me...

Life can not possibly be Hell, because it's too damned unpredictable. Here i am, locked away in these windowless weeks of illness and anxiety, and what do i find but my old Lemonheads album, 'Car Button Cloth'! Ready for a bit of the ultra-nostalgia? This album isn't particularly spectacular in any way; it was no more than the apex of Evan Dando's mediocre pop music career. But i thought i'd lost it years ago. His light folk-grunge, in concert with so many memories of high school, has me smiling in spite of myself. The Lemonheads also hold a special place in my heart because, aside from being a groovy candy, they have performed at the Fairfax Fair. i have attended this spectacular open-air venue every year since 1996, and there has always been a perfect band. This year, which may well be my last, Gin Blossoms are performing! i have asked along the same girl i took back in '96, so i suppose it's fitting that this seventh time should be my last, but i can't help feeling a little sad. If ever i do fall in love again, the Fair will just be one more important part of my life that i won't be able to share with her. posted by Arthur @ 5/24/2002 05:53:00 AM	Friday, May 24, 2002
Sometimes, if i lightly adjust the kitchen faucet, the water will not flow immediately, but in the yawning gap between transmission and reception, i can hear it. From down in the intestinal pipes of human creation, are exhaled rumblings of distant water tumbling blindly through lubricious darkness. In equal depths of my mind i am screaming in primordial terror at the sadistic complexity we have wrought upon the world. But then the water flows. And i am merely disgusted by the unclean distance of which i drink, a slave to the paradox of Civilization. posted by Arthur @ 5/23/2002 10:48:00 PM	Thursday, May 23, 2002
i just got through watching yet another scene in which someone living was reunited with their dead love. As i was shaking with tears, it occurred to me that these scenes have almost nothing to do with Death. They instead employ Death as a metaphor for loss. In fact, i suspect that Death is more often a metaphor than not. And how clever of us. It's easier to deal with loss as Death because... 1) neither person is responsible for not being together. 2) the lost person does not change and grow apart. 3) the lost person is unable to find a new love. 4) at least our loss wasn't Death. 5) Death itself becomes diluted. We can get out all of our abandonment issues, all of our conflicts with change and loss, in childlike simplicity, and never consciously deal with them. Instead we say, "i was crying because of Death. Death is sad." i wonder how these scenes go over in Mexico. posted by Arthur @ 5/22/2002 11:41:00 AM	Wednesday, May 22, 2002
The Spanish verb hacer means both 'to do' and 'to make'. What an egregious gap in English! Who can deny having felt the Urge Hacer? Not to mention the astounding philosophic suggestion that to do is to make, to act is to create! Many writers would have us believe that language is sacred. My thoughts refer immediately to Ursula K Le Guin, since she is the only one of these writers for whom i have respect. However, language is much too arbitrary for me to agree with her. Conventions such as languages are developed in the interest of communication. To then exalt language above communication is to design a living room so beautifully that there is no room for living. This has a lot to do with my frustrations in poetry. Contemporary poems drift single-file, in white hooded robes, to be baptized by the Holy Order of Language. Everyone wants poetry to flow quietly, heads bowed in abject reverence to words and their sounds. i want poetry to drip from stalactites into claustrophobic crevices, and even as the air and water ripple outward, so too are they rebuffed by walls of rock, in haunting echoes and introspective interference. i want Rachmaninoff, not Vivaldi! i want impassioned ideas, not languages! Throw down false prophets like Ashbery! Do not worship the medium, but the message! The message is Life! posted by Arthur @ 5/21/2002 09:40:00 PM	Tuesday, May 21, 2002
Time may be perceived at different speeds (?). As a person grows older, their perception of time decelerates (?). From person to person, this deceleration varies. i don't know why it happens, nor how many of us there are, but for some people that deceleration is close to nothing. We become much older than our age, but remain time's children. i would point to Adams, Gilliam, van Gogh, Whitman, and half the Beats as examples. i have dreams of a home for such perspectives - a place to bare Atlas hearts, and finally be understood. posted by Arthur @ 5/20/2002 09:58:00 PM	Monday, May 20, 2002
Yesterday was severed between gray and white, the drift sky bleeding blue. Exposed by the hewn grass, attempting to capture time in my little metal box, i was discovered by moments of my favorite color. "That's it, there," i pointed to a small patch, "i call it Electric Gray." My brother laughed, and said "You know, you could have your own box of crayons." Sounds like a challenge to me! What would your color be? posted by Arthur @ 5/19/2002 10:48:00 PM	Sunday, May 19, 2002