George speaks: pause. Gloomy Ray speaks: salad. Ring. Hello. Hello. Best Schmaltz Herring. A spider and a man’s shoe are in a bottle. But the old ideal, freshly profaned, is now unnerved. Exhaustion, in either case, is never too far off. Federal law forbids sale or re-use of this bottle. I noticed you’re low on gas. (Thus Herzen’s claim: “Human development is a form of chronological unfairness.”) We are in Scorsese territory. Did I say Scorsese? The first day went okay but the second day Stravinsky became outraged and said, “What’s that screen doing there?” So they pull the screen away and there I am. He looks at me, “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Everybody got nervous and I said, “I don’t know.” There was a long pause. Then he said, “You can stay!” So that is my raison d’être. Whenever things happen I say, “Stravinsky said I could stay.” And here I am! Fuck you! So now that we have used the word fuck five times — this Lincoln Tunnel looks like a church. I urge you to look close failed to stop their burnt edge the surface is crud scrape black crepe mammal engineered ball nut wall hut most beautiful feel sparkly slime flakes of tiny fish shine powder scratched with elephant nails like ancient Egyptian television, Mrs Arp and Harpo Marx would squeeze wooden honks of squeal delight. I urge you I urge you again to walked up and down the room, and shook the whole house; for I was not myself. I could not stop my fury; words flew too fast to utter against the power of darkness: and I felt in myself power, that I thought, if he was present, that I could tear him to pieces; and should not have feared, had there been ten thousand men and devils before me. After this power ceased, I laid myself upon the bed, to compose myself for a little while. I soon was ordered to rise and write. The first words I penned, were, Then saw I in the Idea of Light, two great Fiery Wheels, with two more less. Which moved by them, that wrought uncessantly: as a Clockwork; having their Spring-motions: and from thence the Chrystalline Substance began to appear. Of which transparency, that which is called Wisdom’s Glass is made out. Then it was spoke in me, Behold and see in these Wheels, the whole foundation-work of the New Creation. For hereout will come that Spirit, who shall appear as a flash of Lightning, that will burn through Flesh and Bones, Rocks and Stones, that will be all at liberty. The fourth Wheel is the Chrystaline Pure Corporiety, in which this Divine Life flash will move it self conspicuously. So as now all four will be incessantly in their working power, when Wisdom’s Glassy Book shall be found in any one. Which is as a new organical Body, that hath all radical Powers, and Senses, as a rising Morning without Clouds; being as that Wheel, with Eyes fixed round about them, first one starfish was seen then a second was seen and when I saw a whole cluster I got excited and the waves splashed I had swum out and climbed out of the water and clambered around stooping looking close one starfish hanging its four legs droopy and one hanging-on leg, just there three tentacles or antennae to the rock others lay with their sexy parts hungry all the little antennae-tentacles squirming. The result is a double tension. First, a return to the problem of mediation, which, I’ve suggested, suggests that “full abstraction” does not easily resolve the problem of the “cultural”, which lacks the clarity of destitution and leveled “blankness”. This implies, if not the pedagogic in the “bad” sense indicated by Rancière, at least the difficulty of tracing culture as the mediation of abstraction and struggle, in the seeming massive presence of the one and the relative absence of the other. This links to the second tension, which is the invocation of “break and transformation” in the absence of the “classical” solution – the party or other form of embodied knowledge capable of “carrying” consciousness. Perhaps this is the double tension of the present moment, but, man, who knows. The call is as distinctive as a kazoo, nothing else sounds like it. You know it’s going to make you a nerd to follow it — the worst of all nerds, a kazoo nerd! — but you just have to go. Still, to be totally fair, there are a couple poems in the collection that arose directly out of Twitter musings, like the poem about Bambi and the poem about the hypnodomme. Hypnodommes are out in full force on Twitter for some reason — there’s one who tweets equally about hypnotizing men and going on pagan moose hunts out in the woods. Inspiration, it seems, is everywhere. How can everything done be a blinding light? What did we just do? Scratch arctic zero. It is precisely at the moment I can finally think everything and EZ not to mention EX that you jack everything up and onto-theological relapse, no matter how your ramp. Do we believe in signing away everything on a total market already installed in everything? Is that a bless? Is that in a bless? Does this release everything all over again? At that time Shariputra thought to himself, “It is almost noon. What are all these bodhisattvas going to eat?” Then Vimalakirti, knowing what was in his mind, said, “The Buddha preached the eight emancipations. You, sir, should undertake to practice them. Why be distracted by thoughts of eating when you are listening to the Law? If you want some-thing to eat, wait a moment. I will see that you get the sort of food you have never had before!” Vimalakirti then entered samadhi and, employing his transcendental powers, showed the great assembly a country called Many Fragrances, situated in a region high above, beyond Buddha lands as numerous as the sands of forty-two Ganges. The Buddha named Fragrance Accumulated was at that time present there. The fragrance of his country was finer than the fragrance of all the human and heavenly realms of the Buddha lands of the ten directions. In his land there was not even the term voice-hearer or pratyekabuddha, but only great bodhisattvas, pure and clean, for whom the Buddha preached the Law. All the inhabitants of his world built their halls and towers out of fragrances, strolled the fragrant ground; and had gardens all made of fragrances. Which is to say, the spray can has the Microsoft logo printed on it. You spray two squirts into the cup and breathe deeply. A desktop appears in the air before you, followed by an error message and instructions to try again. The error message consists of an image of Casper superimposed on the desktop. I don't remember eating that chicken. And what are we to make of the tall figure in the right background with the lum hat? Fat and hydrochloric acid. Formed quartet of bookbinders for playing of percussion music. We took refuge in the glass outhouse built especially for Hugh MacDiarmid to write in. If the hearse is rockin’, don’t come knockin’. Oil paint is the reason flesh was invented. And against all visible obstacles, something nice did happen. Here’s a dimpled ball, as you’d expect. Saint Sebastian is never shown being clubbed to death. A straw-filled plush monkey, fixed onto a canvas. Of course, few techniques are more exhausted than mere quotation, a quotation which stands in for thought. Saline drip. There is sickness in the rear carriage and the middle carriage, but not the front carriage. Death penalty / evolution theory / school uniforms. There goes Plan B. Noli me palpere. Noodles fried in human fat. Department of fecal studies. Hard bench of socks. Top that what’s-your-name ... Mina is justified like that. I’ll have what she was having, realizing her dream performance in “Fidelio.” (That’s how I found myself, without a helmet; I’m a yet hater.) This one fire ant graph took me nine minutes. This poses a problem: to claim the right to the city is, in effect, to claim a right to something that no longer exists (if it ever truly did). Furthermore, the right to the city is an empty signifier. Everything depends on who gets to fill it with meaning. The financiers and developers can claim it, and have every right to do so. But then so can the homeless and the sans-papiers. We inevitably have to confront the question of whose rights are being identified, while recognizing, as Marx puts it in Capital, or forget Marx, eighteen shacks have already been destroyed in Cato Crest, but the folks who live there are saying, ‘We will stay … we have nowhere else to go.’
[Note: Sources: Ray Johnson, Paper Snake; Ricky D’Ambrose, “Nostalgia”, at The Quarterly Conversation 36; Charlemagne Palestine, and Steve Dalachinsky, quoted in Dalachinsky’s “Charlemagne Palestine”, at BOMB 128; JBR; Ray Johnson, “Valley of the Small Dead Elephants”, letter to Ann ??, 10 Aug 1967, in Not Nothing: Selected Writings of Ray Johnson, 1954-1994 (ed. Elizabeth Zuba); Joanna Southcott, Letters, and Communications of Joanna Southcott, the Prophetess of Exeter, quoted in Jerome Rothenberg, “Outside & Subterranean Poems, a Mini-Anthology in Progress (63): Joanna Southcott (1750-1814), ‘At the time the horror of the devil was upon me, I felt I could not bear my existence: therefore I desired Mrs. Underwood to take away every knife out of the room …’”, at Poems and Poetics, 25 Jun 014; Jane Lead, A Fountain of Gardens: Volume II: Part III, at The Third Testament; Benjamin Noys, “Separation, Fusion, Mediation: Urgency and Abstraction in the Present Moment”, at Academia.edu; JBR; Patricia Lockwood, quoted in Aaron Belz, “Six Questions for Patricia Lockwood”, at St Louis Magazine, 25 Jun 014; Jonty Tiplady, “Timidity around use of baby photos, maintain anonymity at some costs”, at Trillionaires, 26 Jun 014; Vimalakirti Sutra (tr. Burton Watson), at lirs*ru; JBR; Peter Manson, “Selections from ‘Adjunct: an Undigest’”, at Peter Manson; Jack Kimball, “Yet Mina Loy abandoned her family …”, at Pantaloons, 26 Jun 014; David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the right to the City to the Urban Revolution, at Abahlali baseMjondolo (Home of the Abhlali baseMjondolo Shackdwellers Movement South Africa); JBR; Abahlali baseMjondolo]
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