At that exact moment
Theseus, a tiny male spider, enters a tri-level construction:
look down through the poem, you can see the labyrinth.
Look down through the labyrinth, you can see the spider-centered web.
Coatlicue
Bud Powell
César Vallejo
The bird-headed shaman
You know you can actually – not metaphorically – suffer an actual – not metaphorical – broken heart. It’s called Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. And it’s named after an octopus trap. “In patients with the most clinically severe spectrum of Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, regional left ventricle systolic and diastolic deformation abnormalities persist beyond the acute event [which is usually a high stress event, most commonly the loss of a loved one], despite normalization of global LV ejection fraction and size. In addition, although myocardial edema partly subsides, a process of global microscopic fibrosis develops in its place ...” Which reminds me of how, thirty-five years ago Terry Erwin conducted an experiment to count insect species. Using an insecticide “fog”, he managed to extract all the small living things in the canopies of 19 individuals of one species of tropical tree, Luehea seemannii, in the rainforest of Panama. He recorded about 1,200 separate species, nearly all of them coleoptera (beetles) and many new to science; and he estimated that 163 of these would be found on Luehea seemannii only. He calculated that as there are about 50,000 species of tropical tree, if that figure of 163 was typical for all the other trees, there would be more than eight million species, just of beetles, in the tropical rainforest canopy; and as beetles make up about 40% of all the arthropods, the grouping that contains the insects and the other creepy-crawlies from spiders to millipedes, the total number of such species in the canopy might be 20 million; and as he estimated the canopy fauna to be separate from, and twice as rich as, the forest floor, for the tropical forest as a whole the number of species might be 30 million. It was one of those extraordinary calculations, like Edwin Hubble’s of the true size of the universe ... ok, now couple this with the current collapse in insect numbers in Germany (since late 80s the flying insects are down 75%) ... and ask yourself: Does it matter? If I have to answer that for you you’re reading the wrong ethnography, my friend. Then
I entered a cavern in which a queen sat on a throne—
a golden woman, metallic woman, in black-yarn wig & gold crown,
kohl-outlined eyes The queen was bowed to by white robed
figures; the floor before the throne was strewn with plastic
petals As I watched her she grew larger, grew taller & also
fatter— expanded like a balloon Until with a loud bang she
exploded, disappeared Her courtiers vanished into air & Where
the throne had been, sat a woman, on the ground, weaving straw into
a basket I approached her and sat down then some more things happened
I realized I had become the basket then some more things happened
when the basket was completed I became my human self again, you will have to
imagine all the quotation marks the rhythmic notations I have omitted
Let’s look at a few examples. Nietzsche was a physically weak, sickly man. Is one to deduce from this that The Birth of Tragedy is the wincing of a wasted loser? Tolstoy never had financial burdens. He didn’t know what it means to put bread on the table by working. He lived the life of a petite bourgeois man or, rather, a feudal lord. Is one to deduce from this that Resurrection is a feudalizing work? Of course not. An alchemical analysis of a vegetal substance would likewise establish a similar biological phenomenon in the tree. The Ninth Symphony was humanly born key by key from the law of Mariotee, you know. Good night, Mr. Pirandello ... There you have Bill, Chaplin’s white dog, howling outside the gate of the dressing room waiting for his owner. The Tramp has just come out with a bag over his shoulder, and he heads off to the gold rush in Alaska. Bill, who hasn’t recognized the Tramp as Chaplin, will wait for him at the gate for an entire year, whereupon the pilgrim returns to the dressing room, puts on the millionaire’s clothes, and leaves reincarnated as the mastiff’s owner. Bill licks his substitute gloves, joyfully recognizing him ... Good morning, Mr. Unamuno!
90th Ave, beautifully remodeled
55th Ave, a bungalow ready for your move-in
23rd Ave, originally built as an ammunition box factory during World War II
dot dot dot
I found myself again
found myself astray
struggling, obscured
I woke in wonder
in night sweats
within a forest dark
within 30 days
I found that I had strayed into The Forest, an American horror film, The Forest,
a survival video game, The Forest, a plantation
I woke in wonder in literature sunless and dusky—an 1871 play, a 1903 novel—
The Forest
I was eating a bagel, hand-rolled
boiled in honey water, baked in a wood fired oven
Montreal-style
either that, or I was eating an oyster
all along the wall
a ladder
I found myself again
climbing
through a night-dark wood, wellbutrin
there were no good choices
if you really are an empath like you claim
says Jake or Fiona
your
imaginary
orb
of
protection
will make you look one environmental pressure older
than
oh
I don’t know
Let’s say “The superdense gene puddle”
Let’s say “plutonium”
Let’s say “The eye of the Giant Pacific Garbage Spiral”
Before I know it I hire a man to build me a house. His name is King. “G is silent,” he says. “King,” he says. “Kin?” I ask. “King,” he says. “I can still hear the G,” I say. “No you can’t,” he says. “Kin?” I ask. “King,” he answers. “G is silent,” he says. “How much?” I ask. “Hundreds of thousands,” he says. “Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands and thousands and thousands.” I agree. It is more than fair. His pants are rainbow. He seems like the only man for the job. He is the only man. His skin glows. He smells like gauze. He looks at me funny. He will order materials. It has to do with continuity of the self. Forget the simplistic 2D line I invoked for fold catastrophes; that’s just one axis of a complex system. And forget any N-dimensional landscape. Grab that ball-bearing from the previous exercise; once again, that represents the actual system at any given time. You see where I’m going with this, right? Of course, the resisting poet is not alone in his and her good-cum-bad faith, but there is no consolation in knowing that one’s body is no more or less “sick” than the others in the sack. What sack? The one we drown kittens in. Moreover, the absurdity of life under the thumb of neoliberal globalization can never appear as such. The logic of development generates its own anti-logic. “Did you hear the one about” is a kind of leitmotif.) These are not, however, separate pathogens.
Listen: the sky is screaming at the ash-bodies
And the bodies are little stains in the sky of ash
And these bodies belong to the terrorist group that’s called: humanity.
A glitch in the system.
Nothing that can’t be fixed.
My meme is everywhere, people.
Vitamin D, the kombucha of champagne.
[I don’t think those goats are interested in class mobility
I don’t understand where extreme alpine climbers get the money
or how it even works, all the gear, photo shoots, national geographic
those are the best movies to watch when you have a cold
that comes on sneezing followed by a total emotional breakdown
bromances about a sport you could never imagine getting close enough to
fail at
you may be full of mucous and unable to think but at least
you are not a man among men
hanging from the side of a mountain
eating frozen couscous
because when bae says we gotta GO are you ready
it’s just this cyclone of makeup and hairspray
with 50 shades of yellow spongebob at the center
that’s my meme, and]
what are good bones, anyway? Unrelated, but did you know that during the Civil War, nostalgia was a diagnosable medical condition, and that soldiers actually — well, technically — died from it? The clouds were flat-bottomed, so they looked like they were resting on top of something. But I also think there’s something to be said for having fewer variables in life. Are you a fan of photography?
a domicile is a star-
crossed ten of clubs. what is a crossing?
in the flubbed dialect of these forests
a crossing is the word tree, arms
which were too big, too baggy,
into which we would grow, if they fitted us,
which, eventually, they will. would.
a verb like the sound of sleeves over
wet glass. like
who killed the world?, like here are the top 10 vulture firms involved in sucking Puerto Rico’s blood, listed in order of the amount of debt they’ve claimed in court. We have compiled their names, addresses, and a bit of history on their business dealings.
Puerto Rican Debt Claimed in Court: $937,585,000
Headquarters: 90 Park Ave., 31st Floor, New York, N.Y., 10016 and Floor 2, Conway House, Conway Street, St. Helier, Jersey
Part of an Alliance: Ad Hoc Group ($3.3 billion)
Type of Bond: General Obligation Bonds
Key People: Robert Gibbins, Derek Goodman
History: Autonomy Capital is an affiliate of Autonomy Americas, which is incorporated in the tax haven of the Channel Islands in the English Channel and claims to manage more than $4 billion. Autonomy’s clients include insurance companies, foundations, public and private pension systems, and high net worth individuals. The minimum amount required to invest in Autonomy’s funds is between $5 million and $10 million. Autonomy Capital is one of two firms involved in an ongoing legal battle with the European Free Trade Association Surveillance Authority, a European watchdog, over millions of dollars’ worth of assets locked behind Iceland’s capital controls. Iceland, one of the only countries to aggressively regulate banks in the wake of the global financial crisis, instituted the controls after its biggest banks collapsed in 2008.
#2 DECAGON HOLDINGS / THE BAUPOST GROUP
Puerto Rican Debt Claimed in Court: $912,479,194
Headquarters: 10 Saint James Avenue, Suite 1700, Boston, Mass., 02116 (Decagon is registered in Delaware)
Part of an Alliance: Cofina Senior Bondholders Coalition ($3.1 billion)
Type of Bond: Puerto Rican Sales Tax Revenue Bonds
Key People: Seth Klarman
History: Decagon Holdings is a firm within the Cofina Senior Bondholders Coalition and owns at least 29 percent of this alliance’s debt — as much as $912,479,194 — split among 10 funds, according to court documents. The paper trail on Decagon is circuitous. These funds were incorporated in Delaware in 2015 as limited liability companies. Decagon is not registered at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the financial industry’s federal regulator, and it does not have a website. In a document related to the Puerto Rico government’s bankruptcy case, Decagon Holdings only provided a general address, with no phone number: 800 Boylston Street, the location of the Prudential Tower, Boston’s second tallest building, with 52 floors. On October 3, David Dayen of The Intercept unmasked Decagon Holdings’ real owner: The Baupost Group, a hedge fund that managed roughly $31.5 billion in regulatory assets as of December 31, 2016.
#3 CANYON CAPITAL ADVISORS LLC
Puerto Rican Debt Claimed in Court: $624,871,695
Headquarters: 2000 Avenue of the Stars, 11th Floor, Los Angeles, Calif., 90067
Part of an Alliance: Cofina Senior Bondholders Coalition ($303,080,000) and QTCB Noteholders Group ($321,791,695)
Type of Bond: Cofina or Sales Tax Senior Bonds and General Obligation Bonds (Issued by the Public Buildings Authority)
Key People: Joshua S. Friedman, Mitchell R. Julis, John Plaga, Jonathan Matthew Kaplan, Dominique Mielle
History: Canyon Capital Advisors LLC was founded in 1990 by Joshua S. Friedman and Mitchell R. Julis, both of whom have been intimately involved in stressed and distressed markets since the early 1980’s, according to information from the SEC. As of 2016, Canyon employed “over 200 investment professionals” and had offices in Los Angeles, New York, London, Shanghai and Tokyo. The firm advertises itself as having “substantial experience with distressed financials, including liquidations and recapitalizations.” In 2014, Canyon was one of the hedge funds that jumped on Puerto Rico’s junk bond emission, and requested $50 million of those bonds. It got $28 million.
#4 MONARCH ALTERNATIVE CAPITAL
Puerto Rican Debt Claimed in Court: $606,600,000
Headquarters: 535 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y., 10022 & 52 Conduit St., 6th Floor, London, England W1S 2YX, U.K.
Part of an Alliance: Ad Hoc Group ($3.3 billion)
Type of Bond: General Obligation Bonds
Key People: Michael Weinstock, Andrew Herenstein and Chris Santana
History: Monarch Alternative Capital has a history of investing in coal power. In February 2017, it became the principal shareholder in Arch Coal, the second largest supplier of coal to power companies in the U.S. The hedge fund owns $190 million (nearly 11 percent of the company). Arch Coal has been accused by United Mine Workers of America of conspiring with Peabody Energy in a scheme to default on $1.3 billion in retiree pension and healthcare obligations. Monarch Alternative’s team includes former members of JP Morgan and Rothschild & Co, Stone Lion Capital, GoldenTree Asset Management, Davidson Kempner and Och-Ziff Capital. Founded in 2002 by Michael Weinstock, Andrew Herenstein and Chris Santana, former bankers at Lazard Frères & Co., as of June 30 Monarch managed approximately $4.6 billion and had 63 employees, including 20 investment managers in offices in New York and London. In 2015, Monarch bought $30 million in Four Seasons Health Care properties, the largest nursing home operator in Great Britain, which was carrying significant debt. In 2006, Monarch bought Oneida Limited, one of the world’s largest designers and sellers of stainless steel items, after that company went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
#5 GOLDENTREE ASSET MANAGEMENT
Puerto Rican Debt Claimed in Court: $587,253,141
Headquarters: 300 Park Ave., 21st Floor, New York, N.Y., 10022
Part of an Alliance: Cofina Senior Bondholders Coalition ($3.1 billion)
Type of Bond: Puerto Rican Sales Tax Revenue Bonds
Key People: Steve Shapiro
History: It is very common for vulture fund executives to be former bankruptcy attorneys, as is the case with Steve Shapiro, the executive director of GoldenTree Asset Management. He was a bankruptcy lawyer for Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, where he represented bondholder committees and reorganized companies in Chapter 11 proceedings and out-of-court restructurings. At the 2015 Milken Institute Global Conference (an annual gathering of billionaires and global finance power players that cost $50,000 a head in 2017), Shapiro spoke on a panel titled “Trash or Treasure? Finding Value in Distressed-Debt.” He said his firm had its eye on General Motors’ liquidation and found “parts of Puerto Rico ... very interesting.” He mentioned the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), the government-owned corporation that is the sole provider of electricity to the island. PREPA was already mired in debt, leading to serious maintenance problems. When the hurricane hit, that degraded infrastructure was wiped out, causing 88.3 percent of people on the island to still be without electricity as of October 10, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
GoldenTree has not disclosed whether it currently owns PREPA bonds.
#6 AURELIUS CAPITAL MANAGEMENT LP
Puerto Rican Debt Claimed in Court: $473,417,000
Headquarters: 535 Madison Ave., 22nd Floor, New York, N.Y., 10022
Part of an Alliance: Ad Hoc Group ($3.3 billion)
Type of Bond: General Obligation Bonds, Puerto Rico Highways and Transportation Authority Bonds
Key People: Mark Brodsky, Samuel Jed Rubin, Esq., Eleazer Klein, Esq., and Jason Kaplan, Esq.
History: Mark Brodsky, founder and manager of Aurelius Capital, is another former bankruptcy lawyer, who for 16 years worked in major law firms in New York. Much of that time, in the early 1990s, he served as an attorney and co-head of the bankruptcy practice at Kramer, Levin, Naftalis & Frankel. (The firm went on to represent bondholders Franklin Mutual and Oppenheimer Funds in a successful challenge to Puerto Rico’s 2015 Recovery Act, which would have allowed the island’s electric authority (PREPA), sewer authority and transportation authority to restructure their own debt.) From 1996 to 2005, Brodsky was a partner in Elliott Management Corporation, a vulture fund owned by financial tycoon Paul Singer, who fought alongside Aurelius and other firms for the collection of Argentine debt. Brodsky founded Aurelius in 2006 with $325 million in capital, of which more than half came from pension funds and foundations. Aurelius Capital has $4.83 billion in funds under management and focuses on investing in high-risk debt. Aurelius has successfully profited from debt restructurings more than once. In Greece in 2012, in the midst of the European country’s financial turmoil, the government had to face what was described as a “small well-funded group of investors” who opposed a 75 percent haircut. Aurelius Capital was part of that group. In Brazil’s Petrobras, Aurelius forced a $54 billion default as a “precautionary measure.” The firm also attempted to upset a Tribune Co. bankruptcy plan in Chicago, Ill. that had been approved by most creditors; but in that attempt, they failed.
#7 TILDEN PARK INVESTMENT MASTER FUND LP
Puerto Rican Debt Claimed in Court: $466,084,719
Headquarters: 452 Fifth Ave., 28th Floor, New York, N.Y., 10018
Part of an Alliance: Cofina Senior Bondholders Coalition ($3.1 billion)
Type of Bond: Puerto Rican Sales Tax Revenue Bonds
Key People: Josh Birnbaum, Jeremy Primer, Sam Alcoff, Robert Rossitto
History: One of the biggest players — and biggest profiteers — in the US financial crisis was Joshua Birnbaum, former managing director at Goldman Sachs and now chief investment officer of Tilden Park Capital Management. During this 15 years working at Goldman Sachs, he led transactions related to subprime mortgages that catalyzed the Great Recession. After the real estate bubble collapsed, Birnbaum received one of the highest payments in Wall Street history, raking in $17 million in compensation. In his 2007 performance self-evaluations Birnbaum discussed the “very profitable year” and “extraordinary profits” that came from shorting the mortgage market that year, according to the SEC. Birnbaum left Goldman Sachs in 2008 after he wasn’t named partner, raising much speculation. “The question is really, ‘What’s his encore?’” asked Geoff Bobroff, an asset management consultant, in an interview with The Telegraph. The answer was Tilden Park Capital Management, which Birnbaum cofounded with fellow Goldman strategist (and Morgan Stanley alum) Jeremy Primer. Tilden Park handles more than $16 billion in assets. The law firm of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, which represents the Ad Hoc Group of General Obligation Bondholders in the Title III case, was in turn the legal agent for several Tilden Park transactions, including one of $1,479,825,500 conducted in January.
Puerto Rican Debt Claimed in Court: $432,140,000
Headquarters: 745 Fifth Ave., 25th Floor, New York, N.Y., 10151
Part of an Alliance: Ad Hoc Group ($3.3 billion)
Type of Bond: General Obligation Bonds, Puerto Rican Sales Tax Revenue Bonds
Key People: Laurence L. Gottlieb, Hector Negroni, Dana S. Fusaris, Justin Vinci, Robyn A. Huffman and Bruce Kayle
History: Fundamental Credit Opportunities (FCO), a division of Fundamental Advisors, focuses on high-risk investments in states and cities under “financial pressure.” FCO CEO Héctor Negroni was one of three executives of firms holding Puerto Rican debt who attended a panel at Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program hosted by the Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York in June. Their presence was surprising, as the event was geared toward to journalists covering state and local fiscal issues, and executives from financial firms tend to shy away from media. During the panel, Negroni wore a vest with the FCO Advisors logo on top of his checkered shirt. Sitting in a back row of the room, he listened to the other lecturers, and when he did not agree, he raised his voice to speak sharply over the speaker. He argued that commonwealth of Puerto Rico “is completely solvent. There’s no reason to be in default, no reason to be in bankruptcy.” (Negroni also took advantage of an pause before the panel to take to the microphone and sing a song, Frank Sinatra-style.)
Puerto Rican Debt Claimed in Court: $410,216,768
Headquarters: 333 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles, Calif., 90071
Part of an Alliance: ERS Secured Creditors ($1.4 billion)
Type of Bond: Employee Retirement System Bonds
Key People: Howard Marks, Bruce Karsh, Jay Wintrob, John Frank, Sheldon Stone
History: Oaktree Capital Management is an investment firm that manages $100 billion through various hedge funds. It has 900 employees and offices in 17 cities, including London, Dubai, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Sydney. Oaktree’s clients include 75 of the 100 largest U.S. pension plans and 50 primary retirement plans, more than 400 corporations around the world and more than 350 foundations. Oaktree has major interests in infrastructure, real estate and energy. Its energy holdings add up to $2 billion and it holds a “controlling position” in more than 15 companies in that sector. In 2013, Oaktree Capital purchased 50 percent of Aerostar Airport Holdings, the operator of the Luis Munoz Marin International Airport San Juan. In May 2017, it sold its stake in Aerostar for $430 million to Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste and the Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board. The firm also purchased $25 million in Puerto Rico’s 2014 General Obligations junk bond issue. In Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy case, Oaktree Capital claims $410,216,768 in Retirement System bonds through seven funds: Oaktree Funds Opportunities Fund Holdings LP, Oaktree Opportunities Fund IX Delaware LP, Oaktree Opportunities Fund IX (Parallel 2) LP, Opps Culebra Holdings LP, Oaktree Opportunities Fund X Holdings (Delaware) LP, Oaktree Opps X Holdo Ltd and Oaktree-Forrest Multi-Strategy, LLC.
#10 STONE LION CAPITAL
Estimate of Puerto Rican Debt Owned: $325,377,000
Headquarters: New York, N.Y., U.S.
Part of an Alliance: Ad Hoc Group ($3.3 billion)
Type of Bond: General Obligation Bonds, Puerto Rico Highways and Transportation Authority Bonds
Key People: Gregory Augustine Hanley, Alan Jay Mintz, Danielle Schaefer Klyap, Claudia Lee Borg, Elan Daniels
History: Stone Lion Capital was founded by Alan Jay Mintz and Gregory Augustine Hanley in 2008. These two men were once risky debt dealers at Bear Stearns, the bank that infected the financial market with toxic mortgage assets, received a bailout from the Federal Reserve Bank and was later sold to JP Morgan. In 2014, they requested $100 million from the Puerto Rico government’s junk bond issue and received $30 million. However, the firm is claiming, in total, more than $300 million in General Obligation bonds that may have been obtained before or after 2014. It also owns more than $15 million in bonds from Puerto Rico Highways and Transportation Authority. Eric Michael Friel, senior managing director of Stone Lion Capital, was among the executives who attended the Ravitch event in New York this year. He was formerly a managing director and “risky debt” analyst at Bear Stearns & Co., one of the first banks to collapse in 2008. “Contrary to popular belief, I believe investors like hedge funds want many of the same things that the people of Puerto Rico want,” he said at the Ravitch event, citing government transparency and Medicaid funding as examples. Noting that his father was a teacher, he added, "I understand the value of a good education, and that’s the last thing we want to see taken away from the people of Puerto Rico.” However, the alliance of which Stone Lion is a member, the Ad Hoc Group, launched an offensive against the Puerto Rican health and education systems with a report commissioned in 2015 mapping a debt repayment plan. The report, “For Puerto Rico, There is a Better Way,” recommended the dismissal of teachers, cuts in the subsidy granted to the University of Puerto Rico and trims to “excess Medicaid benefits,” among other austerity measures. At the Ravitch event, Friel spoke to press about the need for more transparency from the fiscal control board and the government of Puerto Rico. When CPI asked Friel to disclose the price at which Stone Lion Capital purchased Puerto Rican junk bonds in 2014, he said, “I don’t know the answer, and I think that’s the wrong thing to focus on. I think knowing that isn’t going to solve any of Puerto Rico’s problems. Literally. It’s not going to help anyone with anything.”
Note: One of the top ten debtholders, SV Capital, a member of the ERS alliance that claims $389,851,034 in debt, is omitted from this list because we could not determine whether it was a vulture firm. The company is a phantom — it was registered as an anonymous firm in Delaware on August 2016 and is not registered with the SEC. We learned it may be related to the Carlyle Group.
And to think, this only accounts for 21% of the debt ... what a lovely day. About that time the Buyer takes on an ominous grey-green color. Fact is his body is making its own junk or equivalent. The Buyer has a steady connection. A Man Within you might say. Or so he thinks. ‘I’ll just set in my room,’ he says. ‘Fuck ‘em all. Squares on both sides. I am the only complete man in the industry.’ But a yen comes on him like a great black wind through the bones. So the Buyer hunts up a young junky and gives him a paper to make it. ‘Oh all right,’ the boy says. ‘So what you want to make?’ ‘I just want to rub against you and get fixed.’ ‘Ugh ... Well all right ... But why cancha just get physical like a human?’ Later the boy is sitting in a Waldorf with two colleagues dunking pound cake. ‘Most distasteful thing I ever stand still for,’ he says. ‘Some way he make himself all soft like a blob of jelly and surround me so nasty. Then he gets wet all over like with green slime. So I guess he come to some kinda awful climax ... I come near wigging with that green stuff all over me, and he stink like a old rotten cantaloupe.’ ‘Well it’s still an easy score.’ The boy sighed resignedly; ‘Yes, I guess you can get used to anything. I’ve got a meet with him again tomorrow.’ I know I’ve been awake for five days because when I went out onto my balcony this morning all the buildings in the city collapsed. This seemed to me to be something of a cause for concern, so I sat down to write my will. Here goes. My coffee cups and typewriter I leave to, I dunno, whoever can scream the loudest. My heart I leave to the centre of the earth. My grief. Gah. My grief which is the size of the wild and collectively inhuman joy of the swifts that circle the city with a frenzy wilder than. Oh whatever. The heart is such a lame metaphor. And so pathetic, the idea of burying it in the earth, when I could just as easily fire it into the centre of the red spot of Jupiter. I think at this point of Will Alexander’s essay “A Note on the Ghost Dimension”, I don’t know if you’ve read it, he writes in it somewhere about the missing five days of the Mayan calendar, which apparently is a time when monsters and poisons will appear, and I don’t know much about the Mayan calendar, but after five days without sleep I know a lot about ghosts and monsters and poisons, and a lot about how the missing five days could be taken to mean the fate of the five senses themselves, and so I decided to explore Highgate Cemetery, and found it as atmospheric as in Gay’s images. “It was full of angels everywhere you looked, just spectacular, standing and covered in ivy with their arms and their fingers broken.” Trinity Cube was created by melting these two forms of glass together into a cube, then installing the cube back into the Fukushima Exclusion Zone as part of the Don’t Follow the Wind project. The artwork will be viewable by the public when the Exclusion Zone opens again, anytime between 3 and 30,000 years from the present. “Eventually the farmer who owned us sold us off — my brothers were sold off for slaughter and myself and sisters, penned, milked, until our nipples oozed, infectious, raw, we were pumped with antibiotics, hormones, trapped in the tiny cell ankles deep in excrement, the meadow became a housing division for elderly urbanites ... this is how we spent our days.” “Note how even the syntax absents key factors.” “Eventually the farmer who owned us sold us off — my brother were sold off for slaughter and myself and sisters, penned, milked, until our nipples oozed, infectious, raw, we were pumped with antibiotics, hormones, trapped in the tiny cell ankles deep in excrement, the meadow became a housing division for elderly urbanites ... this is how we spent our days.” “Note how even the syntax absents key factors, eee gee thin layers of rock relocated, edaphic (soil) conditions, shallow profile of soil, geomorphology of the area, export decomposable plant debris, buffer, erosion, logging operations, increased need for meat in the so-called first world, their bodies are enlarging, remove the forest for grazing, the diet calls for it, felling, pollen analysis shows that temperate forests were removed in the mesolithic and neolithic times and thereafter accelerated, continues to accelerate, agriculture, fuel, charcoal, smoking, wood for construction, smelting of metals, mining of ores, smelting of metals, short bodies, often tergal keels quadrangular flat-backs, tapers towards the ends, head usually subtriangular, cylindrical often with ridges and crests, narrow bodies, “beak” on head, coil around their eggs or young, mainly use silk only during mating and capturing prey, on males, the first pair of legs on the 7th ring are gonopods, which are copulating organs, feed on organic, decaying matter, mate throughout the year, some may crawl into swimming pools and drown. the young resemble the adults, except there are smaller and lighter in color. the female carries the eggs, numbering from 7 to 200 in a brood pouch on the underside of her body. sprays or dusts of bendiocarb (ficam), chlorpyrifos (duration, dursban, empire, engage), diazinon, propoxur (baygon), carbaryl (sevin), pyrethrins (exciter, kicker, microcare, pyrethrum, safer) or resmethrin (vectrin) are effective. other labelled pesticides include acephate (orthene), amorphous silica gel (drione, tri-die), boric acid (perma-dust) and esfenvalerate (conquer). treatment of peat moss, leaves and bark used as plant mulches is important. subsequent sprinkling with water will carry the pesticide down into the soil where these crustaceans hide. materials such as fluvalinate (mavrik, yardex) are used outdoors. mouthparts are modified for piercing and sucking, adults can survive starvation for a year or more, in certain conditions, eggs hatch in 10 days. the nymph stage lasts 6 weeks, and undergoes 5 molts. house centipedes feed on small insects, insect larvae, and on spiders. they are beneficial though most homeowners take a different point of view. natural predators include frogs, newts, toads and small mammals which live and hunt at night on the moist areas where pill bugs live. make valuable contribution to the, the neighbor to my left rings my doorbell. He tells me about being a call-in guest on his favorite local radio show. This week’s show was on the city’s drunk driving problem. He called to offer his solution: Make cars out of rubber. He explained, They’ll just bounce off each other. At first, while he talked, there were only a few flies — easy to ignore. But he kept talking and, after about an hour, there were hundreds of them flying out of his mouth like, like small noisy asteroids. These are my cousins. They took me fishing, played baseball with me, and introduced me to Hulk Hogan and monster truck rallies. I’ve opened Christmas presents with them. They used to call me ‘green bean,’ I assume without too much malice, because I’m only part white (I’m also part Mexican, Filipino, Panamanian, and Colombian). Now we see one another infrequently. I keep up with them mainly on social media, or I ask my mom about them sometimes. I may have been wrong about that malice thing.”
[Note: Sources: JBR; Clayton Eshleman, “from Hybrid Hierophanies”, at BlazeVOX; JBR; Rita Watson, “Broken Heart Syndrome Redux: Woman Suffers After Dog’s Death”, at Psychology Today, 23 Oct 017; JBR; Michael McCarthy, “A giant insect ecosystem is collapsing due to humans. It’s a catastrophe”, at The Guardian, 21 Oct 017; JBR; Alice Notley, The Descent of Alette; JBR; Alice Notley, The Descent of Alette; JBR; Alice Notley, The Descent of Alette; JBR; Cesar Vallejo, “The Work of Art and the Social Sphere”, “The Passion of Charlie Chaplin” (tr. Joseph Mulligan), at Lana Turner 8; Stephanie Young, “Ave Via”, at Lana Turner 9; JBR; Stephanie Young, “Ave Via”, at Lana Turner 9; Peter Milne Greiner, “Untravels”, at Berfrois, 10 Jul 017; JBR (two names used by Greiner in two separate apparently unrelated poems); Peter Milne Greiner, “Untravels”, at Berfrois, 10 Jul 017; JBR; Peter Milne Greiner, “One Little Bit of Everything”, at BORT Quarterly, 2015 Quarter 1; JBR; Sabrina Orah Mark, “You Are Hurting My Feelings”, at Lana Turner 9; Peter Watts, “My Dinner with Ramez: or, The Identity Landscape”, at No Moods, Ads or Cutesy Fucking Icons, 23 Oct 017; Tyrone Williams, and Daniel Borzutsky, quoted in Williams’ “The Performance of Becoming Human. By Daniel Borzutzky. (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2016)”, at Lana Turner 9; Stephanie Young, “my meme”, at Lana Turner 9; JBR (but lifted from the title of a book by Maggie Smith); Devin Kelly, and Maggie Smith, quoted in Kelly’s interview of Smith, at Full Stop, 13 Sept 017; Uljana Wolf, “Stationary”, “Mittens” (tr. Sophie Seita), at The White Review, March 2017; Angharad, in Mad Max: Fury Road; JBR: Joel Cintrón Arbasetti Carla Minet, Centro De Periodismo Investigativo, Alex V. Hernandez, Jessica Stites, “Who Owns Puerto Rico’s Debt, Exactly? We’ve Tracked Down 10 of the Biggest Vulture Firms”, at In These Times, 17 Oct 017; JBR; Nux, in Mad Max: Fury Road; JBR; William S Burroughs, Naked Lunch, at Litkicks; Sean Bonney, “From Deep Darkness”, in Ghosts; JBR; Allison Meier, and Loren Rhoads, quoted in Meier’s “A Guide to the World’s Most Intriguing Cemeteries”, at Hyperallergic, 26 Oct 017; Trevor Paglen, “Trinity Cube (2015)”, at Trevor Paglen; anon (or Brenda Iijima), Ann Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power, and Brenda Iijima, “Cry VI”, “Cry VIII”, in Iijima’s Remembering Animals; Eric Paul, “The Neighbor Who Lives to My Left”, at Evening Will Come 59; JBR; Geraldo Cadava, “The Big Picture: Building the Wall”, at Public Books, 27 Oct 017; JBR]
