights and determined I had arrived to hell--Why do you discard me at this your most desperate moment? Do you not realize the world has left you completely? That not even may you watch it still? Children giggle over your enlightened failure, and you will never see them again. And you discard your last hope?
The fan stopped then, and it seemed time stopped then. I am not enlightened at all am? I thought, noting my lack of effort, my utter apathy in all situations since the beginning of time. And just as I thought it the lights dimmed to a nothingness. The voice this time was less powerful, but much darker. It was a defeated voice, a voice that asked for punishment. It became smaller and smaller and then darker and darker. It grew and shrieked when it spoke, as if utterly terrified. It was my voice. I will not tell you what it said, for it would haunt you every night of your life as it haunts me every moment of this black existence.

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Thursday, December 14, 2006

 

Coffee

Philip awoke with a purpose: he would be the best salesman FAO Swartz had ever seen! He had only held the job thus far for a week and a half, but he knew that selling a product to the children of rich managers' and executives' wives would springboard him to the heights of ladders he had only admired from afar. To him there existed no ceilings, only up and up. But first things first, he would perform his sacred routine: left sock, right sock, left shoe, right shoe, seven minutes in the bathroom. There was no need to take a shower, not in the morning. To only take one shower a day meant either going to bed with wet hair or dirtying the bed with a day's squalor. He chose wet hair, because at least it was clean wet hair.
At the door of the coffee shop everything was still flowing smoothly, but upon entering he came face to face with a brown great dane standing wobbly on hind legs and wearing a pinstripe suit. In one paw he held a briefcase down by his thigh, and in the other a cell phone he was actively searching through.
Of course, thought Philip, this must be a dream. "Well, might as well get in line," he concluded. He shoved past the great dane, and took his place behind a poodle. She wore a leopard-print dress and flirted obnoxiously with the basset hound in front of her, making every bit of her sex life uncomfortably public. No one seemed to mind however. What would have been icy stares normally were in this dog-run world warm smiling gazes.
"Oh to be her age again," he thought he heard an elderly shitsu who chain-smoked near the back of the shop. All kinds of dogs, smiling to each other, laughing and tossing their purses their hats their files all around and barking with merriment. He didn't know what to do, where to turn from all this excitement. Finally he fixed his eyes on the menu, but the words at first were all misspelled, all jumbled and incoherent, and then they cleared up instantly. "Espresso, Americano, Cafe con Leche," he read aloud, one after another, and began to feel normal again. Even the noise had quieted, for now when he turned back to them the dogs were sitting sedately in caps and bonnets, skirts and corduroys.
Now it was his time to order. "I'll have an Americano with an extra shot of espresso," he said to the cute greyhound behind the counter. Her slender neck turned back to the menu, as if to verify, then turned back to Philip.
"We don't serve coffee here, I'm sorry."
"What are you talking about? I come in here every morning!" he exclaimed, then seeing the menus distorted and spinning like a fan he checked himself and began again. "What then do you serve?"
"Water," she replied flatly.
"Fine, I'll have a water," he decided in quiet frustration.
"Oh, we don't serve the water up here, there's a fountain in the back."
"If you don't serve anything up here, then what did I stand in line for!"
"I guess only you know that, sir." Too drained to reply he walked toward the back. Three young stone angels stood in the middle of the fountain, pouring water from miniature buckets. Feeling defeated, Philip bent down onto his hands and knees and moved to lick from the fountain, but he felt himself pulled back from the water then by a firm paw. It was the great dane from earlier, holding a teacup in his other outstretched paw. Philip nodded, taking the cup and dipping it in the water.
"Why are you dressed up like that? Why a tie and everything?" he asked the great dane.
"Why are you?" came the reply. They both shrugged their shoulders and sipped from their tea cups. "Does it taste funny to you?" he asked Philip. After reflecting he took another sip and nodded, affirming the suspicion. "That's because it's a kind of weak tea that makes the world whirl around you."
"Dammit," muttered Philip, who had been gazing at the angels, watching them turn softer and softer, filling with pinks and tans until they came to look like ripe peaches, but now the picture took on too fierce of a change and the water twirled away the stone until everything mixed and streaked.
Inside was not much better; the spinning did not take everything over, though the ceiling shook in waves and the counter shifted back and forth like a rocking ship in a terrible storm. What stuck him though was the massive canine orgy that took place there before him. Boxer and pointer, terrier and pincher, it mattered not, what mattered only was the love of all for all. They all howled and sung their howls in a harmony, no more than that, in a unifying voice, a singular essence bellowing eternity. Now they were separating from the center, now they were giving him a path and chanting that he should take her, a beagle lying on her back in the center. He approached slowly, admiring the soft white between her hind legs. He would have gone down with her but a rush of conscience gripped him and he ran out the front door.
There at his feet was a flowery basket with what looked like a baby inside. He lifted the figure out to discover it was not a baby human but a miniature pink elephant with a card wrapped around her neck. "So this is life," he said after he read it. Those were his last words that morning, for the day had already thoroughly started.

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