On the bus yesterday I met a hobo by the name of James Cromwell Stearns or alium, something in that vein. There he was, bag-in-hand--Colt therein, forty ways to assuage his weariness. He struck up a conversation with Roberto, an ex-army man lacking lower teeth (retaining only hounds), far too compromised to lay claim to Hellenic Formalism. I must say, James found Roberto quite distateful; my expectation of his expectoration mounted with his threats to grace the Spaniard with the same. The full carriage rattled on silent, rapt to their salvos yet uncaring. But a revelation (more apocryphal, but as evocative as John's) averted apocalypse; they were, as James said, brothers-in-arms. Army and National Guard! The great gulf of ethnic hate which rended their clattering jaws was bridged in a moment by an idea precious enough to break all bonds of enmity. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Roberto reintroduced himself to his new compadre as Robert; James sublimated into Jaime; the two became fast friends and struck up a discourse on the encircling hounds who they, by their valor, had driven off. Through men like them the veil endures. As they conversed, a woman of fading charms and slackening face escaped her unfortunate placing between them, leaving the platonic lovers to rejoice in freedom.
Tragedy marred that day. Robert had to disembark, leaving Jaime (the miracle passes; James again) no outlet but your self-same flawed narrator. He tells me his quest: a search for a lost loved one, a son he cannot find. But the heartfelt plea is duplicitous in its irony; the drunk man shows me smiling a picture of a Costa Rican sloth he tore from a magazine, one of several identical images he bears. For sloths, being a sloth is okay (opines James), but not for man. The pallor in his eyes precludes ignorance of his words' import. A wandering nous strays to the Lyceum, and James regaled me with tales of his noble father's alma mater (alma mater virumque cano; broken meters, sour wordplay) which the son sought in heart alone, not deed. Man precludes himself from paradise's open gates. His skills were all pro patria; a sharpshooter, straight as an arrow (perchance to dream). That route in living lost, he had found a true friend, an ever-present intervener less intravenous than his other joys). His last candle, lit for Messiah. He quoted Solomon's Proverbs: laughter cures all ills, a salvific panacea (so much for sola fide). I questioned his textuality, and he referred me to the font and source (Dasani: replenish the source within). Sola scriptura. That at least pleased me. I've yet to confirm. But, like the lost visage of Robert, James vanished forever by destiny's inscrutable hand, and I alighted at Bleecker.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Coriander and Thyme
Churn the mortar and pestle. The lies lie ever at the root, all-consuming. Have you ever driven someone to tear away their facade? Grind away the mosaics. Break a man's law. Hidden truth beneath the fallacious vault of rainbows. You cannot but wash a man clean. A perpetual intermittent scouring shall lay plain the tabula non rasa of the nascent persona non grata. The duality of the false dichotomy uncovered by your wicked archaeology is utterly destructive. Do not bring your compatriots to the last dark. Jack Horner's wisdom waxed at terrestrial expense. Shofar! Shofar! Victory sprouts without exception from deceit, and thus is tarnished as soon as made. Jericho is the oldest city in the world.
No man eschews a glamour so easily maintained. Regnant duplicitousness entombs the shackled pneuma. Whether Amontillado, Antigone, or anchorites lie within, that wall's assiduous preservation precludes any subterranean yearning for annihilation. Pure-hearted Amytis (tritely, a true Medea) lived within the endless fathoms of the antelapsarian primal forest which denied civilization, its progenitor, she its captor. But the earth's own anger cracked this antique splendor, broke a man's facade, leaving little room for wonder. And that's all there is.
No man eschews a glamour so easily maintained. Regnant duplicitousness entombs the shackled pneuma. Whether Amontillado, Antigone, or anchorites lie within, that wall's assiduous preservation precludes any subterranean yearning for annihilation. Pure-hearted Amytis (tritely, a true Medea) lived within the endless fathoms of the antelapsarian primal forest which denied civilization, its progenitor, she its captor. But the earth's own anger cracked this antique splendor, broke a man's facade, leaving little room for wonder. And that's all there is.
Monday, June 30, 2008
This Side of Utica: Act I
They sat in silence, side by side in the motorcar as it sped through the empty streets of downtown Utica. With eyes fixed on the pavement ahead, his left hand groped through his breast pocket while his right held steadfast against the wheel. A white package of cigarettes emerged from the folds of fabric; one cigarette clenched between his teeth was lit in a single, fluid motion. He inhaled.
"Put it out," she said. Her voice was hollow.
For ad instant he allowed his eyes to stray over the passenger seat, observing in silence the woman who sat beside him. Her dark tresses held up by pins that were the fashion had begun to fall loose and lay across her shoulders, her head, turned slightly to the right came to rest against her open palm and her eyes, heavily lidded, tok in the last breaths of the sun as it retreated behind the decrepit skyline. It had begun to rain.
"Put it out," she repeated, this time her throat rang with a hint of exasperation.
He inhaled again. Then ever so casually flicking the cigarette out the open window he watched in the rear view mirror as the ember faded into the growing night. With gaze once again fixed on the road his foot weighed heavily against the accelerator while his right hand came to rest on hers. It rained harder. The city shrank.
"Put it out," she said. Her voice was hollow.
For ad instant he allowed his eyes to stray over the passenger seat, observing in silence the woman who sat beside him. Her dark tresses held up by pins that were the fashion had begun to fall loose and lay across her shoulders, her head, turned slightly to the right came to rest against her open palm and her eyes, heavily lidded, tok in the last breaths of the sun as it retreated behind the decrepit skyline. It had begun to rain.
"Put it out," she repeated, this time her throat rang with a hint of exasperation.
He inhaled again. Then ever so casually flicking the cigarette out the open window he watched in the rear view mirror as the ember faded into the growing night. With gaze once again fixed on the road his foot weighed heavily against the accelerator while his right hand came to rest on hers. It rained harder. The city shrank.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Genessee Genesis, Pt. 2
Jacobus van der Hoeken, after the departure of his wife, travelled west from Defreetsville to the isolated environs of what we would now call Utica. Here, he learned from the natives of the Oneida tribe valuable tricks of the trade, so to speak. It was here that he earnestly adopted the surname of Genessee and met his new wife, Ilse de Berg, a voluptuous Dutch maiden captured by the Indians and sold to van der Hoeken (Genessee) for a bushel of maize. Jacobus built a farm on the corner of what we would now call Bleeker Street, then a maze of deciduous trees with each acting as willful New World obscurantist for our would-be patroon. Repressed in nature, Jacobus turned to textiles. Yes, textiles! He was a man far ahead of his times. He needed no Industrial Revolution. His farm became his factory, and his son Ezekial soon became his farmer, transforming the virginal soil into a proto-Community Garden.
The year was 1700, and permanent residence in Utica was not to occur for another 74 years if you believe the all too misleading yet popular historians. Jacobus moved around the area, mapping the terrain and swimming in the rivers. He had found a joy, as it were. Yet, when he contracted scarlet fever at the age of 50 in 1711 he could do nothing but sink into the inexorable abyss of death. His body flew to the shades as the Mowhawk river still flies canal-ward to Albany then sea-ward down the Hudson past the world's biggest and greatest town once known as New Amsterdam. Inscrutable to the last, Jacobus left a will and a manual for Ezekial. The will promised his estate in its entirety if Ezekial eschew farming, marry an Oneida woman, and learn the textile trade secrets found in the manual...
The year was 1700, and permanent residence in Utica was not to occur for another 74 years if you believe the all too misleading yet popular historians. Jacobus moved around the area, mapping the terrain and swimming in the rivers. He had found a joy, as it were. Yet, when he contracted scarlet fever at the age of 50 in 1711 he could do nothing but sink into the inexorable abyss of death. His body flew to the shades as the Mowhawk river still flies canal-ward to Albany then sea-ward down the Hudson past the world's biggest and greatest town once known as New Amsterdam. Inscrutable to the last, Jacobus left a will and a manual for Ezekial. The will promised his estate in its entirety if Ezekial eschew farming, marry an Oneida woman, and learn the textile trade secrets found in the manual...
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Going Away
A brief post this time, I promise. This particular point is not a grand pronouncement or revelation. Rather, it's something very obvious to everyone already. I am feeling very sentimental. Tonight for the first time in a while.
Any given place is meaningless. Utica has about 25,000 households. So many of those houses and homes are virtually identical. Levittowns, suburban sprawl, mass-produced structures. Drive past them, fly over them with disdain. Each one is someone's home, and to them it's not the same. The same for cities. Utica is little different in kind from Albany or Scranton or Plattsburgh or even larger cities, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Columbus. It is not the history of these cities that make them special, not their economies or monuments or landmarks. Only when you leave and become bound by the walls of different gates can you see your lover's veil from without, its true beauty hidden, but not to you. Never to you.
Any given place is meaningless. Utica has about 25,000 households. So many of those houses and homes are virtually identical. Levittowns, suburban sprawl, mass-produced structures. Drive past them, fly over them with disdain. Each one is someone's home, and to them it's not the same. The same for cities. Utica is little different in kind from Albany or Scranton or Plattsburgh or even larger cities, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Columbus. It is not the history of these cities that make them special, not their economies or monuments or landmarks. Only when you leave and become bound by the walls of different gates can you see your lover's veil from without, its true beauty hidden, but not to you. Never to you.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Utica and the Ishtar Gate
Only the entirely desensitized can resist the inexorable drag of the urban lodestones which scatter the globe. Civilization saw its first fruits behind the cedar doors of Ishtar Gate, adorned with the emblem of the aurochs, for we shall never forget our roots. Bulls and dragons stood there too to protect the city. So even today. The 1930s saw the fertility goddess take up her guard again: the century's foe drew up the gate, a mockery in its perfect simulacrum, to herald the new dawn they darkly foreboded.
The Gate's polarizing power has drawn more and more to look on its glory: one person out of two lives in the shade it brought us. But since time out of mind, the covenant the Gate made with us seems less than sacrosanct.
The Gate brought teeming multitudes of the eager to Utica in the 19th century; they poured down the Processional Way, the Erie Canal, and found in truth the promise of aurochs, bull, and dragon fulfilled. Warp and weft, but by machine, and for the benefit of the entire land. They made colors never before seen by man, not from snails or berries but from purer and more vibrant substances never seen alone in nature. They made for themselves the tools the hand needed to earn its ease... manufacturing! Its aim, its own obsolescence, achieved, the machines worked for man and Utica flourished. In the 1920s, Utica was the radio capital of the world. The martial might of General Electric propelled the city to its zenith; here, the distance that had so long vanquished man became prey.
Two men with radios are side by side. Beyond the Gate's wildest dreams, Utica made possible for the first time the even yet unrealized reversal of Babel. Through pride and joy they tore turgid Nebuchadnezzar from his alabaster sepulchre (but his stink will still infect the world until we seal the door of his mausoleum forever).
But the Gate is a relic as forgotten as its city and a thousand others: Ur, Babylon, Seleucia, Ctesiphon, someday Baghdad; all once the largest city in the world, the latest is bound in manacles, but may yet evade its coup de grace: Ishtar's fickle bounty gives the lie to her open loins. Utica's lodestone is a grass-covered rock, infused with as great a power as that half-hearted image. Most of the people know. They leave. Piece by piece, they take the aurochs and bulls and dragons with them, until not even cows remain. But still some come to Utica, drawn by the Gate's vestigial visage and the need to fulfill that covenant, the same passion that made Babel rise.
The Gate's polarizing power has drawn more and more to look on its glory: one person out of two lives in the shade it brought us. But since time out of mind, the covenant the Gate made with us seems less than sacrosanct.
The Gate brought teeming multitudes of the eager to Utica in the 19th century; they poured down the Processional Way, the Erie Canal, and found in truth the promise of aurochs, bull, and dragon fulfilled. Warp and weft, but by machine, and for the benefit of the entire land. They made colors never before seen by man, not from snails or berries but from purer and more vibrant substances never seen alone in nature. They made for themselves the tools the hand needed to earn its ease... manufacturing! Its aim, its own obsolescence, achieved, the machines worked for man and Utica flourished. In the 1920s, Utica was the radio capital of the world. The martial might of General Electric propelled the city to its zenith; here, the distance that had so long vanquished man became prey.
Two men with radios are side by side. Beyond the Gate's wildest dreams, Utica made possible for the first time the even yet unrealized reversal of Babel. Through pride and joy they tore turgid Nebuchadnezzar from his alabaster sepulchre (but his stink will still infect the world until we seal the door of his mausoleum forever).
But the Gate is a relic as forgotten as its city and a thousand others: Ur, Babylon, Seleucia, Ctesiphon, someday Baghdad; all once the largest city in the world, the latest is bound in manacles, but may yet evade its coup de grace: Ishtar's fickle bounty gives the lie to her open loins. Utica's lodestone is a grass-covered rock, infused with as great a power as that half-hearted image. Most of the people know. They leave. Piece by piece, they take the aurochs and bulls and dragons with them, until not even cows remain. But still some come to Utica, drawn by the Gate's vestigial visage and the need to fulfill that covenant, the same passion that made Babel rise.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
The Native Sadism of Alfred Kinsey and the Mama-Papa Taxonomy Reports
What, no
other activity? Polonski is,
yes, no longer.
Tits, boobs,
big tits, huge tits, small tits, tiny tits, nice tits--
tons of tits,
Most were
classified, systematic, with a mixed diet
and cream floating
On top.
A robust picture is best restricted,
sometimes separated, shifting
Temperate forests
where great-bellied elegant-winged
chickadees discuss relatives
In claves.
The feeling, charge of rhythm, her feet against
the bed, hips
Squeezing him
relaxes desire, a pillow for Aquinas, or
"the serpent manners"
That explain
the available data, are not
slowing the angle
Or easing
the advantage your Persian slippers sense
simulating the clitoris.
Psychological contact,
that lively little she-devil, a common
ancestor in arms,
Nesting in
the aspect of focus, for the first
time is chosen.
Virgin hand
in range expansion suggests a nomenclature, since there
are no answers.
other activity? Polonski is,
yes, no longer.
Tits, boobs,
big tits, huge tits, small tits, tiny tits, nice tits--
tons of tits,
Most were
classified, systematic, with a mixed diet
and cream floating
On top.
A robust picture is best restricted,
sometimes separated, shifting
Temperate forests
where great-bellied elegant-winged
chickadees discuss relatives
In claves.
The feeling, charge of rhythm, her feet against
the bed, hips
Squeezing him
relaxes desire, a pillow for Aquinas, or
"the serpent manners"
That explain
the available data, are not
slowing the angle
Or easing
the advantage your Persian slippers sense
simulating the clitoris.
Psychological contact,
that lively little she-devil, a common
ancestor in arms,
Nesting in
the aspect of focus, for the first
time is chosen.
Virgin hand
in range expansion suggests a nomenclature, since there
are no answers.
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