2:40 a.m.

dumb-john, a blur now, on a beach at sunset, addresses his shoes��
I grow old, I grow old; I shall wear the endflaps of my straightjacket rolled. I shall learn to do my laundry, and learn to fold. I will dedicate what remains of the remains of my life to mastering the quotidan and proleterian details of daily life. I shall bathe my dinner dishes and cutlery in clean water and bright soap bubbles, and not mourn its brevity nor entropy's undisputed victory. Oh god, I will live my life in all manner of simile, and take my trope from what the world provides me. For example, check out how the footprint left behind by my wet Sketcherz in the sand lends itself perfectly as a metaphor for our life: life is like a footprint in the sand: it soon disappears, its collapse is a direct result of its mad ambition to leave a mark in the shifting sands of time and the world, it's size 11 and a 1/2.

two mermaids in rollerblades and bikinis come and go, speaking of Michelangelo��
Was the bikini named after the Bikini Atoll? and was the Bikini Atoll some near sea-level stretch of flatland until good old western nuclear power plumped that flat dull atoll to Grand Teton proportions? Can the trend towards pantagreulian gigantism in breast size since 1947 be related directly to the growing use of nuclear power throughout the world? Weapons of mass distraction indeed. Must I always think about sex? Can the whole of human history, like all of Marcel Proust, be reduced to the eternal and unending quest for that other, aviator or aviatrix, Albert or Albertine, to give us a madeline with our tea when we're old? What was it that J. Robert Oppenheimer said again, "I have become Shiva, unbuckler of bras?" Is that really in the Bhagavad-Gita? Can you really get it on with a multiple-limbed blue-skinned semi-divine hermaphoridite in Bombay's better brothels?

watch the land bob up and down, the sea still as stars. imagine yourself a kite and catch the breeze that dances from the east��
For the longest time I've disdained travel, since Zeno's proved that movement is illusory and therefore evolution but a convenient theory; "travel is a form of despair," Kierkegaard said, and in Repetition I think, he reduces the enormous globe into smaller and tarter slices by using logic like surgery; and finally concludes that travel, like any effort in life, is merely futile gesturing at the fantastic nonsensical blur of passing life; so you may as well roll off the bed and consider that a trip to Denmark. Or do as I have done, lay in bed and concentrate astrally projecting yourself out of the mouldering shy mess of the body and aim yourself confidently towards that other world that shimmers without, that Fire Island playground where your fortress of solitude can be ground down and pasted upon your rubbery skin. I'm lying, I don't prefer astral projection above locomotion, just as I don't prefer being garrotted over being lightly massaged by a smiling Vietnamese boy. I don't know whence this want for travel has come, nor where it will buoy me; like Sir Thomas Urquhart, I'll glory in the voyage, and never mind the destination.

The ship is empty, though every light and lantern blaze and very softly can be heard, like a song remembered from childhood, distant music from some subterranean radio. The water is blue and the sky is green and the beach is nowhere to be seen��
Oh, travel, travel; go, go, go, and do not ever hope to arrive. Don't concern yourself with where this ship takes you, don't bother wondering who is preparing the food, who is tidying up the stateroom and making the beds. And do not wonder where you are, just look out at the world blazing in bright hue before you. And keep in mind: just because the sky is the colour of glass is not reason enough to believe that this ship we are on is inside a bottle.

the Funny Show

agriculture poem

my life in the ghost of Bush

time-lapsed (part 1)

unreconciled

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Images are taken without permission from the fine and trusting folks at Folk Arts of Poland; please purchase something from them. Background music stolen without permission from Epitonic, Basta Music, and just about everywhere else my unscrupulous hands could grab something. No rights reserved.

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