The Phantom Ape

the owls are not what they seem

2012-02-13T15:24:00.001+01:00

Dream Journal: Toe

2012-02-09T14:47:00.002+01:00

This is a recurring dream. I've had it maybe 5-6 times over the course of several years.

I mockingly call this dream ‘Satan’s Little Helper’ because of the transparent Hell-motive. Transcribed above is what happened the first time I had this dream. I’ve had it several times since and always remembered I had been in this situation before, so I adapted. I only adapted in making the ‘job’ easier for myself, not by refusing the ‘job’ or going off course in any way. Somehow, that seems impossible. I cannot describe enough in words how absolutely terrifying this dream is, to the degree that I’m happy I don’t believe in Hell. The worst part is being alone; there is no explanation as to where I am or why am I there. In the dream I’m also not freaking out by all of this, I’m just acting like it’s a job that needs to be done…maybe that is the most terrifying aspect of all.

I’m in a slaughterhouse. It’s a large hangar with white tiles on the floor and walls. There’s blood everywhere. The air is dirty with flies and there’s a nauseating smell. All around me are dead bodies, stacked on top of each other in grotesque piles of naked people. Some are hanging on hooks and occasionally a new body comes crashing on the floor through some sort of chute. I’m the only living person there. I’m dressed as a butcher, with a leather apron. I’m wearing a mask like an executioner. Over a loudspeaker I hear a harsh metallic voice. I don’t understand the words but I know it’s shouting commands at me. My job is to drag the bodies on top of metallic stairs that are in the middle of the hangar. Once there I can throw them into a giant furnace. I drag a man’s dead body to the foot of the stairs, but he’s too heavy to lift on my shoulders and carry. The metallic voice on the intercom is getting more angry. I look around the hangar and I find a hatchet and a large sack. I take off my mask and start hacking at the dead bodies, removing their limbs, chopping off their heads and splitting their torsos. I put parts of them, randomly, in the sack making sure it’s not too heavy to drag up the stairs. I’m completely covered in blood now and I’m wiping off pieces of flesh on my apron. I carry the sack up the stairs and once up there is a small platform. I look down and watch the greedy flames of the furnace which is the biggest I have ever seen. I toss limb by limb into the fire, my eyes transfixed on the flames. When my sack is empty I go down again and repeat the process. Somehow I know this is my job for the rest of my existence.

Dream Journal: Won

2012-02-08T10:17:00.005+01:00

Location: home (slept alone)
Time: between 1 AM & 7:30 AM

The world is some post-apocalyptic wasteland and a few people (like me) are running from something. There is some unknown enemy, I just know they're human and they have guns. We are literally running in the dark streets, and know we could get killed any minute.

So I’m running and being chased by something, scared for my life. There’s a tent, but just before I can reach it, I fall on the floor and I hide my face in my hands, thinking; ‘maybe in the dark they won’t see me lying on the floor in the mud’. There’s a noise behind me and I’m sure I will get shot. But the person behind me is not evil, it’s a little boy. A little skinny boy dressed in rags. He drags me into the tent and we sit there for a while, looking at each other. There might be other people in the tent, but I can't see them. We managed to lit some sort of gaslight and in the shadows and on the surface of the tent I see my shadow and I realise I’m much bigger & stronger then the little boy. I should be protecting him.

Suddenly a man opens the tent, a soldier armed with a gun. He demands us to come out. I argue with him but say that if he’s alone, I’ll come fight him. The soldier says his name is Peter and he’s there with another soldier, also called Peter. Me and the little boy get out of the tent, but the little boy transformed into a man, roughly of my size. We both face a Peter, but suddenly we’re armed with swords, each one of us a different kind. My sword is long & white, with a very thin & small handle. I have trouble wielding it. The little boy, who is now a man, has somehow convinced one of the Peters that he should help us, so the three of us attack the Peter that is left.

Peter is an excellent fighter and we can’t seem to win. No matter how many times I cut him with my sword, he keeps fighting. Nothing even a scratch on him. I try to cut off his head, but my sword doesn’t even scratch his skin. I consider giving up, dropping the sword and letting him kill me but seeing the other two fight gives me courage. The Peter we’re fighting got fatter and fatter during the fight as well.

…I can’t remember what happened next…

Bard's Movies to Watch 2012: number 1

2012-01-25T14:33:00.001+01:00

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (directed by Peter Jackson)
Starring: Martin Freeman, Cate Blanchett & Ian McKellen
(based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien)

I was named after a character from The Hobbit, so predictably this novel holds a special place in my heart. It would be a massive understatement to say I’ve been impatiently waiting for Peter Jackson to finish his prequel(s) to The Lord of The Rings trilogy. In Sauron’s name, why does it take so long! Although, a thought I had after watching the trailer; why didn’t Peter Jackson make The Hobbit before LOTR? I can’t seem to find a reason. And yes, there will be a part 2, which means waiting another year before seeing Smaug & Bard battle it out. Cruel.

Interesting fact: both Ian Holm (old Bilbo) and Christopher Lee (Saruman) filmed their scenes in a studio in London because neither were healthy enough to fly to New Zealand.

Bard's Movies to Watch 2012: number 2

2012-01-24T10:25:00.002+01:00

Prometheus (directed by Ridley Scott)
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender & Charlize Theron
(screenplay by Jon Spaihts & Damon Lindelof)

With Alien and Blade Runner, Ridley Scott redefined sci-fi movies forever and the director is finally returning to his roots with Prometheus, a film that was once set to be a prequel to Alien, but is still heavily inspired. Whatever the case, it should be a highly entertaining and intriguing thriller, and with no returning characters from the franchise, it means that pretty much anything goes, cranking up the suspense. Whether Scott can conjure up the magic of his first two forays into science fiction remains to be seen. However, there should be little doubt about his credibility and the ensemble cast features some terrific stars. This has the potential to be one of the very best films of 2012 and has earned a well deserved 2nd place on this watch list.

Interesting fact: The androids' names in the Alien films follow a pattern: in Alien, it's Ash (A); in Aliens and Alien³ it's Bishop (B); in Alien: Resurrection it's Call (C) and in Prometheus it's David (D).

Bard's Movies to Watch 2012: number 3

2012-01-24T10:13:00.001+01:00

On The Road (directed by Walter Salles)
Starring: Garrett Hedlund, Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, Sam Riley & Steve Buscemi
(based on the novel On The Road by Jack Kerouac)

We move into the top 3 with long awaited film adaptation of Kerouac’s On the Road. Already in 1980 Francis Ford Coppola bought the movie rights but now finally Walter Salles (director of The Motorcycle Diaries) is heading the project. Salles even traced Kerouac’s journey from the book and filmed a documentary about it. If you are a fan of the Beat Generation, jazz & poetry this is your movie. If you ever felt lost, adventurous and made some big mistakes in your life, this is your movie. If you ever searched for ‘it’ not having a clue what ‘it’ is supposed to be, this is your movie.

Interesting fact: Twilight actress Kristen Stewart will be playing the part of Marylou. Combined with starring in Snow White, maybe people will see that she’s more than a lip-chewing vampire-stalker?
Nah, probably not.

Bard's Movies to Watch 2012: number 4

2012-01-23T16:17:00.001+01:00

The Dark Knight Rises (directed by Christopher Nolan)
Starring: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anna Hathaway & Marion Cotillard
(based on the DC comics)

If you’re not excited yet about this movie, I can’t see anything changing that. The ending to Christopher Nolan’s outstanding Batman trilogy will undoubtedly be the biggest blockbuster of the year. And rightly so, this movie looks fucking awesome. And of course, the question on everybody’s mind; will Bruce Wayne die in this movie?

Interesting fact: I’ll just give you a kick-ass quote from the trailer: Selina Kyle (Catwoman) to Bruce Wayne (Batman) – “Do you think this is gonna last? There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” Meow!!

Bard's Movies to Watch 2012: number 5

2012-01-23T16:08:00.003+01:00

Moonrise Kingdom (directed by Wes Anderson)
Starring: Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray & Frances McDormand
(screenplay by Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola)

Wes Anderson is known for his quirky movies and I’m quite a fan of the strange atmospheres he creates in his movies. Remember The Royal Tenenbaums? In Moonrise Kingdom a pair of young lovers runs away from home and a search party goes out to find them. A lot of star power in this new offbeat coming-of-age comedy making this definitely something to look forward to.

Interesting fact: Anderson’s latest film was the animated Fantastic Mr. Fox which also featured Bill Murray. (Anderson’s favourite actor no doubt).

Bard's Movies to Watch 2012: numbers 10 to 6

2012-01-20T11:03:00.006+01:00

10. Les Misérables (directed by Tom Hooper)
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter & Amanda Seyfried
(Based on the novel Les Misérables by Victor Hugo)

This movie will be the first-time adaptation of one of the most popular stage musicals of all time. There is so much star power in this that, combined with director Tom Hooper (The King’s speech), what could go wrong? Well, maybe that it will also star Sasha Baron Cohen & Taylor Swift. But I shouldn’t judge, I’m just glad there’s a musical in my top 10.

Interesting fact: the part of Enjolras will be played by Aaron Tveit. Who you ask? Good question, I know him from playing a very sexy Fiyero in Broadway’s Wicked. Dancing through life, skimming the surface, gliding where turf is smoooooth (oops sorry got carried away there)

9. The Great Gatsby (directed by Baz Luhrmann)
Starring: Leonardo Dicaprio & Carey Mulligan
(based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald)

I love The Great Gatsby; it’s lavish, rich, tragic…and now I see that Baz Luhrmann will be directing an adaptation to the novel. My curiosity alone should have put this movie in the Top 5! But, unfortunately Leonardo ‘Babyface’ Dicaprio is playing Jay Gatsby and for some reason Tobey Maguire is also in some scenes. They should have cast, oh I don’t know, someone talented maybe?

Interesting fact: A lot of actresses were considered to play Daisy Buchanan; among them Amanda Seyfried, Keira Knightly, Michelle Williams, Natalie Portman, Anna Hathaway & Scarlett Johansson. In the end, Carey Mulligan snatched the part.

8. Snow White And The Huntsman (directed by Rupert Sanders)
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth & Charlize Theron
(based on the fairytale)

Kristen Stewart’s minimalist acting method (stare blankly when sad, bite lip when happy) has been questioned by the occasional critic, ahum, but this girl sure is in a lot of movies lately. Bella as an armor-clad Snow White, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) as the hunky woodsman and Charlize Theron as the sexy evil Queen is gathering a lot of buzz and the trailer does look very exciting. I wonder if there will be dwarves?

Interesting fact: Yes there will be! And all seven of them are named after Roman emperors; Caesar, Tiberius, Constantine, Claudius, Nero and Trajan. Funny.

7. The Master (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Dern & Amy Adams
(screenplay by Paul Thomas Anderson)

The Master is a 1950s-set drama about the relationship of a charismatic man known as ‘the Master” and a young drifter who becomes his right-hand man. It’s been 5 years since Anderson’s last movie ‘There Will Be Blood’ and of course who could forget ‘Magnolia’? Paul Thomas Anderson on the directing seat of this faith-based drama with such amazing actors can only mean one hell of a movie.

Interesting fact: James Franco, Jeremy Renner & Reese Witherspoon were all attached to the movie at some point, but during the production phase they all dropped out. It’s a shame about James Franco.

6. The Hunger Games (directed by Gary Ross)
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson & Liam Hemsworth
(based on the novel Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins)

If you haven’t seen the trailer for this movie, go watch it first, then come back. Back? As you could see, Jennifer Lawrence (from Winter’s Bone & X-Men First Class) stars as a teen girl forced to face her own mortality when she’s thrown into a kill-or-be-killed battle for the amusement of the public. This movie is based on the biggest novel sensation since Twilight and the Harry Potter series and people, people, listen, this looks much better than sparkly vampires and short wand-wielding British folk. At any rate, Katniss Everdeen is a much better role model for young girls than catatonic & I-secretly-stand-for-Mormon-values Bella Swan.

Interesting fact: Composer Danny Elfman had to leave the film because he had too many projects and was replaced by James Newton Howard (who you might know from pretty much every M. Night Shyamalan movie)

Bard's Movies to Watch 2012: numbers 15 to 11

2012-01-19T12:02:00.007+01:00

15. Cosmopolis (directed by David Cronenberg)
Starring: Robert Pattinson
(based on the novel Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo)

David Cronenberg, the King of Venereal Horror, brings us a paranoid odyssey of a young millionaire who can’t seem to escape Manhattan. His main star is Robert Pattinson; the sparkly vampire from the Twilight series. This is a fact that seems to bewilder many, but I have confidence Robert can pull it off.

Interesting fact: It turns out Robert Pattinson wasn’t first choice for the lead role. He only got the part after Colin Farell dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with his movie Total Recall.

14. Sound Of My Voice (directed by Zal Batmanglij)
Starring: Christopher Denham, Nicol Vicius & Brit Marling
(screenplay by Zal Batmanglij & Brit Marling)

A journalist and his girlfriend go undercover within a cult in order to expose its charismatic leader who claims to be from the future. What makes this movie interesting is that Brit Marling also wrote and starred in one of my favourite movies of 2011; Another Earth.

Interesting facts: Who is this Brit Marling? Well, she was a struggling actress who only got offered movie parts such as ‘dumb blonde’ and ‘waitress’ so she decided to write her own screenplays just so she could play more interesting roles. She wrote ‘Another Earth’ in the mornings and ‘Sound of My Voice’ in the afternoons. I could learn a thing or two from this dumb blonde waitress.

13. The Cabin In The Woods (directed by Drew Goddard)
Starring: Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford & Chris Hemsworth
(screenplay by Joss Whedon)

Five friends go to a remote cabin in the woods….BAD things happen. All fans of scary movies, meta fiction and twisty storytelling are told to go watch this movie. I feel a bit screwed now that I saw the trailer though, when will they finally learn not to show so much?

Interesting facts: This movie was already shot in 2009 (so before Chris Hemsworth was really famous) but only got released now for some (mysterious? spooky? meta?) reason. Or did it? What? No, I didn’t. Fuck you.

12. The Woman In Black (directed by James Watkins)
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe
(based on the novel The Woman In Black by Susan Hill)

A Victorian ghost story starring Harry Potter directed by the guy who gave us Eden Lake. Sold! Let’s hope they don’t overdo it with the special effects and that I won’t think ‘why doesn’t he use his wand?’ whenever Daniel’s character is in trouble.

Interesting facts: Adrian Rawlins, who played Daniel’s father in the Harry Potter movies, played the same character in the 1989 version of this movie.

11. Dark Shadows (directed by Tim Burton)
Starring: Johnny Depp, Eva Green, Michelle Pfeiffer & Helena Bonham Carter
(remake of the 1966 cult series Dark Shadows)

At first, I didn’t want to include anything directed by Tim Burton in this watch list. After ‘Alice in Wonderland’ I really just wanted to punch the guy in the face. But, I came around and decided to give him one more chance. (Last one Pal!) So, I present you with Dark Shadows; his latest gothic horror tale featuring Johnny Depp as a vampire and Helena Bonham Carter as a werewolf (I presume, I actually don’t know).

Interesting facts: This movie is a remake of a gothic soap opera from the sixties. Depp’s part was played by a certain Jonathan Frid, who said in interviews he felt silly doing it.

Bard's Movies to Watch 2012: numbers 20 to 16

2012-01-18T13:34:00.008+01:00

20. Gods Behaving Badly (directed by Marc Turtletaub)
Starring: Christopher Walken, Sharon Stone & Alicia Silverstone
(based on the novel Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips)

I’ve always liked Greek mythology (ok, I’ve been borderline obsessed with mythology ever since I was a little boy) so this modern uptake where Greek Gods are living among New-Yorkers could be fun. I’m not crazy about Alicia Silverstone playing the lead and Sharon Stone as Aphrodite could be disastrous, but director Marc Turtletaub has produced Little Miss Sunshine so…cool.

Interesting facts: the part of Dionysus is played by Nelsan Ellis, best known as Lafayette on HBO’s True Blood and Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie) is playing Artemis.

19. The Brass Teapot (directed by Ramaa Mosley)
Starring: Juno Temple, Alexis Bledel & Michael Angarano
(screenplay by Tim Macy)

“A couple discovers that a brass teapot makes them money whenever they hurt themselves, now they must come to terms with how far they are willing to go”….ok, imagine the scene where the writer, Tim Macy, is pitching that to a producer. A teapot, seriously? Just for that I’ve included this flick in my top 20. Yes that’s right; for the teapot that got through the production process. Well played, Tim Macy, well played.

Interesting facts: besides that it’s about a teapot? Well, you might know Alexis Bledel as the ultra-annoying brat on Gilmore Girls and Michael Angarano as Jack’s son on Will & Grace.

18. Warm Bodies (directed by Jonathan Levine)
Starring: Nicholas Hoult, Teresa Palmer & John Malkovich
(based on the novel Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion)

Warm Bodies is a “zombie romance” movie based on the novel with the same name by Isaac Marion. A zombie becomes ‘involved’ with the girlfriend of one of his victims and their romance sets in motion a sequence of events. Let that sink in for a minute: “zombie romance”. But, unfortunately, I’ve seen a picture of the zombie, who looks like an Emo kid, so I’m not that hyped about seeing zombies make out.

Interesting facts: are more like questions such as; why is John Malkovich in this? Will Zombies become the new Vampires? Is there already a teen Zombie series in the making? If not, what the hell?

17. Great Expectations (directed by Mike Newell)
Starring: Ralph Fiennes & Helena Bonham Carter
(based on the novel by Charles Dickens)

Great Expectations is a literary classic. Ralph Fiennes & Helena Bonham Carter are two great actors. Mike Newell attended Cambridge and is as British as they get. What’s not to like? Hand me my sofa, a blanket and some hot coco and I’ll eat this baby up.

Interesting facts: Mike Newell, strangely enough, directed Disney’s Prince of Persia. He apparently had trouble with producer Jerry Bruckheimer cutting all of his shots. You don’t say?

16. The Avengers (directed by Joss Whedon)
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson & Chris Hemsworth
(based on the Marvel comics)

It’s been called the most anticipated comic book movie ever, but honestly, I’ve only included this movie in my top 20 because Joss Whedon is directing it. After making cult series such as Buffy & Firefly, he should be able to direct an interesting superhero movie, right? Also, Captain America is hot.

Interesting fact: sadly Edward Norton will not be reprising his role as The Hulk. He was replaced by Mark Ruffalo.

"Bard changed his religious views"

2012-01-17T12:20:00.003+01:00

I’ve been a convinced Atheist for some years now. I was raised Catholic, but from pretty early on I lost faith in God and Jesus and in about the billion Saints it has. It think it was when I first lied during confession at the age of six and didn’t get struck down by lightning. Nevertheless, Atheism is pretty dull isn’t it? Reason, science, common sense, boring. And also, no divine rules, commandments, rituals, no blame on a higher being, what am I; a goddamn animal? I tried looking into other religions, but besides Buddhism nothing really tickled my fancies. I tried, but I had to face it; I’m just not a good enough person to be a Buddhist.

But then, as if by chance – nay, Fate! - I discovered Discordianism. “What’s this?” I mumbled to myself while randomly browsing Wikipedia, ‘a nonsensical religion based on the Goddess of Confusion? It is utter madness!’ and I have loved it ever since.

It is also called (I think….they’re so vague) the Paratheo-Anametamystikhood of Eris Esoteric (POEE) If I try to pronounce it, I sound like Mary Poppins
YES!

They describe themselves as ‘a tribe of philosophers, theologians, magicians, scientists, artists and similar maniacs who are intrigued with Eris, Goddess of Confusion, and with her doings.’
YESS!

Their commandments include (but not limit to) something about a Golden Worm, believing 5 is everything, eating a hot dog on Friday (but NEVER the bun) and most importantly not to believe what you read.
YESSS!

And they say; ‘remember, King Kong died for your sins.’
YESSSS!

They use the word Fnord, which is funny beyond measure. Also, everyone is a Pope.
YESSSSS!

There, that’s five. Hail Eris! Fnord!

Preludes

2012-01-12T23:27:00.003+01:00

The winter evening settles down with smell of steaks in passageways six o'clock the burnt out ends of smoky days and now a gusty shower wraps the grimy scraps of withered leaves about your feet and newspapers from vacant lots the showers beat on broken blinds and chimney-pots and at the corner of the street a lonely cab-horse steams and stamps and then the lighting of the lamps.

The morning comes to consciousness of faint stale smells of beer from the sawdust-trampled street with all its muddy feet that press to early coffee-stands with the other masquerades that time resumes one thinks of all the hands that are raising dingy shades in a thousand furnished rooms.

You tossed a blanket from the bed you lay upon your back and waited you dozed and watched the night revealing the thousand sordid images of which your soul was constituted they flickered against the ceiling and when all the world came back and the light crept up between the shutters and you heard the sparrows in the gutters you had such a vision of the street and the street hardly understands sitting along the bed's edge where you curled the papers from your hair or clasped the yellow soles of feet in the palms of both soiled hands.

His soul stretched tight across the skies that fade behind the city block or trampled by insistent feet at four and five and six o'clock and short square fingers stuffing pipes and evening newspapers and eyes assured of certain certainties the conscience of a blackened street impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled around these images and cling the notion of some infinitely gentle infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth and laugh the world resolve like ancient women gathering fuel in vacant lots.

Adieu

2012-01-12T23:20:00.002+01:00

A fairytale

2012-01-10T14:49:00.002+01:00

Once upon a time, there was a woman who had three daughters.
The first daughter asked her; ‘mother, why am I called Rose?’
The mother replied; ‘well dear, that is because when you were born, a rose fell on your head.’
The second daughter asked her; ‘mother, why am I called Violet?’
‘sweetheart, that is because when you were born, a violet fell on your head.’
The third daughter asked her; ‘wwwaaarrggjkkglfguh?’
‘SHUT UP REFRIGERATOR! BACK IN YOUR CAGE!’

Suddenly, at NASA

2012-01-10T14:16:00.004+01:00

You know how you’ve been sending radio signals into space for decades hoping for a response from another planet? Well, this is it. Please stop spamming us. We beg of you to stop! It’s not you, it’s us. We’re just not that into you. We only read the signals because we get bored sometimes, but that doesn’t mean we should engage into an inter-planetary alliance. From now on we’re just going to ignore you, so it’s no use to keep sending us those da Vinci drawings and that Martin Luther King speech anymore. We know already! You had a dream, fine, let’s move on. I’m sure there are other aliens out there that would love your carbon-based company. Maybe you should look into the Circinus constellation, we hear they throw wicked cocktail parties. We hope we don’t offend you by saying this, but please do not invent space travel. All that talk about travelling faster than light is bullshit anyway, trust us. You will NEVER reach us. Don’t even try. We would hate to use force, but we’re a highly developed race. We have dead rays. We will obliterate you. We admit, kittens are hilarious and True Blood is a pretty raunchy series, but we’re just not looking for something new. This is our first and final message to Earth, please have a nice, lonely existence until your sun blows up.

PS; those alien abductions are totally not us. Not to snitch on anyone, but where do you think they get the staff for those cocktail parties we told you about? Think about it…

Toast

2012-01-10T10:14:00.005+01:00

…so I was in the kitchen, standing in front of the toaster and…
Were you making toast?
What?
When you were in the kitchen, standing in front of the toaster, were you making toast?
So, I was standing there and I thought to myself; “what am I doing?”
Making toast?
“What is my life leading to, why do I get up every morning?”
To make toast.
Exactly. Wait, what? No, I’m telling you I had an existential breakdown.
In the kitchen.
Yes.
In front of the toaster.
Yes.
While making toast.
So I went to the bathroom, I only had fifteen minutes left to shower and get dressed…
Where were you going?
Work.
So, there’s your answer. Why do you get up every morning? To go to work.
But is that it? Work?
Well, work gives you money. Money gives you happiness. I really don’t see what the problem is here.
It’s just all so pointless.
Next time you’re in the kitchen, standing in front of the toaster, you better make some goddamn toast.
So utterly pointless.

I feel like

2012-01-06T14:27:00.002+01:00

Dancing on my Own

2011-12-31T16:31:00.002+01:00

let's end 2011...

Relax

2011-12-23T11:16:00.004+01:00

Ladies and Gentlemen,

this is your Reality crew speaking: as foretold by the Mayan calendar, the Universe is one year away from it’s final destination, where this reality will terminate.

Please prepare to vacate the Universe. Return all matter to it’s pre-atomic state and place any left over dark matter into the black holes provided. If you require any of your checkout procedure to be recorded as string theory equations, then please collect and retain any dimensions you require beyond the third. Any remaining Time can be claimed back as Space if you correctly fill in your time return forms. If you’ve not yet been issued with a time return form, then this is an illusion caused by your limited dimensionality. Relax, and an authorized time collection agent will have been visiting you.

On behalf of our parent company, The Mayan Gods, we hope you enjoyed your stay in this reality and would choose to participate in an inexplicable and random expression of spontaneously generated space-time in what, for want of a better term, we shall call ‘the future’.

Top 5 Movies of 2011

2011-12-20T11:34:00.014+01:00

Post-Apocalyptic Antwerp

2011-12-07T13:15:00.003+01:00

Hibernating

2011-12-02T11:10:00.003+01:00

Please, give me some perspective
and just let me sleep

Voyageur

2011-11-29T10:29:00.002+01:00

Manipulated Living

2011-11-23T23:59:00.000+01:00

T-XYZ

2011-11-07T11:43:00.005+01:00

Like in a post-apocalyptic disaster movie, the air has become poisonous and I am sporting a gas mask, running from one safe spot to another. My vision is hindered and I feel my friends are always far away. Time, probably bored with always going in a straight line, has decided to change the rules and now I’m forced to wait until the rising sun in both past and future. The present, has been decreed, is not invited. It’s like the White Queen’s rule of ‘jam to-morrow and jam yesterday’ which dreadfully confused poor little Alice. From a scientific point of view, Time has to work together with the three spatial dimensions but is in itself one-dimensional. So, if it doesn’t flow in a line, there are seemingly infinite moments, a bunch of paths that you can move along from this moment to the next. All of a sudden, Time is starting to look very much like a tree. Was the Queen wrong? Maybe I can have jam always and never at the same time? It is not me who will read these words later, it will not be my eyes. It’s not even me anymore writing these words. It is not my reality that caused me to write this.
“What are you on about?” the Phantom Ape asks. If Time was so fickle, could it not be manipulated? Maybe I could shake the tree, switch a branch, map out a more agreeable future for myself.
“Blavatsky said to wait,” the Phantom Ape sounds more desperate now, “you promised her.” She and her divine spark can both suck it. How sick I am of waiting. I’m six years old now, cleaning up toys together with my mother. I get into a trance and remember playing with a blue electric light for more than an hour which engulfed the entire room. It was one of the most magical events in my entire life. In reality, according to my mum, I stared at a piece of lego for about ten minutes and then she told me to quit fooling around and put it in the damn box. Time is a tree and reality a most personal experience. Last week I kissed someone and the blue electric light came back, but this time it was inside of me, spreading out of my pores as if my body was too small. As before, I was told to put it back in a box. In a way, it should stay contained. One moment traded for another, 22 years in one bright blue flash.
"You're crazier than you think I think you are."
You know I believe in killing your darlings, and if you turn out to be one, my little monkey, I'll cut you up. You've been useless in this text, utterly useless.

Upādāna

2011-11-04T10:31:00.004+01:00

What is the definition of attachment?

Being dependent on someone or something: emotional, mental or physical.

We attach ourselves to things, to people, to places: it’s like we can't help but cling to anything and everything around us. But an attachment is an odd companion. It treats this something as though it is a part of your body; inseparable, despite the fact that it is not a part of yourself.

We become so hurt by losing it. What we don't realize is that possession is merely a comfortable illusion we create for ourselves because we want a thing to exist as if it were a part of us when it can physically never exist that way.

Only the idea of it can exist that way and ideas are as much a part of you as your tone of voice and the words you speak. They are a collection of the world around you, interpreted by your subconscious mind. You don't possess them, you are them. They as much possess you as you do them and ideas themselves are ethereal, inherently unable to be possessed, wandering through everything we think, see, and do.

Our minds are constantly outside, never fully existing in the present moment, always directed by the past, and dreaming or worrying of the future. Creating fantasies within the mind, and using those fantasies to interpret the external world. What is the present moment? Does it even exist?

Can we free ourselves from attachments? Can we free ourselves from our pasts and fantastic futures to find the present moment? Can we will something like that to happen?

Essentially will is our ability to cause things to happen. We will something and it occurs. But what is will?

Cause and effect. Will is the cause and the effect is whatever we will to happen. But we forget that will is not simply an ultimate cause; it too had causes to bring about the act of willing. In forgetting this, our understanding of will is not unlike a god's act of creation scenario along with its inherent paradox.

Our will is created by forces outside our conscious experience. The perspective of willing is merely that: it is an illusion. We are not the ultimate cause in our act of willing. If we understand this, then what do we become?

Well, what are we to begin with? How does a person define himself? Is he merely what he perceives as himself? Certainly not. We have already shown that will is merely an illusionary perspective of something more. So we too are something more than we think we are.

Are we then a collection of cells to form a body and a collection of experiences and understandings to form a mind? What is it that wills? Is it our cells? Is it reality bent into perspective by our minds? A thought is merely a perspective, an experience (and a very personal one). It is not you who does the thinking, you are merely experiencing a perspective on the thought; a thought being a collection of actions outside your comprehension.

We are not merely what we perceive to be ourselves. In fact what we perceive to be ourselves is but a small view of something much more, it is illusionary and masks the true nature of existence. We must therefore redefine our understanding of ourselves.

What then are we?

(thank you ML)

Melancholia

2011-08-22T12:22:00.002+02:00

20/03/2010 – 18/08/2011

2011-08-18T15:02:00.001+02:00

Aalasyam amrutham visham. Non compus mentis. I’m like a fish out of water. 28°C in Sevilla! Thanks people (even Kath) for the birthday wishes. I say; eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation. I’m confronting the maze of the blank page. Several billion trillion tons of superhot exploding hydrogen nuclei rose slowly above the horizon and managed to look small, cold and slightly damp. I’m the proud godfather of Amélia! It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw. Am I the peaceful phlegmatic? Unruffled. You’re softer than a pillow...stuffed with bunnies! The Pentabarf IS the most fundamental of all Discordian catma! Who knew you have to get x-rays for a job interview? I am seriously catching up with my translations. Swimming upstream and getting tired. I got the job, training starts the 21st. True Blood. Synergy. Training is over (praise Jebus), moving on to internship. I’m Resourcing the humans. Tomorrow is my last day of internship and after reunited with my man! Magus. Vampire diarrhoea. One roll for the whole shebang. Flat hunting. Getting the keys in 20 minutes! Filling boxes. 1 day, 18 hours, 23 minutes and 10 seconds. Dafarhinihibicolludol mix. Living together. 12 chapters, 8 stages, 7 characters - 1 novel. Tango with Blavatsky. The sudden access to panic experienced by one who realises that he is being drawn inexorably into a conversation from which one has no hope of enjoying, benefiting from or understanding. Waiting for books to arrive. Dancing to the wrong tune. NYC. Wicked on Broadway. Last hours in Manhattan. Rain in Antwerp. Say what? Kotek san.

"Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

It's all downhill from here. Djindobre, mjeskam w belgie, nje moevje po polsku. Moevish po angielsku? Chsiaubim koepitsj chepwe paptche na zjime. Djenkoeje! Is sad to leave lovely Poznan. Light your torches, sharpen your pitchforks and get your mob on. Last day of work this year. Escape from Bellcrataz. Poker & chili con carne. Do not watch TV. Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.

Guildenstern: Consider: One, probability is a factor which operates *within* natural forces. Two, probability is *not* operating as a factor. Three, we are now held within un-, sub- or super-natural forces. Discuss.
Rosencrantz: What?

Kitten wanted. PIXEL. Thanks everyone for the wishes and the great birthday weekend! Confounding variables. In London. Lost in the maze without a ball of thread. Is again Uncle Bard; welcome to the family Matthias. I was warned about not having hot water, but no water at all makes me cranky. It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction. Can’t wait for tomorrow. Needs hiking gear. A weekend in Budapest. Almost. Brussels-Berlin-Poznan. I Survived the Tatra Mountains. I’m back in Antwerp. I was blown to pieces by Melancholia. Rush of empathy.

Like a Hook into an Eye

2011-08-18T10:24:00.001+02:00

I don’t know which is worse, a past I can't regain or a present that will destroy me if I look at it too clearly. Then there's the future. Sheer vertigo. Loving you blurred my vision; but now that you’re not here, I can now see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing I see if I sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future. The ruin I’ve made. Still, you fit into me, like a hook into an eye. I can’t tell you where it hurts. I can’t calm down. I can never stop howling.

I wonder which is preferable, to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin - everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone - and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?

When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.

Phantom

2011-05-12T01:06:00.000+02:00

Labyrinth

2011-02-21T13:52:00.001+01:00

the hornless minotaur in the ochre room
exhausted, trapped in boneless skin
the balding bitches licking his heels
him begging for release, to kill
a tourist passing through

the yellow birch stands smooth
and bronzed smelling like oil of wintergreen
the small black marks and scars
on his matured bark grow in the shade
of all those provincial hedges

the sacrificial virgins are being led away
from the threshold
with paralyzed gazes and spaghetti legs
abducted into the borderland
cutting corners
transforming themselves on the cold stone
defying classification
until the center is reached

Howl

2011-02-21T09:56:00.003+01:00

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls

Allen Ginsberg, Howl, part I lines 1-12

The Tale of Little Red Riding Hood

2010-11-22T20:39:00.003+01:00

Translated from English to Dutch, French, Polish, Finnish, Italian, Icelandic, Latin, Welsh, Hebrew, Hungarian, Chinese, Afrikaans, Russian, Turkish, Haitian, Greek, Spanish, Thai, Arabic, back to English using Google Translate technology.
By Bard Neeus (2010-11-22)

However, the city was old as well. Grandmother loved her despite the high pressure: Red Riding Hood, a young woman named in Red Hat.

One of those days, she said: ‘my mother, my love and I came to this very bad feeling after the rumours I have heard about the bread and butter.”

Never withdraw from your grandmother in another city Red Riding Hood!

In the wild, the wolf spirit is also a tree which fears deforestation marches that can never be found. Some writers have to go if you know that wolves pose a threat to grandmothers who hear the mission for the poor. She said, “the bread and butter are my mother.”

"I tend to break down what is.”

"Yes”, said Little Red Riding Hood, “in the first office of the village.”

"Why," said Wolf, “it seems they knew what they wanted when they visited first.”

The wolf fought against the economy as soon as possible, in fact, he was nuts. The butterfly curve of industry against the old house, turns out to be wild animals after a short time when the content is not a step.

“What's this?”

“I am Hood, the son,” said Little Red Riding Hood, “the opposition to beautiful, cereal, bread and butter. I come to see your mother.”

“A little girl in a big city," said the beginning of photography.

Good Bobby opened the door and saw girls for more than three days, winning seven of their index fingers. He waited to at last trust Red Hat, then sleep. Grandma blows.

“What's this?”

Red Hat is more difficult than he thought. Grandmother said, “I was surprised to hear the sounds of the first harsh winter so I sent the daughter of Red Riding Hood’s mother and her jar of cream pie.”

Wolf called, "I hope that the opening of the bottle is safe.”

Bobby with the red hat opened the door.

Wolf said, “put the bread and butter in a pan on the double bed, and take another chair with hair skin.”

Little Red Hat made the bed. She was surprised how many reservations grandmother had made. She said, “my grandmother in bed is significant.”

“I want to kiss the child.”

"Great, and a good friend in the legs.”

“Children are the best.”

“Move your ears.”

“I left the best for Israel.”

“Grandmother looks great!”

“It would be better to see my children.”

“Grandmother, girls have big teeth!”

"All the best food.”

The man who was with the big bad wolf, ate the red hat.

Doris Lessing

2010-10-12T08:41:00.002+02:00

This is the sort of thing we accepted as normal. Yet for all of us there were moments when 'the game we were all agreeing to play' simply could not stand up to events: we would be gripped by feelings of unreality, like nausea. Perhaps this feeling, that the ground was dissolving under our feet, was the real enemy...or we believed it to be so. Perhaps our tacit agreement that nothing much, or at least, nothing irrecoverable, was happening, was because for us the enemy was reality, was to allow ourselves to know what was happening. Perhaps our pretences, everyone's pretences, wich in the moments when we felt naked, defenceless, seemed like playacting and absurd, should be regared as admirable? Or perhaps they were necessary, like the games of children who can make playacting a way of keeping reality a long way from their weaknesses?

2010-08-30T21:03:00.001+02:00

From a friend

2010-04-05T00:12:00.002+02:00

"Think of Easter as a resurrection. It's gonna get better from now on."

Names

2010-04-05T00:04:00.000+02:00

What would my life look up if my name were Anthony? Or Christian? Mark, Damon, Benjamin, Jonas, Louis, Magnus, Conrad, Gregory, Ivan or even Alejandro? Would I be prettier if I were a Dante? Would I be smarter as a Joseph? Would I be straight as a Daniel? Would I be a world-famous painter if I was named Gustav? Would I be sick more if my name was Elias? Would Mauritz be more adventurous? Surely if I was a Bjorn, I would be more into sports? As a Rico, would I be into science?

Couldn’t I have a different name for each day of the week?

3 years of my life in status updates

2010-03-22T00:14:00.003+01:00

I’m scratching my presto lot. I’m meditating and losing my hand. Time to enjoy a cigarette. Gotta make some paninis and chocochinos. Now I’m drinking a martini and I’m turning around. I’m kicking my heels. I’m a chicken. I’m not touching, can’t get mad. I don’t like YOU! Just kidding. I want to sleep. I’m studying journalism now and getting up from my lazy ass. I still want more sleep. I just am. Now I’m thinking: huh? I’m blown away by something. I am not going to break. I’m singing and making strange noises. I will hammer your toe like a pediatrician. I say rarrr. I want more sunshine. I have a pen and I’m not afraid to use it. Blabla. Trust me, I’m a professional. Let's party! Let's work! I'm in Utrecht and waving hi. I'm sleepy again. I'm cleaning something.

Your actions turn from conquest to dust.

I’m heading out to Brussels. So sleepy. I’m hatting it mad! I’m in a loving mood. Happy birthday Sharah, happy birthday Grandma! I’m transcending. Why am I going from Vilvoorde to Holland? I’m baked and obsessed with Mortal Kombat. I’m in Paris. I’m loving Paris. I’m blind. I’m dancing the samba. I’m writing fairy tales about a golden deer. I want some brass goggles with dual magnifiers. I will get kung fuy on you! I’m lost. I’m wondering what you are doing right NOW? I’ve had 3 full days without paper cuts. I’m lost again. Now I’m on a good path. I’m welcoming my nephew to the world. I’m in my veal-fattening pen. I am going back to Antwerp. I’m thinking love is a blast. I’m writing, thinking, drinking and partying. I have an appointment with professor Pieters. I’m waiting for an important letter. I am going to rock! I can see Russia from my house too. Wait, what? I am going to tackle some classical mythology. I want you to stop photoshopping my head on sexy bikini pictures. I am trying to read The English Patient by the next day. I’m confused and need a day planner. I am narrowing down subjects for my thesis. I am on a flying Persian carpet. I need more bookshelves. I’m betting my bottom dollar that tomorrow there’ll be sun. I’m writing again. I will give you language advice. I’m living in the 1930’s. I am facing a lot of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead. My style is da bomb digi bomb dideng dideng digidigi.

All right Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.

I am glad that knowing that the best part of waking up is not Folgers in your cup but knowing that Chuck Norris didn’t kill me in my sleep. I like maxims that don’t encourage behaviour modification. I’m having a princess blues. I’m stressed because I have an important presentation today. I’m taking the special bus to school. I helped put up the Christmas tree. I finished my portfolio and I’ve been waiting all week to say that. I’m flattened and then recharged. I’m working and making a list and checking it twice. I’m studying Canadian literature but forgot about my reading assignment for African literature. I’m telling people to check their mail.

Her lips were saying ‘no’, but her eyes were saying…’read my lips’.

I say your work is puerile and under-dramatized. It lacks any sense of structure, character, or the Aristotelian unities. I made it through my first exam and my grammar courses. I’m wondering what a geminate is and why it disappeared. I’m reading about Berbice Dutch. I’m studying and rooting for Obama. I’m telling people they look cold and someone dumped a present. I am wondering what’s going on with Becky and those midgets. I think chitty chitty bang bang is shitty shitty gang bang. I am an early bird. I am at a very late Christmas party. I’m sick.

I sometimes seriously doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!

I am going to buy new glasses, turns out vision isn’t overrated. I picked 5 books that influenced me. I’m singing eerie yarn owls and retainers. I’m off to Paris. I am wondering if I will wake up with some gray hair tomorrow.

Precious and fragile things need special handling.

I am thanking people for their birthday wishes. I don’t understand the use of twitter. I really thought The Curious Case of Benjamin Button sucked. I am going to a party and wondering what to wear. I’m sick of it. I’m loving it. I am spreading the WTFitude. I am thinking of buying a classic Mercedes. I am having sushi on a boat. I am having the strangest of Mondays. I decided firmly against watching Stephen King’s IT. I am making my BFF proud. I’m studying, studying, studying and studying some more. I’m having my first exam. WTF? I just need a convertible and a silk head wrap and I’m good to you. I am forced to acknowledge the existence of the incorrigible. Time for the final exam! I’m having family time. I’m covered in books. Books, books, books, all is in books. I want to draw stick figures. The latest episode of Wipe Out was amazing. I have seen a human being act at his worst. I am Zen. I am looking at the man in the mirror. I’m thinkering. It’s almost naptime. Bridal shower today! I need more coffee. The favourite anagram of my name is ‘nerd abuse’. I think it’s time for some serious job hunting. I want Vonti to hang in there. I’m smitten. I’m on set today and people should wish me luck. There’s a beached whale in Antwerp? I’m getting up at 4AM for make-up and wardrobe. I feel like Gregor Samsa.

As my dear departed friend Lotus Weinstock used to say; I used to want to change the world, now I just want to be able to leave the room with a little dignity.

I’m pulling it together. My godchild is going to be a girl! I ain’t bothered. I’m happy and I tell it in Spanish. I wonder if this is a good title for a short movie. I’m violently happy.

HEY SUSIE DERKINS, IS THAT YOUR FACE OR IS A POSSUM STUCK IN YOUR COLLAR? I HOPE YOU SUFFER A DEBILITATING BRAIN ANEURISM, YOU FREAK!

I am wishing people a merry Christmas in 9 languages. I am going to see him in a heartbeat. I keep on smiling. I can almost feel him. 0 days, 21 hours, 42 minutes and 38 seconds. I think isolated sleep paralysis sucks. I love my song!

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.

It’s 12h45. I’m going to watch my boyfriend perform for the first time. I’m going for it. I’m in Lisbon and thankful for trendy hotspot cafés. I’m eating the rich. I am a minion of fortune. My heart is in Rome now, but I’m going to join it on Friday. I feel like kicking something, preferably a small cuddly animal. I’m in a pressroom in Rome wondering if I should write a review. I’m back in Antwerp. I am an evil giraffe. I think that being 18.706 kilometres apart is really far. What would little baby Jesus do? I’m a ninja. I’m a ninja in London. I’m fixing things.

Part Sephenn - Dead Letter, Numb Twat, Drifting Stones

2010-01-04T19:38:00.002+01:00

A boy (hungry) left the country
That empty stomach of his! That burning hole
Where once a lost Jesus
Was his groom, a greasy shining God,
A healing stomach ache against banality
Of rooting, saving, building, owing.

But banality is nothing?
Ah no? But oh, the joy!

On the city square friendly scholars sat
Reading Ovid by a full moon, they laced
Chaos to cosmos on their quoting tongues
And I presented my empty stomach to their feet
And nobody yelled that I confide in fantasy,
That you are nothing but a dead letter.

No sir, I don’t need a vision, no disclosure
And no revelation through higher powers, no ma’am,
A summer morning, black coffee, cigarettes,
The singing example of a fly, a mosquito,
Which bombards my absence with her drunk figures,
Such things suffice to lift up the skirt
Of a moist soul, to blind your critical eyes
With her numb twat, oh yes sir.

I don’t care about words, you see, but about constructions
That marched the street this morning out of nowhere
When the yawning children, still drunk from sleep,
Carefully played with each other’s desires
And caught balls that no man would toss over the hedge
They lie down on the curb, hugging each other
And kiss without caring about their distant futures
It is about these constructions, without meaning.

I dream with head and hole
Around the clock, I braid and I knot
With all ten toes, ten fingers
At once, I walk on my bare hands

Into the night, of this paper

My lips pluck drifting stones
Of the road, my climbing feet churn
The constellations, my voice
Comes up and runs away

I have nothing to gain.

Part Faif - Love at First Sight

2009-12-23T17:29:00.002+01:00

Love at First Sight

They’re both convinced
that a sudden passion joined them.
Such certainty is beautiful,
but uncertainty is more beautiful still.

Since they’d never met before, they’re sure
that there’d been nothing between them.
But what’s the word from the streets, staircases, hallways -
perhaps they’ve passed by each other a million times?

I want to ask them
if they don’t remember -
a moment face to face
in some revolving door?
perhaps a “sorry” muttered in a crowd?
a curt “wrong number” caught in the receiver?
but I know the answer.
No, they don’t remember.

They’d be amazed to hear
that Chance has been toying with them
now for years.

Not quite ready yet
to become their Destiny,
it pushed them close, drove them apart,
it barred their path,
stifling a laugh,
and then leaped aside.

There were signs and signals,
even if they couldn’t read them yet.
Perhaps three years ago
or just last Tuesday

a certain leaf fluttered
from one shoulder to another?
Something was dropped and then picked up.
Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished
into childhood’s thicket?

There were doorknobs and doorbells
where one touch had covered another
beforehand.

Suitcases checked and standing side by side.
One night, perhaps, the same dream
grown hazy by morning.

Every beginning
is only a sequel, after all,
and the book of events
is always open halfway through.

- Wislawa Szymborska

Part Fore - The Meaning Of

2009-12-22T02:27:00.004+01:00

Life is to strongly desire to swing from the pole on the rear footplate of a bus.
Life is the ancient art of being able to balance the hot and cold shower taps.
Life is that kind of facial expression which is impossible to achieve except when having a passport photograph taken.
Life is a fitted elasticated bottom sheet which turns your mattress banana shaped.
Life is the sudden access to panic experienced by one who realises that he is being drawn inexorably into a conversation from which one has no hope of enjoying, benefiting from or understanding.
Life is the moment of realization that the train you have just patiently watched pulling out of the station was the one you were meant to be on.
Life is the entry in a diary (such as a date or a set of initials) or a name and address in your address book, which you haven't the faintest idea what it's doing there.
Life is the topmost tread of a staircase which disappears when you climb the stairs in the darkness.
Life is the tapping of an index finger on glass made by a person futilely attempting to communicate with either a tropical fish or a post office clerk.
Life is the look directed at you in a theatre bar in the interval by people who've already got their drinks.

Life is funny.

(based on 'The Meaning of Liff' by Douglas Adams)

Part Tree -stirred something, somewhere.-

2009-12-04T18:14:00.004+01:00

After years of deafening silence and an almost unbearable waiting, I woke up one morning with a small but undeniable feeling of pressure on my left shoulder. I dismissed it as some sort of ache at first, but during the day I occasionally felt a short squeeze in my shoulder and by nightfall I knew he had returned. The Phantom Ape had come back to me. That night, when I was alone in my room, after making sure there were no cats around and I couldn’t hear dogs barking in the distance, I looked in the mirror. In the dark I could just see the outline of my reflection and to my delight, the clear glowing transparent form of the tarsier I held so dear.

I saw something in your eyes, I’m sure.
What was it, my friend?
You were lost. You hung up your coat in the closet and stopped thinking about it. You were in the fields all the time, always trying to get to the end of the field where he would be waiting by the road.
But there was no end, I couldn’t find the road.
You kept going in circles.
Where were you? Why didn’t you stop me?
You destroyed the house, I had to rebuild it.
A pioneering few concentrated their awareness on the still, sweet sound that lay across the chasm of sensory awareness, stirred something, somewhere, within the recesses of the glandular system and, in a transcendent moment, opened their third eye.
That’s right, go on.
The old Persian of the Achaemenian empire was an Indo-European tongue with close affinities with Sanskrit and Avestan, the language of the Zoroastrian sacred texts.
Don’t stop, please don’t stop.
Recidite plebes, the king’s men are on a mission! Search the farthest corners of the land with the prince with the golden eyes!
Yes, you remember now. Do you remember the valediction, the forbidden mourning?
If they be two, they are two so as stiff twin compasses are two. Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show to move, but doth if the other do.
You haven’t forgotten. You are ready now. Take your coat, we’re going out.

I look out the window and see it’s raining. Just like it was before, so many years ago. I walk over to my closet and all the way hiding in the back I find my old coat. It looks worn and battered but I smile when I put it on. I search its pockets and slowly I put everything I left there before me on the kitchen table. An empty wallet, a bottle of rum, a get-out-of-jail-free card, a folded picture of Madame Blavatsky, a pack of disposable razors, a Raageshwari album and finally one set of keys. The keys to the house I once saw in my dreams, then visited and ultimately destroyed.

When we visit, I hope you like the changes I made. They’re all there, they’re all there waiting for you. Yes, they’re all waiting.
I take a sip of rum and start putting everything back in my coat pockets.
Leave out the Raageswhari and put some money in your wallet. You might want to buy him a present.
Buy a present for whom?
You’ll see.

I do as he says, like I always do. I step out my front door and through the distorted street in front of me I can already make out the house he made for me. It’s only a short walk away. It used to be so hard to find, I walked the streets for hours and hours until I would finally fall on my knees, soaking wet and exhausted. And now, I can already see the lights burning on the first floor from my own front door.

Remember, you walk alone. The midnight street will spin itself from under your feet. When your eyes shut, my dreaming houses will all snuff out. You make houses shrink and trees diminish. Your look’s leash will dangle the puppet-people. If you choose to blink, they die. In good humour, you give grass its green, blazon the sky blue and you endow the sun with gold. In your wintriest mood, you hold absolute power to boycott any colour and forbid any flower to be.

Slowly, trying not to blink, I make my way towards the house.

Part Toe

2009-10-27T16:24:00.002+01:00

I am not fond of uttering platitudes
in stained-glass attitudes.

If you're anxious for to shine
in the high aesthetic line
as a man of culture rare,
you must get up all the germs
of the transcendental terms,
and plant them everywhere.

You must lie upon the daisies
and discourse in novel phrases
of your complicated state of mind,
the meaning doesn't matter
if it's only idle chatter
of a transcendental kind.
And everyone will say,
as you walk your mystic way;

"If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,
why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be."

Part Won

2009-10-26T00:41:00.001+01:00

Still the world pursues, “Jug Jug” to dirty ears. And other withered stumps of time were told upon the walls; staring forms leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed. Footsteps shuffled on the stair. Under the firelight, under the brush, his hair spread out in fiery points. Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me. Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak. What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? I never know what you are thinking. Think.

I think we are in rats’ alley where the dead men lost their bones.

What is that noise?

The wind under the door.

What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?

Nothing, again nothing.

Do you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing?

I remember. Those are pearls that were his eyes.

Is there nothing in your head?

Oh that Shakespearian rag – it’s so elegant, so intelligent.

What shall I do now? What shall I do? I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street. With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do?

If it rains play a game of chess, pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale filled all the desert with inviolable voice. And still he cried, and still the world pursues, “Jug Jug” to dirty ears.

Part Toe-Zewo

2009-06-24T15:10:00.002+02:00

Chris Von Steiner
www.chrisvonsteiner.com

Part Won-Nain

2009-06-08T11:58:00.001+02:00

A critical look at American ideology regarding war photography.

Photographs objectify.

They turn an event or a person into something that can be possessed. Often something looks, or is felt to look, 'better' in a photograph. Indeed, it is one of the functions of photography to improve the normal appearance of things. (Hence, one is always disappointed by a photograph that is not flattering.) Beautifying is one classic operation of the camera and it tends to bleach out a moral response to what is shown. Uglifying, showing something at its worst, is a more modern function: didactic, it invites an active response. For photographs to accuse, and possibly to alter conduct, they must shock.

Pictures of horribly disfigured First World War veterans who survived the inferno of the trenches, faces melted and thickened with scar tissue of survivors of the American atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima, faces cleft by machete blows of Tutsi survivors of the genocidal rampage launched by the Hutus in Rwanda - they will always testify to a great iniquity survived.

The familiarity of certain photographs builds our sense of the present and the immediate past. Photographs lay down routes of reference, and serve as totems of causes: sentiment is more likely to crystallize around a photograph than around a verbal slogan. And photographs help construct - and revise - our sense of a more distant past, with the posthumous shocks engineered by the circulation of hitherto unknown photographs. Photographs that everyone recognizes are now a constituent part of what a society chooses to think about, or declares that it has chosen to think about. It calls these ideas 'memories', and that is, over the long run, a fiction.

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as collective memory - part of the same family of spurious notions as collective guilt. But there is collective instruction.

All memory is individual, unreproducible - it dies with each person. What is called collective memory is not remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds. Ideologies create substantiating archives of representative images, which encapsulate common ideas of significance and trigger predictable thoughts, feelings. Poster-ready photographs - the mushroom cloud of an A-bomb test, Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking at the Lincoln Memorial, the astronaut walking on the moon - are the visual equivalent of sound bites. They commemorate, in no less blunt fashion than postage stamps, Important Historical Moments: indeed, the triumphalist ones (the picture of the A-bomb excepted) become postage-stamps. Fortunately, there is no one signature picture of the Nazi death camps.

As art has been redefined during a century of modernism as 'whatever is destined to be enshrined in some kind of museum', so it is now the destiny of many photographic troves to be exhibited and preserved in museum-like institutions. Among such archives of horror, the photographs of the Holocaust have undergone the greatest institutional development. The point of creating public repositories for these and other relics is to ensure that the crimes they depict will continue to figure in people's consciousness. This is called remembering, but in fact it is a good deal more than that. The memory museum in its current proliferation is a product of a way of thinking about, and mourning, the destruction of European Jewry in the 1930s and 1940s, which for the United States of America came to institutional fruition in the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Photographs and other memorabilia of the Shoah have been committed to a perpetual recirculation, to ensure that what they show will be remembered. Photographs of the suffering and martyrdom of a people are more than reminders of death, of failure, of victimization. They invoke the miracle of survival. To aim at the perpetuation of memories means, inevitably, that one has undertaken the task of continually renewing, of creating, memories - aided, above all, by the impress of iconic photographs.

Even in the era of cybermodels, what the mind feels like is still, as the ancients imagined it, an inner space - like a theatre - in which we picture, and it is these pictures that allow us to remember. The problem is not that people remember through photographs, but that they remember only the photographs. This remembering through photographs eclipses other forms of understanding, and remembering.

Probably, if you are American, you would think that it would be morbid to go out of your way to look at pictures of burnt victims of atomic bombing or the napalmed flesh of the civilian victims of the American war on Vietnam, but that you have a duty to look at the Holocaust pictures. Yet, the Holocaust Memorial Museum is about what didn't happen in America, so all that memory work doesn't risk arousing an embittered domestic population against authority. Americans prefer to picture the evil was there, and from which the United States - an unique nation, one without any certifiably wicked leaders throughout its entire history - is exempt. That the United States of America, like any other country, has its tragic past does not sit well with the founding, and still all-powerful, belief in American exceptionalism. The acknowledgment of the American use of disproportionate firepower in war is very much not a national project. A museum devoted to the history of America's wars that included the vicious war the United States fought against guerillas in the Philippines from 1899 to 1902, and that fairly presented the arguments for and against using the atomic bomb in 1945 on Hiroshima, with photographic evidence that showed what those weapons did, would be regarded as a most unpatriotic endeavor.

However, now there exists a vast repository of images that make it harder to maintain this kind of American moral defectiveness. None of us can afford it anymore. The images say: "This is what human beings are capable of doing - may volunteer to do, enthusiastically, self-righteously. Don't forget." Remembering is an ethical act, has ethical value in and of itself. But history gives contradictory signals about the value of remembering in the much longer span of a collective history. There is simply too much injustice in the world. And too much remembering. To make peace is to forget. To reconcile, it is necessary that memory be faulty and limited. That is it only a photograph.

If the goal is having some space in which to live one's own life, then it is desirable that the account of specific injustices dissolve into a more general understanding; that human beings everywhere do terrible things to one another.

Part Won-Eyth

2009-06-05T17:40:00.002+02:00

Ah Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down.

Part Won-Tree

2009-03-16T23:34:00.002+01:00

Part Won-Toe

2009-03-04T10:45:00.002+01:00

He knew he was faltering, trying to keep his footing. Everything in his life was temporary, ungrounded. Language itself had lost its solidity; it had become thin, contingent, slippery, a viscid film on which he was sliding around like an eyeball on a plate. An eyeball that could still see, however. That was the trouble.

He remembered himself as carefree, earlier, in his youth. Carefree, thick-skinned, skipping light-footed over the surfaces, whistling in the dark, able to get through anything. Turning a blind eye. Now he found himself wincing away. The smallest setbacks were major - a lost sock, a jammed electric toothbrush. Even the sunrise was blinding. He was being rubbed all over with sandpaper. "Get a grip," he told himself. "Get a handle on it. Put it behind you. Move forward. Make a new you."

Such positive slogans. Such bland inspirational promotions vomit. What he really wanted was revenge. But against whom, and for what? Even if he had the energy for it, even if he could focus and aim, such a thing would be less than useless.

Then he'd stay up too late, and once in bed he'd stare at the ceiling, telling over his lists of obsolete words for the comfort that was in them. But there was no longer any comfort in the words. There was nothing in them. It no longer delighted him to possess these small collections of letters that other people had forgotten about. It was like having his own baby teeth in a box.

At the edge of sleep a procession would appear behind his eyes, moving out of the shadows to the left, crossing his field of vision. Young slender girls with small hands, ribbons in their hair, bearing garlands of many-coloured flowers. The field would be green, but it wasn't a pastoral scene: these were girls in danger, in need of rescue. There was something - a threatening presence - behind the trees.

Or perhaps the danger was in him. Perhaps he was the danger, a fanged animal gazing out from the shadowy cave of the space inside his own skull.

Or it might be the girls themselves that were dangerous. There was always that possibility. They could be a bait, a trap. He knew they were much older than they appeared to be, and much more powerful as well. Unlike himself they had a ruthless wisdom. The girls were calm, they were grave and ceremonious. They'd look at him, they would recognize and accept him, accept his darkness. Then they would smile.
Oh honey, I know you. I see you. I know what you want.

Part Tree

2009-01-04T20:06:00.000+01:00

It doesn't mean you won't get any sleep, actually you'll sleep more. Fall asleep in the couch, sleep until noon, feel tired even when you're washing dishes or when you're talking on the phone. You will feel numb. Flat. When something doesn't go your way, you'll just shrug and think that was the way it was supposed to go, that you deserved it. Determined fatalism. You will start losing time, get used to it. There will be hours in the day unaccounted for. You won't remember what you did or where you were, they are just blank spaces of time. When people ask you how you are, you'll respond only with 'fine', 'much better, thank you' and 'I'm doing alright.' A soft, yet distant smile will accompany these answers. It won't stop people thinking you're weak and pitiful, but it will stop them asking questions. You don't have the energy to get into that. You will stop having dreams, making plans, enjoying a good time. You will lose interest and soon enough you will be alone.

Filling space, everything on repeat. You'll probably develop habits such as peeing in the shower, brushing your teeth everyday precisely at nine, writing letters to yourself, buying a cage-held pet, alphabetising your books, ... These are just examples, you're sure to develop your own. Odd details will grow in significance, holidays and important national events will be your guideline to order your life, put everything in place and perspective. You will find ways to justify your existence if you focus on little things. Television will be your window to the world of which you are a spectator. You'll be nothing more. You might try phoning in to one of their games which is on late at night or in the early afternoon, but they will never put you on. People will never meet your eyes or smile at you at the supermarket or in the post office. They will expect you to pay and leave. Any attempts to better yourself will fail. You know you'll never dye your hair, lose weight, buy new colourful clothes. Why bother thinking about it. If you live this way long enough, they will come to you.

At first a haunting silence. The refrigerator will stop making noise, the clocks will stop ticking and no more cars will drive by. Then at night, the voices will come. You won't understand them at first, but give it time. You should understand that they have chosen you. They waited for you to be ready. They want you to be quiet and to stay away from other people. They need you to be detached. Mentally blank. No needs or desires.

If you're ready, they will start showing you things.

Part Won

2008-12-15T12:06:00.000+01:00

"Hopefully you'll make something out of your life."

Then how much is my life worth right now? Is it measured by what I contribute to society? How much money I make, what great things I have accomplished? How much I give to the poor or how I help others?
Is it measured by my health? Should I be strong and lively, full of energy?
By what I know perhaps? By books and theories, streetwisdom and empathy?
By friendship? How many friends I have? How quickly I come to their aid? How much I give them and how grateful I am by what is given back? By how much I care for my family?
Or is it measured by love? How much love and sacrifice I give, equally measured by what's given back. How much he wants me, wants to kiss me, dreams of me.
Or all of the above?

How much is it worth right now?

Part Tree-Tree

2008-10-13T21:33:00.002+02:00

October 14th, 2008 is a day where a 'channelling medium' called Blossom Goodchild (of all names) predicted that a large alien spacecraft will appear and will be remain seen for 3 days, while radiating an extraterrestrial love-pulse throughout the globe.

Goodie.

She already has quite the following, and the fun part is: tomorrow we know if it's true.

I've been reading about it online, and this anonymous post was the best one, I swear:

Whether or not there is a sighting on October 14th, we are very close to the Day of Declaration, in which these "aliens" reveal themselves. There have already been increased UFO reports around the CERN collider.

I have had a lifelong interest in UFOs, but eventually came to recognize that while these beings claim to be benevolent, they have other motives. Even before I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, I saw the usefulness of the "What Would Jesus Do?" test. UFOs do not pass this test. Would Jesus kidnap people and experiment on them without their consent, justifying such behavior by saying how bad humanity is? No, He would not. These beings claim to be loving and kind, but they have been here for a long, long time and have waited around to be useful until right now. I don't buy it. The Bible refers to an end times deception that will be so believable that the Elect would be deceived, if it were possible. These fallen angels/Nephilim will present all sorts of reasons why we should follow them (they will say that they don't want to be worshipped and that all religions are just misunderstandings of their messages, yada, yada, yada). Arm yourself now. Read the Bible. Pray to the God of the universe, Who died and spent three days in hell so you can spend eternity with Him. If you surrender to Jesus Christ, you will not be deceived by Satan's End Times lie.

Remember: If Satan showed up and said, "Follow me and burn in hell," he would not get many takers. Instead, he will pretend to be an "angel of light" and will say that he's all about peace, love and happiness--yet without worshipping Jesus Christ as Lord. Choose your allegiances wisely. God bless you!

What's wrong with people?

Part Tree-Won

2008-10-06T18:20:00.001+02:00

I want to hear your voice. Your voice.

I want your voice that roots through the volatile carats
of playing clouds and children,
your voice who will sow the stars to my lips,
will steal the ground from underneath my feet,
your voice which hurts if happiness comes over me,
like a long sleep,
your voice which comforts when I have none.

I want to hear your voice. Your voice. I want your voice
of spinning cities filled with sun-less courts,
your voice which dresses me and quenches my old thirst
and your voice which stoned all the coolness out of me,
your voice which has cut me, man, as bread
and your voice who will salt my throat,
will pepper my puny mind with desire,
your voice which will tear open my lungs
and will waste the rotten gold of this tongue to passers-by,
yes, your voice which has collected bright lights
in this simple man, your voice which sings
or cries, your voice which teases
or loves, but still your voice, your voice, at least
a voice.

Part Tree-Zewo

2008-10-06T14:37:00.003+02:00

Part Toe-Nain

2008-09-29T23:46:00.001+02:00

Random Facebook status of some friends

... dead and broken
... is trying hard not to revert to zombie mode..braaaains
... is in 2.0
... needs a fucking cigarette
... is putting a hand out to people he lost in the past
... est à Paris
... is baking Kerupuk
... seems to be broken. Please contact manufacturer.
... told you so
... thinks there's love in the bodies of elephants too
... touched God in full explosion
... is looking for inner fucking peace
... is fucked
... is hungry for brainfood
... is in Lana Turner's villa enjoying Liz Taylor's company
... has issues with 'patience'

... thinks that life is great

Part Toe-Eyth

2008-09-22T13:38:00.004+02:00

Part Toe-Sephenn

2008-09-14T03:03:00.001+02:00

I'm dancing with the pink-lipped harlequin. We're in a field of poppies, burning bright. Sometimes he bites, he growls, he snorts haughtily, but I cling to his shoulders and try to keep in rhythm. In his diamond-patterned costume I assume he has knives hidden, but that's only a thought, we're swirling so fast I could never check. We stop. We step apart and look at each other. His disapproving glare puts tears in my eyes. I'm not a very good dancer, I'm not fast enough for him. I show him my picture of Madame Blavatsky and for a moment I seem to have his attention.

'Stand your ground chief,' the phantom ape says, 'stand your ground.'

He takes a knife out of his vest pocket and throws it at my feet.
'I'm not a saint', I say, 'and I can be a coward at times, unable to move.'
He looks at me, puzzled. I keep talking.
'I can be very forgiving, but I don't easily forget. And I'm edgy. I'm too sensitive. I pick up other people's moods too easily. I require lengthy explanations for things that shouldn't be explained in the first place, and yet I still wonder what is going on. I hear something, twist it around and then twist some more until I can't sleep at night and start shaking. I'm not acting very confident. My brain doesn't function like other people's, and that I experience things differently, so naturally I turn to others for guidance, and I trust, I believe, I dive in, but what if they're wrong? I'm a taciturn man, I'm an observer. I notice little things and changes around me. I skip the bigger picture and focus on the details. I'm mindful of the way things are said. The tone of voice, the matter in, the choice of words, details that are left out, but I can't trust my observations. They're coloured, I project too much into them, it all turns out clumsy and ambivalent. There's no more black and white left, everything's gray and shrouded. No more clear options, just choices you make to get to the next day. The grounding's gone. No words etched in stone, just acting on impulses and spilling out random thoughts. By every choice I make right now, my entire life changes. All I have is myself to rely on ultimately, and I can't trust my own twisted version of subjective reality. It is your fault, isn't it? You are doing this to me. These little games you are fond of playing.'
The pink-lipped harlequin takes the picture of Madame Blavatsky out of my hand .
'Are you going to take that away from me? You can't, you see. I need that picture. I was just showing you so you would understand. So you would see her eyes and understand. She knows and she's always looking. She can see right through all the chaos and nonsensical rubbish. Without her looking I'd be lost.'
He grins, folds the picture and puts it into his vest pocket.
'Naturally. It's all variations to the same theme. I'm going now, someone's waiting for me at the edge of the field. At least, he said he would. I sometimes doubt he will, but that's another story. I'm still going. Please give back the picture.'
The pink-lipped harlequin turns away his head and I silently start marching to the end of the field.

Distant Voices: Friedrich Nietzsche

2008-09-04T22:00:00.001+02:00

Let us face ourselves. We are Hyperboreans; we know very well how far off we live. “Neither by land nor by sea will you find the way to the Hyperboreans"—Pindar already knew this about us. Beyond the north, ice, and death—our life, our happiness. We have discovered happiness, we know the way, we have found the exit out of the labyrinth of thousands of years. Who else has found it? Modern man perhaps? “I have got lost; I am everything that has got lost,” sighs modern man.
This modernity was our sickness: lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous uncleanliness of the modern Yes and No. This tolerance and largeur of the heart, which “forgives” all because it “understands” all, is sirocco for us. Rather live in the ice than among modern virtues and other south winds!
We were intrepid enough, we spared neither ourselves nor others; but for a long time we did not know where to turn with our intrepidity. We became gloomy, we were called fatalists. Our fatum—the abundance, the tension, the damming of strength. We thirsted for lightning and deeds and were most remote from the happiness of the weakling, “resignation.” In our atmosphere was a thunderstorm; the nature we are became dark—for we saw no way. Formula for our happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.

- The Antichrist

Distant Voices: Ophelia

2008-08-27T23:04:00.002+02:00

You must sing 'A-down a-down, and you call him a-down-a.'
O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false steward, that stole his master's daughter.
This nothing's more than matter.
There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts.
A document in madness! Thoughts and remembrance fitted.
There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for you, and here's some for me. We may call it herb of grace o' Sundays. O, you must wear your rue with a difference! There's a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they wither'd all when ... they say he made a good end. For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy!

Part Toe-Siks

2008-08-18T22:35:00.002+02:00

How horribly unjust of me would it be to categorize a man who crosses my path called Doctor J. I wish I was more like Lord Henry who said; "I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their characters and my enemies for their brains, and consequently they all appreciate me." Let's say he's a kindred spirit, very much different from myself. We met online, myspace I think, which leads to an interesting train of thought. It often happens that the real chances in life occur in such an inartistic manner that they almost shame us by their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an impression of emptiness, and we revolt against that by charging it with meaning. Sometimes, however, a chance encounter that has artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements are true, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. It becomes a play, and we are both spectators and players. We watch ourselves being watched by the other and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthrals us.

We risk reducing our friendship to the memory of a single encounter. It could become stout and tedious, and all talk could go at once into reminiscences. That awful memory! It's a fearful thing, and it can only reveal an utter intellectual stagnation. We should absorb the colour of life, but never remember its details. Details are always vulgar.

Put in a crude way, it's all in the bigger picture.

Jason, cheers.

Part Toe-Won

2008-07-21T19:05:00.005+02:00

Ba.Sha's Heresiological Cabinet

Ba.Sha. is an artist's duo consisting of the two young Belgians Noah Aspen (25) and Esther Staubach (24). During the summer of 2008 they decided to start a small artistic project together. Although they both have a literary background, they decided on putting their hands to use, handling objects to infuse them with their own ideas, meaning and by their own words 'pimp' them. Their objects of choice at the moment are items of by Catholicism inspired 'kitsch'. Religious paintings, crosses, statues of the Virgin Mary, and so on. They plan to form a collection embracing a common theme among the transformations, calling it 'Ba.Sha's Heresiological Cabinet' . Current pieces (in progress) include titles such as 'The Worshipping of an Unknown Infant, accompanied by St. Joan and St. Butch', 'Neustra Señora de Hollanda' and 'St. Barbie Crucified'. It could be seen as a form of mockery of Catholicism, which it is, but as the artists see it, it is also a higher and lower form of producing art. They say it's not meant to be seen as art, it's just a lark, but also that their almost intuitive transformations of the objects are of consequence. It is what happens when two atheists are charged with bringing meaning to religious artefacts. It is seen as a great distrust in religion and radical doubts of the knowledge of what is traditional. They create a new aesthetic code for these pieces, derived from the fleeting culture of modern day consumption, academic knowledge and mythology, technology and craftsmanship.

Although it's highly unorthodox, they allowed us to take a picture of a work in progress, for which we are granted permission to publish. Although it is expressed that it is not nearly finished.

Ba.Sha. -The Revery of an Unknown Infant, accompanied by St. Joan, St. Butch and St. Barbie

Part Toe-Zewo

2008-07-16T21:53:00.002+02:00

I'm on a field covered in poppies, burning bright. I'm walking through it, on my bare feet, hoping that a snake won't bite me. By hoping I mean saying to myself that if there would be a snake, the chance of it biting me in the toe would be minimal. Contrary to Eurydice, I don't look back. If I move forward just a bit, past the scarecrow, I'm in the clear end where the farmer already collected his crops.

- rent
- new address
- scholarship
- pharmacist
- optometrist
- paint & brushes
- writing room
- meeting for novel

There is no hat on my head. No protection against sun, wind, bad hair and various hair-loving bugs. I'm domesticating. I wake up every day at sephenn, take a shower, brush my teeth, pick out clothes and read the newspaper (now the news is mostly about our failing prime-minister and tensions between two parts of the country) while I'm eating cereal. I feed the kitten, pet her a little bit, kiss my sleeping prior goodbye and I'm off to the factory. My mornings are variations to the same theme. I need reassurance, a pet on my back and someone saying; 'well done boy, welcome to the fold.' Why don't you go clean his socks and smile while you're at it. He deserves a pillar, a warm blanket and his martini.

I'm not very good at this.
The words gulping out of me are not my own. I speak blandness. I'm a bore. I snicker and snatch, no fun at all.
I apologize for having an opinion, I try not to.

Distant Voices: Ophelia Benson & Jeremy Stangroom

2008-06-05T15:28:00.005+02:00

Catastrophism
A theory describing what occurs when we're asked to explain our ideas clearly.
Dream
Freud explained them. Whatever they seem to be about, they're about sex and wanting to kill people really. Except they're also messages from the Beyond or from extra-terrestrials.
Edge
A thing it is necessary to be on the cutting part of.
Education
Brutal, violent intrusion of arbitrary material into the clean innocent heads of children, which should be left empty.
Fashion
Important ethical principle. Something that is behind the times is very wrong indeed.
Force
A thing you want with you.
Human Gnome Project
Most likely something to do with genetic engineering. Probably the idea is to create a new race of tiny human beings.
Quantum
First name of various ideas that no one understands, least of all scientists, so it makes a great metaphor for chaos, complexity, relativity, randomness, Postmodernity, and just about anything one needs a metaphor for.
Relativity
What Einstein had a very special theory of, which means that it's all, like, relative.
Spiritual
What to call a belief that perhaps is not terribly plausible or even possible but makes people feel special and magical.
Truth
A quaint, old-fashioned word, like bustle or barouche-landau or button-hook. No longer needed.

- Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense

Distant Voices: Jack Kerouac

2008-05-21T03:43:00.003+02:00

Give me another slug of that jug. How! Ho! Hoo! I've been reading Whitman, know what he says, cheer up slaves, and horrify foreign despots, he means that's the attitude for the Bard, the Zen Lunacy bards of old desert paths, see the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn't really want anyway [...] I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young people wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures.

- Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, chapter 13

Part Won-Siks

2008-05-17T20:36:00.003+02:00

"Don't worry chief, it will be alright."
last words of Rudolph Valentino, actor, died August 23, 1926.

Part Won-Fore

2008-05-05T01:14:00.002+02:00

My thoughts tonight are with John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, Saint Robert Southwell, Thomas Traherne, Henry Vaughan, George Chapman, Abraham Cowley, Richard Crashaw, Edward Herbert (1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury), Katherine Philips and Edward Taylor.

These people were a loose group of British poets in the 17th century, who shared an interest in metaphysical concerns. They were not part of a group or school, most of them didn't even know or read each other. They were just looking beyond the palpable and in them they all had a foreshadowing form of existentialism. As Georg Lukács, the Hungarian Marxist aesthetist, said: 'They were attempting to erase one's own image from the mirror in front so that it should reflect the not-now and not-here.'

They asked questions, that's what I like about them.

Does everything have a mind? Does everything exist in a mind? Can you step into the same river twice? Is space meaningless? Is there a God? Are there many Gods? Is it possible to know if there is a God? Does the Divine intervene directly in the world, or is its sole function to be the first cause of the universe? Are God and the World different or are they identical? It is impossible that the same quality should both belong and not belong to the same? Is there a free will? Are all things determined? What is the origin of the Universe? What is its first cause? Is its existence necessary? What are the ultimate material components of the Universe? What is the ultimate reason for the existence of the Universe? Does the cosmos have a purpose? Are we a futile bunch of poets and overly vague, or of no use entirely? Why am I writing this down in the first place?

You know, things we think about. I'm sort of obsessing over them and thinking about writing a very very long essay about them. Of course, overly vague and of no use entirely.

Part Won-Tree

2008-04-30T22:55:00.001+02:00

"I'm swaying like a boulder suspended on a pebble on the precipice of a cliff. I might come crashing down, or just sway, rocklike."

I've been standing on the edge of the cliff for so long now. I must have accustomed myself to the danger of falling, slowly letting go of the survival instinct, the intrinsic fear of falling. The subtle, yet addictive thrill of the possibility of falling has become so great that I can no longer step away. But I am cautious, I only take one little risk at a time, one step closer every time, slowly allowing myself to get out of balance, just for a little while. It's not that I have the desire to fall in, I just have been standing here for so long that it no longer scares me, unless when I close my eyes of course. When I let my imagination take over.

Good old Ovid wrote an epic poem called 'Metamorphoses', drawing on Greek mythology. The poem's subject, as the author indicates at the outset, is "forms changed into new bodies". From the emergence of the cosmos from formless mass into the organized material world to the deification of Julius Caesar many chapters later, the poem weaves tales of transformation. The stories are woven one after the other by the telling of humans transformed into new bodies — trees, rocks, animals, flowers, constellations and so forth.

A fictional assembly.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.

We are indeed queer and quaint and all things that start with a Q, and we hammer like madmen, yet we wouldn't want it another way.

Step away.
Step away.
Step away.

Part Won-Toe

2008-04-29T00:01:00.002+02:00

If we shadows have offended, think but this; and all is mended that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear and this weak and idle theme no more yielding but a dream. Gentles--do not reprehend if you pardon, we will mend. And, as I am an honest Puck if we have unearned luck. Now to scape the serpents tongue. We will make amends ere long else the Puck a liar call. So--goodnight unto you all. Give me your hands if we be friends. And Robin shall restore amends.
- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, Scene 2

Banality

Banality. Disbelief. Our trustworthy curtain of rationality that explains away our fears of the unknown but also snuff outs the spark of creativity that ignites into hope and imagination. Banality. The word that reduces the marvellous into the mundane, the miraculous to the ordinary and the inexplicable to the impossible. Banality. It epitomizes darkness, dreariness and relentless cold. Banality is the death of spirit. It clouds our minds to the wonders of the world, blinds us from the possibilities of making our dismal lives better. It imposes on us the belief that everything is the result of cause and effect. Evolutionary processes and entropic decay follow fixed patterns, and all things will eventually come to a grinding halt with the death of the sun. Banality is the wet blanket of the cosmos. Banality prompts a jaded parent to destroy a child's belief in Santa Claus. It forces a talented student to lay aside his dreams of becoming a great writer in favour of joining the work force because his advisors counsel him to make “realistic” decisions about his future. Banality is the end of dreaming.

We have left no place for dreamers. We destroyed amazement, it has become a commodity for the gullible and weak of mind.

Enough of that! Why should we not grant ourselves dreams and refuse reality? That is, this value of certainty in itself, which, in its own time, is not open to our repudiation? Why shouldn't we expect more from a dream than we expect from our consciousness? Can't the dream also be used to solve the fundamental questions of life? Who the fuck were my career advisors? Did they amount to anything great?

I dream of hearth and home, of wanderlust and adventure, innocence and play, passion and beauty, change and transcendence. I dream of standing tall, making people proud and seeing happiness around me. I dream of love, unconditional and deserved. I dream of busybodies, storytellers, tricksters, lovers and revellers.

I dream of finding the silver path and not walking it alone.

Part Won-Won

2008-04-23T20:30:00.002+02:00

Teenagers put pictures of dead classmate on the internet

Turnhout - A group of Belgian teenagers put pictures of their dead classmate Paul Vanhoof on the internet. After the 14 year old died in a tragic accident his classmates were allowed to say their goodbyes in the hospital. More than one student took pictures of the boy with their cell phones and those pictures were deliberately put on the internet, without consent of the boy's relatives. The boy's family filed a complaint. "It's horrifying what people are capable of," father Louis Vanhoof said in another newspaper.

- Metro, April 23th 2008

Part Nain

2008-04-14T16:52:00.009+02:00

Nostalgic Thinking in 5 artworks

Johann Heinrich Füssli, Nachtmahr

Bert Want, Titaanszoon

Jean Fouquet, La Vierge et l'Enfant entourés d'Anges

Pieter Paul Rubens, The Apotheosis of James I

Vincent Van Gogh, De Sterrennacht

Part Sephenn

2008-04-07T23:01:00.003+02:00

A very merry unbirthday to me.
To who?
To me.
Oh you!
A very merry unbirthday to you.
Who me?
Yes, you!
Oh, me!

Let's all congratulate us with another cup of tea.
A very merry unbirthday to you!
Now, statistics prove, prove that you've one birthday.
Imagine, just one birthday every year.
Ah, but there are three hundred and sixty four unbirthdays!
Precisely why we're gathered here to cheer.

A very merry unbirthday to you, to you!
To me?
To you!
A very merry unbirthday!
For me?
For you!

Now blow the candle out my dear
And make your wish come true.
A merry merry unbirthday to you!

Part Siks

2008-04-02T02:28:00.001+02:00

Character-Driven Confessions on the Couch, A Psycho-Analysis Exploring a Fictive Realm

What do you think of when you write about the Vampire?

Nothing. To me, he is nothing but a corpse. He leaves his grave at night to drink the blood of the living by biting their necks with his sharp incisor teeth and licking it clean with his anticoagulant saliva. He is nothing but an undead leech, an annalid worm but surprisingly timeless, eternal, unfaltering, flawless in his own imperfection. He is a methuselan patriarch with an endless stream of victims, but no offspring to call his own. He is an immutable void, does nothing but drain.

How about his counterpart, the Bride?

She is his opposite. While he exist freely throughout and out of time's bounds, she is firmly fixed. She can only manifest on her wedding day, ironically that's everyday. She is the feeling of excitement and mystery, remoteness of everyday life because she exists in only that sentimental, idealized way. But maybe, yes, I feel she is shrouded, in that eerie way, by her wedding veil which is like a membrane attached to her immature fruiting body and will ultimately rupture, or should rupture if she wasn't trapped in time. While the Vampire sees time as an eternal void with meaning nor consequence, it is everything to her and is faced with a pink tinge in her face at all times.

How about the other characters, the Pink-Lipped Harlequin for instance?

Well, I don't know. I don't know how long I can keep this up. Is it relevant, didn't I destroy, resurrect and wiped them away again? I suppose the Harlequin is, was, a demon in a diamond-patterned costume. A tormentor, the one to tickle my vices. A forceful, fierce and skillful agitator of cruel acts. He represents reckless mischief. He is always mute, but by his amusing and variegated chicanery a waterfall of possibilities. Pink-lipped, for what would an evil spirit want with a young man? Fool him into acts of sexual desperation. Rash and extreme behaviour, wild and abundant. Whipped into flesh-driven hunts at night, sheered into a frenzied ravaging and despoiling of what should supposed to be values. Theoretically, because he never did get a full hold on me.

I think that's enough for now.

I think so too.

Distant Voices: Mark Twain

2008-03-28T00:30:00.001+01:00

The pause -that impressive silence,
that eloquent silence,
that geometrically progressive silence,
which often achieves a desired effect
where no combination of words,
howsoever felicitous,
could accomplish it.

Part Faif-Siks

2008-02-10T20:58:00.001+01:00

- Art work by Jan Baerts -
www.myspace.com/dogdaystrikes

Distant Voices: Rod McKuen

2008-01-28T01:11:00.000+01:00

I have to walk at night and be with many,
and give myself to many strangers.
I don't know why.
I only know that people smile sometimes,
and I must smile back.
A certain eye, a smile, the way somebody walks,
I need mostly love.
Everything else must find it's place.
I need the warm touch, the unfamiliar smile,
the umbrella when it rains.
The head against the shoulder when thunder comes.
The unfamiliar touch, the knowing that someone loves me,
even for a little while.
You'll like my house.
The music's okay, the lights are nice
and I'm warm, you'll see.

Can you still go home with me knowing the way I am at morning,
might make you sorry that you did?
I mean, it's different for me in the mornings,
I'm not afraid of yellow sunlight,
or suspicious of rooms without music and atmosphere,
but things work best for me after 5 o'clock.
It's been like this always.
And you must believe I'll be good to you,
for me to work the best. I will, you know.
I will try so hard, for it's been so long since I had a woman
or a special friend.
So turn the corner with me.
Stay close.
Don't be afraid.
For there is no one else but me,
and I am warm, you'll see.

- Rod McKuen "Eros" Queer Noises 1961-1978: From the Closet to the Charts

Part Faif-Tree

2008-01-15T03:08:00.000+01:00

I know a man whose name is Hermes Brighton. Some don't call him much of a man, they laugh behind his back and call him names. Never in his face though, he's too much of a storyteller for that. An he's kind. Not that his stories are elaborate tales, mostly just little titbits of information that promise a fascinating life. He's always involved with different people, doing different things, travelling to wherever he wants to, stories you could envy if you wanted to. Most people don't though, because behind these little tales they easily see how he really is; lost, confused, unhappy, without a goal, cliché.

I know a man whose name is Hermes Brighton. He is smart, fun, well-dressed and knows just what to say and when to say it. Behind his cool façade, people think there's a little boy desperate for reassurance. Those people are right, but they don't know the little boy inside is a mean little fucker who would stab your mother in the back just for a piece of candy. That little boy is a passive-aggressive whore.

I know a man whose name is Hermes Brighton. He has a lot of cool friends but no personality of his own. A social chameleon who just goes with the trends and sells out at every corner he passes. If you were to put him in a room by himself, he would simply stare at a wall. A man who thinks everything is fine. A man without an opinion. A man without initiative. A man without a soul.

I know a man whose name is Hermes Brighton. Sarcastic, twisted sense of humour. A man you want standing by your side if you want to feel better than others. A mystery of a man he is, a closed book. A man who pops up when you don't expect it and make your night feel just a little more dark. A venomous spider who spreads just the right amount of poison to make you feel buzzed. A man you wouldn't introduce to your mother because you know he will be bored and hate you, and maybe your mother might cry a little.

I know a man whose name is Hermes Brighton. He's just like the rest of us. He farts and has bad hair days. And he gets it. No bullshit, no pretending. A man who wears comfortable clothes on weekdays, orders pizza and watches bad reality shows. A man who can't straighten his own tie. An ordinary guy, doing ordinary things. A man you'd like but would never call.

I know a man whose name is Hermes Brighton. I haven't quite figured him out.

Part Fore-Nain

2007-12-13T01:30:00.000+01:00

The Alchemist has been too quiet for too long.

Distant Voices: Samuel Beckett

2007-12-03T00:24:00.000+01:00

His plan therefore was not to refuse admission to the idea, but to keep it at bay until his mind was ready to receive it. Then let it in and pulverise it. Obliterate the bastard.
–More Pricks Than Kicks

Heroine of the Day: Marion Eaton

2007-11-28T11:24:00.001+01:00

Who portrayed a brilliant Mrs. Gert Hammond in the 70's cult classic 'Thundercrack'
"Oh Charlie, people come and go, but cucumbers must stay."

Part Fore-Toe

2007-11-18T23:37:00.001+01:00

I'm sitting across a man. The room is filled with smoke, a children's choir is singing a devil's hymn behind us, a woman, one leg, brings us drinks. Mi madre ha muerto, she says. I smile empathically. The man is an alchemist, he is here to teach me. He is my Señor Zenith. I know all of the Artes Liberales, now the forbidden arts are in order. The Alchemist drinks and smiles. I wish he would look into my eyes and see my conviction. The Alchemist is more handsome than I imagined, his voice warmer, his gestures soothing. I lean back. I hear the woman repeat herself, mi madre ha muerto, to the harpies sitting next to us. They shriek and laugh and spit in her face. A boy, a soprano clearly, yells out: 'look, she's back!' and as in a vision I see the Bride walk into the smoky room. She waltzes to our table and introduces herself to my Alchemist. My Señor Zenith.
"Forgive me, I should have warned you," I stumble. But he merely smiles and for the first time he looks into my eyes.
"I studied Ibn Hayyan, Hermes Trismegistus, Alain de Lisle, Masini and Boehme, but never did I find the symbol I need." The Bride takes my hand and we both look to the Alchemist for an answer.

Part Fore-Won

2007-11-18T02:52:00.001+01:00

Zabayel

Distant Voices: George Orwell

2007-11-15T14:37:00.000+01:00

The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition - in many cases, indeed, they abandon the sense of being individuals at all - and live chiefly for others or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, wilful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong to this class.

- from Why I write

Part Fore-Zewo

2007-11-08T01:05:00.000+01:00

Because I was thinking and didn't know where to begin, a rough translation from the poem 'Eind van de Eeuw' by Leonard Nolens;

End of the Century

So What, Achmatova, we aren't in love anymore
with your pain, that iron fall of seventeen.
Other moustaches and Octobers have grieved us
before we were born, before we could see
Afterwards how blind we were in the crib
of this cold war. The enemy without a trace.
That's why we hated ourselves, our clattering lies
of this armed peace, a heaven without a saviour.

Yes, Achmatova, so what!

I feel conflicted about what I wrote about the actor I met last Friday. It is what happened, but it's my subjective version of the facts, fictionalized so it could fit in my story. I feel that he comes across as too arrogant and at the same time needy, and that I'm a cool-acting bitch. That's not how it felt at the time, but that's problem isn't it? If you write about things like that, it's always a lie. What I remember most is his smile, but I can't put that in words. I could try, but I could never give an accurate description of that smile and how I reacted to it. I also don't want to blow it out of proportions, after all it was just a drunk encounter on a Friday night, so I'm conflicted.

Distance and saying goodbye is the horny metaphysics of men who keep their love moist and damp in a faraway place where they can boil their days.
- From the hurting that I am, I have no part.

I talked to some people today, I want to remember what they said to me, although it's of no great significance.

"If your parents had sent you to art school when you were younger like you wanted, imagine what your life would have been like."
-My ex.

"Sure, you can borrow this book. It's only on the table because my sister asked what sort of books I enjoy. I couldn't get away with anything else, that would just have been ridiculous."
-My best friend.

"My shop looks way too pink from outside if you stand across the street. It just doesn't go with my chandeliers, it's like Barbie's dream house in here. Damn, now I have to paint again."
-My boss.

"If my former teacher could see how I'm fumbling with this html code he would yank my hair right out of my skull."
-My flatmate.

"Why can you never find work that's legal?"
-My mum.

"Oh right, I forgot you're still young and naive. When gay men discuss outdoor activities, they don't talk about camping or fishing."
- A friend

Part Tree-Nain

2007-11-07T00:54:00.000+01:00

Step away from the computer.
Turn off the phone.
Put out the television.
Shut down the music.
And step into my darkened room.

A room with heavy curtains drawn over the windows. A room with no furniture. Close the door behind you. Come stand in the middle, together with me. Take off all your clothes and throw them away. Think about what you're doing. Do you feel alright? Are you scared? What are you thinking about? Just try to relax and tell me your first thoughts. Take your time.

An escalator.
Bathing when I was little.
The woman from the grocery store.
Maggie Simpson.
Smoking a cigarette.
A dead bird.
A sharp knife.
A dead bird.
A sharp knife.
A dead bird.

Let's try this another day. Try not to think anymore, open the curtains and put on your clothes. Log in, put on your music and chat away. Just don't think. Stay away from dark rooms. Drown your thoughts with sounds.

Whatever you do, never log off.

Part Tree-Siks

2007-10-30T23:59:00.000+01:00

While Man has turned his back on me, making me coffee so I can be on my way, I ask the Phantom Ape some questions.

"Should I give my characters names?"

- They have names, you just never write them down. The Bride's name is ******. The Vampire is called ********. The Undead Soldier is *********. The Man in the Chair is the same of the Man you are writing about now and his name is *****. The Pink Lipped Harlequin you call ******. Should I go on?-

"No please, that's enough. Why do I have trouble naming things?"

- Because you get nothing in exchange for it. Once you name it, it becomes unchangeable. You will lose all the chaos you crave and the object of your interest will be locked within it's name. You'll have power over it. You wish for everything and everyone to have a name for usage and a true name, a name that should be hidden and secret. You know the philosophy behind that as well as I do.-

A conversation in between:

Ursula -Slaapwel, bisous.
Gaylord -Bonne nuit madame.
Ursula -Bonne nuit à le singe!
Gaylord -Il est plus populaire de moi!
Ursula -He's got a sexier ass.
Gaylord -Bon, laisse moi un message pour samedi prochain. Good night.

I am sleep deprived. Every time I sit down to write I feel like peeing. Tomorrow I have loads of psychological test with my psychiatrist. His favourite mental disorders for me are a form of autism and something that starts with shizo-. I think he would get a kick out of seeing them both manifest. I have to buy my chihuahua a fucktoy. I'm thinking -stuffed elephant. It's morning now and I'm so glad the crazy cat lady is keeping me company. Man is bugging me, I secretly think I'm a disappointment and that I should work on my act, but I just make it easy for myself and say Man is to blame. We're restyling the apartment and decided we're going to spend New Years skiing. It sounds eighties prep, but it beats being bored at a party. I'm surprised with how many of my friends have never seen any of the Star Wars movies. So far I've counted seven.

I was sitting in my living room, looking at the book shelves, wondering what I should read. I picked out a random book and it's title was 'Astral Entities Around Us'. The next two I picked out were 'A History of Erotic Literature' and 'Anna Karenina'. My first thought was - I should stop buying books impulsively- and the second was -If you combine these three, you get an interesting story. A Russian saga where horny phantoms try to speed up divorces, the morbid decadent downfall of aristocracy.

L'amour est un oiseau rebelle keeps haunting me. I swear I could hear a girl humming it on the bus. It reminds me too much of the house I destroyed. Of the Bride I killed. Is she dead? Could I bring her back? Is that girl telling me I should bring her back? Prends garde à toi.

I'll bring her back.

Part Tree-Faif

2007-10-26T21:51:00.000+02:00

I'm in the bed of Man. The only thing masking my nude form is my pearl earring. Man is lying with his back turned to me, snoring softly. A flowing rhythm, a gentle wave covering me with sleep, uncovering me, covering me, uncovering me, making me want to cover me again. Man has confessed his love to me, but I could only smile at him. What is love without truth? Who's still looking for truth? Who can still love when truth is overlooked? Questions don't really matter now, all what comes next is morning, my cup of coffee and the journey afterwards. The Phantom Ape is sitting on the cupboard.

I ask the Phantom Ape; 'is it safe?'
The Phantom Ape answers: 'think of the cat."

The Cat. Man has a cat. When the morning has come, after my cup of coffee, I'll leave Man again. Until I miss Man, will want to see truth in his green eyes, will present my body to him so I can feel the waves, caress his stubble, forget the questions, hear the stories. It's all about the stories.

The Phantom Ape is waiting patiently until the sun comes up, until the naked bodies cover themselves with shame again and the morning game can begin.

Distant Voices: Daft Punk

2007-08-25T14:22:00.000+02:00

Buy it, use it, break it, fix it,
Crash it, change it, melt - upgrade it,
Charge it, point it, zoom it, press it,
Snap it, work it, quick - erase it,
Write it, cut it, paste it, save it,
Load it, check it, quick - rewrite it,
Plug it, play it, burn it, rip it,
Drag and drop it, zip - unzip it,
Lock it, fill it, call it, find it,
View it, code it, jam - unlock it,
Surf it, scroll it, pose it, click it,
Cross it, crack it, twitch - update it,
Name it, read it, tune it, print it,
Scan it, send it, fax - rename it,
Touch it, bring it, pay it, watch it,
Turn it, leave it, stop - format it.

Surf it, scroll it, pose it, click it,
Cross it, crack it, twitch - update it

Lock it, fill it, call it, find it,
View it, code it, jam - unlock it,
Buy it, use it, break it, fix it,
Trash it, change it, mail - upgrade it,
Charge it, point it, zoom it, press it,
Snap it, work it, quick - erase it,
Write it, cut it, paste it, save it,
Load it, check it, quick - rewrite it,

Surf it, scroll it, pose it, click it,
Cross it, crack it, twitch - update it,
Name it, read it, tune it, print it,
Scan it, send it, fax - rename it,
Touch it, bring it, pay it, watch it,
Turn it, leave it, stop - format it.

- Daft Punk, "Technologic"

Distant Voices: Ted Hughes

2007-08-03T12:28:00.000+02:00

Work and Play

The swallow of summer, she toils all the summer,
A blue-dark knot of glittering voltage,
A whiplash swimmer, a fish of the air.
But the serpent of cars that crawls through the dust
In shimmering exhaust
Searching to slake
Its fever in ocean
Will play and be idle or else it will bust.

The swallow of summer, the barbed harpoon,
She flings from the furnace, a rainbow of purples,
Dips her glow in the pond and is perfect.
But the serpent of cars that collapsed on the beach
Disgorges its organs
A scamper of colours
Which roll like tomatoes
Nude as tomatoes
With sand in their creases
To cringe in the sparkle of rollers and screech.

The swallow of summer, the seamstress of summer,
She scissors the blue into shapes and she sews it,
She draws a long thread and she knots it at the corners.
But the holiday people
Are laid out like wounded
Flat as in ovens
Roasting and basting
With faces of torment as space burns them blue
Their heads are transistors
Their teeth grit on sand grains
Their lost kids are squalling
While man-eating flies
Jab electric shock needles but what can they do?

They can climb in their cars with raw bodies, raw faces
And start up the serpent
And headache it homeward
A car full of squabbles
And sobbing and stickiness
With sand in their crannies
Inhaling petroleum
That pours from the foxgloves
While the evening swallow
The swallow of summer, cartwheeling through crimson,
Touches the honey-slow river and turning
Returns to the hand stretched from under the eaves -
A boomerang of rejoicing shadow.

Distant Voices: Oscar Wilde

2007-07-03T04:19:00.000+02:00

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.
The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new
material his impression of beautiful things.
The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.
Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without
being charming. This is a fault.
Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are
the cultivated. For these there is hope.
They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
The nineteenth-century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing
his own face in a glass.
The nineteenth-century dislike of Romanticism is the
rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.
The moral life of man forms part of the subject matter of the artist,
but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect
medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true
can be proved.
No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist
is an unpardonable mannerism of style.
No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express
everything.
Thought and language are to the artist instruments of art.
Vice and Virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
From the point of view of form, the type of all arts is the art of the
musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.
All art is at once surface and symbol.
Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.
Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new,
complex, and vital.
When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself. We
can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it.
The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it
intensely.

All art is quite useless.

- Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray

Distant Voices: Sylvia Plath

2007-06-22T15:11:00.000+02:00

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

Part Toe-Tree

2007-06-19T01:32:00.001+02:00

I open another room. It's white again, same chair, same portrait.
A painter is trying to paint over the queen.

"Why are you painting over the queen," I ask.

The painter stops, blushes and hides away his brush.

"That's better," I say and close the door behind me.

Part Toe-Won

2007-06-13T06:24:00.000+02:00

I move to another room. It looks exactly the same as the previous one, an empty white room. One armchair and a portrait of the queen hanging on the wall opposite of the chair. No man-pig this time, but a jazz musician.

He says: "Hello, I am Capricorn."

I wave hello and take my seat in the chair. Capricorn offers me wine and drugs and plays his sweet sweet music. I laugh and rest my head. Capricorn laughs with me and gives me a kiss.

The Phantom Ape says: "You promised."

I become sullen and stand up. I noticed that the queen is smiling to me.

I say to Capricorn: 'It's a quarter to nine. I have to go."

Capricorn answers: 'It's always a quarter to nine."

I smile, leave the room and gently close the door behind me.

Before the Phantom Ape can speak, I say: "not now little monkey, I still have those razors and I will make sure Madam Blavastky isn't looking."

Part Toe-Zewo

2007-06-09T07:38:00.000+02:00

I am in a room I do not like. I am in a room I despise.

My hands are resting in my lap while I'm watching the man-pig from my armchair. It is naked and on hands and knees, snorting and whimpering. It is a vile creature. It disgusts me, it makes me want to kill it. I look at the picture hanging on the wall in front of me. It is a stately portrait of a woman, a stern and commanding queen. The man-pig crawls closer to me and instinctively I open my legs and let it pleasure me. I hold it's head firmly so it cannot pull back and lock my eyes with those of the queen.

Snow crystals have been tattooed on my right hand. I see them and I release the man-pig and kick it hard on it's side so that it crawls away in fear. I turn away from the queen, my queen, and I ask the Phantom Ape:

"Are you still with me?"

First, I hear nothing. I only hear the whimpering man-pig. Then I can hear a faint voice answer me;

"You promised."

I have? Yes, I have.

Distant Voices: Thomas Chapin

2007-06-04T01:54:00.000+02:00

What would you do if you had a billion dollars?
I don’t know about you… but I would definitely develop a method to draw a smiley face on the moon. Call me crazy, but can you think of a better legacy to leave behind?
Yeah. I didn’t think so.
Think about it.
Future generations of mankind would look up in the sky at night, only to see a big smiling face. Wars would cease to exist!
How could people even think about fighting with a giant smile in the sky?

Part Won-Sephenn

2007-05-31T04:18:00.000+02:00

I am unable to sleep. I tried for more then an hour, but I have given up for the night. I kept thinking that an exotic spider managed to crawl into my bedroom and would bite me so that I would become paralyzed and..die. That made me think of vampires. The vampires made me a bit edgy, so now I'm writing. I should start thinking of the mess that I made of my life lately, but I only talk about it. My friends know all about my filthy mess, but I never stop to actually, truly think about what I am doing. I just talk and then do exactly the opposite of what I said earlier.

I said I would quit Mr. Neverland, but I am seeing him tomorrow night.

I am reading 'And the Ass saw the Angel' and I'll quote the part where I am now, don't try to stop me;

Six years passed. Six young gunfighters down on their luck. Six pine boxes to carry them in. Six crooked miles walked. Six broken stiles crossed. Six passing bells swinging but making no sound. Six widows weeping. Six plots of cold ground. Six blackbirds throwing six crooked shadows. Six sinking moons. Six wounds. Six notches. Six muddy crutches broken in two.
So rolled the years of mah springtime.

Six wicker baskets.
Into these did the years of mah youthhead roll.

Six years ago I was eightteen. I thought I was going to become a famous writer. I thought I was a genius. I thought I was sane, beautiful and talented. I was ready for the world, and the world was supposed to sigh in relief of my much anticipated adulthood. I wish I could pinpoint the moment when it turned from silent confidence into the cynical void that I feel today. Am I failing somehow? Have I burned a bridge too many? Has my soul turned black? Have I become the vampire, the human leech, that I fear at night?

Is it easier maybe, could we say that my path of self-destruction, lack of self-worth, is merely a symptom of a clinical depression, the well-documented black hole that twenty-somethings experience after their college days? A lack of faith? Slight shizophrenia lingering somewhere in the dark periphery of my brain? A curious and unstable mind forced to see reality?

The Janitor of Lunacy said I reminded him of the following, It's the image I'll take to bed where I'll read until it's dawn so I can be sure the vampires are gone.

Distant Voices: C. Hein

2007-05-23T15:59:00.001+02:00

Wenn der Augenblick sogenannte menschliche Grösse von uns verlangt, vermögen wir nur intensiv und fast ehrlich in unserer Kaffeetasse zu rühren.

Part Won-Siks

2007-05-21T15:15:00.000+02:00

We’re having tarts in the star-lid sky. Pints of beer go round while we sit in the grass and the firstborn perform their magic while reason sleeps and vanity is born in the shadow of a tree. We’re too young for coherent dreams. Underneath the clouds we seek the comfort of a statue, and from a gaping hole in the sand we hear children’s laughter. We’re shielded from malady, the truth cannot find us anymore as our mirror show only lost keys. We unzip our trousers and I kiss you, my friend.

Part Won-Toe

2007-04-30T13:48:00.000+02:00

And now, 3 references to Bard:

THE VOICE OF THE ANCIENT BARD

Youth of delight! come hither
And see the opening morn,
Image of Truth new-born.
Doubt is fled, and clouds of reason,
Dark disputes and artful teazing.
Folly is an endless maze;
Tangled roots perplex her ways;
How many have fallen there!
They stumble all night over bones of the dead;
And feel--they know not what but care;
And wish to lead others, when they should be led.

- William Blake, The Voice of the Ancient Bard, Songs of Experience (1794)

BARD THE BOWMAN

A significant supporting character in The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien, Bard the Bowman (abbreviated to Bard) of Esgaroth was a skilled archer and the heir of Girion, the last king of old Dale. He was described as "grim faced" and while a guardsman of Esgaroth he was often predicting floods and poisoned fish. He rallied the guards to defend the town when the Dragon came. Bard was able to slay the dragon Smaug with the Black Arrow after a tip from the old thrush (who had overheard Bilbo Baggins' description of Smaug) had revealed an unarmoured spot on the dragon's underside. Bard claimed a twelfth of the treasure amassed by the dragon, which he subsequently shared with the Master of Esgaroth to rebuild the town, but the Master stole the money and ran off into the wild where he died. After its rebuilding, Bard was the first king of restored Dale, followed by his son Bain, grandson Brand, and great-grandson Bard II.

- J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium

ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORD 'BARD'

The word is a loanword from Proto-Celtic *bardos, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gwerh2: "to raise the voice; praise". The first recorded example is in 1449 from the Scottish Gaelic language into Lowland Scots, denoting an itinerant musician, usually with a contemptuous connotation. A Scots ordinance of ca. 1500 orders that "All vagabundis, fulis, bardis, scudlaris, and siclike idill pepill, sall be brint on the cheek". The word subsequently entered the English language via Scottish English.

Photo Story Nain: The Jungle Suite

2007-04-23T10:52:00.000+02:00