an image of myself, first two dimensional
then nine dimensional,
standing naked amidst wild vines and grasses,
orchids of all types shining out passion colors
The plants are speaking to me in various languages,
none of which I fully understand
I get a few words here and there
the feelings are more evident
They are telling me that I have created them
and they love me
They are telling me that I am totally insane
They are telling me that I used to be God
no, the universe
and for some reason I occluded my mind,
blotted out part of my divine vision,
They are telling me I'm only part of myself,
that this garden of nonsense I'm tending
is one garden among billions
That they, the flowers of my meaningless hopes,
dreams and delusions,
are unique species,
but other similarly unique species exist
in other similarly unique gardens
within the boundaries of what used to be my perfect
godly universe soul
"Tend your nonsense garden!"
they tell me
"Tend it carefully and truly
Infuse it with your mind and body lust,
your surreal inventiveness,
your trees of knowledge and despair.
Ensure that we,
the flowers of your bleeding,
tears and laughter,
display a strange beauty that sings
at the resonant frequency
of your innermost core.
Then one day your love will come.
She'll step into your garden,
looking surprising or familiar,
gorgeous in unexpected ways,
and she'll stare at your flowers
vines and grasses with awe
She'll reach out her hand
and extend to you flowers,
a bouquet grown in her own garden
of exquisite nonsense,
not dead flowers but plants complete
with roots,
for you to plant in the soil of your mind,
to add new shapes to your dictionary
of colors, lusts and beauties,
to crosspollinate with your lifetime of
screams and inventions,
creating new blooms that are yours and hers
and hers and yours."
You wonder if you've understood correctly,
squeezed through the tiny pore of language
the meaning of the flowers of the garden of Babel
-- this too-strange creation of your soul
You tend the garden diligently,
marveling in light moments at the intricacy and diversity
of the vegetable forms you've bred,
awaiting impossible love with patience and
impatience and madness
and infinite sanity,
realizing occasionally that your garden of nonsense
is infinite and contains it all
then sensing something outside it
then wondering, where is she, where?
Is she right in front of your face, you've just been
unable to perceive her
due to deficits of vision processing?
Is she sheltering under a willow tree
a few miles up the stream
that feeds your flowers water?
The plants are leaning toward my image
sometimes two-dimensional, sometimes nine-dimensional
and singing it songs in a musical idiom that I can barely understand,
that is not transmitted through hearing
or any of the ordinary senses
A beautiful music, so happy that it makes me sad to hear it
My image sees an image of her, or of you, walking
toward it and wonders, is it a mirage or not?
My image realizes it's not an image,
but is actually me after all
I sit alone in my garden of nonsense,
wondering where the madness has gone
I sit alone in my garden of nonsense,
wondering where this absolute stillness and majesty
has come from
I sit alone in my garden of nonsense,
awaiting impossible love,
and ridiculing myself for doing so,
and wondering if what I hear the flowers say
has any meaning
or is just a dumb invention of my mind
I sit alone in my garden of nonsense,
inventing characters who sit alone
in their gardens of nonsense
My characters try to invite others
into their nonsense gardens,
and they very occasionally succeed
I sit alone in my garden of nonsense,
breathing and breathing and breathing
I sit alone in my garden of nonsense,
sleepy,
thinking and typing these words
*
1, 2, 3, 4,
*
"Truth is beauty,
beauty truth,"
so someone said,
I can't remember who
It's a crazy thing,
If it's true I'm not sure
But it's beautiful
And I don't ask for more
As I go through life I find
I'm drawn to beauty of a certain kind
The years drift by, this doesn't change
I love the beautiful and strange
Strange beauty, yes
it makes me feel
in contact with the truly real
Lifted outside the everyday
into a charming world where devil-angels play
and dance to polyphonic beats
and songs with minor chords replete
Strange beauty of a melody
that's off, then on, and then off key
Strange beauty of an acid trip
that allows you between selves to slip
Strange beauty of your lovely face,
its happy grief and awkward grace
Strange beauty of a love affair
that never quite can be repaired
but goes on twisting, weaving, winding
always strange new beauties finding
Strange beauty of computer code
as it loses itself, shrinks and grows
Strange beauty of the big-brained beast
which seems on its own pain to feast
and values most what loves it least
Strange beauty of strange lines like these
That try, but fail, strange truth to seize
Strange beauty of the girl I see
in the center of my mind
Sitting on a curbside nearly naked
Staring at the sky as if to find
a joy once lost
or a sorrow
grown restless and flown away
Long brown hair unmoved by the wind
Why I love her,
I can't say
Strange beauty of imagining
the world as it can't be
Inviting others into one's
illusion come with me!
Strange beauty of each human life
that, passionate, extends
to grasp it all and taste it all
then, helpless, simply ends
*
So it begins. And it goes on. And then goes on some more.
It's a story. A story of love. A love story.
With philosophical overtones, and undertones, delirious madness,
deviant poetry and quasi-poetry, psychological excavations beneath,
occasional cryptopornography and even more occasional non-crypto
pornography.
It came to me on the PATH train commuting to work, while I was
reading Pushkin to the rhythm of hip-hop, and rearranging bad hip-
hop into the meter of Pushkin.
In came to me, in wholes and pieces, for several weeks afterwards.
And then it went away.
Strangely beautiful, beautifully strange? I hope.
It exists, for a while.
*
It's about a woman.
It's always about a woman.
*
I sit, alone,
in the garden of my nonsense,
awaiting your impossible love
I sit alone,
in the garden of my nonsense,
feeling my skin feel like skin
feeling my mind feel like mind
feeling my eyes feel like eyes
feeling my soul feel like soul
feeling my love feel like love
feeling my hate feel like hate
feeling my dreams feel like dreams
feeling my thoughts feel like thoughts
feeling my lusts feel like lusts
feeling my disgust feel like disgust
feeling my words feel like words
feeling my sounds feel like sounds
feeling my feeling feel like feeling
I sit alone,
in the garden of my nonsense
*
she dreamed she was a fuck
and the fuck dreamed it was her
As she passed her hand across my chest,
a million percolating fireflies
danced their psycho naked dance
between the layers of my skin
the body is a transformation --
occurrence goes on and on
She talks a lot,
I rarely listen,
But the sound of her voice can be entertaining
or soothing
or arousing
it's no shock the clear oceans of her soul
become the shallow winding streams of her person
The fucking bitch says
all I care about is sex
She thinks I don't respect her
Why does she take these words
so seriously?
or the strange turn she gives her mouth on joyful occasions
once indicated sadness
Her tears are love
Her tears are stupid fucking
madness
Joy
Delusion
sex
are all our hopes and dreams any different?
we bustle around, looking for what?
*
BA BOOM CHICKA BOOM!!!
BA BOOM CHICKA BOOM!!!
BA BOOM CHICKA BOOM!!
BA BOOM CHICKA BOOM!! Shah shah
BA BOOM CHICKA BOOM!!
To tell a story like this
Here in the 21'st C
you have to be a bit Whacked --
that's probably WHY it occurred to me
What is this rhYthm and rhyme?
Is it the breath of the flesh?
Howl, O vexation of love!
Wander on, consciousNESS!
Started nOw, can't turn back,
the meter's mastered my mind
The concepts are flowing
The pain is awake
Staring at me like a snake
My soul desiring to take
All my raw secrets knOwing
-- There's something I HAVE to find
Words always LEAD me
away from the core
I know this and yet I
still have to say more
In my garden of foolishness
Nonsense and greed
I tell MYself a story
The kind that I NEED is
breathing
You wanna hEar it Too baby really the only truth?
Prepare your ears
It goes On fairly long i only wish
But you may perseVERE i had my face
between her legs
It's a story of LOVE right now epic
And confusion and craving delirium
Delusion, obsession is
The road to pain paving the scene
Tension Of woman's thigh
Void at center of eye
Ancient chemical madness
creating this "I"
Do you want to bE whole?
Or do you want to bE free?
You must choose one or the other
and get neither, you see
*
Is it about a woman?
Or is it about time?
Time goes on. In fact that is the very definition of time,
that it goes on.
That it goes at all.
Time goes on, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.
Blowing through me like idiot wind?
Let me tell you a story.
Eugene, our hero, blessed with a brilliant mind, cursed with shyness
and delusions of grandeur, is obsessed with Tatyana, a beautiful,
vivacious young woman who is frustratingly but tantalizingly beyond
his grasp. He sits in his Upper East Side apartment, staring out the
window fuming, knowing that she, at that very moment, is most
likely in one way or another occupied with her boyfriend James, a
completely ordinary, inoffensive, typically small-minded human
being. In her apartment in Brooklyn, on her four-poster bed with
squeaky springs, where he's sat with her but never made love with
her, she is quite possibly at the present moment bouncing up and
down in the throes of passion. This fact Eugene finds particularly
incensing. Impelled by his insane jealousy, his unrequited love for
Tatyana verges on hostility and hatred. The neural cocktail of
emotions overwhelms his mind and body, leaving him pacing back
and forth in his small apartment, mumbling disconnected delirious
obscenities under his breath.
Such is the human lot.
*
Vexation of mind
Vexation of eye
Vexation of spirit
Look at the gorgeous girl
Head floating
In the rage-filled sky
Vexation of mind
Vexation of eye
Vexation of body
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves thru Negro
streets at dawn, drunk on fermented polluted rain,
vanishing into nowhere Zen New Jersey, mental molochs
with a thousand blind eyes
She comes over the sea
with her round blue eye
She hold her head too high
She better take care
she don't turn zombie
Escaping the handcuffs of space,
we are rocking and laughing
We speak, but our lives are under attack
under the urination of astronauts
and the evacuation of brain matter
My darling, everything is wonderful
Howl, children! howl again,
copulate ecstatically,
collage the images of your memory across
the posterboard sky
Howl holy laughter
Vexation of mind
Vexation of spirit
Vexation of eye and eye
Sweet love Tatyana! I'm with you in Brooklyn
where you're madder than I am
although you're not really
I'm with you in Brooklyn
where you suck my cock with awesome vacuum power
derived from the living human Jesus, who will never return
your soul to your body again from its pilgrimage to the void
I'm with you in Brooklyn while you fuck that stupid jerk instead of
me, with a mind that transcends time Maybe his cock is
longer or fatter or not inconceivably even both, but so
what, I have the magic of 20 universes in every drop of my
sperm, seething and waiting to enchant you they will,
they will, or will they, they?
I'm with you in Brooklyn,
insane as a weasel
I'm with you in Brooklyn,
howling out like a grandmother who got her electric dildo
stuck in her rectum
I'm with you in Brooklyn,
You insufferable bitch, with your coy tricks and your carcass-like
stained glass lust cruelty
You circle my head like a rotting halo
eaten by superintelligent maggots
crushed by the fucking sun
I've seen the best minds of my generation sucked
into the folds of your cunt
Howl, baby! howl like fucking music,
fucking music howl and howl!
Robot apartments! Invisible suburbs! Death of the human dream!
Yellow flower of industry
posing for your nipple,
its stem sticking out of your ass
I'm not with you in Brooklyn,
I'm here in my apartment,
rambling insane and mad
Vexation of mind
Vexation of soul
Baby, vexation of eye and eye
The Creator gave me a shot of his presence,
I wasted it chasing your insufferable beauty
I gave my love for no good reason
And you, Indian Dream, didn't care
I'm a bodiless consciousness, teeth of the nothing, Satan licked my
burnt weeny and then, ten years animal suicides and
screams molten plastic, fifteen angstroms of
purgatory, why?
I search your face,
real as light,
hear your weird words sewn
soft into the webworks,
"There are many kinds of love
and I have known some of them."
So what -- so fucking WHAT, bitch-hole?!?!?
Vexation of mind
Vexation of spirit
Vexation of soul, of soul
Are you ready for the kill, jolly Jezebel?
You bitch,
seducer of mens' souls,
Ungodly girl,
giggling harlot,
let my cry come unto you
My heart have you
favor you with cunning
and new species of fractal orchids
We have dug up rage!! I say
The amphitheatre of the genital sun is a dungheap, and I am a
dungheap, and Brooklyn is a dungheap, where you lay legs
splayed under your toy boy, idiot lover, broken statue of
moron dawns with his own particular truth and lies
shocked from their essences
We have dug up fuck, fuck on!!!
An ailing truth bleeds out of your pussy,
of my mouth and pathetic poetry,
And toward the truth
the soul is bent
Binding shaped fire to cold event
Penetrating the emptiness
Sleeping in the depths of eyes
And eyes and eyes
-- Babe, babe, sweet babe, we have dug up rage!!!
Vexation of mind
Vexation of eyes
Vexation of bodies
Vexation of crazed imagination, creativity doomed to have no use,
to sit here scribbling while the shallow souls laugh romp and play
with angel girls like you
I'm with you in Brooklyn
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! Your hole is holy, holy!
Holy bloody bungholes in holy bloody bungalows! Holy psycho
dreams and screams, holy bloody seraphim, holy fucking jazz, punk,
filth, tongue tracing your mustache, sex friction blisters, forgiveness,
charity, master equations, eunuch bananas, delirious monkeyful
cheese. Peyote solidities of your firm yet gentle water-breasts. And
children mouthwrecked in the zoo. And nothing ever working.
Holy! Holy!
Somehow I always lose Holy! Holy!
The best morons of my generation suck the pussies of infinite babes
and fuck them over and over in beds of melting plastic and sing
them melodies in proper chords only please, while we geniuses of
delirium walk all night through solo streets, the trees adding shade
to shade, subtracting love in imaginary units from the uncountable
sum in the curve of your hips, your hips now swaying around the
waist of someone who is not this one
And here I think at the sun
I am with you in Brooklyn!!
Vexation of jealous love!
Vexation of mind,
of eye,
of body
Vexation you stupid sun
Howl, children, yackettyacking screaming vomiting whispering facts
of mind and crying fragments of collective unconscious,
binding feelings into motions,
binding motions into structures,
binding structures into living lies
Vexation of mind
Vexation of soul
Vexation of eye, of eye
Vexation of mind
Howl! Vexation of soul
Howlhowl! Vexation between your thighs
Vexation of mind
HowlHowl! Vexation of soul
HowlHowl! Vexation of eye, of eye
Vexation of jealous fucking love!
Howl! Howl! Vexation of fucking mind!
*
Howl, indeed!
Who among us has the courage to howl these day?
Instead we sit in our cars, commuting to work, filled with impotent
frustration.
Instead we snap at our children when they ask us perfectly natural
questions.
Instead we glare at our husbands and wives, spreading spite instead
of love.
Instead we drag our tired bodies to bars where we suck down mildly
psychedelic poisons, deluding ourselves that this is the key to
happiness.
Motherfucker! Such is our lot indeed.
Howling at the moon might perhaps be preferable.
And we delude ourselves, remember, that we have understood the
origin of the universe.
We delude ourselves that our mathematical equations have
penetrated to the heart of being.
We believe that it all began with one small point, one infinitesimal,
mathematical instant, which suddenly tired of its nothingness and
burst, exploded, created itself and the universe, transformed from
infinite undifferentiated energy madness into a specific
configuration, a high energy system in which particles were mushed
together and slowly separated into their own domains of being,
which cooled down gradually forming laws of motion, atoms,
molecules, galaxies, suns, planets, people, poems.
What a conceit. What a crock of pig feet. What a hunk of shit.
Anyone with even a smidgen of sense can see that it began with the
lovers' kiss.
Howl! Howl! Howl! Hooowwwwwlllllll!!!!!!!
A small element of truth, a jewel in the shit-heap of madness that is
the human universe, is contained in the center of that howl, its pure
animal soul perfection.
Howl strange orchids of inner gardens, howl out your truth and your
passion perfection, fucking howl, fucking howl howl howl!!!
*
Several months before all that howling, before the pain, the
jealousy, the loathing, the lust-filled madness, Eugene sat down at
his computer and didn't want to program.
It was the first time, ever, that he had experienced this.
Instead, an amusing idea occurred to him, and he wanted to write it
down.
Had he ever fancied himself a writer? Of course not. He was a
scientist, but not an artist.
Certainly not a poet.
But the code wouldn't come.
He was thinking about Tatyana, whom he'd met a few days before.
He was thinking about her far too much.
His mouse launched WordPad,
the words came pouring out,
his soul felt itself and sighed, or sighed
*
Tatyana's Kitchen
by Eugene Pavlov
Tatyana's new apartment
had a large and attractive kitchen.
She had moved to New York from Seattle three months ago
spent 6 weeks staying with friends looking for a place
a real fucking pain in the ass
she'd been starting her new job at the same time
but eventually she'd found a place
small but modern for the price
in a good part of Brooklyn
The kitchen
as already noted
was particularly spacious and fine
She particularly enjoyed making love
to her boyfriend on the countertop
observing his chest move
as he thrust in and out of her
feeling the smooth hard
formica on her back
At the far end of the long, narrow room
two tall windows let in generous amounts of light
A huge refrigerator sat in one corner, its hum
reminiscent of late Mahler, and so quiet
that, rather than hearing it, one felt it buzz
through one's bones and one's muscles and soul
buzz through one's body
as one fucked on the counter
or occasionally perhaps
on the floor
Next to it was a broad gas stove
an electric range
and over the stove three gleaming cookbooks
looking as new as the day they were bound
apartment-warming gifts from mom
for her first grown-up apartment
her first genuine place
of her own
Cooking appealed in principle
but in practice
time for it was very hard to find
She normally ate out
and when she ate in it was Ramen noodle soup or cold cereal
or spaghetti with Prego
And sometimes she was eaten out
sitting on the counter,
her lover kneeling on the floor beneath her,
her legs spread wide occasionally clenching
their soft white flesh around his head
A dizzying variety of instruments
adorned the racks on the wall -- metal,
plastic, and wooden tools for manipulating food
in every way imagined by modern humanity
Flour and sugar
and spices in profusion
in the cabinets
Also gifts from her mother
Who never imagined the sugar would be rubbed between her legs
to create a sweet and sour delight
The stainless-steel sink was impressively stainless
The garbage disposal was polite, swift and docile
The dishwasher performed its duties
with diligence and minimal noise.
And one fine evening, Tatyana
opened the refrigerator and was peering
through its well-lit chamber
trying to figure out whether to eat Ramen soup
or Captain Crunch for dinner
And the refrigerator closed its door gently but firmly
and said, "Girl, this can't go on any longer."
"Huh?? Who is that?"
" I wish it could be otherwise,
but it's out of my control at this point
It just can't work, do you see?"
"No, I don't see," she said quite honestly,
frustration increasing
tugging on the handle
She had loads and loads of work to do
she didn't have time to fuck around arguing
with the goddamn fridge.
She wasn't getting out of it that easy.
"He's right," the stove sighed wearily.
"I feel like such a fool
All we ever do is sit here, you never cook anything,
All you do is walk through the room
and on occasional nights fuck with your back up
against us, but we're not made to be fucked
up against girl you know we're made for cooking."
Her jaw dropped
"Look girl, we simply weren't made for each other,
It's not our fault, it's destiny.
You've never opened a cookbook in your life
We're the best in food-preparation technology
We were never meant to stay together."
"Are you saying,"
Tatyana said slowly,
"I'M NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU?"
"You suck, bitch,"
put in the blender.
"And not even often enough.
You get sucked much more often,
according to my observations.
And you haven't blended a damn thing yet."
"Please," said the refrigerator hastily,
"there's no need to get so ugly
You know we'll always think fondly of you.
But we can't live this lie any longer.
It's tearing our souls out, dear."
"APPLIANCES DON'T HAVE SOULS!!"
She argued, ordered,
whined and moaned,
blocked the doorway with her body,
howled the infinite teeming desolate rage of her ancestors,
but nothing worked, they all left:
the dishwasher, the stove, the garbage disposal,
the eggbeater and its clattering family of attachments,
the obnoxious blender,
the knives and forks and spoons,
the ladles and measuring cups,
whisks and graters,
the cheese axe and the fondue forks,
the cookbooks, never touched.
She just sat there on the floor under the windows
for four hours, her face in her hands,
the kitchen empty of everything
save dust
and then she remembered the feeling she'd had
with her back on the formica counter
his cock pulsing in and out of her
and she lay back abstractly
fingering her pussy
soon her fingers were on her clitoris
moving round and round
in soft familiar circle motions
Tatyana knew what the kitchen
was really for
It was an excellent room after all,
well-lit and spacious,
particularly with the appliances gone
After ten minutes of typing, he read over his work and laughed
aloud.
"You're a fucking Dostoevsky," he said.
It was the first time he could remember that he had ever talked to
himself.
Your obsession with this girl is getting ridiculous,
he said to himself silently.
Better watch yourself.
Best calm down.
He put his hand in his pants; his cock was quite hard. He felt a
strong urge to masturbate.
He couldn't really see how to calm himself down, not at all.
*
Meanwhile, the real Tatyana was on the phone with her friend
Shannon, asking her if she'd like to move to New York and be her
roommate, as opposed to the bouncing around Seattle she'd been
doing since graduation, not quite sure what to do with herself,
considering grad school but not that seriously, not quite ready to
commit to it or anything else, somewhat bored but not totally like
many people. And Shannon agreed surprisingly quickly. She figured
she could find a job in New York in two weeks flat, after all she had a
stronger background than Tatyana, what with a 3.9 GPA and an
internship at Boeing last summer. She had no particular desire to be
in New York, but at least it was different than Seattle.
Tatyana remembered how depressed Shannon was. She might be a
pain to be around. But then she looked around her empty
apartment and thought again, and again.
Shannon's depression had a refreshing kind of heart to it. Anyway
Shannon was an artist, she was supposed to be depressed. It was a
shame she didn't want to make a career of the piano, instead she
was in computers just like everybody else.
Some of her compositions were so sweet and sad they weren't
amateurish at all, they were really good.
She and Shannon had hung out since freshman year. It would be
good to have her around. New York would be their adventure
together.
*
Eugene closed WordPad and launched Visual C++.
The algorithm he needed to complete the class he was working on
was crystal clear in his mind he saw it as a whole, a kind of
multidimensional mathematical shape; now he just needed five
unbroken hours to type it in.
He didn't miss the solid world at all, the shifting universe of
mathematical symbols shapes and structures and their realization in
loops functions and objects was a much more agreeable place.
Feelings served only to guide judgments, then they disappeared,
embodied in the code he'd typed. Everything was sculpture from a
distance, then mathematics from up close. If everything was quiet,
he could hear the code singing. It wasn't the computer he loved, it
was the code itself, the invisible universe beneath what you
observed when you used the computer program, the shifting and
turning tendrils of binary numeration that squirmed their way
through the computer's memory and registers, resulting in
miraculously ordered bit streams zooming toward the screen,
moving the electron gun to make words, numbers, pictures,
plunging forms into the retina and the brain of the user, and all
coming out of mathematical instructions for pushing around zeros
and ones.
He sat there typing having to pee very badly but not wanting to get
up and break the stream of concentration. By the time he got to
the bathroom he'd been holding it in so long that the hot stream
hurt coming out.
*
I've Always been told
to begin AT the beginning
It all started out
with a vague mOving or spinning
First there was the nOthing --
about which I've nothing to say --
but somehow, or nOhow,
the nothing gave way
Time emerged i'd
something surged give up everything
something verged on existing in my life
The core of the nothing to spend one moment
started bEnding and twisting at the very center
started starting perhaps -- of her delirious
here language falls all apart soul
The Universe, as we call it,
began to beat like a heart
inside
This was LOVE, elemental
No body or mind FLAP your scabby,
Only the crave to return, kneecaps apart
the primal wholeness to find my little whore!!
Move apart!
feel the difference outside
There's you and there's me
Come together now, darling -- can you feel the
how close can we be? see the
Once was one, hear the
now is two, taste the
broken symmetry, done difference
Once was none, difference?
then another, difference?
then none became one,
and the other was two,
and the party's begun
and the wonderful sensual smell of her breath
comes to life, and the reeking of animal death
and the perfect confusion of thoughts that kill sense
and the look on her face when she's angry and tense
and the O of her mouth when she has a big O
and the pointless disputes that all couples must know
and the love and the hate and the beauty and fear
and everything, everything, starts off RIGHT HERE
All the chemicals, animals, plants, people, cliques
Everything that is lovely or that makes me sick
It's a big fucking mess, that's the only real fact
It call came out of nothing when's it gonna go back?
Is it still pure perfection, is it love, is it sweet?
It all depends on the moment
She makes me feel so complete
*
The moon rises.
The moon sets.
The moon rises.
The moon sets.
The moon rises.
The moon sets.
The moon rises.
The moon sets.
And I go about my business, most days not noticing it at all.
*
Still reeling from the departure of her appliances, but warmed by the
richness of her multiple orgasms, Tatyana lay back on the floor and
closed her eyes, feeling her skin tingle and itch.
But she was disturbed after a few minutes by a peculiar bang.
She jumped up and opened her eyes and saw what it was: Her
toaster, which had been left behind, was making its way toward the
door.
"Fuck it," she said, and lay back down.
As she was drifting off into a dreamy half-sleep, she heard more
noises, and slowly twisted her mind around in their direction. These
ones weren't coming from her apartment, and they weren't her
renegade appliances either. They were yet stranger sounds,
humming and buzzing and clanging and beeping noises, apparently
coming from the apartment below hers. She had no idea what the
fuck they could be. She didn't try very hard to guess, which is just as
well, because if she had she wouldn't have been successful. It's very
unlikely she would have guessed that her neighbor, Krystof Saba, was
at that moment involved in soldering the last few parts onto his
latest invention; a cybernetic love-goat named Phoebe. Phoebe was
a prototype, and the result of a running joke between Krystof and his
friend Armin. Krystof's main project was Helen, a cybernetic female
that he had been designing and building for nearly 6 years. She was
to be his perfect mate, with the body of a supermodel and the mind
of a supercomputer. The force-feedback vagina, designed using
nonlinear dynamics to provide the maximum possible male orgasm,
had absorbed a year and a half. This was a labor of love. But there
were plenty of kinks to work out, after all no one had built a working
android before, and so Krystof had decided to build a prototype
organism first. Armin, his only friend to speak of, was for some
unaccountable reason always making jokes about fucking goats. So
there you had it: Phoebe. Krystof planned to give her to Armin for
Christmas. Phoebe walked, whinnied, ate just about anything, and
she contained a pretty much debugged version of the force-
feedback cunt, so she was gonna be a pretty damn awesome fuck.
What Tatyana would have thought had she known she was lying
there on the floor of her apartment listening to the squeals of a
recently animated cyber-love-goat, I don't know. Maybe nothing; she
was a fairly self-absorbed person. She had already forgotten about
her renegade appliances and was wondering whether she should
perm her hair or not, and trying to decide what methodology to use
to design the database she had to build at work.
Thus is the human lot!
*
Four pOint two billion years later
give or take a bit
The universe has expAnded
All sorts of structures in It
Stars and planets and gAlaxies,
nebulas, quAsars,
And in a small corner
the plAces we call ours
-- the bioLOGICal RObots
we call women and men
The situations we gEt in
again and again
broken symmetry
We're all parts of the nothing love
fantastic
split off wildly spinning
repEating the story
of the very beginning
I crave dear your
We're separAte; in our separateness tongue on my tongue
we find our glory and your
But perfection is always a unified story
We strive back for oneness,
for nothing again Lust Supreme
Reach out for togetherness, breath on my
lovers and friends skin
To embed OURselves in history,
leave mysterious marks
Anything but to be left
alone in the dark
And one day INTO this universe
our Eugene came
Forced out of his mother
Into the cold from the warm
The first tiny flowers
In his garden
Were formed
*
Discontinuous?
Continuous?
Moments?
Is it really a stream of consciousness? Or is it a juxtaposition of
discrete moments, each one freaked and frozen in wholeness, strung
together like stills in a film? Take off your clothes, walk outside of
your house, stand out in the yard feeling the wind, forget about
people, houses and things, close your eyes, stab yourself with a pin
in your naked ass, and you can feel the gap. The gap between
moments.
*
Eugene invites his little brother Sean to come live with him. Sean is
good looking, normal, intelligent but not exceptionally so.
Why did he invite his brother to live with him? Why not invite his
brother to live with him? Did he ever really notice his brother
before? Was he merely bored?
Sean watches television. Sean does not chew his toenails. Sean
knows the names of major football, baseball and basketball teams.
Sean palpably exists, we say.
We say and say and say.
Sean puts beer in the fridge. Sean has strong preferences about
beer.
Sean doesn't understand the inner vibrations of the cosmos. He
doesn't need to or want to. Sean is a network administrator. He
keeps computer systems happy. He has few pictures in his mind. He
think his big brother's kind of weird. The four years between them
is irrelevant; it's the incomprehensible abyss.
Sean knows what kinds of pants he's wearing. Cargo pants, today.
Chinos, yesterday. He has jeans custom cut. Eugene buys clothes at
random, whatever happen to be there in the store.
They converse about everything, but not very often. They both
have liberal views. Sean has many girlfriends. Sean listens to hip
hop, he thinks Eugene's modern classical and jazz fusion are
"interesting."
Eugene likes having him around. It stops him from drifting off into
his own world. It reminds him that his apartment is part of a greater
surrounding culture, with football and beer and food stores and
newspapers and magazines and politics. There is more than just
millions of lines of C++ code and strange lusts and worries and the
emanation of existence from the formless void. Or is there really?
It often occurs to him that the universe itself is composed of trillions
of lines of C++ code. If you stare at an object long enough the
actual visual trace is replaced by a transdimensional silhouette,
which is an encrypted version of the source code used to create the
executable file of reality. Bugs occur regularly. Bug-fixes must be e-
mailed to the Absolute. Who wrote the Universal Program? Eugene
did, of course. Before he blotted out his memory, before he placed
himself in the body of an individual being on an ordinary world, a
C++ object implementing the "human" class. Why did he demote
himself from Creator, author of the Cosmic Code, to the lowly role of
human molecule?
Sean was sick of living with his parents in Jersey. Manhattan was
going to be fun. A lot of cute girls there, though to be perfectly
honest, so far he hadn't had as much luck as with the girls back in
Jersey.
The stars were aligned, the collective unconscious breathing, brain
cells buzzing like tiny electric wires. Eugene thought about Tatyana
and was pleased to have Sean there. He felt himself drifting into an
obsession with this woman to a terribly unhealthy degree. He knew
Sean would anchor him down.
Little do we know indeed.
*
As a child he was normal
-- well OK, not quite
He was quick to learn math
and to read and to write
With the boys on the block
on warm days he would play
But he really preferred
to spend his hours in dreams
or to while away the day
With his best friend, Ann Jeanne
More popular than Eugene
Beautiful, nearly as smart
Anne Jeanne was a girl
who'd win anyone's heart
The world was their garden!
After school they would sneak
behind the old mattress warehouse
and walk down the creek
to the forest,
then take off,
often losing their way
walking through the dark trees
till the end of the day
Running fast through the thorns
lying flat in the grass
looking up at the sky
with a mysterious cast
of mind -- What a joy!
What a friendship!
What love
(If only he knew
what this was the start of)
He was strange, the outsider
She was everyone's love nothing
He told her secrets, Amused something
her with things he'd thought Of -- everything
his own nonsense garden,
a Universe in his thumb you my dear
Where everyone whistled are perfection delusion
and was otherwise dumb dance
Where monkeys played chess dream
And dinosaurs juggled money
Where rivers flowed chOcolate
and clouds rained down honey
Where thEre were no parents,
no teachers,
no laws
Where the power of dreaming
could make you grow claws
and climb trees
through the atmosphere
up to the moon
descending quite slowly
in silver balloons
Imagine, he said
and Imagine, he did
She eyed him in wonder --
What a freaky, sweet kid
*
What a conglomeration of iridescent clitoral moments!
One after the other like a series of sweat beads running down a
lover's forehead.
Or is it really a string of moments? One after the other, step, step,
step. Perhaps it's more like a collage. The one-dimensional order is
an illusion. Standing in any frozen moment, one can step in
infinitely many directions. Here I am, in the middle of the still,
reaching my hand out to you, never quite reaching you, while you
stand there frozen wearing boxer shorts only, your nipples gazing
out toward the sun. What lies inside your vacant stare will never
grow or deteriorate. But then the spark of life infects me and I can
move anywhere any direction. Forward "forward" perhaps, in
your possible universe of choice. Or perhaps forward in the cosmos
where a meteorite zooms through the window, severing your left
nipple, leaving only a bizarre and sickening mass of blood. Or
perhaps backward to the day that we first met, when I was dazzled
by your beauty, which struck me as much greater than it really was
due to the harmony between the acne scars on your face and the
non-Euclidean scales melodizing in my brain, and you thought me a
vaguely ridiculous if evidently intelligent clown. Perhaps you'll
move into Hitler's urethra, lying in a jar of formaldehyde in an
Argentinian goat brothel. Children, anything is possible! Moments
are spheres of light, screaming mad and dispersed in a non-
dimensional discontinuum. We hop from another to another,
moving in what we call one particular direction forward because
that is the cast of our minds. The spheres spurt out and overlap, in
different colors and wild amoeba shapes, creating a collage of form
and meaning, which no one can really love, though we can try with
religious explosions. The love, if it really comes, will annihilate our
human forms. Our bodies disappear and are replaced by non-
luminous lights. I saw it happen to a woman on Fifth Avenue the
other day. She was walking down the street, briefcase in hand,
looking up at a neon sign. A rather odd look came over her face.
And then she disappeared totally vaporized leaving only a
momentary halo. I knew her moment had come, and gone. Of
course, it had always been there.
*
Shannon meets Sean at the Internet World conference and falls
madly in love with him in front of the Sun booth, begins coming by
Sean's (Eugene's) apartment whenever possible. Eugene has no idea
what she sees in his brother. She seems extraordinarily bright, fairly
nerdy, a bit like him perhaps, but, he senses, without his
philosophical and emotional depth. She thinks a lot. She
understands things. She needs to have meaning in life. She finds
meaning through doing challenging work with a purpose. All this is
quite laudable. She lacks an appreciation for the underside of
things, the transdimensional transnihilistic silhouette, the inverse-
meta level of luminous eggs about which ordinary objects are
questions or statements. But this is hardly to be held against her. At
least she is a real being. Perhaps it is Sean's very ephemerality, his
paucity of existence, that attracts her to him. Or, perhaps things are
reversed. Perhaps it's people like he and Shannon who are surreal,
who are floating in the space of nonexistence, not understanding
the solidity of things and experiences. Perhaps Sean is the real one,
Sean with his universe of beer and football and TCP/IP protocols.
Perhaps it's his reality, his solidity of existence, that attracts her. She
need something to anchor her, to tie her down, to keep her from
floating off away from the world like a helium balloon, because, like
a helium balloon, she'd just float for a while and have a fucking
grand time of it, but eventually, when she got high enough, she'd go
pop pop pop.
Or maybe it was just his good looks. He really was a pretty smooth
looking guy.
"And if my world's not good enough,
I'll change my life
to better suit your moooood
cause you're so smoooooth."
He imagined her imagining herself making love to him. He could see
why the imaginal image was attractive. They agglomerated
together like magnetic particles in a supercharged superfluid. He
didn't care about her interior universe, he just wanted to make ngles
himself feel hot and alive, and he knew that the way to do it was to
fill her with sensory vibrations. She shook back and forth like the air
inside a guitar. Spread across his face was her music, encoded in a
notation of caresses.
Was he jealous of Sean for attracting Shannon? Not really. Shannon
wasn't his type. He understood her too well. She was a subset of
him, projected into the feminine universe. She had his analytical-
ness, his ethereality, but in searching all of her mind he detected no
luminous eggs. No inner portal into the womb of the delirious
naught-goddess. He felt sorry for her, though, because he knew
Sean would never appreciate her. Sean would be entertained by her
for a while, they'd hang out, go out, have a good time, why not?
She was there, he was there, they were man and woman, boy and
girl, being and nonbeing, nonbeing and being, self and other, other
and self, background and foreground, foreground and foreskin, and
everything else but something really special and wonderful.
One cold afternoon, the fact that he loved Tatyana more than
Shannon was disturbing to him. He saw in the warm light of two
o'clock that Shannon and he could understand each other. But that
was so boring. Tatyana was perfect, glowing, magic. She was a
luminous egg herself, whose shining nearly blinded him when he
looked at her dead on. Even when her clothes were sloppy and
loose, her breasts seemed about to pop out of them, leaping out at
him with love-words, radiating showers of multicolored dreamflesh.
Even though she'd never displayed him any special affection, her
voice trembled with a kind of warmth that promised him
everything. It was idiotic, he realized. But did that really matter?
The way she said "yeah," the charming contours of her expression,
counted for 100 times more than the depth and clear truth of
Shannon's soul. And for this he de-existed himself three times each
hour. But it didn't matter, he was always reborn. Shannon and Sean
retreated into Sean's bedroom and made love, with what dynamical
vectors he rarely even attempted to envision. The universe went on.
Love refused to conform itself to reason. Love and lust tangled up in
knots, mind and body two snakes swallowing one another's tails,
both coming off Medusa's head, and Medusa's head was the tip of his
penis, and his penis was coming off Tatyana's nipple, and her breasts
were leaping out at him as she leaned over him at work pointing at
something on the computer screen, meanwhile Shannon and Sean
were doing the wild thing, but could Shannon really ever get wild,
presumably at the moment of orgasm anyone can, however stiff and
restricted their being appears to be otherwise, that is the wonder of
the sex act, and the non-activity of love as well although this non-
activity did not appear to be manifested at all in the relationship of
Sean and Shannon, being rare indeed in the actual universe though
ridiculously everpresent in the seething cauldron of Eugene's
hyperactive brain.
He thought of his fictional character Krystof who was building an
ideal robotic woman. With everything he'd ever wanted, would
Krystof really be happy? He wasn't quite sure at all. Would the
perfect crystallized orgasm, obtained with the ideal robotic woman,
work Krystof up to such a pitch of cosmic ecstasy that he would cast
off his body and die, ascending to the demented heavens designed
by the insane little sister of God?
*
And then, one day at school
when our Eugene was nine
the teacher faced the class, grim,
and told them Ann Jeanne had died
She'd fallen down in the tub
and hit her head on the side
Words of consolation
Touched not his desolation
There was nOthing for him
Life progressed, cold and dim
He made other friends
but none did he let inside
the garden grove of his mind
His habit became to hide
In the winter he sAt there
alone on his bed
Just thinking and building
the world in his head
"What are you doing?"
-- He couldn't explain,
the big show was inside
among the folds of his brain
As he grew older (wiser?)
He lost the childish daze
But he never quite adjusted
to the world and its ways
He dreamed somewhere warmer
and purer in tone
Where wistful weird wondering
was always at home
And it all made him sick
People, the looks in their eyes
He tried to fit in angles of Catholic thighs
He grew bitter and shy promising love-pumping,
He wondered of others madness
How they did it, and why brilliant glimmers
of sweat
But he excelled in his studies
obtained his degree diamond
got a job in an office eyes
working like you and me
One day he was 23 -- !! --
How did THIS happen? How?
He was a human, alive --
He was here, he was now --
A body stuck in the world --
His garden withering within
To express what he felt
he couldn't even begin
No unhappier than most
Dating a girl now and then
Reading novels on weekends
Getting drunk with his friends
Impressing the boss
with long hours at work
and creative inventions
Why did he feel like a jerk?
Had Eugene become normal?
Not really, not quite
There still were strange glimmers
around him at night
Strange lusts, odd pretEnsions,
desires to exceed
all the boundaries of what
normal people should need
The flowers in his nonsense garden
grew weird and wild
as they'd been unattended
since he was a child
On occasion he thought he might
conquer the world!
But he quietly settled for a night
with a girl
friend, or curled up in bed
with a book by himself,
tending the world in his head
But one strange, most peculiar,
thought stayed in his mind
(One flower in his garden
stood tall, bright and vain)
It often occUrred to him
that one day he'd find
(Perhaps in a chat room,
Or commuting on the train)
a perfect match,
a true companion,
someOne he could brIng
into hIs secret garden
where they'd togEther sing
songs of nonsense and laughter
it was a stupid thought well
it was stupid, but still,
Tantalizing as hell
He'd shut out this crap,
And then suddenly -- SNAP!
the dumb delusion was back --
He would look at some girl
Some ordinary creature
living her life in the world
Walking dOwn the street, talking
or sitting, reading a book
He'd wonder,
did She give a magical look?
Did that quirk of expression
I saw in her mean
that she was seeing in ME
some kind of hint of a dream?
Is she my Angel,
my foretold and fabulous one?
He'd slap himself in the face --
too late! the thought had begun
His girlfriends were fine,
they never lasted too long
One had lasted a year
then he'd said something wrong
And his garden grew on,
wild and crazy and spastic
Vines expanding in knots,
stretching out like elastic
Flowers laughing and singing
in tones dark and dire
Till he could not ignore
The strange sound of this choir
*
Chaos! Sickness! Madness! Delirum!
Where is time in this story? At what angle?
Where is the perfect sense of mind?
How can we leap years to years, moments to moments, ideas to
ideas, patterns to patterns, sex acts to sex acts, lusts to loves and
loves to lusts, minds to minds to minds?
And what is the purpose at all?
What of representation, the other half of pattern? So, should the
nappies and beer be put close together in the store to facilitate
shopper convenience, insidiously, maniacally, with vast explosions of
orchidal lust, a representation is an entity that "stands for" another
entity. To talk about representation one must have three entities in
mind: This was discussed by several speakers and the results were
interesting.
Vines wrapped around the innards of your being. Does this mean
that men are changing more nappies? One thing has always puzzled
me: If stretched out sufficiently, could her labia be tied in a knot?
The entity A being represented, the entity B doing the representing,
and the entity C that recognizes B as a representation of A. Not just
one twist around each other that's easy but two, a complete
knot, perhaps a square knot, the only knot I remember from my
year in the Boy Scouts (alas, they never let us practice on vaginal
lips).
The recognition activity of C is a kind of transformation; in
mathematical lingo, should the nappies and beer be put close
together in the store to facilitate shopper convenience, wrapped in
the knot tied from her labia, made flexible with olive oil, we would
write C(B)=A. Thus, putting simplicity and representation, together,
the conclusion is that they had better buy what their partner needs
to be able to have patterns, one must have entities that can
transform entities into numbers ( to give simplicity judgements), and
one must have entities that transform entities into other entities (so
as to enable representation, instead of water). One winds up being
completely pickled, in Peircean terms.
Both simplicity and representation are Third both are relations.
Where is the other water? Simplicity is a relation between an entity
and a number, for purposes of order comparison. Where is the
other water? A representation is, obviously, a relation between the
representer and the represented. People buying beer and nappies
are mission oriented and they are not going to forget them, and
there is no increase in other purchases. So much for theory! Non-
delirious moments? Beer is the other water not. A pattern is a
relation between these two relations a simplicity relation and
representation relation linked not, not, or not, or not. He gave the
familiar example of emergent data links: between purchases of
diapers and beer. This was an early find of data mining supermarket
purchase data. Supermarkets world-wide note such correlations.
The question is, what do you do about it? Not necessarily as it turns
out, just that whenever either member of the family with young
kids goes, or far apart, so that people buying both will have to walk
across the store and see other things that they will then buy and
increase the stores' profit?
It's all really stupid. No one understands anything. The currents of
mind self-intersect and form odd whorls and eddies, fractals without
sufficient data points to confirm their fractal nature. Someone at
the conference had actually talked to the supermarket owners about
this and they said, yeah, we know all this, but it doesn't make any
difference. Moments connect, and disconnect, and divide
themselves by each other differentially, but representation pattern
simplicity emergence beer and diapers, they all rapidly dissolve in
the liquid luscious folds of her olive lunch skin.
*
And then one day, it happened
He couldn't believe it
He walked into a moment
and was frightened to leave it
Because, if he did,
he might not see her again
She looked like the One
His true lover and friend
whom he'd seen in his dreams
The perfect match for his soul
His hope rose and fluttered
Was it time to be whole?
Was it time for his garden
to grow forms new and sweet?
Or was it one more delusion
Yet another defeat?
*
Imagine the moment.
Working in a mid-sized software company, with 100 other
programmers, sitting at the computer hour after hour typing in
C++ code, writing design documents, building parts of a Website
for visualizing satellite data. Some interesting mathematical
transformations. A lot of debugging.
This is what the universe has come to after 14 billion years!
Plenty of acquaintances among his coworkers, of course, but no
close friends. An outstanding worker, he tended to keep to himself.
No one but him could churn out high-quality C++ code as fast as he
could. The other coders tended to be high-velocity hackers or slow-
as-molasses design gurus. Eugene could do it all. He understood the
nature of each problem immediately, and mapped it into program
code in his mind. It was just a matter of tapping it out on the
keyboard, which he did with phenomenal finger coordination 120
words a minute.
His last date had been about three weeks ago, with Marion, a friend
of James. It had been their fifth date, he wasn't that eager for
another. They'd slept together a couple times. She'd done a cool
sex move he'd nicknamed the French corkscrew twist. They'd seen a
movie, this last time, which neither of them had enjoyed very much.
He couldn't even remember the name.
yeah when she gives me
the French corkscrew twist
i just can't control it
i just can't resist
She'd actually called him last weekend, but there was too much
work. Anyway he was halfway through Madame Bovary, which
wasn't nearly as boring as he'd feared. Her twist was cool, but wasn't
quite enough.
And then Arnold dragged her into his cubicle.
Her. The perfect one.
The beautiful genie, fairy, angel, the one who'd haunted his dreams.
Not in this exact form, of course. The hallucinations walking
through his garden, parting the thorns, kissing the orchids,
spreading pixie dust around leading to new mutant beauties, had
looked a little bit different, he thought. But that was the inner
world, this was the outer one. You couldn't expect perfect identity.
"Hi Gene," said Arnold, "This is Tatyana, our new database specialist.
She'll be working with your group a bit. She just joined us
yesterday."
"Hi," she said, lips parting, white teeth smiling out, one of them
slightly chipped on the upper left side.
Her voice was every bit as melodious as he'd imagined, with a hint of
a sarcastic bite, and an element of hoarseness, as if several years ago
she'd smoked way too many cigarettes, or there were perhaps a
population of psychotic army ants running circles in her vocal
chords, or whatever, whatever or not.
Was it indeed so totally impermissible to throw her on the floor and
rip her clothes off? to pledge her his eternal love? to carry her off
to the moon and live with her in a geodesic bubble, appropriately
decorated?
Imagine the moment.
"Gene?" said Arnold. "Hello? Man, you're out there today."
"Oh, sorry," he said, shaking his head back and forth rapidly.
There you go. Make a bad first impression.
"Tatyana, I'm looking forward to working with you. Anything you
need, feel free to come by and ask, or just send me an e-mail. For
right now I think we've got our database stuff pretty well sorted out
here in the data analysis group, but when we restructure the code
next month we might need to revisit it."
"I'll see you around," she said.
Was that a wink she gave me? Or was it just my imagination?
You never know, you never know.
Imagine the moment.
*
Imagine a woman
No thIng and her,
yet
Young and yet old
she
Remembers,
forgets
On no knees she stoops down
as sOme gravestones will do
Names gone and
to whEn, where
Stoop down
and for whom?
Same stoop for all Idiots
vast vAsts apart
The lAst state
The fIrst state
The stAte of her heart
Much wOrse in vain
Less in vain
NEver to be
All gnaw to be naught
All walls blInding
to see
What were
skull to go?
Why erotic reActions?
The trial's going on,
Still unknown
the infrAction
No. Skull better worse.
What is left of skull.
Soft.
Worst now, why of all.
Skull not go.
Fallen off.
Into it still
the whole
what's left
Of soft.
Enough.
It's enough.
Sudden.
Nothing, you see
Nohow on
Somehow on
Somehow tempt me to be
Best if worse if
no farther
Worse if better
Or not
Said go on
On
Said gO on
Near the germ of it all
Bare breasts heaving gently
Love nipples
Wet skin
She loves me, she loves me!
Let the games now begin
Dimly seen,
never unseen
there's nothing to see
So-said void
So-missaid
Was it her?
Was it me?
Add others?
Add?
Never
Never till
if needs must
No, no
Nothing to thOse so far
She must go
Ooze on back to say
void here
Legs apart
Moving wet
No sadness
how good cOuld
never wOrk as you thought
First the body, she said
Touch my body
Exist
Touch my place there
and watch me
I'll shiver and twist
First the place now
the place now
A place
in your soul
I'm in now
You nEver will
gEt me
to go
Your flowers of need
lean their blooms
toward my spark
Your nothingness garden
is mine
Is it dark?
No, the body first
Nothing
All of old
Nothing new
Try the either
The other
What else will you do?
RemAins of thinking
where none
for the sOle sake of pain
Somehow up
Somehow stand
Somehow rise
through your brain
Was she something sUrreal?
Something bold?
Something new?
Was she beautiful, perfect,
something to aspIre to?
Was she vulgar and evil
and hateful and vain?
Did she writhe on your cock,
loving you as she came?
Pain of bones,
pain of bones
Nothing else
Never new
Pain of old Aching bones
Here's the place
Not to do
Was it me?
Not to be
Fear of you
Source unknown
Dim light source
Source unknown
Meremost minimum
No
Meremost too much
Much less
Meremost minimum
No
Put my hand up her dress
Feel the infinite
No
Feel the nothing
No
No
Pending worse still
Not so
*
Academic poetry about dimensionality.
Strange surreal beauty of the midrange luxury sedan, re-envisioned
as a twelve-dimensional subjective flower.
These codes enable you to get to the 255'th Sexual Millenium. But
they cannot be revealed. Large-breasted gorgeous women stalk
slowly, naked but for African masks, in darkened ancient rooms.
A bunch of the programmers went out to lunch together every day
often to the Chinese place across the street from the office, or to
the Burger King down the street. Usually Eugene skipped lunch and
sat at his desk working, grabbing something from the vending
machine if the hunger got intense.
But Tatyana, on her first day at work, joined the lunchtime crowd,
and so Eugene joined them too. A non-coincidence that Eugene
knew would be detected by the others, but he really didn't care.
Tatyana sat across from him at the table in the Chinese place, doing
ordinary things, eating her chop suey, drinking her ice tea, just
being an ordinary human organism in the ordinary human world,
and he was deluded that she was an angel-beast, a perfect being, a
spark of pure love.
He didn't understand why others couldn't see it her pure
perfection, her transcendence of the daily grind, her sheen, her
abundance of energy. She smiled and a ray of ethereal energy
tumbled through him, as if someone had punctured the surface of
space and time and revealed the raw truth beneath.
She took out a fat book and laid it on her lap while she ate, looking
down at it now and then.
"I don't mean to be rude" she said, noticing him looking at her.
His mind fumbled his beautiful love, she had spoken to him. What
could her words have meant? Rude, in what way?
Oh, she's reading a book. Words?
Are there words he's supposed to say now? Is there an appropriate
response?
"What are you reading?" he asked finally.
"Organic chemistry," she said. "Schoolwork. I'm finishing up my
bachelor's degree. Two more courses left. Organic chem, it's killing
me."
He perked up, suddenly in the conversation. "Oh yeah?
I used to know that stuff pretty well.
I've got a cool program on my computer at home, it's called
ChemSite.
It lets you draw any molecules in 3D
it's got the rules of chemistry built in.
You can find the minimum energy configuration
."
"Really? That's interesting."
"Want
to
come
by
and
see?"
"Can't you bring it by work?
"Mmmm. It only runs on Windows, not NT.
I can't run it on my office machine."
"Well, maybe I could come by some time. Where do you live?"
-- yeah babYYYY !!!
*
Dee DeeDEE, DeeDee DeeDEEDEE DeeDeeDEEEE
Dee DeeDEE, DeeDee DeeDEEDEE DeeDeeDEEEE
Dee DeeDEE, DeeDee DeeDEEDEE
Dee DeeDEE, DeeDee DeeDEEDEE
Dee DeeDEE, DeeDee DeeDEEDEE DeeDeeDEEEE
One! Two!
There's a 9 dimensional puzzle in your brain
There's a 9 dimensional puzzle in your brain
There's a 9 dimensional puzzle
There's a 9 dimensional puzzle
There's a 9 dimensional puzzle in your brain
Sitting in the Chinese lunch place
talking about chemistry
and work and whatever
with me and some other jokers
it's evident your mind
is orbiting somewhere
probably somewhere quite prosaic:
the smell of the air
the coldness of the room
the date you had last night
the novel you're reading
the texture of the peanuts in the food
bugs in the code you're writing
There's a 12 dimensional puzzle in your eye
There's a 12 dimensional puzzle in your eye
There's a 12 dimensional puzzle
Against which I would like to nuzzle
There's a 12 dimensional puzzle in your eye
But my ignorance is magic:
I can imagine you
considering the angle
between delicacy and madness
in zero dimensional space
or envisioning yourself
soaring through the sky
clad in muddy overalls
and a white lace hat and shoes
whispering rhymes in Spanish
to uncaring seagulls
There's a non-dimensional puzzle in your
There's a non-dimensional puzzle in your
There's a non-dimensional puzzle
That will get you into trouble
There's a non-dimensional puzzle in your
Is there a vortex
three inches behind your eyes
into which several galaxies output
their excess neutrinos
and the flux of the collective
unconscious registers itself
in colorful shapes wrapping themselves
around songs?
Most probably not
But does this illusion do me
any harm? It certainly makes the
conversation more interesting
And I hope so that the puzzle's never solved
Would be a shame to see
The mystery resolved
Yes I hope so that the puzzle's never solved
Would be a flying lying shame to see
The mystery resolved
The world is all illusion anyway
If all the crap were peeled away
we'd be left with one gigantic
donut hole
If I want to cluster
around the most beautiful illusions
what the fuck do you care?
If I could shrink you down to fourteen inches tall
And roll you in a taco, maybe
bounce you against the wall
If I could fling you like a star to outer space
All the pieces in the puzzle
They would fall right into place
All the problems in the universe
Would quickly be erased
If I could only wake up right inside
The dream that is your face
If I could only wake up right inside
your face
(A very ordinary kind of extraordinary place
A very ordinextraordinary place)
(return to start)
*
Some prose about Eugene romancing Tatyana without success,
the obsession etc.??
He sits by her at lunch each day, talks to her awkwardly sometimes,
smoothly sometimes,
understands her better in certain aspects
than she understands herself
becomes her champion at work
gets her what she needs
to do her job better -- What a bloody good citizen.
Fuck!
She comes by his place to check out ChemSite
and really does exactly that
He gives her a copy.
Politely, she invites him over to her place one Thursday after work
He hopes it's a date,
but finds seven of her friends there.
A bunch of friends over for dinner
An ordinary social gathering
He stays a little too long, till after the other guests have left,
winds up sitting on her bed with her
looking at photos she took a few years ago,
of dogs and phone booths mostly.
Why the obsession with phone booths?
Really weird, what the fuck, or fuck?
He leans over toward her suggestively as they sit together
on the bed, which creaks a bit when he moves,
but she doesn't lean back toward him at all,
if anything she moves away a bit,
and her rejection, slight as it is, stabs his soul
and stokes his imagination:
he sees her naked, splayed out on the bed,
bouncing up and down beneath him
to the melody of box spring creaking,
with appropriate music in the background
Miles Davis, Bitches Brew perhaps.
Yeaaaaahhhhh.
How much more forward could he get?
How could he make his wishes known?
Should he declare himself to her, proclaim his undying love?
Does he really have undying love?
Or maybe it'll die pretty soon, and he'll find another object
for his ridiculous obsession.
Is she really his Angel, the woman he hallucinated
in his nonsense garden,
his pure antediluvian dream?
Or is he just going off his rocker?
Fuck! Fucking fuck fuck fuck!
Finally he gets up the guts to ask her out.
He asks her to join him for dinner at his favorite Thai place,
on Saturday night.
Not after work, is the important point.
Not just a regular coworker thing.
Although, it could be misinterpreted as purely a friendly gesture,
just two friends getting together for the evening,
not a regular date (which is why
he has the guts to ask)
But she says no, she's busy.
He's not sure how to take it maybe she really is busy
So the next week he asks her again.
And she's busy again. Goddamnnit.
He starts to get the picture.
To him she's just another work acquaintance, a sort of friend,
another guy orbiting around her,
basking in the glow of her cheer charm beauty.
Whatever glories might await her in the nonsense groves
of his heart and mind
are completely undetected and irrelevant.
She's got enough to worry about besides
??
Should he force himself to forget her?
Or should he simply wait.
Maybe there's some natural maturation process
that has to occur in her mind,
at the end of which a window will open
enabling her soul to see out,
feel his glory
Maybe after she knows him for a while
his infinite merits will sink in.
Maybe, maybe, whatever, whatever.
He doesn't have any interest in other women.
She's the only one for him.
But fucking Patrick drags him out to a bar.
Patrick thinks he hasn't been laid in a while.
Patrick is right, of course.
Patrick wants him to pick up women.
Patrick is normal; Patrick is well-intentioned;
Patrick is forceful; Patrick is a fool.
And so, there they are in the bar, watching human beings suck down
beers and listen to dance music too loud, feel the beats and rhythms
shake their bones and put their minds to sleep.
And it's all so sickening, boring, useless. Tatyana is the only woman
in the world, the only one of any value.
And then it occurs to him, all of a sudden: his birthday is in three
weeks. He should hold a birthday party, and invite Tatyana. A
perfect way to invite her into his world. Invite her and maybe ten or
fifteen others. A small gathering. Perhaps a passionate birthday
kiss, the beginning of a new romance
.
*
And WHAT THE FUCK, then, what the fucking fuck. And why the fuck
should this be surprising? And why the fuck doesn't that bitch want
me? What the fuck is that bitch's problem? What the fuck is my
problem, actually? Why are the flowers of my wonderful garden
choking around my stupid neck? What is this fucking nonsense
anyway? Where is the order, pattern, perfection that I was
promised when I was born? Where is the strange beauty of the big-
brained beast, the wonderful symmetry of the universe, the
Hollywood happy ending, the return to the tonic note after
multitudinous wild deviations? What the fuck is the matter with this
place, this universe I've found myself in? Does everything always
have to suck so fucking bad?
Howl, vexation of love!
Fucking howl, howl, howl, howl, howl, howl!
Antediluvian lament, older than a million copulating trees and
orgasmic archaic brain segments leading to lusty emotional
attachments seething through one's life like snakes, breathing
power and passion and pain into otherwise repetitive days, causing
one's skin to stand up and fucking shriek, sing, yell, moan, howl,
howl, howl!
*
But the party turns out differently than he thought, of course.
Differently for the worse. Tatyana got really outrageously drunk and
wound up hanging all over Sean. Fucking Sean, of all people. And
Shannon became insanely jealous. Really, much too insanely jealous.
Why did she flirt with Sean? Why not in fact. She was drunk, he was
attractive. Shannon was so fucking ridiculous hanging all over him,
as if she had some kind of claim. He was just a kid, just a toy boy,
look at him standing there in his tight pants, look at those tight little
buns. Little Seany needs a spanking. He didn't give a shit one way or
the other. Shannon got held up coming back from the bathroom by
someone who wanted to talk to her. Sean was standing by himself
as if he was eager to dance. Eugene had cranked Sean's music up, his
dancy hip-hop, and everyone was jumping around. At least he
hadn't felt the need to inflict his Mahavishnu Orchestra or Kronos
Quartet on everyone. That weird freaky music he was always
listening to. She felt like dancing, moving, hopping, feeling the
tunes in her bones. Yeah. Sean danced in front of her like a million
other guys had, or at least a few hundred anyway. A slow song came
on. Something. Whatever. Pull him closer, yeah. Why not squeeze
that tight little bun now. His lips are small and hard but you know
he wants you. Fuck it. It's just a dance right?
Ok the song's over. See ya later Sean. Meanwhile what the fucking
hell eh yeah.
Shannon? What the fuck are you slapping me in the face for, stupid
bitch?
Sean? You're welcome to him. I danced with him, so fucking what
huh.
I kissed him? Did I kiss him? I guess you're right I did. OK. Look
I'll kiss who I want girl. I didn't mean anything. Where are you going
anyway?
Aw Jesus. Some people take things much too seriously. Don't be so
fucking upset. Man, I can hardly stand up. Don't make this another
I'm so really depressed thing. Look, get over it. Fuck, where did you
go? I need to sit down.
*
He stared at her, frozen --
darkness washed through his soul
His partner, his Angel,
The one who would make him whole
Was standing there, pressing
her flesh on his brother
All wrapped up in his arms,
looking lusty and sweet
Her nipples squashed on his chest
Humiliation, complete
She saw him, called "Eugene!"
Waved for him to come talk
A friendly look on her face
All lost in some swoony grace
He stood there not speaking
Legs cold,
He couldn't walk
He realized numbly
how stupid he'd been
Nursing along these delusions
-- She was queen, he was king
They were to rule the great Empire
of Idiot Light
Together, they would have EVERYthing
Future so bright
They'd both need pOlarized shades
Where had this stupid shit come from?
This diarrhea of brain?
An illness that she had none of
How could hE bE so fucked up
and stupid and vain
To think an angel like her
would want to deal with the pain
of the thorns of his garden
See the beauty of the blooms
winding past space and time
forming surrealist wombs
for new shapes, colors, motions
and melodies and lusts
This was his world and her world
feel it, taste it, she must!
But she didn't, the fact was
It was all a dumb thought
Just his stupid obsession
A fucking damn bunch of rot
He was a thing she should run from
A mutated disease
She didn't need him at all
How had he thought he could please
her -- Just look at her now, so warm,
light in his grip,
with her lips on his flesh
-- in her step, such a skip
Her breasts shOuld be on MY chest,
he thought,
inwardly screaming,
but I'm such a damn idiot,
endlessly dreaming
These stupid ASSholes like Sean
never Understand jack
They scoot thEir flesh around
and retreat and attack
Always grabbIng and moving things
Fucking, talking and screwing things
The women all love it --
just have no brain and no soul
and they'll come crawling at your feet
begging you "here's my hOle,
stick it in me," here's my LIFE,
snatch it now,
in your stupid damn limited world
you know how
I've got so much more IN me
but I'm dumb standing here
(while you're kissing her)
empty
demented with fear
Having a soul is a curse
Feeling, where does it get you?
InsAne and pathEtic
Why let these Assholes upset you,
Eugene -- FUCK these idiots!
they may as well be DEAD
She never was fOr you
She's got SHIT in her head
She doesn't understAnd,
we could make something REAL
She has no use for sOmeone
who knows how to feel
The weekend goes by,
he lies there in his bed
All full of delirious fury
But then Monday comes
Time to wake, time to work
He wakes up quite late,
has to hurry
*
BA BA BA BUM BA BUM CHEE
BA BA BA BUM BA BUM CHOO
BA BA BA BUM BA BUM CHEE
BA BA BA BOOM BOO BOO
WHAT THE FUCK YOUR PROBLEM GIRL
Looking at me like you're
too good for me
Sticking your chest out in that way
You know we all watching
your hips sway
smiling at everyone
touching 'em casually
filling 'em up
with freak electricity
I'm imagining your nipples
Brushing up on my cheek
Girl, you make me feel
So foolish and weak
But I got ten time more power
And nine times more strength
Than the stupid bloody boys
That you like to date
Maybe you don't like the
look of my face
I'll pick YOU up one day
Carry you away
Tell yOu all the things
that I would say
if I weren't so shy
If I weren't so fucking shy
I'd look you in the eye
and say
-- FUCK I don't know
what the fuck I'd fucking say
I'd say "Wake up girl! Here in the
crux of the day
We can break through the walls
And in the warm garden play
If I can just hear your voice
saying: Take me Away!"
No that's really quite dumb
I don't know what the fuck I'd say
I know, I'm not your type
Too smart, too fucking serious
Too sarcastic, non-plastic,
intermittently delirious
Too stupid to lean over girl
and kiss your puffy lips
What the fuck am I afraid of?
It's all such a mess of shit
Come WITH me to my island
Let's get shipwrecked you and me
You'd look awfully fucking awesome
Naked, splashing in the sea
Reefs of nonsense, seaweed
Drifting slowly in the surf,
Seagulls landing on the beach
Sweetheart, we're happy on the earth!
But FUCK it, it's ridiculous!!
Are you really worth this mess??
I could give you so much more girl
But I guess you prEfer less
You've got the mind, you've got the body girl
But do you got the SOUL?
Don't you fucking SEE, girl,
that I could play the role
of liberator, stimulator, mixer and fader
for the music of your heart,
But we'll never get a start
I guess I'm just too ugly girl
Cause elsewise I can't see
Why the fuck you keep on actin' like
you're too good for me
When the truth is really simple babe
And furthermore it's true
Why the fuck can't you fucking see
That I'm too fucking good for you
You may be cute and clever girl
But girl I got the power
to shrink a minute to a second
or expand it to an hour
Master of space and time,
my heart is deeper than the sea
My love is deeper than the bullshit
in Washington DC
My brain though quite insane
contains the world
in nonsense poetry
I've got the soft touch
that makes you feel too much
and rush to such
a peak that makes you freak --
I can string along words
in a way that's quite absurd
as you've just heard --
a crazy genius technique
*
Delirious whispers mysterious moments insidious fingertips.
What's that blues riff doing, in the center of my soul?
I can't make sense of anything. Dream eaters, poison gas, barrage,
leech life, lovely kiss, sky attack, transform. Bubble, dizzy punch,
spore, amnesia. Actions takable, percepts digestible, thoughts
cognizable. It all swarms through me quite inscrutably like alien
warfare shapes.
Rape the Nothing, it refuses to scream.
I know I have the whole universe within me. I can do anything, I can
see anything. I plunge deeper than others. I can build intelligent
machines, time travel devices, teleportation chambers. I've
penetrated to the very core of love and grabbed the red jewel at
the center, one bloody ring to rule them all, one ring to fucking bind
them -- One ring, one ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind
them Yeah!
But then realities shyness when talking to people you look in her
eyes and see the truth of connection but words fumble and tumble
and twist. She walks away with another, not understanding damn
fuck. You don't understand either. She's dressed in clothes
purchased at stores, she's speaking words heard on the radio. She's
an actual being; you thought she was an emanation of soul. What is
the source of the confusion?
And you too have disturbing real aspects. The beige cream you put
on your nose to partially obscure that huge pimple, the one with
thirty-seven heads and four elbows. Why should you really care
about emanations of pus from fatty glands in your skin? The stupid
jokes you tell, trying to amuse. And why not amuse, for Christ's
sake? What the fuck really is there? The numerical iterations you
run your mind through in the middle of sex, trying to keep yourself
from coming. The colorful pictures on your T-shirts. Bob Marley's
face streaming out, in the midst of tie-dyed whirls..
You thought you were an emanation of soul.
To others you are a body.
There's a vibrant crazy world, a world buzz mad underneath. A
world where love is lovely violent, and sex between molecules
cradles the earth. You see it, feel it, breathe it, looking into her
eyes, walking down along the street. You're in the other world beneath.
But no one else knows it. But they all really do. But they just won't
admit it. The universe is sick, sick, sick, obscuring its true nature
from itself almost obsessively. Is this how the universe was created?
There was the pure, all-seeing void, and then ba bing! Bing! Bing!
it decided to obscure itself from itself, and this decision, no, the
idea even, before the decision, accomplished the evil act, blindness
was born, reality created, and here the fuck we fucking are, you and me,
looking at each other through a dirty fucking window and for
moments seeing through, feeling through to the truth and love of
each other as surreality exists, but then the moments fade and we're
back again, we're merely bodies, bodies bodies, talking and making
love searching the brilliance that brings us beneath beyond.
*
"What's the difference between a bitch and a whore? "
"A whore sleeps with everybody at the party, and a bitch sleeps with
everybody at the party except you."
"What's the difference between love, true love, and showing off? "
"Spitting, swallowing, and gargling."
"What's the difference between the universe and my little finger?"
"Goat. Goat. Goat. Goat. Goat."
"What's the meaning of love?"
"Disaster, salvation, life, love, death. Spitting, swallowing,
gargling, whores, bitches, goats. Nothing. Skin. Shut up. Yeah right."
*
So WHAT THE FUCK
your problem girl
I simply cannot see
Why the fuck you keep on thinking
You're too fucking good for me
You're just too fucking beautiful
And it's so plainly fucking true
I'm fifty fucking billion times
Too fucking good for you
*
Eugene sits on the PATH train then
riding to work
Mad thoughts course like wind
through his brain
Look at all these damn jerks!
Look at these fucking jerks!
The world's An open sore
Feel the pain!
His thoughts run to music,
take tones dark and dire
punctuated by screams
Awake, yet filled with bad dreams
that run on much too long
Thoughts so right yet all wrong
It gets so damn fucking tired!
My mind is a joke, he thinks
My brain is a bust
Do I really love Tatyana,
or am I just full or lust?
The whole fucking world is a joke and a farce
It started a joke,
then somehow it got lost
For a moment he sees it all --
a big fuzzy dot
the whole world containing --
the whole messy lot --
It's all glowing and perfect
with infinite sides
A garden, in whose bushes
leprechauns hide
Whooda thunk bliss revealed
on a commuter train ride?
But no, it's all stupid SHIT
Tatyana just doesn't care
That asshole is running his hands through her hair
Fuck YOU, Tatyana
Fuck Everyone, shit
I don't care if you die now
I hope the damn train gets hIt
by a comet
I hope the whole fucking cIty gets squashed
What the FUCK's going on, man
Where did I get lost?
Fucking goddamn TatyAna,
I wish I was in bEd with you
I wish I was pouring
the contents of my hEad to you
Take off your shirt HONEY,
I'll lick your breasts like ice CREAM
I need you so girl,
you're my infinite dream
I see you there waiting
with a wonderful smile
A bouquet in your hand
By my garden beguiled
FUCK you bitch,
Fuck you
just fuck you to hell
I'd kIll you, if I didn't
Love you so well
Mad trails of thoughts
rolling down through his brain
Standing and staring
Going to work on the train
*
PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) rapid transit trains provide
service between New Jersey and New York City 24 hours per day,
seven days per week. The fare is $1.00. Children under 5 ride free.
Or so the story goes. In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human
beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies,
larcenies, arsons and last but not least I have committed sodomy on
more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things, I am not in
the least bit sorry. Or so the story goes. My conscience crawled up
its asshole and died; and that was the end of it, baby, baby, baby.
Revolution, evolution, devolution, lick my scrotum, add my totum,
run my weasel, it's a diesel, move my body, very oddly, undersize
me, realize me, take my soul now, dig a hole now, feed the one love,
what you're made of, why the big deal, turn the big wheel. Or,
perhaps, the love is not perfect. For assistance, call 1-800-FUCK-YOU.
A million dollars, doggie collars, you dress for goodies, I've got a
woody, I count to fifty, I think you're nifty, touch your skin now,
end to begin now, my tongue inside your navel, my mind's in plato's
cave, hell is just a kind of nothing, you're just a kind of nothing. For
more information, contact PATH at 1-800-234-PATH. . For maps of
individual PATH stations, do not fear your enemies. I do not mean
that large-scale lesbianism should be adopted, but simply that the
emphasis should be taken off male genitalia and replaced upon
human sexuality. The cunt must come into its own The worst they
can do is kill you. Do not fear friends. Revolution, evolution,
devolution, lick my scrotum, add my totum, run my weasel, it's a
diesel, move my body, very oddly, undersize me, realize me, take my
soul now, dig a hole now, feed the one love, what you're made of,
why the big deal, turn the big wheel. A million dollars, doggie
collars, you dress for goodies, I've got a woody, I count to fifty, I
think you're nifty, touch your skin now, end to begin now, my
tongue inside your navel, my mind's in plato's cave, hell is just a kind
of nothing, you're just a kind of nothing. Tell me again, baby, tell
me again. Do you love me? Do you really love me? Tell me again.
Do you really love me? Tell me again. Tell me a-fucking-gain. Your
beauty makes me wonder, is that a kind of thunder, is that a kind of
eyeball, is that the phone when you call, is that the voice you talk
with, are those the legs you walk with, are those the other people,
are those the minds that we will. Remember, at worst, they may
betray you. Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray,
but betrayal and murder exists because of their silent consent.
Overnight, weekday nights from 11 PM - 6 AM, and weekend nights
from 7:30 PM - 9 AM, We got tickled and started making up juicier
and juicier ones, ending with: "Shot Gun Homosexual Retarded
Marriage Performed by Crazed Psychic while Group Home Workers
Get Drunk and Laugh Their Asses Off." PATH operates two lines
(passengers traveling between Hoboken and the World Trade Center
must change trains at Grove Street): Holidays: Saturday/Sunday
schedules will be operated on New Year's Day, revolution, evolution,
devolution, lick my scrotum, add my totum, run my weasel, it's a
diesel, move my body, very oddly, undersize me, realize me, take my
soul now, dig a hole now, feed the one love, what you're made of,
why the big deal, turn the big wheel. Goose bumps, got lumps on
my head from where I banged it on the brick wall, not quite sure I'm
not dead, quiet desperation leaves you comfortably dumb, I can't
say it all cause my tongue is too numb. Julia comes from a mentally
ill family. Her father was paranoid schizophrenic, and beat her
mother nearly to death when Julia was 2. He was in and out of
mental hospitals continually. Her older sister, Cindy, is also
schizophrenic. A million dollars, doggie collars, you dress for
goodies, I've got a woody. Her mother is not mentally ill, but is
highly eccentric, unable to hold a job (she has not worked in 16
years), and lives in poverty. Julia and her mother have a very volatile
relationship due to their mutual mental instability. Your beauty
makes me wonder, is that a kind of thunder, is that a kind of eyeball,
is that the phone when you call. Presidents' Day, Memorial Day,
Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. A
special Saturday schedule is operated on Independence Day.
*
But work, he can't face
His mind's in the wrong place
Too loud the crazed voice
Overfull of this noise,
like a robot, no choice
he walked through the streets,
walked and walked,
walked and walked
walked for block after block
*
Tatyana stumbled home at 3 when the party was over and fell into
bed. In the morning she woke up and made some coffee. Then she
went into Shannon's room; the door was open a crack so she didn't
bother to knock. She had never seen a dead body before. Let alone
one belonging to a roommate and friend. The bottle of pills was
lying open next to her, she was slumped down on the bed
unmoving, like in a scene out of a movie.
She jumped on her and felt her pulse, immediately though even
before that her deadness was apparent. There was no breathing
going on. The heart wasn't beating either. No way noway nohow.
What the fuck was this about, about me kissing Sean, at Eugene's
stupid fucking party? It didn't mean anything of course. Anyway I
told her that. Something must have happened between them
afterwards. But she just seemed to walk right out. What the fuck,
what the FUCK, what the what THE FUCK!
Fucking hell. Breathe deep, deep, calm down. Thinking of myself in
this situation. I need to call an ambulance. Or the morgue? Or
what. Is she really fucking DEAD, Christ. I guess I should call Sean or
what, but.
Fucking fucking fucking fuck fuck fuck.
*
BA BA DA BING BA DA CHOO
BA BA DA BING BA DA CHOO
BA BA DA BING BA DA CHOO
BA BA DA BING BA DA CHOO
People sit on the train
Looking stupid and dead
A hundred billion eLECtrical cells in their head
Living with no understAnding
in worlds not expAnding
Biological Robots, motivated by branding
Waiting for HOLidays, full of vague IDiot rage,
how can you turn the next pAge,
when your brain is the BIRDcage
and it's gilded with FOOL's gold
How quickly we gEt old
We're thinking we BOUGHT our freedom
when the truth is we BEEN sold
Sold down the river
by our pErsonal hells --
networked eLECTrical cells --
Feel the cold shiver --
I got goose bumps,
got lumps on my head
from where I BANGed it on the brick wall
Not quite sure I'm not dead
Quiet desperAtion leaves you comfortably dumb
I can't say it all cUz my tOngue is too numb
Well I'm a strange deviAtion
some kind of psychic mutAtion
Now I've got off the trAin
I'm standing here at the stAtion
Time to head off to WORK
like a stupid ass JERK
Scribbling In my mind's NOTEbook
Words not Even HALF cooked
Is this some kind of conFUSion, deLUSion, ilLUSion
Bang my HEAD on the wall again,
get a conTUSion
Bleeding OUT like a faucet
I think I've FINally lost it
I no longer can
distinguish pleasure from PAIN
There's far too mAny dimEnsions
to stay with the SANE
Have I really gone crazy?
It's not at all hAzy
It's just so hard to proJECT into everyone's LANGuage
I look into your EYES and I just see the DAMage
The world was born out of LOVE
Way back beFORe time existed
The world was born out of LOVE
And then someHOW it got twisted
WRAPped all around its own ASShole in knots
DROWNed in cheap beer and mariNATed in snot
The GARden so pErfect and lOvely and SWEET
Was RIPped in six billion pieces,
Each one incompLETE
And each one with a nAme
And a body and HELL
Nonsense gArdens whose SICKNESS
We know all too well
There's no underSTANDing
It's at random exPANDing
There's no way to recEive
what it is I'm deMANDing
If perFECtion came to me
I'd be too small
to accept it
and that's why
there's NO HOPE at all
My secret GARden it's dYing
so could you leave me ALONE?
Take off your shirt HONEY,
I'll lick your breasts like ICE CREAM cones
I need delirious disTRACTion
Surrealist spicy reACTion
My trial's been going a WHILE
I still don't know the inFRACTion
I see through the WINdow
I know what we DON'T know
I saw a lady there WAITing
I saw the smIle on her fAce
Fingers undOing the lAce
On her nine dimensional LINgerie
I'll live to DREAM another day
She'll mesmerize me like SPACEtime
Isn't her flesh fine
I'd like to have her inside
This nonSENSE garden OF mine
DOZens of cOUSins of NOthing there bleeding
I don't know their nAmes
I can jUst feel their nEEding
As they ride on the PATH train
scorching down DIME lane
without a true thought in THEIR brain
the world feeding THEIR pain
PAPERS in their hands
Lusting for movie stars
Reading OF foreign lands
Sucking on SPORTS CARS
Lies of the century
Closing the soul's doors
And I am no bEtter
My blood is no wEtter
My shit is no swEEter
I'm as mad as a HATter
REALize EVERYthing,
where does it gEt you?
InsAne in your brAin
The truth will only upSET you
Better the IGnorant bliss
Drunk on your GURU's PISS
Listen to this
Ooh babe
Awash in the HIT OR miss
Ok,
I'm walking to WORK now
I'm less of a JERK now
All my strange cogiTATions
are only a quirk now
Expanding in EMPTY space,
the grace of the HUMAN race,
and all that I dreAM
is just a spArk in a DARK PLACE
The world was born out of LOVE
I'm just a tiny part Of it
Existing twisting reSIStance
You wanna make something of it?
Invisible BODY bags
surrounding the HUMAN drags
It really don't MATter
We're all the mad HATter
God-not GOT the EquAtion wrong
This song has gone ON too long
Some part of my HEART has an ART
that is FAR too strong
And I wish only THAT
I could look aHEAD to the day's end
Put the whole mess asIde and
curl up in my WARM BED
DisappEAR in the passion,
comPASSIONate romance
of your LIPS on my skin --
your NondiMENsional INstants
Who fucking CARES it's all
chance and machInery
I love you so baby
You're such EXcellent scEnery
With you in my garden
Everything would be SWEET
Never perfect but stIll
Moving toward the compLETE
But you AREn't mine --You're his --
I won't come home to YOU
I'll murder myself!!
But I won't, it's not true
Mad trails of thoughts
rolling down through my brain
Standing and staring
on the damn stupid PATH train
*
Some prose about anger, hate, frustration.
He doesn't want to feel it but
just like the rest of us
what real choice does he have?
Another soul stuck in a body,
wandering alone, sad and mad.
What he does, walking through the morning streets filled with
anger, is to walk into a cyber-cafι, create an anonymous Yahoo free
account, and tap out an e-mail. An e-mail of anger and hate? No, of
love. He taps out a love note to Tatyana, and signs it "You know
who."
youknowho999@yahoo.com
"Dear Tatyana," the damn fool writes,
"I'm writing down what I don't have the guts to say in person, shy
fool that I am. I'm madly, incredibly, tremendously in love with you.
All my life I've been imagining a woman like you, and now that I've
met you I can hardly believe my good luck. I get the feeling that you
realize my feelings and do NOT reciprocate them, but this is
important enough to me that I'm willing to make an ass of myself by
being explicit and making this declaration of love, which you of
course can feel free to delete and ignore. In the off chance that you
feel the same way as I do, but are just being shy in some way of your
own, in spite of your apparent outgoingness, perhaps this will spur
you to throw your arms around me and kiss me, or at least to agree
to go out on a date with me like you do with James. I'd give this
about a half of one percent chance, enough to justify the ridiculous
embarrassment that will be my lot in the other 99.5% of possible
universes. I know, I'm just a stupid romantic. In spite of the
rational side of brain, I believe in love destiny. I believe you're the one.
If you don't realize it, that's too bad I guess; the universe is a crappy place.
I know you like me, we're friends, blah blah blah. I like you too,
but it's much more than that. I know it sounds stupid, but I really
believe in my heart of hearts that every individual human soul is
incomplete. You and I have what we need to complete each others'
souls, to make each other whole. This stuff is hard to say because it
sounds so fucking trite, but there's a reason it's trite it's been
repeated so often because it has a fundamental human truth to it. A
fundamental human truth that we could experience you and me. If
you'd only say the word. Anyway I've typed enough garbage. You
can of course respond or not as you like."
He clicked SEND, and requested a return receipt, so he'd know if
she'd gotten it.
Then back out again to wander the streets. He felt as if he'd
accomplished something. Made an ass of himself, most likely. But at
least, he'd thrown his heart into the void, he'd been willing to
gamble, to make himself ridiculous in the hope of a potentially great
gain. No venture, no win, blah blah blah.
But still, goddamnit, fucking stupid bitch, you knew she was gonna
say no. She has no fucking interest in you that way, at all. You
know, I value you too much as a friend to fucking fuck you, and so
on and on like that. And anyway you don't really stir my soul at all.
Whatever treasures you have inside you well you can fucking keep.
Ad nausea infinitum.
*
BA CHOO BA BAPPA CHOO
BA CHOO BA BAPPA BAPPA CHOO
BA CHOO BA BAPPA CHOO
BA CHOO BA BAPPA BAPPA CHOO
I hate you fucking hate
What the fuck you doing
in my brain
I try to rip you out
But fucking asshole,
you remain
You make me scream
at people
Who ain't doin' nothin' wrong
Punch holes in walls
Kick doors in
And write nasty fucking songs
If I could fucking kill you
Hate
I really fucking would
Just get the fuck out Of me
hate
You ain't no fuckin' good
*
Shannon is found dead of an overdose. Tatyana is crushed, feels it's
her fault, suddenly quits her job and takes a friend's job offer back in
Seattle.
While preparing to leave, she sends an e-mail to Eugene explaining
that she doesn't love him and has to leave, is a bad person, etc.
Does anything else need to be said?
It's not a porno film, unfortunately.
Eugene, I thought about your note and how to respond to it a lot,
but now everything is different and I'm just going to say a few badly
thought out words. I'm wrapping things up here. As you know I quit
the company. I'm moving back to Seattle.
Eugene, I only wish I were a good enough person to reciprocate your
sentiments, which are sweet and wonderful and everything else that
I'm not. Unfortunately, I'm empty inside, Eugene. The person you
think you're in love with isn't even there. I killed my best friend for
no reason, just being drunk and thoughtless. I need to go away and
never return. It's been really good knowing you, but I just need to
go. I'm sorry. I really like you a lot, and if things were different
maybe something would have worked out between us, but I don't
have the kind of feelings you want me to have, and right now I'm
really not able to feel much at all, except like a real fucking bitch. I
wish you the best. Tatyana.
*
For weeks now each night
Eugene plod through the streets
Hurt, distraught, lost all hope
Of becoming complete
AvoidIng peoples' faces,
Staring down at the ground
Or maybe up at the sky
When a strange mood came round
Lift foot up, put foot down INSANE MOMENTS
On and on, nothing else
Then one night what was that?
On his arm, a touch felt
familiar but strange VOID EXPLOSION
somehow scared but alive
Then he heard a small voice --
which was NOT in his head --
"Excuse me," she said, NOT
"do you know where I could find NOT NOT
a train, the 4 or the 5?" NOT NOT
Dig under the ground, he thought,
just fucking die ...
But he pulled himself out
of the hell he was swimming in
and looked at her curiously --
she looked Useless, but, then again --
"Where do you want to go?"
he asked with a halt
"I need to get to Penn Station.
to get a train out to Jersey."
Something in her faint voice
reached into him in a way
he could not quantify
He looked her in the eye
"It's complicated, I'll walk you there,"
he said, barely breathing
She followed him quietly
He felt the darkness receding
*
The story of Eugene and Papaya Girl.
It's very simple, really.
He was walking through the street depressed, she stopped him and
asked directions to the train.
He gave her directions, they exchanged phone numbers, they dated,
they talked, they ate together, they fucked, they ate each other
together, they went out several times a week, and then she asked
him to move in with her. He was amazed how fast it had happened.
Had only four months gone by? Her actual name was Julia, but after
their first night of love he noticed that she tasted like papayas, and
he decided to call her Papaya Girl. She made no protest, she thought
it was kind of cute. She'd never had a nickname before. Had four
months gone by already? What difference did it make, really? Time
was an illusion in the Garden of Nonsense, time doesn't pass at all.
Time is another dimension like space, you can move about in it this
way and that, unless specific obstacles interfere. Time is just the
bogus name for your particular path hopping between the islands of
moments, in the vague sea of potential. And so on and on and on.
It bleeds the same of death. He didn't really have the heart to say
know. He loved her well enough, or didn't he? She certainly passed
the time. Excellent scenery. Strange beauty and all, and all. It was
going much too quickly. But she needed him so. She had to have
him there every night, she was lonely without him. Unlike Tatyana,
for example, who didn't care if he even breathed or not, except
insofar as he could help her on her career path. It was all a fucking
lump of shit. Except it wasn't so bad now was it. Papaya Girl was
cute enough, not as cute as Tatyana, but the way she posed for him
without her clothes on was really pretty damn fine. It was life in the
real world, the illusory garden fading like the nonsense it really was.
Things weren't so bad at all.
But should he move in with her, or not?
It wasn't an obvious decision.
He appealed to the leprechauns in his garden but they only smirked
and vanished.
He was all on his own, it seemed
And she didn't make the decision any easier, the way she threw her
naked self at him, begging him to make her feel all right. Her cunt,
he couldn't argue with.
The difficulty was the beautiful nonsense tucked away in the folds of
his soul.
She wanted him around all the time. He made her feel happier. She
was never all that happy, really. Three years ago she'd tried to
commit suicide, taken a whole bunch of pills. But then she could
find such joy, in odd moments, like when he was standing in the
shower with his eyes closed and she somehow sneaked up on him
and scared the fucking shit out of him. And standing on the street
corner, staring up at the sky. She understood mad moments.
They sat in a restaurant eating Chinese food. Always Chinese food, it
seemed, with him and his women. They talked about the logic of
life. She explained that her parents had consistently ignored her;
her older sister had been so much brighter, so much friendlier, so
much more athletic. Then her big sister had been hit by a truck. He
told her about Ann Jeanne, the love of his childhood, and her
untimely demise. After her sister had died, her parents hadn't
started to like her more, they had started to like her less, resenting
perhaps in the backs of their minds that she hadn't been the one to
die.
"My parents were perfectly OK," Eugene pointed out, "but it didn't
make much difference. I just went on and on and on, on my own
trajectory. They didn't screw me up much, they provided me with
food and water and shelter, but after the age of six or seven
probably not much else. Anyway," he said, "you're grown up now,
and your parents don't matter.
"Whether they ignored you or paid attention to you or thought you
were valuable or a total piece of shit, at this point it's really quite
irrelevant. You live in your own nonsense garden now, you build
your own psychic universe. That childhood stuff has only as much
value as you yourself decide to give it. You have to realize that no
one's valuation structure is absolute. Your parents didn't value you
as much as her, but what does it really matter. There's nothing
absolutely right about their view of the world. If you have any
sense, you'll choose a valuation scheme in which you're judged
valuable as fuck. And surround yourself with other people who
think you're worth a lot too. What the fuck else is there to do? I
think you're fantastic, I'm here, you're here, this is the moment, the
reality, so what does it matter what the people your parents were
fifteen years ago used to think, or what you think they used to
think?"
She reached over and kissed him thick lovely warm on the mouth.
"Eugene, you're such a sweetheart."
He helped her find her way to the train. He helped her get through
every day. And then he drove her nuts too, of course, of course, of
course. He pissed her off incredibly, for example, when she bitched
about someone at work, and he pointed out that it might not be
entirely their fault, that perhaps there were aspects of her behavior
and attitude that could use adjusting, things that she would admit in
other contexts but only when in the proper mood. But she was
already nuts, of course. He made her feel necessary. Is this how
relationships are composed is this the anatomy of love? Is this the
logic of existence? Alone in my garden of nonsense, extracting
passions and inspirations from the flowers that only I see, mapping
them into your universe, helping you muck through the days?
*
Debating his future
with Papaya Girl
he was torn with strange doubts
about the whole fucking world
What was right?
What was good?
What was real?
What was true?
Did he still love Tatyana?
What the fuck should he do?
Did he really love Papaya Girl?
Was his love the right kind?
Could she ever see the flowers
of his garden --
Was she blind?
She was NOT the one
he had seen in his dream
The image of woman
standing there holding out
her mutated bouquet
on that undefined day
in his garden so green
But she was here,
she was wild,
and she loved him it seemed
Should he push her aside
in favor of stupid dreams?
She needed him deeply
He helped her to live
With her he was valuable,
So much to give
*
I sit,
alone in my garden of nonsense,
impending doom awakening
I sit,
alone in my garden of nonsense,
dreaming delirious dreams
"Delirium" I use that word too much, but what does it really mean?
I sit,
alone in my garden of nonsense,
dreaming delirious dreams
*
And then a flash of white insight
dispelled the confusion
that had shot through his brain
made his world sour illusion
He understood, finally:
There's nothing that's real
There's nothing that's final
Nothing that we feel
Nothing that we think
And nothing that we do
Is more solid than dreams
Nothing is truly true
We're all expAnsions of nothing
Struggling to return
To get unity, harmony,
we endlessly yearn
And it's love and compassion
that bring us back home
Extend the soul to another
and truth becomes known
The mind's contradictions
will instantly melt
in the face of compassion
Love, honestly felt
Trite words,
baby formulas,
dull rEligious goo
"God is love," he thought wryly
"Amazing. It's true!"
*
"Truth? What is truth?"
It's all the same, it's different, it's different, it's actually the same
I understand nothing, I understand everything, I understand
everything, I understanding nothing
I sit alone and together, and together and alone, in my garden of my
nonsense, writing nonsense about my garden
And beautiful illusions seek me out, strange beauty of the big-
brained beast that I embody, but no more or less than any other
freaked out soul
The universe dements itself each instant, and that is the only true
tale.
Can love really cure the dementia, or can it merely palliate it a bit?
This is the ten-to-the-ninety-fifth particle question.
The answer is unknowable, of course. It resides in the flesh of her
thighs.
*
in all the cosmos
physical mental spiritual
technological
virtual
sociological
empirical delirious
tasting like chocolate
moving with dense erotic meaning
Through cities of plastic
traffic jams
deserts
Heaving oceans like breath
Mothers fathers
Chinese restaurants
Conditions of ecstasy
insight and
fury
Ice-covered pinnacles
Sour desolation
Car insurance playtime vibrating madness
war zone bottom line binary ternary
Equations that capture the logic of motion
and the order of things
Through swerve of sure, bend of bay,
twisting of woman,
There's only one thing that's important:
spark
act of kindness
Kind
to self, others,
things
Thrill peace
empty full balance
ignore it
mock it
sing it
embrace it
Enclose its luminous reality
in your thinking, sweating limbs
Exude it as you eat, mate, sleep,
move, talk, read, write, play, laugh,
dance, type, show off, elude,
fall down and get up
and fall down and get up
and fall down and get up again
where you are
there it is
it is
*
is this the way
to touch --
Who knows?
The dead plastic world
has no room for compassion
No dollar amount
is assignable to love
which mingles the profit and loss columns
irremediably
-- Perhaps even illegally
(sardonic laughter
by young men in business suits)
Love! (ha ha)
Walking down a New York street,
can I wrap my arms around a stranger
without being smacked in the face?
No?
Then what place does love have
in the realm of the body?
*
But a random touch could
lead to a friendship, a dalliance, a romantic
explosion
a lifetime of wonder and
bliss
Is love merely
statistically improbable? Life just an unlikely combination
of death particles, the beautiful look on your face when
I know that you want me
an emergence of the perfect and eternal from
the meaningless concatenation of particles in meaningless
four-dimensional spacetime?
Existence is an extreme condition of
the nonexistent
Look at me I touched your arm on the street
Look at me -- strange woman
it was I touched your arm on the street
Look at me another human being, another cosmos,
another stinking world
Look at me I howl for you silently, my internal howling precisely
the same as your own, as proved by the Pauli exclusion
principle applied to karmic surfaces of revolution
Look at me I exist, I breathe, I eat, I fuck, I run, I love, I talk,
I write far too fucking much nonsense garden when I have work
to be doing
Look at me I'm an asshole!
Look at me I'm an asshole!
Look at me I'm an asshole who repeats himself three times!
Look at me I'm a wonderful guy, a real sweetheart, the loveliest
guy in the world
Look at me I just might smack you in the face
Look at me Whatchoo lookin' at muthafucka?
Look at me garden of sweet nonsense teeming inside
Look at me -- and forget your family friends and lovers, children
grandparents job hobbies possessions addresses lives and lusts
and lies
Look at me, and remember, there is nothing but nothing, there is
something but something isn't something, there's only you
and me and you and we are not at all,
Look at me, I love you, I love you, I love you, hello I love you won't
you tell me your name, let me jump in your game, et cetera,
et cetera
Fuck you, you won't even look at me
Or maybe you will, maybe I'll ask you directions to the subway and
give you my phone number and you'll call me later and fuck me with
madness and I'll read you my poems and we'll live together for hours
or years and I'll hear all your secrets and soothe your stupid divine
sadness and all because I touched your arm in the street
random madness what the fuck, you know
*
Must a relationship based on desperate confusion be devoid of
passion?
Not hardly heh heh heh.
Eugene and Papaya Girl writhe not inconsiderably, approximately
every other night, seeking surreal salvation in the flowing of juices,
in the stimulation of nerves on skin.
This is by no means unusual.
Their apartment reeks of sex and old books and computers. No
flowers are evident.
This is by no means unusual.
This is by no means unusual at all.
The moon sets and rises, sets and rises, sets and rises, rises and sets,
and nobody pays a damn fucking bit of attention.
This is by no means unusual at all.
*
[Tra la la la]
kissing each small patch
of your fragrant soft skin
each piece a flavor unique
this is the way to begin
motions aren't made
of light
but can feel so
occasionally
Tracing my tongue
along the backs of your knees
and in the pits of your arms
My hands are eager to seize
your breasts, gently to squeeze --
a small nibble, a kiss,
a few licks, a few more
A few minutes like this
Then a few minutes more
Then I have to move on,
Other skin to explore
With one cheek in each palm
and your thighs splayed out wide
I'm ready to dive, girl --
Prepare for the ride!
I'll begin slowly, gently
Making orbits around
Tiny bites to your thighs
and your soft furry mound
Up and down in the cracks
between pussy and thigh
till your body relaxes,
your clit pushes high,
reaching, eager, for touch
but I won't feed it yet
Let's see you beg, baby --
how hot can you get?
Around again, teasing, till
greedy, you grasp
my hair, push my mouth
onto it, gasp,
it leaps up, crazy hungry,
caught in the rhythm it's found,
knowing now it'll come soon --
it's ready to pound --
It's hard to restrain you
Musical smacking sounds
As my tongue dashes out
and my tongue splashes in
I've got you now baby!
Feel that pussy spin!
Then relaxing and calming,
it barely can move
Still hungry, but now
in a quite different groove
I lift my head from your cunt,
grab with my hands your hips,
and pound my cock into
your wet, waiting lips
In and out out and in
it's a damn simple beat
You're scraping your toes
on the soles of my feet
as your clit rubs the bone
at the base of my cock
I feel the come rising
I'll give you a shock --
Sit up, don't be lazy
Come, sit on my lap
I'll lift you up and down
Nothing better than that
Lean back and I'll feast on
Your breasts jutting out
Turn over now, baby
this should make you shout
Wheee! Look at that baby!
Jesus your ass looks fine!
Flapping in, flapping out
As my cock keeps the time
If I reach my hand down I can
jiggle your clit
round and round as you pump
Whoa!!! Ouch!!! Slow down a bit!!
You want me to lie down?
Sweet!
You get on top
Keep going girl -- fuck me like crazy --
don't stop --
My sperm's gonna spurt soon --
I'm holding it back --
I'm timing the moment
for the final attack
God you're nuts this morning
I can't hold you on!!
If I let go your ass
you'll be flying off, gone
Up and down, in and out
Pounding down from above
You're a miracle, so fucking perfect
my love
Ooh yeah, here it comes --
One thrust, bigger than ever
I'm a force now, a primary force
like the weather --
Dance on my sperm baby!
Drown in my pleasure
Again now ooh yeah
hold on tight stay together --
Holy shit, there it goes
Now we lay side by side
My hand on the organ I just played
inside
Flaps of skin, fragrant juices
It was brilliant, but then
it's so sad that it's over
Wanna do it again?
*
He said, she said.
He fucked, she fucked.
He wrote, she wrote.
Was this the beginning of the universe, this primordial friction, this
communion of opposites, driving each other crazy in all ways?
Or is it just another illusion, another thread in the web of deceit?
Man and woman, man and woman, man and woman.
It's a better bet than the Big fucking Bang.
Anyhow, they pleased each other, and that's worth something, if
anything is, at any rate.
*
And keep in mind, obscenity is not protected by the First
Amendment, Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S. Ct. 2607 (1973), sale
or distribution of obscene material, $3,000 fine for a first offense,
and up to two years in jail and a $10,000 fine for a second or
subsequent should no longer be viewed as a victimless crime. It was
the voice of a young man in his late twenties whom I had counseled,
his penis was marred by small warts and he had a terrible time with
exhibitionism, approached people on a picnic in a park by dropping
on the path in front of them from a tree sans pants. There is
mounting evidence that sexually oriented businesses are, as
described earlier in this report, often associated with furthermore,
as discussed previously, when there is no prosecution of obscenity,
large cash profits prove that material is obscene, a prosecutor must
prove: (i) that the average person, applying contemporary
community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole,
appeals to the prurient interest in sex (the analytical procedures);
(ii) that the work depicts sexual conduct
in a patently offensive
manner; and (iii) that the work, taken as a whole, was also
promiscuous and so his wife was at her wits end and had all of it she
could take. Qua qua qua qua. Now, a couple years after his divorce,
he was calling me from way across the country with yet another sad
tale to tell. He had read in a magazine that it was fun and enhancing
to your relationship to "share" your mate with another man. It had
backfired on him when his girlfriend told him to go away because
she wanted to be with the other guy exclusively. He told me "It
wasn't at all like what they described in the magazine, it was
horrible!" To be sure, to be fucking sure. Prosecutors are generally
not aware that the cult of the prostitute is one of the me (sacred
treasures) given to the Sumerian goddess Inanna by her father Enki,
the god of wisdom. When Inanna takes the me back to the city of
Uruk in the boat of heaven, the people turn out in droves to cheer in
gratitude. A hymn to Inanna which describes the people of Sumer
parading before her says, "The male prostitutes comb their hair
before you. They decorate the napes of their necks with colored
scarves. They drape the cloak of the gods about their shoulders."
They include inadequate training in this specialized area of law,
attempts by defense attorneys to remove jurors who find
pornography offensive, the offering into evidence of polls and
surveys through expert testimony to prove tolerant, in the case such
as that of another young man I had counseled who first told me that
he had witnessed an occultic ritual murder. Alan E. Sears, former
executive director of the U.S. Attorney General's Commission on
Pornography has stated: "In a better world, virgins and novices
would probably resort to prostitutes who specialized in rituals of
initiation and education. A talented sex worker could introduce
brand new players to all of their sexual options, show them
appropriate ways to protect themselves from conception or disease,
and teach them the skills they need to please more experienced
partners. This is a sensible antidote to the traumatic rite of passage
that losing your cherry often is today."
Incandescent fragments of being, undulating lustily through my
brain like melting plastic.
Obscene? I don't understand where they come from thoughts,
turns of being, feelings, invisible thrusts and thrusts. Pieces of
others' minds, minds of others' pieces, words heard on the train or
at work or in childhood, not understood, filed away for future
madness. Everything you've ever said written or thought is here
somewhere in my brain, in the cosmic contradictionary, in the
cosmic cuntradictionary, tucked away, fucked away, sucked away,
understood away and stood under with umbrellas as it rains its
vacuous meaning thus watering the glorious lawns of the mansion of
my ever-raving soul.
You don't understand people don't understand no one ever
understands. Understanding is impossible. Mutual communication's
a farce. Our minds each have their own special languages.
Translation into spoken and written phrases is a form of ritual
murder. Although perhaps a sensible antidote, et cetera et cetera.
Humor value may be significant, but semantics is mangled, pulled
through the asshole of sacrifical goats, lost like a single drop of holy
water fallen into a toilet or onto the body of lovers cloaked in pain
and sweat.
You stare at these words not knowing, trying to pull the strands of
meaning out of the hideous mess. What the fuck was this goertzel
guy thinking? Why the fuck was he typing these words? How did
this twisted attempt at great literature find its way into my realm of
mind, with its known limitations, its perfections and courage and
fears? He himself, as you know, struggles endlessly with meaning.
With meaning and meaning and time. With women, and their
meaning. With his own lusts, delusions. Like any other being, but
with excessive introspection. Perhaps he has overly frequent sex,
and this addles his neurons. Perhaps he would be better off
restricting himself to technical work and not attempting to create
literature. But is he really creating literature, or just
balancing the equations of his mind? Forever seeking balance,
it can't be found, or found. The limitations of ordinary forms of
discourse, written and spoken, frustrate him, make him crazy sane.
He wants to cup her cheeks in his hands and transmit directly mind
to mind. To shout his weird thoughts to the universe through universal psychic
satellites. But what would the value be? Has he really solved various
puzzles, of value to the common man? Perhaps a few pieces of the
human enigma have been assembled in his notably productive and
creative yet disturbingly eccentric brain. Perhaps if we all could
broadcast our thoughts, through the fabled psychic satellite, of
which he wrote much in 1986 (qua qua qua), each of us would share
(la ti da) the sections of the puzzle we've put together, and we could
collectively formulate an attempt at piecing together the whole
damn whole. So mushy, lovey, dovey, love. The whole enchilada
burp of being. The solution to which is, inevitably, a big white Not.
But no, instead we shit our thoughts out through the toilet of
language.
But if it's all so ridiculous, so stupid and pointless, why contribute
to the mess with more text? Another inner compulsion, obviously,
ridiculously. The compulsion to obsess on women, the compulsion
to obsess on words. The compulsion to spend hours yanking ideas
from the collective chamber at the back of mind, pulling them into
the forms of conscious understanding, making them real and dead
and perfect, sharing them with others, forcing them through the
teeny tiny doors of other peoples' minds. Can we in fact rebuild the
universe into its virgin state, by typing out words on paper? It's
highly unlikely. But it's a piece of the puzzle. And every piece is
the puzzle. Inside the puzzle is a strange and beauty peace.
And then and then and then and then --
Here I sit, alone in the garden of my nonsense, waiting for
impossible unity, waiting for you to step into my cosmos and extend
to me a welcoming flower.
And then and then and then --
*
Listen to what my friend said to me on the phone the other day,
speaking a hundred words a second, voice all full of breathless
excitement:
"Listen! I think I've got a big lead for my novel. I think this is my
big break. The woman David is renting his Ha