Dialoguing --Once again back on the screen, off the typer, back into the loop.

Is this dialoguing in the vein of Plato? --More like in the vein of telephone. Stagnant Water --What Im worried about is that Im not changing, actually what Im worried about is that Im getting worse, I still have the same old horrible habits that are becoming more entrenched and are paralyzing me. Im still bad with money, Im still irresponsible with taking care of basic stuff that people do every day: paying insurance, paying parking tickets. I mean when I look at what Ive done to myself, you cant help but appreciate the self destructive nature of it. Before I could put it up to artistic temperament, but the artistic payoff for the temperament, Im not exactly setting the world on fire, I think Im smart, or have some smarts, but my education is pedestrian, my professional life is on the periphery, as well as where I live. There were points in my life where I used to think, God how amazing is it that Im here? And now I think, I cant believe Im living here, now, by myself, with two cats. I need to do something. I need some success. What do you want to do? --I want to travel again. Id like to take the Trans-Siberian and then the Iron Rooster down into China. I want to get a Masters. What would you do that in? --Philosophy, maybe Media, ideally I think of that European Graduate School in Switzerland. I like making music, I like how quickly it sorts what Im thinking about, with a subtle narrative with reoccurring motifs, very adult but not suffocatingly ironic. Its frighteningly funny. --You should sell that as a blurb for a horror movie poster. It seems like time is passing so quickly, the body is breaking down, changing amalgamating into dust dirt mud, bugs. Good n Evil I think that its a lot simpler than the way youre trying to make it. Theres a battle, an unseen battle, between God and Satan for peoples souls. --I agree that there is much going on that is unseen, beneath the surface. I was reading something the other day about how human sight has a bandwidth of sixteen bits of information but is bombarded with some insane number (of bits of information), whether in the thousands or millions, I cant remember, the point stands that most of what goes on we do not perceive. Isnt that all the more reason to trust God, the one who is all powerful, all seeing, all knowing, the one who sees reality clearly and in its entirety? Even though we do not understand the whole thing or perceive everything, there is

only one reality, thus we need to trust that God is in charge, and that everything is working towards his divine plan. --How do you know that God knows everything? From the scriptures? --What does it say? That he is the Alpha and the Omega, the Great I AM, the creator of the universe, that through him all things were made, that in the void God existed above the water. --But if I create something, just because I am the auther doesnt mean that I necessarily know everything about it. I mean thats what one of the main reasons we create: is to surprise ourselves, we learn something new. Even if God knew everything, is he also omni-pathetic, can he feel for all people all life at all time at once, does he know what its like to be powerless, to be evil, and even if he does But thats where God finally gets to relate, with Jesus, completely human, with all the same stuff that we go through; lust, power, but he resisted it all. --Doesnt that make him less than human? I mean whats the appeal of Jesus? He blew up the law and hung out with whores and drunks. He was a rebel jew. God created everything and said that it was good, somehow thats not good enough for us, reality is not good enough for us, because theres so much evil and shit out there that its difficult to give credit to God for it all. We prefer to give him credit for all the good stuff, and the evil part: the rape, and blood, and disease, and animal skin, and forests slaughtered to create the beautiful word, (God how right was Nietzsche, from the evil emerges the divine.) Because without the evil nothing exists, we know the nature of things, when Id ask the kids which dinosaur was ad the docile diplodocus or the aggressive and carnivorous You can mock all you want, but a mans faith in God --Became Ive tried to give context to the same old tired bullshit? Dont you find it boring, I mean for yourself, dont you find it all done and so limited, or is that the appeal? Knowing where youre going to spend eternity, whether in a lake of fire, or with the creator of the universe, and considering that you dont have eternity to sort it out --Fine Ill give you that, theres an eternity and with the way that its presented in the Bible and salvation and all that its good to get yourself sorted out, by why do you think the moral angle is played up so much? The law lets us know that were sinners that we dont measure up, Gods law is perfect and if we follow his laws and principles we will have the opportunity for a more intimate relationship with God and a more abundant life.

--The problem with the view from the high horse is that your point of view morally speaking is limited to that of the old seigneur looking down upon the masses. If my morality was based on the mass conception of morality God would be pretty sickened with me. --Does he hold you in higher regard because of this? I do it out of obedience, out of respect for his Word. Because I value the difference Jesus has made in my life. --This is insane, youll think its insane, its not it has some sense, and makes a lot of sense in the reality we live in. Maybe the greatest ethical or moral strength of Christianity is its flexibility, its adaptability, it sitting up on your high horse like some old seigneur. Whats that mean? --Up on a high horse, youve never heard of that expression? I dont know if Ive ever heard it. --Well, its quite old, and still quite common, and I think you might find it applicable, as a piece of information, that may serve you and then rest of the planet you come into contact with. Ive heard of this expression get off your high horse --Okay fancy feet whats that mean thendont even explain that, you know exactly what it means, you stand removed and see from a position of It is superior, its Gods word. I dont have to contemplate the morality, its quite clear, its in the scriptures. --I agree that morality is quite clear in the scriptures, but it seems to me that the scriptures, the heroes of the Bible are the ones that balk against some established precedent against God, its the balking where the stories come from , the resistance, the friction between God and man, why the friction? Man sinned. --God told man to do something and then he didnt do it, and then felt ashamed that they didnt do it, and denied and excused why they did it. And man had been a perpetual state of anxiety in relation to God, until he sent his Son, Jesus to be the perfect sacrifice the final sacrifice for man, and if man accepts this sacrifice, and realizes that he is a sinner, and is truly repentant, his heart will long for Gawd, and will desire a relationship with him. --Do you desire a relationship Jesus, or with God, when youre thinking to yourself, or praying and talking to God are you thinking about God or about Jesus, in your imagination? I think I think of myself as Jesus talking to God, I find the moment when he was in the garden of Gethsemane, I find that I think about Jesus like that, or when anyone cries out to God, theres something in those men that I imagine myself as, when I pray. Exchange of Ourselves The problem is that people will never accept an idea of God as money. Theres no element of the sacred to it, its too profane it wont satisfy that longing.

They need a personal connection and the only way they have any hope of attaining it, is through Jesus Christ. It would be like saying that a gambling addiction is a path to enlightenment because you get a buzz from it. --But its not the God buzz?...its just an everyday ordinary buzz, right, because we know that God doesnt cloak himself in the garb of the profane but in an immaculate robe that consumes all, even and especially colour. I agree that you can do Godly things with your money. --Boring you still got God as the guiding had what if money was the truest representation or incarnation of the zeitgeist that the libido that perpetuates this. As much as I see Gods handiwork in capitalism and the free market, its still too narrow, money wont around forever, we already know about moneyless societies and the mark of the beast so we know that moneys days are limited. --True enough the love and worship of money is old hat, too fat, you get the feeling that the inflation is unsustainable. The worlds exploded in billions of simulated in dew drops while under the hindi-thighs I-mean-everything cools, movement has lost its heat but still has weight and power to consume and obliterate the googilian points of view. Money, youre right, its the last vestige of amateurism, placated with automobiles, easy jobs, tasty food, good porn, computers, virtual friends, effective drugs that ease our pain and even give us the hope and reasons to live, you come up with good reasons when youre on the better drugs. Seems like your perspectives gone so secular you dont know up from down anymore, its shriveled up and dragged itself into a corner, out somewhere, like you like to say on the periphery of the tribe, curled up shaking waiting to be picked off waiting for its plight to turn romantic, transform its flesh into poetry. --Therell be a way in this new town. Instead of wasting your life on the word processor, endlessly reediting the same Introductory Paragraph over and over. --Thats why Im down with the typer. Itll keep me linear, keep me moving. I dont even want to write I want to type. Do you think you would have been as inclined to use the typewriter if your computer didnt break? --No, very unlikely, but I like when it happened, I dont worry about the whys too much with the creative process, the whys come later when the analysis begins, for an artist to think to hard on the whys always makes it too contrived. I like coming up against some kind of limitation, you stop crying and start making do, its like Rachenberg going through the trash you do the best you can with whats there when you get a like more money you can buy the stuff that the successful ones use and then yours will be like the successful ones and people like those things, those things that the are familiar with those objects that comfort. Im talking about Gods sacrifice, heaven and hell, eternity, the fate of mankind, the Great Throne Judgment; when your life is replayed in front of God and you.

--Thats what everyone is talking about, you dont think these are the concerns of most people, whats the purpose in life, whats wrong with their lives with the world, what happens when they die, is it all for nothing? Were not talking about everyone else. You know the language, you grew up with the language, you cant fight the language its built into. --I know, thats the thing I appreciate the most about growing up in a cultish environment where the written word has some kind of supremacy. But you dont think any of its true. --Why not? You see it as some kind of sociological experiment. --Thats part of it, but why dont I think any of its true, I think what happens is that you read it in the same way every time, you read it to entrench those points of view and you groove it out so much you cant over the walls, by fighting for a singular perspective, an integral point of view, you lose all perspective. Like those weight lifters who go crazy on the steroids to gain hyper masculinity end up with the testosterone levels of a nine year old girl, the result: hyper femininity. Perspective only gives you what you hate about ultimately about life: a lack of absolutes. Your old fashioned proofs and rationalizations, and all that creationism If its all fictitious then it might as well be in the same category as Shakespeare. --You say that like its a negative, you could be compared to worse. Do you really like the Bible? Do you enjoy reading it? The absolute that I take from the scriptures is that Jesus, Gods son died on the cross for our sins; He died so we could live with Him in eternity. Thats the part I really enjoy about it, the fact that Im not going to spend the rest of my days burning in a lake of perpetual fire because I didnt accept the blatant truth God in his mercy was generous enough to show me. And for all this relativity and humanism and post modernity where has it gotten you. You have no one you live with, you have hardly any possessions, youre hopeless in debt, and for all of it you have really no success to show for it. For all the drugs and booze youve consumed and the pain you caused Renee, and her subsequent revenge, you have little to show for it. --If I was concerned with what I have to show I would have done things differently, I would have kept everything under my hat with Renee and went along being a great guy. But you didnt tell Renee because you had a fit of honesty. Werent you living with Lily at the time? --Yeah wed just got a place, a beautiful place, right on a park, it reminded me of Savannah, of Washington Square some place like that, that existed in literature, there was some magic to it. So you told her so that you could clear up things with Lily. --Well of course she was freaking that I should cut off everything, I mean after seven years of marriage, I mean I couldnt make sense I left her for this girl

that essentially was unstable and vicious as a cobra. And Ive never been as vicious. Pretty Specific Well the first bit is pretty specific, I know you find this religious upbringing a source of inspiration and I can imagine how it is somewhat fascinating to you, I dont think a lot of people are going to get it, and the ones that get it are going to be like, yeah yeah, this is old hat. --I want to preserve something of that culture. I mean Im not going to write about something Im not going to write about. Well you dont have a story any where near this yet, you are going to base a book on what conversations that you have on the telephone. Why do you like the telephone so much? --I like it because I like to socialize, I like to talk to people and we dont seem to have that, or I dont seem to have that here in Windsor, or ever in Canada, actually the Pub with Rusty was very good, it was that type of place where you could always go and there were people you liked hanging out with and there was usually something going on. But being in Europe and getting into the routine of always going out to a place or meeting after work something was always going on, any given night you never knew, I loved that about Europe I liked the centre the socializing, and you seemed to get just as much work done, just as much writing. I dont have that; the closest I have is the telephone. MORALITY --And thats why the immoral choice is so enticing, money and millionaires are on the way out, value because of on the proliferation of money its dirty is has no value what will be valuable will be rarities, the chosen few, mammon burns up like liberty and the pursuit our happiness. Im sure that theres a degree of evil, its built in deep, but it all comes from the same thing, if you want to go the God route you are going to have to give him credit for the whole thing. Whether it turned out right or not is a luxury you have to contemplate. The fact that we even get to think about such abstractions should make us instantly grateful. I disagree. --You dont think you should be grateful for the world that youre born into? You dont have to but why not? What are you going to do set it right, and if you can then great might as well make it better, and Im sure that youre sensitive enough that you usually have peoples interests in mind. I think there an insidious battle that underlies all this--what is pedantic, and normal living, and we dont see how our souls are being jeopardized for eternity.

--The battle thats going on is to maintain a soul in an environment geared towards soullessness. In a pornographic environment where the image is supreme and exists in a pantheon of charged images, when the object no longer charms it is discarded like the rich man who trades in his used up wife for the new version, the only price to be paid is the lack of (a) soul. Im surprised Jesus hasnt come back yet. How much more will God allow? --How do you know he hasnt? Let me call you back on the land line. --bye. He took a sip off his vodka and water. Thomson was a fundamentalist old-core there was something solid about him being such a closed minded old bastard, he had a fetish for nostalgia; he had visions of a golden age, the late fifties, bobby socks and malt shoppes, cool cars and good old fashion fun, Thomson dug the era of dry humping. Before the Beatles got into drugs is the cut off point, Sgt. Peppers, even before, but revolver sounded mint, and paul hadnt taken the plunge yet. Simulated innocence in the land of filth, James Dean, Marlon Brando, the sullen outsider the romantic, the idiocy and the mumbling, what was it there in the mumbling, social ineptitude, the beatific bad boys. Binary comes, the paradox inside of one. Two inside of one, equal and opposite reaction, cause and effects. Phone rings, call back, get your ammo ready. --What do you think about the illusion of cause and effect? Is it an illusion? --No I dont not really not in humanity, of course in objective reality it does exist, or doesnt work each and every time and even if it does it doesnt mean that the sequence that appears to be cause and effect really exists, I mean thats not news thats been around since Hume and Berkley. Although the claims of emphatic knowledge may not be fool proof nor infallible, because they arent in some abstract reality not, thats why you cant beat sports you dont need the back ground you just have to display yourself in the reality thats happening around you. Why do you find the reality around you so unpleasant if you hate the duality, its not even the duality that you have a hard time with, its that you find the majority of it unpleasant? --Its not true. Visiting the Lazy Fiend I dont see how you can just type and do nothing. What do you have to write about? You havent been anywhere in years.

--I dont need to go anywhere anymore. I got enough left in the tank to last me awhile. Ive seen enough evil and bewilderment; Ive been close, precariously close to the edge. When I was out there on the streets with my mistress cat and mine after she had through me out, the devil got her back and she was evicted which she blamed on me which was some of my fault but not all of my fault, she ended up leaving me in the streets, and I followed her, hopelessly in love, but with the weight of two cats, and heat and circumstance where was I going to go? I had a car that wouldnt work so well, the plates were bad and the insurance was bad, Id be jailed twice for not having proper documentation, is a sin that has followed me here. I am irresponsible; women dont love men who act like children. They dont dig disease or stain. Women arent generally enthralled with men who dont live in reality. --They seem to have a better idea of reality. Theyre good at paying their bills, and budgeting their money. They always have something in the bank. They seem to have more self respect. They are much better at operating in this Disneyland, and theyre better at learning languages. Youre one those that doesnt like Disney? --I dont mind Disney I like the movies better than the labour practices. I like the complete reworking of the childrens classics so that most of society relates much more to the films than they do to the books and the books are probably also the Disney version, the films though have a lot of talent and work put into them, very Germanic, uber-kitch, but thats where the stuff comes from, folksy kitschy low culture. I like the simulacrum that Disney has made possible, that baudrillardian other-verse, but I dont find it so all encompassing, the thing that you cant make go with your mind is the smell of cotton candy grease and vomit, its not so Disney it takes you out it. Its too instinct too foreign, also the foreignness of the place people from all over the globe, thats why theyre trying to stretch it out, no one wants to see a billion chinks in Disneyland. Do you see this as simulacrum? I think most people get its an amusement park with a bit of fantasy. But the way they go on about Mickey, what is it with Mickey speaking of the guy in the costume, unanimated --It must be in Mickeys mannerism his white gloves his open hands his slow motion, his bouncing knees. Pascals Wager Once youve accepted Christs gift of salvation, its what do with after that matters most. Hes also given us his word to guide us, and I believe that whats in the Bible is divinely inspired, God working through man. In the scriptures he gives us principles to live by that can make our lives more abundant and more pleasing to God and improves things for mankind as a whole. --It sounds simple enough until you examine the jumbled mess of ideas that are the underpinnings of your faith, a mish mash of philosophy, folk wisdom, and convenient science. The technology of the Bible, the reformation, the establishment of the early church, Paul, Augustine the Plato of the Christian faith, how much Greek, Babylonian Zoroastrianism, free will, choice, why the

supremacy of the word over church history, American fundamentalism, the Religious Right, your education, your ability to read and live well. So, youre essentially saying that everything is relative and that there no absolutes. --No Im sure that there are absolutes or things that are very absolute; my ability to understand or apply these absolutes is presumptuous. But if you have them revealed to you, which you do, wont your life be better if you apply them? --I agree that not everything s arbitrary, it maybe relative, and like I said there may be absolutes. I agree that if one finds certain cause and effect relationships even if they are not absolute they are very useful. I think of it as a road map or a copy of Lets go Europe, they arent absolutes but they definitely useful, even if they contain errors, like a compass that points to magnetic north and not to the true north pole, and the maps of the early explorers, they didnt give definite knowledge but they got men around the world and these men in turn drew more accurate maps. I dont see they point in becoming fundamentalists about some map that Columbus might have drawn five hundred years ago (even if Columbus had add some foot note saying that whomever adds to these maps is in peril of losing his soul. The more important questions is why or how anyone couldve had he arrogance to say that anyone who adds to the Book, may the plagues and hardships be visited on the person who adds to them. Isnt that the passage cites for divine inspiration ending with the book of Revelation. The King James is, And if any man shall take away from the words of this book of this prophecy And if any man shall take away from the words of this book of this prophecyGod shall take his name, no his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. --That sounds good Id like to let out of the book of Revelation altogether, but theres something else isnt there about the plagues? The verse before says, that if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are in this book. --There are at least three problems that I can see, one is that to add to the book of Revelation is a no-no, but it doesnt say that the book is it, as far as divine inspiration goes, and it doesnt say that he wont be divinely inspired but that he will pay a high price, which seems par for the course for those who have been touched by God. And really what right does the writer, crazy John have telling people that they cant add anything to the Bible, which of course he doesnt because there was no such thing as the Bible. Its possible that all the writers of the Bible were given the insight that one their books would be gathered into a book and that John was given the message from God. --I agree that its possible, but because something is feasible doesnt necessarily make it so. Its fun to think about the what ifs, and its good for the imagination to stretch itself, the problem is that when someone else starts to flex their imagination, like the last temptation of Christ, when someone tries to fill in the blanks, unless its an orthodox stretch then its not only invalid but sacrilegious, it is adding to the word, the same that Johnny boy warns everyone

against, dont add dont take away. Its such bullshit that you cant help but see it as arbitrary. And Im all for arbitrary, but Im not for orthodox arbitrariness. How do you know its arbitrary? How do you know it doesnt come from on high? Was it arbitrary when Paul was blinded on the road to Damascus, or when Moses was confronted by the burning bush, was it arbitrary when Christ was crucified? --Every situation speaks of itself by denial, in order to escape, by simulation of death, its real agony. Thats sounds intriguing but what does it mean? --I was thinking about the crucifixion in the sense that Christ died so that we may escape death. Thats not exactly true; we know the scriptures say that it is appointed unto man once to die and then the judgment. And its there that the real agony of death occurs, when you are confronted by the life that you squandered wasting your time on frivolous things that have no eternal value, as we stood by and watched the people we loved march off the plank into a lake of fire. --The ol lake of hate. Wailing and gnashing of teeth, thats a pretty gruesome panaorama, actually its the sound, the gnashing is a good onomatopoeia, and waaiillll is good too, teeth a great word, its hard to imagine a better word in any language, I bet every language has a good word for teeth. Whose teeth are gnashing are there any animals in hell? Dogs I suppose, I dont think theyre cats there hissing for eternity, dogs and snakes and pigs, hell is what little boys are made of fire and fear, dogs and snakes and pigs, burning alive for eternity, the dull toothed cogs of industrialization, the cycle of endless drudgery. The Pantheon of Objects Porn in its essence is anti-sexual. It is what sex is not. --I agree, porn is nothing like sex, you know your relationships is in its last vestiges when you start to turn it into image watching, or for women romance (asex) novels and dildos. Men want the immaculate image, the cartoonish perfection. --But the image is never good enough, the image is consumed and digested and the mystery is used up, gone. It becomes old hat and the images are disregarded for newer images but not necessarily more beautiful or sexier, though there is probably a certain pattern in the images that is fairly static. I wonder if thats what we want for ourselves to be clearly defined in the pantheon, to be objectified, like a human sacrifice, a tool for the greater glory of mankind, superior to anything in my imagination but the embodiment of something greater, thats probably in inflammation of fame, when you feel the adoration of the masses. I dont know about that, the pornographic deeds seem to get grimier. --And grittier. The best sex, and the most consistent sex must be happening in marriages, you just have that much more opportunity.

--Youve only been married six months; give it time. Time heals all wounds. Anal Breakdown --I think its povertys response to Catholicism. I think it became big recently because of the proliferation of east European porn stars, beautiful girls who have a lot less to lose, plus the poverty pre dated it, you didnt want to keep on having babies, contraception wasnt or isnt an option, I was reading there was an out break of anal cay-nal, in whatever century England for this very reason as a form of contraception. But thats not the case anymore. --Youre right, I think because it is the new pussy, the last realm of intimacy, the higher probability of virginity, the final act, something that their mothers never did. You could only out do it by doing it all with a black fellow. --How about an Arab fellow? That might be the new black. Not quite. --Whats missing? We still think we better than they are, we think we stronger, were not afraid of them on an abstract basis, were more afraid of black people on a physical level we think that theyre better fighters, faster, more ruthless, more on top of the game, and when the negroes start bedding down with the white women, whats an Arab going to put some anthrax on the tip of his dick, god if they were that creative, they have the new AIDS. Purity --I think its rooted in a death wish. The quintessence of purity is the concept of heaven. You have nothing left to strive for, nothing to fear, the end of struggle, the whole place has been redeemed, no competition, no decay, I dont think theres a lot of babies being born. They used to tell us that you would know the mind of God, any question you asked God would tell you the answer. Everyone has access to the mind of the almighty; can you even imagine where this notion came from? Whered you get this Sunday school? --Sunday school, the church, everyone in the church believed it, I never heard anything different. And no really cared that much about heaven, it was more the insurance from hell fire that we wanted, that we felt that we deserving of. But there were some that were heavy into heaven, they had systems worked out, where there would be a sort of hierarchy where the really dedicated and obedient would receive crowns. How would they verify it? --They had some kind of methodology; they gather up a bunch of verses and then use some of common sense/logic to stick it together with a bit of science and conjecture. I mean what people use on a regular basis, I mean their

ideas were as grounded as political theory, archeology, psychology, it wasnt like you got any tougher minded people in schools, they used similarly suspect methods to convince you that they were right or factual. It was the time of dialectics, the cold war was on, it was about choosing sides, ideology was big, definitive knowledge was big, if it wasnt all true it was all false. Do you resent that you were grew up under such circumstances? --I dont resent it. I think the thing I dislike the most about it is that when there was any challenge to the orthodoxy, it was dismissed and the perspective was seen as heretical, as protestants we thought we were against the things like the crusades, or the inquisition, we thought that Nazis were evil, we thought the repression of thought in the Soviet Union sick and twisted, but our own narrow dogma was Gods will, we hated the sin but loved the sinner, which was a lie. Didnt it strike you as repressive at the time? --certainly but I still thought the crux of it was true. I believed that Jesus was the Son of God, and that he lived, and was crucified for our sins and was raised from the dead. I liked God, I liked thinking I was talking to God when I was praying. When did it first strike you that something was wrong or might be a bit off? How old were you? --Not for awhile, I mean I was young and there were churches around, so the idea of church didnt seem strange, I think when I started to learn the differences between religions. I mean I didnt start out hating Catholics, but you heard a lot of anti Catholic stuff how they worshipped Mary and prayed to the saints and priests, which wasnt in the Bible, we werent big into liturgy or church history, unless it was the early church, the closer you got to the source the less diluted it was. The more diluted the less true. What first got me thinking and it came quite a bit later was when I was about fifteen and began wondering how the Bible was assembled or who assembled it at when. Id never heard much about it, I think all Id heard was that everyone was in a big room, I never knew who they were. Id imagined it happening shortly after Paul dying. The other thing that made the process divine was that they all prayed about it and came to a unanimous decision about which books to include. Which is a bit of a fabrication. --When I found about the Council of Nicaea, and the process, and the books that were included and kind of included and the apocrypha and the doubt by some protestants like Calvin about including the book of revelation, I guess that I thought for the first time that the whole thing at least as far as us, the protestants were concerned, with the adherence to the word and what not , was that the criteria for choosing the Bible or the New Testament was almost or maybe more important than the books themselves. Thats why the miracle is integral. It gives it Gods stamp. --What is it about the miraculous that is an indication of the divine? Its the intervention into the mechanistic universe the tweaking of the program a way to set things right a little mercy-verse of the Deist, its God tinkering with the clock, setting things right, showing that Satan isnt running the game.

--The idea is that the game can be superseded that there is the most minuscule of a chance that some immaculate genius is going come along and set whatever that is presumably wrong: --Just another way of getting there, youre right, its that answer to all the mysteries. What is it about the people that revel in the mystery, in the ignorance, in the unthinking, in the acceptance of the universe, with no agenda, who are these people. You kno who they are. They are the we, the us. They are you. c revolution faith, its the faith that pushes it forward no matter how misguided. Its that ulimate god lust, you want to be like god and thats what heaven is everything you don --Why is it if you have any black, youre black, even if youre ninety percent white? Look at Tyashaun Prince, the guys whiter than I am but hes still black. Because the persons been polluted, theyve been forever corrupted, irredeemable, you cant get the white back, you might look white, you may trick a lot of the people but deep down youll know youre not a hundred percent. --White is the purity that is corrupted. Its the desire for purity that produces the vilest behaviour. The Nazi dream was the last hope for ethnic purity for Europe, it was an impossible task. The colonization of the world, the inertia of industry, and displacement brought about by mass transportation. The only ones who are still giving it a shot is the Middle East. And the Middle West. --Funny, but not so so accurate. The mid west seems more opened mind than the deep south.. Good enough, but you need the middle west as the bridge to accuracy, (besides the South Amerika reeks of trying to hard, the strength is the coolness of the joke, the blanks you have to fill in, its nice when someone tries to define it, but the level has to be the quality of music or poetry to pull it off, but, I mean, its good that you tried. --Very Nietzschesque, that the inventions perfected in war fare were responsible for the birth of the first great multi-cultural nation: The United States. The American dream liberated the and to a degree the British colonies liberated Europe not only from fascism but from the supremacy of ethnicity, but as well as per or at least initiates mob violence. I find the methodical genocide to be more revolting, at least with the mob you get some democratic feel about it. --Its the same urge for purity, genocide at least within borders is to stamp out that element that corruptive element that is holding the rest of them back, holding them back from their true glory --But you still get the genocidal element. The genocide within your own country is a toughie, all your security is gone, your environment all the mechanisms you have tried to adapt to have turned on you. At least when the

infidels come over the foothills to slaughter you, you have you brothers by your side. I Dont Understand the Homeland --Why would you want to live in a place where everyone despises you? Because its the homeland the place that God chose for Is-rye-el. --The holocaust helped. Shrunkren Treasure --Have you ever noticed how some voices sound different when you listen to someones voice mail, even though the message is apparently identical each time, it sometimes feels like the mood of the voice changes, which I suppose isnt really possible. Its obviously on your end then, it has to do with the change in you, whether your mood or other factors. --Is it possible that the actual hard technology changes, especially is the device is analog and the cassette that delivers the message is stretched or shrunk like a wooden tennis racquet. The digital does give less variation, theres no tactility to it. --Its more fun to think that the technology is fucking up, that theres imperfection in the mythic, if theres a fuck up in you thats normal, but if theres a fuck up in the machine its almost spiritual, that theres a ghost there, another entity, a voice in the past or the future, frozen. Dumb Down Because our eyes dont see everything, doesnt mean they see nothing. And because we dont understand consciousness doesnt mean that we are completely unconscious. Just because most of what happens is completely out of our control does not mean there are no choices. Puff Puff Pass Stop puffing, youre getting too old for it anyway, you need to get with the Tao, you need to learn to live well and gracefully, pots too clumsy to be taken habitually, puff once a week, its all you need to knock down the walls. But after the thousandth glass youve inadvertently knocked off the edge of the table, I mean come on, no cares that youre the midnight toker, When you smoke you let a little fear in, maybe as a result of the disequilibrium, whatever the reason the point is that at this juncture you need the opposite, you need some action. --Fuckin eh, I need some action, in every sense. You got to put the pieces together now. Youve got thousands of pages in that box. You got to put them together with the music, you could catalogy it all pretty quickly and give it to someone. Or you could buckle down and use all your

resources, and come up with something good and new and creative. Remember that your resources are finite, that is where your beauty lies, the weed is good in that you get your time space fuck up which I suppose is cute, but all too repetitive at this point. What a shame to waste them when they give you pleasure and insight. --Pleasure and insight, comes from an proximity to the source. What source? The Platonic source? Taking notes from the gods? --Its a bit like that taking notes from the gods, at times, youre not trying to contrive it, it comes from It comes from your brain. The source is the brain. --The source isnt anyone one thing but a symbiosis of many things to produce a result, the brain and the senses are links in a chain, as consciousness is a link in the chain, as art is a link, as appreciation is, as debate and conversation. A link in a chain, its the web there is no beginning or end or any direction Genius --What we worship in genius is everything were not. Like our idea of God. --Youre right, hes all powerful, he knows everything, hes always good, He doesnt need anyone else, hes very selfless, he loves everyone, he has no carnality to drag him down. But theres also the artistic genius, the romantic genius. --As a response to the mathematical scientific genius of the enlightenment The romantic genius is more human than the enlightenment counterpart, less in control, wilder, crazier hair, he fights against the world he sees with penetrating vision. --I like the penetrating vision, because the deeper he penetrates the less verifiable is his vision, the less scientific it becomes. The romantic genius is the subject; he is the experiment, the rat in the laboratory. He is married to the pain, he revels in his sense and sensuality, and then surpasses his senses in to see beyond the surface into the nature of the universe, to be married with its pain, to revel in sensuality, and to surpass the senses, the romantic genius is an artist who turned life into an art. Theres less of a chance of the romantic genius being strictly a prodigy, he has to suffer the pangs of existence, he has to be touched by life, the enlightenment genius is like a well functioning machine, objective, cold, calculating, precise. So mind feminine genius. --I was going to say, that the next genius is the synthesizer the one who makes his way seeing the connections, but I keep going on about he, without doubt the next biggie, the new vision will be and already is feminine. Do you believe that? Or is women the new noble savage? Peace and Solitude

Dont you find that you need quiet to write? That state where theres nothing else, nothing coming in, that beautiful harmony, where some good words actually come out. --Actually I dont, perhaps Id get more written, or Id write better, but I usually have something on, music mostly. --Why does it always have to be a stream? Why does what? --Consciousness, since Joyce it seems that the only way to refer to consciousness is a stream Thats what Joyce called it and considering he was its most accomplished purveyor, I guess it kind of stuck. Its like Seurat doing his pointillism, I mean if you wanted you could call it dotillism, but itd still be the same technique, and then youd have to be explaining yourself and everyone would wonder why the fuck does this guy want to be so confusing. --Thats a technique, what Im talking about is an thread bare analogy for consciousness. Put a Root Down I got to put the root down? You really think thats what I need? Paolas Fucked Up Nephews Birthday Party I Stood Her Up On I went to Daves I wanted some weed, I was a goddamn weed junkie and hadnt any in ten days, for any junkie tens days is a long time, the reason wasnt because of will of course the weed wasnt there, the pathetic fact was I went out of my way to get there. That morning Id been talking to Paola about going to her nephews party. I didnt really like him, he was big and did things I didnt like, like pissing on your leg through his pants, and putting his gum on the carpet, or wiping shit on the toilet seat as a joke, poor kid it wasnt his fault and he for all of it he had a sweet nature. It was my fault. I could have never gone; instead I was running around because I was angry I didnt have any weed to control my anger. You didnt want to be under the weed thumb, the weed thumb or the green thumb was when the junkies bought up the supply, because if you had the supply you had the control, you werent running around the joint. Out Early --Im glad they let me talk to you. I didnt know if there were regulations against it What the regulations are is a bit capricious. --You think thats supposed to be part of the gig, to break your ego. Im not sure, Im not sure they got it that finely tuned or the resources to do it. --I thought this place was supposed to be good?

It is good. Im clean. Its just he mental grind they do on you. So, the gist of it is that I wrote Cheryl a letter. --And thats okay? But then Cheryl calls and complains, saying it was her understanding that they would have no contact with me for at least six months, well I can write the kids, but since Cheryl and I arent technically married. --Youre divorced. Was is it something in the letter you wrote that she reacted to or was it that she hadnt expected to hear from you. I think, I assume, because I havent had a chance to talk to her that she was probably worried about adhering to the rules, I mean how many times do I just completely disregard any parameters. --What did you say? That I loved her and the kids and that I was missing them, and then what my day consists of. --So then they told her that it was cool that you wrote her so whats the issue? I think she contends that some of it was inflammatory and she wasnt ready for a letter, or that type of contact. --They didnt give you any idea of what you said that she might have taken badly? They said that I already knew considering that I wrote the letter. --Sounds like a game, one they set for you to quit or for you to lose. totalitarian but I guess thats what re-hab is. I wonder if thats a consequence or just the nature of all power. Whats you got it over someone you cant help but use itaresult of the totalaitarian, they --You must feel completely alone. Not really, youre constantly doing something, and there are good people to talk to. No its just one guy really, hes gone through the program and I think his mentality is he had to go through hell and now its his turn to put everyone else through hell. --People like to hand the hate down. Yes, they do. Im think of leaving early, Ive learned a lot, Ive been clean. --And then whats the plan? Move back in is what Im hoping. --Cheryls going to go for that if you dont finish the program? No, thats why Im considering staying. --Maybe its time you got Buddha. Maybe its time to stop caring what they do to you. Theyre not going to kill you, they might get angry because they cant fuck with you, and they cant kick you out for not caring, just dont not care in a bitter way, I know, its so easy to say. Exactly thats the challenge but when someones got the upper hand they can manipulate you eventually not matter how egoless and serene you think youve become. Ive done everything that theyve asked; Ive complied with every rule and every random amendment of their rules. You cant even get the satisfaction of them being your rules, cause hey keep moving the goalposts. The

fact that I want contact with my family is the thing that theyre holding over my head. I thought the problem was that Ive been completely neglecting my family. --The last vestige of your goodness. Youre always looking for that thing that keeps telling you that youre some how a good guy; like you used to when you didnt t drink and take any drugs, that was your thing you never drank, that used to be your goodness when you were fucking aroundand pleasing Cheryl, or these people isnt going to make you any better. Even if they could be pleased what would that tell you, how is that different than a master slave relationship: Daves such a bad boy and he has to do what hes told or he gets in trouble. Youre no different; youre just less dramatic; even though youve been more thoroughly independent you still have the same tendency to fuck things up when they start going well. --Maybe were bored? Maybe every bit of independence and freedom we got was from breaking rules and undermining authority. It sounds juvenile. It is juvenile, we never grew up. Where Does All This Go: An Old Memory of Infidelity It all began on the return. Just before the return Id hooked up. I sold out I fucked a girl, the girl of my dreams. Not a lot o guys get the chance to fuck the girl of their dreams. I like the way she looked and I liked her style I thought she was sexy, sexy as the came, in my book. The coffee and the napkins and the rendezvous and the exams and the singing started just about then. Renee and I had a place in the old part of Amherstburg. The Novelty --I suppose because the dialogue is the part that is magic, and is closest to what I see as reality. And the reader is expected to fill in so much of the information they have to imagine that they are forced coerced into the story. If they continue to read it, there has to be enough there to keep them going, and doing another: writing about writing a story isnt going to incredibly novel anymore. Hittin It --We certainly put up with less and less as women. We dont need them any more, we dont have to put up with shit, were the new bitches, slut will be like stud, girls taking cock, and leaving men with an empty feeling in the morning, plus we got practice with the pussy whip, guys dont know how to use the cock whip yet, you starve em and then they fuck up and then you got them, they feel guilty and they pay, and we pretend that we dont know whats going on, we call them juvenile, and less than. They cant lay a finger on us and we can slap em around, if they call the cops they open themselves to the greatest humiliation and

if we do we are being strong women, gone or the days of boogey slapping women around. Dont you miss it though the old days when we did get smacked around when we acted like cunts. --Have you ever been smacked around? No, but Im sure I deserved it once or twice, Ive definitely smacked a few men, pretty hard, no retaliation, why youve been hit? You can tell me if you have honey. --No, Ive never been hit. The Agent Visiting his Hung-over Genius I cant imagine that you got much encouragement for this one. --No, its not a big seller, people dont like it. Its too ambiguous, theres no focal point. You should change the artist from a writer to a painter. --You think it would make much of a difference? I dont know it might be just the trick. Its not going to make this better but it might get you thinking, you come across as snobby in this and unfunny, youre such a funny guy in real life. --This morning I feel as funny as exorcism, I need to heal. Heal, youve been at it non stop, too much artistic living. Youre going to lose your looks if you keep this up, and then your edge and your concentration and conviction, and then you wont have anything except this mess that your life has become, this meagerness. --It makes it easier to keep clean up this mess that is my life. Its not even that its a mess, it barely exists, when you have nothing you dont need anyplace to put it. Are you afraid of success? --No. If Im guilty of giving that perception its just sour grapes. Id love some success, I dont need a ton, just enough to work on my legacy. I wonder what the bottom number is, how much do you have to sell? As long as theres electricity you got a shot. With this internet you can reach an audience, you got to give it that snobbish literary look to it, have nice print friendly version that look like booksbut bottom number --Im talking bottom number before I check out. To be in the pantheon you have to go global, millions in the end. Maybe its the million mark where the tide turns, doesnt seem to matter when. Like Moby Dick, it took awhile to get there but now that its there its going to tough to knock it out of peoples consciousness. But thats not your worry, your worry is to keep yourself going by working, Ill make you a celebrity and commodity, before you die youll be so famous and miserable youll hate yourself. --Sounds good to me. Cleopatra

Whats been the problem lately? --The ribbon on my typewriter is worn through, its like Im writing Braille. I have no back up machine, I keep drinking, I have no direction. Its playing out fast and easy and its passing me by. I feel like Im back on the sideline again watching. That old feeling here, that nothing can happen that nothing will change, and your life is laid out cradle to grave, that you tow the line, keep an even keel, you go nowhere and do nothing unless its on vacation. But the idea is that you end up somewhere, that you have something in the end, you can keep up our gallivanting around, but youre doing nothing with it, you have nothing to show for it, you dont have a dime, if youd stuck around by now youd have something, youre playing catch up already. Youve completely fucked yourself over, your credit is shot, you cant even get an overdraft on your account, you got this court thing coming up, you amassed thousands of dollars in parking tickets, all of it avoidable, but you want to fuck with the system, its complete arrogance and its eaten you up. Youve been back in the country for five years and you completely fucked up any chance of success for yourself, and what I dont understand is why you think I would want anything like that. Theres no way Im going to take on any responsibilities for your irresponsibility, so you can devote all your resources to cleaning up the messes youve made and are still making. --What are you working for? You dont see the purpose in anything. You say it all the time, theres no purpose in life, that theres a black pallor over everything, impending doom. No I get it, you get enough stuff and surround yourself, you change your environment, thinking that creating something will inoculate you from the sick realities of life, from absurdity, pain, death, chaos, madness. Nightmare --Youre the one whos the big slut. The one who fucks and runs you advertise it constantly. You talk about all you did in the summer was suck some guys dick when you were thirteen and thats how youve been rolling since. Im not interested in fucking you, and I dont find you attractive, in fact I think that youre ugly. I never call you, the only time I talk to you is when you call me and try and invite yourself over. I dont think you really care about anyone else, you use people and what you can get from them. You say you always get what you want, like a child, because youre so desirable, an outdated cougar who moans about how much she cant stand her friends and family. Come on, no one has that low opinion of some one, it was like with Yoko, when they kept saying that she was a witch and how ugly she was, but no one could be that mean to a person, if it was true, unless they wanted to hurt them. Are you trying to convince yourself? --The truth is Im not that tempted and to give up what I got, itd take a lot morethan what you have to offer.

Youre a cold one, you do have the ol evil, nice guy. Dont get too close to touch the nice guy he might turn into a frog. You dont like me around because Im real, I have an effect on you that you find disconcerting. --The only effect you have on me is that you stir my pity. --I never liked deliberate cruelty but this chick didnt give a shit about me, she wanted what she wanted so she could tell her friends and act like some celebrity bitch. I didnt feel like getting used, at least not by her. Do you think shes dangerous? --Shes capable, shes bored, shes got nothing going on, shes lost most of her friends. The only thing that keeps her scorned ass in check is that she has a son. If she wants to get fatal attraction on me I can use her son as leverage. Hopefully she stops vying for your attention and goes away. --Shes convinced that my disinterest is predicated on the fact that shes too real. Shes just an aspect of reality Id prefer to have nothing to do with. Just because somethings real doesnt mean its any good for you. Like massive amounts of radiation. --Like cyanide extracted from apple seeds. This chicks a soul eater, a psyche sucker, a non linear nightmare. The Right Reason --You dont think hes going back for the right reason? No, I know why hes going, he wants redemption. --Why does anybody go back? They need those pure memories The End of Everything Once the sex is over its finished. --What is? Everything, the whole relationship, everything after is a faade, that the longer its perpetrated, the more detrimental it is, for everyone. --Relationships last as longer as the memories of the people around them, they change they dissipate, they mutate, but they never entirely disappear, the linger and haunt, they are the acts, the episodes, the scenes, and the songs, and the people you knew. All of these memories stir to distract you from the forthcoming apocalypse, the narrative of life and the jewel of life: death. I hate reality, I hate people who believe in it, everything is reality, people invoke it on you when they want you to feel as bad as they are. Do you think youre constantly drunk and high because you dont want to believe that anything ends. --Probably, and it makes me feel good. Vistula

Im on the bus going the Vistula River that separates the Wars from the Sawa. Im reading Henry Millers first novel, the one that no ones read, about how his wife was going lesbo with some chick from New York City. I was living in Praga with my wife Renee in a flat with some British slobs. I was writing a story, the best one I ever wrote but I didnt know it was good at the time. I thought about being a writer and what it would be like to be successful and being able to say that you were a writer and pretend that it wasnt any big deal. Greenway had split, life was too easy, too much money too many women and parties, Greenway wanted a dose of reality, he went back to Canada, met a girl in AA and got hitched a while after. Greenway had disappeared, he re-emerged when my marriage was on the fritz, people said he gloated when peoples shit got fucked up, now Greenways shit was fucked up and he couldnt be sure he still had my novel, he thought him and his old lady who he hated had thrown it out. I had one version left a uncompleted version. I didnt know if I wanted to go back or needed to I didnt know if was any good, I didnt know if I was going to make it any better, I didnt know if I cared to, I mean if I did I would have already done, I thought I was going to come up with something better. Outreach What is it about writing that you thinks its more meaningful than the rest of it. --Without it theres no soul to anything, theres nothing I like, with it I feel a connection between things, even if this connection is only linguistic, it doesnt give me reality, but a figment of it, which is all youre going to get. Writing is how I synthesize how I comprehend, the reach of the language contains infinite possibilities and teaches me in ways that Im unaware of. Legalized Do you have a prayer of getting off? --Thats all I got. If I dont Im fucked as far as practicing my profession, at least in Canada, I wont be able to cross the border, I wont be able to drive, Ill have to pay a million in fines and get one of those breath lock devices if I want to drive again.

God, it was my life flashing before my eyes, at least my professional life. Plus the stigma of having a criminal record, not being able to travel over the border, not being able to drive. A fucking night mare was before. Have you prayed?

--Yeah, this is one of those times when you need a break from the almighty, theres no reason why I should get off, I mean Im guilty of everything that they accused me of, so the only way this is going to work is that the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord. The Gamblers Weve been getting rocked lately. --God, it seems like we havent won a bet in forever. We got to stay confident, we built it up this big, weve been playing with their money for almost a year. --I agree, only our last bet was semi foolish, but everything else has been solidlegitimate anyway. Well get it back. Anything you like tonight? --I was looking at the Laker game. It seems out of whack. I cant believe the Lakers are giving up eight on the road Know It All --Its how we feel, and how we care, and what we feel guilty about. It us that gives value. We must know that value comes from us not some higher source. I think the idea is that the higher source gives us our values. If you have any religious bent you can put it off to God. If you dont, you can invoke some survival instinct, so even though values do come from us, they came before. Values like strength and wisdom seem obvious, caution, memory. These values must have preceded consciousness, because they are apparent in beings that we dont think of as conscious. --When we become conscious of something these days, the tendency is to revert to the unconscious. What do you mean revert to the unconscious? --Theres a certain cache in the old days, in the simple lives of men who lived in tribes in harmony with nature, in things like yoga, clearing the mind to hook up the power source of the universe, in animals. I wonder if language is the beginning of consciousness. --You mean communication, or an internal dialogue? I dont know? Which came first? --Im thinking that thinking about things came before words. An internal dialogue would suggest a sophisticated knowledge of language and shifting points of view. You can see an animal thinking, a cat sees a mouse run into a hole, while a cat certainly communicates with other cats it is difficult to imagine that is has the language to explain thoroughly what it sees smells and feels. Certainly consciousness only reveals a glimpse of truth, unless the parameters are confined, the parameters generally being the limits of ones consciousness. Or the permanency of communication. Maybe having. No

--I think thats what communication is: the repetition of signs that have a somewhat stable value, but Isnt that what a signifier is? --A signifier is the symbol or the expression and the signified is the concept. The signified must come first, the first language must be what confronts ones senses, only later must people or any animal become aware of the language, or that it is a language, certainly, the wind, the stars, the animals, the seasons, the sun, the moon spoke first, your mother, your mothers voice, and primarily avoidance of pain. The First Ten --I couldnt find the first ten pages of whatever this is? You found them? --Yeah, I dont know why I was so upset, I never read them, and I mean there wasnt a ton there only ten unedited pages, like I had lost a lottery ticket, that there was something there was going to be great or save me or be undeniably profound, genius for me is a lottery a crap shoot, a one off, or a lucky streak thatll change my fortune. I know why you dont read it, if you havent checked your bet you havent lost yet, or you might have to think about what youre doing, and the problem with that is you wont write anything, or itll be too hard or take you too long. --I know it. I really have to take a look at what Ive got. Ive gone way to much stuff in the bin to keep writing, I dont even know if I care about it. Do I want to look at it? Do I structure it into some coherent version of my life and my writing? Do you throw your music in there and do something new, instead of writing and using film, every film maker it seems is a frustrated novelist. --Its how the elements are combined, its how I combine them, if I do, or is using the songs a way out. If you can do in naturally or in a way that makes some kind of sense. If you have a character who writes songs, you can include the songs. --Or you can write a song and include the stories of a writer. I dont know, I feel tired and the end of my life getting closer, coming to the realization that Im not going to be successful at the things I dreamed about. When the Lights Go Out Its been a long time since weve heard from you. --When I think of my behaviour, I just didnt feel like talking to anyone, I was embarrassed at my cowardice, I was ashamed of my infidelity and my duplicity. When I think back I was well on my way to being a sociopath And now youre the good boy cured of his vices. --Its because I reject the cure that theres any hope left for me. Are you any happier now?

--Its another illusion Ive had to temper. That someones a special effect thats going to simulate my perpetual bliss. So now you dont believe true love again? --No, I believe in it, I just dont have it. I barely have any lust, I work with a bunch of measly looking women. Goodlife without passion is life without hope. Theres something in me thats always wanted you to die a morphine sedated existence free of fear, passion, and pain. You always talked this art shit and made me out to be cold, that you were the artist, and what have you amounted to. Maybe you could have rationalized it all, if you had at least made good, if you had done anything, but youre still in this still working on your vision mode, afraid. --A complete lack of success does nothing to bolster my confidence. I was, I still am surprised of what Im capable of, I have no real moral frame work. And without it Im a good as a wound clock, I cant get, I cant even get a woman to touch me to keep my nervous system from shriveling up, they treat me like a disease. Which is somewhat normal I suppose, most men feel that theres something not quite right with them, and the world they live in, and the consequences of living and being a man are at times unbearable. Not unbearable, just unpleasant and inconvenient. This is why you want to get back with your wife again. Shes a way out for you, shes salvation, she could ease your mind. Youd be a good boy again. -Why did you call her then? --I didnt she called me, she wants to finalize everything with the divorce. Do you want to talk to her? --Only when Im drunk. Why, when youre drunk? --I dont know Im tired, Im just talking. Keep talking. --I think shes met someone and she cant live in sin with a clear conscience because shes still married. Sounds like the curse I put on you is coming true. --Yeah, it feels like that, like in the belly of the beast. You talk down but youre a fun guy, youre lucky not all people are born with it. Even when you used to pray, you used to pray that we would have fun. Pleasure for Your Punishment --Its distrust of the male libido. Its distrust of exploration, of evangelism and warfare, a majority feels they have been abused and molested. We must be strong enough to fight this ethos of sustainability. You cant stop, you can fight, and hate, you changeadapt , or roll with it while it lasts and just, just feel it as hard as you can in everything, in your body to the tip of your head. Take your time to concentrate on it and even in the end if it doesnt serve you well you can at least ay you enjoyed some pleasure for your punishment.

How Woody Allen Movies Ruined My Life Have you ever done anything with the Woody Allen ruined my life concept? --No, I never really got started on it, I never really got a story of my own to run it through. I mean whats the idea really that Woody Allen movies have somehow are responsible for fucking me up. Its a cute idea. You would have to pay homage to Play it Again Sam, which is a bit of a similar idea, but your Bogey is Woody. --I think the idea is funny that a character slips into a Woodyesq character when he is confronted with situations in which he is uncomfortable and so latches on to this personality that has shaped his life from an early age. He likes beige clothes, hes not Jewish, he doesnt wear glasses, he likes bookcases with lots of books, he loves the universe and New York that Woody has created. The look and texture of Hannah and Her Sisters is not a realistic version of anything but a type of fiction that is more than reality. But theres no story, not yet. Well think of one, theres a million stories out there, steal, everyone does it, Shakespeare stole all his stories, he just rewrote the lines, find a story where something similar happens, where a person becomes enraptured with someones art to the point where it captivates them and they transform into the personality of the art or artist. --Thats not bad. Can you think of anywhere I could steal it from? Not off hand. Whos the guy that falls in love with his sculpture? --( ), but he fell in love with his own creation. The best examples are probably Woodys own movies, Play it Again, and Zelig who at his worst completely transforms into the company that surrounds him. Thats why Woodys a good template, he seems to suffer from the same two problems that plague you, he doesnt know who he is so he latches on, or he does know who he is and feels inadequate and so he resorts to a psychological crutch. --Also, the whole Woody thing of a person suffering but having no art or talent to express themselves. But I still need to steal or make up a story. Why does he revert to Woody. It cant just be the whole social anxiety gag, maybe instead of Zeliging, he changes the situation around him into a Woody Allen film, by adopting speech patterns, by drinking wine, by having affairs, wearing the beige like you say, he makes his life a movie, a bit Buddhist with the idea that life is a dream, the whole worlds a stage, but he wants to change the channel to a Woody Allen matinee, what he wants is the artificial light like Blanche Dubois. --Why is the mundane unfulfilling? We take it for granted. --It never seems good enough. Good enough for what? --I dont know.

Maybe he should slow down a bit, writing, directing, acting a film a year every year. Does he need to continue to make these mystery murder comedies? --Its why the later movies seem parodies of his early movies, because movies have become his life. His real life. But of course there is no real life any more, its a babble of information, or course kids that play first person murder games are more likely to murder like the game. --Exactly, why play the game if it doesnt change or touch your life in some way? Think of the old debate of art imitating life, as if there were some substantial difference. As if creating artificial realities or video games is somehow unnatural. God, even if some alien came here and started a race of of superior beings humans, I mean can you imagine the hubris, but even if it were true, how would it be any more supernatural. The supernatural thing is that you have enough hubris to be a fucking know it all. But we think less of people who play in a substandard reality. We think more of the people that play basketball than he kids who play them in a video game. --Dont you think the problem is the creators of video games? For as good as the animation and art might be the stories are juvenile, basic revenge plots, hyper violence, actually Im surprised theres not more hyper sexuality. They do have those rape games in Japan, where the idea is to go around and rape everyone. --Why are the Japs so into rape? Its hard to say, you cant really blame it on the bomb, because they were raping the Chinese women pretty hard even before they got post apocalyptic. --Now they cant, the games up, so they got their anime to fantasize about it. Until they get their chance again. Golden Age --What came first emotional depression or economic depression? I would think people suffered emotionally before there was any economy in place. --I was thinking of the terms not the real thing. I would think that Freud must have come up with the term. Or the Greeks. You think you got something new and then you see it straight forward in the Greeks. --Maybe even the Indians, they seemed acute to emotional stability and enlightenment and that the purpose of health is for enlightenment. Not to hold on too tightly. Hierarchy of the Senses Whats with this whole touch thing? --That touch is the most reliable of the senses, and the most gratifying.

You think that touch is superior to sight? --In the sense that-- get it, sense Yup. --But in the sense that touch is the least manipulated of the senses at least from a media point of view. Sight is so manipulated, that the axiom seeing is believing is absurd, sound would be next, taste, smell, and then touch. The only real commerce with touch is the whole sex trade that however big, is still underground and not consolidated and manipulated the way the other senses are. Then you have that whole spa culture. --Sports, I guess is, but not really, generally sports is marketed through sight and sound. I suppose its related to the information that is garnered through the sense. The most accurate, reliable, efficient information comes through sight and sound, and then smell, and taste, and touch. --Its related to proximity of the receiver. Sight and sound gives you distance, smell, and then touch and then taste. Depending on the scenario. --Of course I was thinking in terms of the ability to manipulate, to trick the senses, reliability, accuracy, and efficiency of processing information. What came first ears or eyes? --That I dont know, you mean evolutionary? I would think ears, vibration seems to be a much simpler device than sight, and as far as the develop of media and communication, painting came after story telling, the movies came after radio and telephone. But the ability to read hand gestures, could that have come before speech? --As far as communication? Probably both in combination. As far as child development, they must do all the things in the womb first, and as I think about it in reverse order, due to the sophistication of the sense mechanism. Is that true? Youd think a fetuss first sense would be touch, pleasure pain etc., and their eyes dont open until theyre born. But I think it falls into your proximity theory, and that the first environment, like a mole sight is unimportant, it gives relatively little information of the environment. --Also sight and sound, are the least likely to cause injury by perceiving, if a lion scratches you it can cause injury, but if you see a lion a mile away on a savannah it could save your life. Also that greater satisfaction and substance is more closely related to the direct survival of the organism, taste and touch. Consumption and creation. Match Point Do you think you got into psychology because of Woody? --No, I got into because I was going crazy at a certain point in my life. My wife went back to Canada to go back to school. Id been having an affair, I was in love, when my wife left there was this, I was kind of I was moving in with Lily

and our other friend and then of course the other friend didnt end up moving in, and I hadnt told my wife that Id been having an affair. Lily, the girl, Id left my wife for was going what the fucks going on, when are you going to tell your wife? So I end up reading Self Reliance by Emerson, and it gave me the courage to tell my wife, and then I felt in disarray and found a book by Carl Jung I dont even remember which, but it had to do with his theory of archetypes and it gave me some kind of foothold, it gave a structure to my apparently self destructive and some what erratic behaviour. And then I read Freud later after I read everything by Jung. I came to it late, we were never encouraged to read psychology, my dad called it fake science. Which turned out to be right with everything weve learned about biochemistry and genetics. --Thats like saying not to read Newton or Darwin because they werent right about everything they said, even before you knew that they were wrong. The shrink is like the new priest, plying a superstitious trade so people can confess the sordid facts of their lives, and live without guilt that otherwise might interfere with their happiness. --Except a priest works for a lot less, and is more reliant on ritual to produce comfort. A shrink uses techniques that are invasive and certainly the shrinks purpose is not to create guilt and then alleviate it. Whats interesting is that both priests and shrinks like to frame their subjects experience of enlightenment or mysticism into a dogmatic framework or a religious context. Is that for the sake of the person going through the experience, which I suppose is quite frightening and confusing. --You could also make the argument that the mystical experience should somehow serve to guide the society that it exists in, and it also shows the society a more vivid and realistic picture of what it is what it was and where it is going. But with no framework it is indistinguishable from madness? --Or serves no other function. World War III This, if youre not for us youre against us has gone on a long time. --I wonder why the enemy is so enticing, actually I understand why the enemy is enticing, because for a large part your enemy resembles yourself, but what we like to think is a distorted version of ourselves. By destroying the enemy we think we gain clarity. But what we destroy is our opposite. So should the enemy be assimilated? --Or synthesized. Why is it the masses are so patriotic when they have the toughest time under the system under which they live? --It gives meaning to their lives, they become part of something bigger more significant, and by doing so they gain the power that the mass has; their sheer numbers, but what they believe must be superior to their mundane existence, thats how you get them to sacrifice their lives.

Its funny just because you think youre better than someone else it should hand in hand with hate. --Because theyre unconfident, they worry that the lack of morality the enemy exhibits may threaten their security, the lack of refinement in the enemy is a way of distorting his power, and I suppose the enemy within exhibits the same characteristics, less geared to ward morality, if pushed will commit any action which guarantees its survival. To indulge the shadow can have dire consequences. --The shadows going to come out whether you like it or not, its like having a tiger for a pet. God Forgive Me Youre forgiven. Now what? Deeper Blue --The important thing about the Karpov match Deeper Blue has nothing to do with computer versus machine, but that a very good player with the aid of a very good computer can defeat arguably the greatest grand master in history. Its the deadly combination of more than one personality. Can two very good chess players beat Karpov? --I dont know. But without personality the computer becomes far too predictable, and thats what Karpov noticed, the introduction of a human quality. And IBM maintained that Deeper Blue displayed characteristics of human thought? --And Karpov maintained that there was divine intervention. Whats the fear, that a machine can beat a person? That a machine is smarter? --Weve had intelligent machines in boxes for years, the smarts traveling in a fragile dome, now if they could teach the smarts to play tennis. Cits Women arent just men with cits I mean cunts, and tits. Cits: the latest innovation. The perfect combination. --I remember in high school Scott Wright had this key chain called the perfect woman, and it was tits on a pair of legs with a bushy vagina. It looked kind of grotesque, actually I couldnt figure out what it was for the longest time. But it made me think that the idea of perfection removed from body gave you this cruel image. Like the idea of having sex with really stupid women. --Look at how stupid this chick is, I cant wait to fuck her, she cant do anything else, thats an attractive quality: barnyard animal. Like youre so stupid all youre good for is fucking. Maybe its a sign of aristocracy.

--Like youre so well endowed you dont have to bother thinking. The Stone Reader --I was think of putting little things into the conversations to give them a sense of place. Like, Can you pass me the salt? or Man this car really moves! --Put that thing back in your pocket. When did you start drinking? Or you could get blatant, Man this restaurant is so old school steak house, check out the ribbons on the wall. --Most of the conversation have definitely a telephone element, maybe something like, Are you going to the bathroom while youre talking to me? Funny that when people do things, they have something to talk about, other than ideas. --But writing, I mean how many writers have these fantastic interesting lives, I suppose if you were wealthy you could travel and journalists seem to have put themselves in the action. I was watching this documentary the other day, The Stone Reader, the premise to the documentary was almost exactly the same plot as a novel Id started about a guy discovering this eclectic little treasure and pursuing the author, but in mine the author is accused of murdering his wife that committed suicide. The J.D., Thomas Pynchon, exclusivity fascination. --With nothing, with non lives, with that they seemingly do nothing. Like KISS, with the make up, and the fake personalities, you couldnt go home with The Demon, because once the show was over The Demonic manifestation was over. Old Rock Do you think your dialogue style is indicative of a culture in decline; unable to paint a powerful, vivid, picture; too lazy to come up with a story that takes you some place magical. --The only standard Ive been holding it up to is what interests me as far as ideas, and that most of the conversation lack setting is because they take place on the phone, which has been instrumental as keeping our tribe together, more so than any other medium, and my fault is that I talk in the phone or use the phone as a type of public square, but unlike the square they are dialogues, but Im not going to sit on the phone and record, its even duller than what Ive been writing, which is also of interest. You do have that commercial, now where theres a series of stories passed on through cell phones. --Cell phones are better. This story is unfortunately a black and white, this is the telephone, the drivers license have been sacrificed to drinking and driving charges, so the only roads that everyone talks on is the phone, there is no square, not face to face. I was reading the other day that the invention of the

phonograph, the reason it was invented was to record conversations that were taking place on the telephone. The Myth of Myth The Message is the Medium --Why do you find it easier to accept your sons perspectives? Well I appreciate that theyve seen things that Ill never be privy to, either because I dont have the moral flexibility or because it doesnt interest me. I never had the desire to snort cocaine or inject myself with heroin, or go to places like India. I Got to Your Book --Sounds like you enjoyed it. Are you being sarcastic? --I guess, but I dont know why. It was definitely a novel, a book, a beginning, middle, and ending. The prose was a bit purple for my taste, but there are two hundred and forty pages of it. --Its not remotely perfect, I know, its a good lesson with a book that its not going to be perfect. You dont have a good copy yourself? --No, thats my last one. Most of the characters arent very likeable, thats something I found difficult, even though I guess theyre realistic, or at least autobiographical. --The days of guts and glory, when we were spoiled children with nothing left to lose. Everything super charged everything exciting, never knowing what was going to happen next, everything that I hate about this cradle to grave armpit. Good Boy --I was going back early to get an apartment in Warsaw before Renee arrived. Id just come off a nine month affair, I was fucked up and felt horribly guilty and was ready to try and set things right, but of course I didnt say anything, just push it down and be a good boy from then on in. I put it off to too much artistic living. I didnt know why I thought I wouldnt do it again, I figured the guilt would be enough to cure me. Why did you do it? Were you so dissatisfied with Renee? --No. Nothing like that had happened to me. I was teaching these horny young girls who had just been given their freedom for the first time in fifty years. I was a new teacher I didnt know how to handle it, and I didnt get a lot of counseling about it before hand. I thought thats what years of reading fiction was for.

--Fiction was fiction for me. I never bought into realism. When I read Hemingway Id never thought it was realistic, it was magic, it was highly stylized, I never expected that people really talked like that, and if they did it was because they were making an effort, you know to act cool, or important. Writing is never realistic, is necessarily needs metaphor or analogy, while a photograph or even a piece of film, needs no commentary, even though theres a vast amount of technique involved, when the audience sees the image, and I think of Barnett Newmann, with his stripe down the middle, that you observe everything immediately, a moment of awe. You dont want a look in the mirror you want to go through the looking glass. Did you see your infidelities as a rite of passage? --I dont know if my infidelities were per se, but the whole traveling, going to live a foreign country. In hindsight I can say that I used my marriage as a way of gaining my freedom. I remember Greenaway lamenting the night before my wedding that the fun was over for me. And I couldnt get it, it hadnt even crossed my mind that I would have to sacrifice, and I was like, Are you kidding the funs just started. And so you took up residence in the fun house. --Europe, yeah. When Greenaway came out for the year, hed had a good job, a nice apartment, scores of beautiful women, writing, going to art shows and concerts, and he finally had to leave because it wasnt reality. --I find visiting Dave to be psychically troubling, almost like hes wearing you, as he goes from audience to audience imparting his spiritual platitudes, shrinks, pastors, counselors, family, church friends, its like he wears them. How does he wear them? --Theres a story about Marshall McLuhan and Tom Wolfe going to a strip bar when they first started to become somewhat of a fashion in the late sixties early seventies. So they go to the strip and McLuhan makes the observation that the women, the strippers werent nude because they were wearing them, the audience. The audience was the one exposed and uncomfortable. Maybe Dave does the same. His purpose, and their salvation is trying to save him from himself. Hes like a tragic archetype. Whats the archetype? --A moral reprobate. Hes the device that regales them with accounts of a seedy side that fascinates them, but they have communion, their utmost desire for holiness, and their vain attempts to imitate what they think it is. Do you get through to him? --No, Im sure I dont. I dont know if I even care enough. The only thing that I might be trying to instill is for him to take some pride in himself and to tire of this ego of goodness. I mean, everyone wants their friends and family to be heroic, to behave heroically, they pick us up, salvation through association. Yet with out the moral degradation you hardly understand a thing about yourself. When you cheat on your wife, when you lie to her, when youre too embarrassed to to tell her to trim up the pubic hair around her vagina, that is the key. Why?

--Because it is embarrassing because you have to say how you think and feel and how we really are. One of Those Deals With the Devil Come on, the meaning of the action can only be determined in relation to the situation its happening in. --Thats what we say, the old dudes, but take a look at interest in statutory rape. You can fuck a cop in the mouth whos eighteen years old and go to jail not because you coerced a minor, but because you thought about it, but in reality a chick cop whos an adult was going to give you a blow but because she didnt and you thought she was seventeen your going to be forever labeled as a child molester. But the truth is no one should be fucking seven year olds, or babies, what do you get by fucking a baby? --I dont know, but Ive had dreams about people trying to rape me, and most often but I hate to say it is Dave. Hes got no conscience, he thinks its funny, its fucked up. But I cant put it on him. These are parts of my consciousness, this is my problem, that Im cruel and uncaring,I mean, I may be cruel, but I take little pleasure in it, and I dont think its funny. I dont find people getting tortured or breaking their femurs, or losing their balls, or breaking their faces amusing. Like this chick with her obsessive thing, I find her ugly, stupid, annoying, I mean Im not interested. But I take no pleasure in telling her to fuck off, I wish that shed just go away. Shes a fucking slut with a little son and a string of dudes from skanky bars. I dont give a shit if you made out with Lenny Kravitz backstage. Depression Glass --On the way to work in the morning I used to cry everyday, overwhelmed by what I thought was beauty. It never occurred to me that I might be depressed because I felt so much joy at these moments. Everything was light and poetry and good chemistry. It mattered, or it matters, that life is poetry, and even if youre not a genius at creating it, it does give a person a thrill to be near it, to experience it on a first hand basis. Not everyone is wired for it. But to come out of this, and to persist with your art and your life, and youve found some ecstasy or rapture, youve buoyed yourself up with your music, and your profession, but what has always been your rock is your writing. You have seem to have lost that, in Europe you werent afraid to say that you were a writer, but here, if youre not getting published, or making money youre not a writer, youre a flake artist, a poseur, a wanna be. You cant say youre a writer, because people will ask you what youve publisher, and you really got nothing to say, Well you almost forty now, does anything give you the notion that maybe its time to hang it up and get on with your life. --I like that, writer as lifestyle, writing as religion, music too make you shiver and cry, when you feel that hand of God so strong on you.

Fan Base --I remember Bukowski saying that when you couldnt write the worst thing to do was push it too hard. This is from a man who published thirty books in twenty-five years. --And even when youre at it, you stand up, have a puff, walk to the fridge have a sip, rub your eyes, etc. and then you sit back down at the typer and let it go. Its never like the movies, or the docs, or when Jack talks about his spool of paper, we see the writer just pounding on the typer apparently enraptured with his muse, a bottle, a ceiling fan, and (a) smoke, this is what we envision, a movie of Henry Miller going nuts on the typer. But at the end of the day does it matter what youve written, if you live your whole life and no one cares and no one tells you that youre any good, or worse that you never get published, and theres a pile of paper, that not even your family wants to read, and you dont even have a kid that might what to read it because youre his dad. Birds Eye View --Women can sense desperation like a vulture, high above the old patterns emerge, the slowing, the stopping, the dropping, the falling, the wailing, the slow rise and fall of the breath as it leaves, the ants on the tongue.

You cant seem to give up on the European Dream. Was it as good as you remember or do you think you glorify it? --I mean thats impossible for me to know, no Im sure there are aspects of it that I choose to forget, the red tape with visas, and having to find an apartment, and that state of anxiety. Sure I glorify it, but there was a lot of glory going around. Cheap booze, good drugs, jobs, beautiful women, that was the fuel. Plus there was the thaw, in Eastern Europe and also us going there to thaw with them, I cant help but think Cold War notions and propaganda, and the us versus them polemic was dying out. We were kids who had grown up in Christian Fundamentalism, and had all our hang ups that wed kept under wraps back home. This was our thaw too, we were thawing together. We were off our turf. Great but it doesnt exist any more, this sentimental attachment what does it get you here? Youve been back for six years, you go on about peoples values, and that everything is money, so what? Its like an Eskimo hating snow, he can bitch all he wants but its not going to stop it from snowing. The sooner he --I get it. Nice analogy. I just dont understand why you want to be treated as a joke. You have all this potential and you squander your resources on fucking yourself over. Party dude is getting repetitious. --It does make one weary and poor.

Page Turner Why dont you write a page turner to get you out of this financial mess? --Ive always wanted to write a page turner. Its easy, just follow the formula, doesnt Harlequin give a template and you just fill in all the details. --Ive heard that, I dont know if its true. I cant be that easy, everyone would be doing. I suppose a lot of people do work on these books, You always hear about all these people slaving away on Tom Clancy assembly line books. The formula makes you money, you need money, no one wants to read a bunch of little sad funny stories. The only people who like them are your league of half baked writers. --Maybe youre right, were all afraid of the formula. The formula kills any hope that we might be any good that were going to craft a brave new genre. Why does writing have to persist with this singular vision, the vision of the genius, the romantic that consumes himself? With film the burden of creativity is shared and coordinated, the actors give so much scope and personality with out narrative. Is it not necessary that it all starts somewhere? --Necessary for what? For an explanation of where a creative idea came from? Someone reads something or sees something or understands something and that something turns into something else and some of these rise up in our pantheon and some never do and some serve the egos of the great cteaors and some challenge and some fight. The only explanation that seems important is who gets paid. Creative rights and fame, but more literary types call it respect within the community. But without the story War and Peace theres no mini series. --And without a kick in the ass or his lust and hate for his wife and her literary approbation we dont get war and peace and the mini series, does that mean a nagging wife is the source, of course not. But the writer seems to be severely neglected especially in the film industry. The most expensive films seem to spend the least on the writing. --Your right that film is very derivative even the guys that are lauded with Academy awards are adapting novels, recreating stories that everybody already knows. As well as the actors everybody has digested. Theyre almost ghosts. --Like Derridas thing about being a ghost, apparently when we do not absorb a personality, or we grieve to the point where we take on the personality, as a ghost which speaks through us. How does he try to verify this? --I dont think he does. He tells a story about how he visited Prague and he became possessed by Kafkas ghost. He talks about ghosts being a carnal form of the spirit. That it is the body, the flesh, which gives the spirit its apparition. Why does anyone take this seriously? Or why does he take it seriously? --I think it has to do with technology and the image and what the image is.

Ruby --Rubys had one kitten so far. One little wet mole. Shes under the sink. Im trembling and the verge of tears, Ive never really seen anything like it. Ruby left it alone with its head between the folds of the blankets she was lying on, I couldnt let that poor son of a bitch die, not the first, maybe she didnt get it, maybe this was nature letting the baby go, I moved the baby on to her and she started licking him and then he started feeding and I felt elated. Its hard to know what to do. If you touch them does the mother eat them? --Exactly when are you supposed to step in? I remember the story they use to tell in Sunday school about the butterfly and the cocoon, and the guy helps the butterfly out of the cocoon because its having such a difficult time getting out and of course the butterfly is lame because without the struggle it doesnt develop its flying muscles. But just because something is natural doesnt mean its good. Extinction is natural but not very good for the species. The Artist as an Industrial Artifact Is the point of all this writing an excuse for your irresponsibility? --What the fuck do you care? What kind of question is that anyway? Thats a bitchie little question. If you never do anything with it, you havent sent anything off in years, if you dont send anything off youre not a writer. Youre a masturbation artist. Time to practice on some humans. --Im thinking about making my move. Writing is not just writing its making people think of you as a writer, everybody writes, its like saying youre a painter because you did a nice job painting your living room. Maybe you got the living inside perfected, but like this dialogue obsession its so personal so inside, theres very little to like or latch on to, and people want to, thats what you got to remember that people dont not like your writing because its good, its because its not good enough. No characters no setting, no people, no place. --Maybe Im the prophet of the new man, the new values: boredom, tediousness, pointlessness, and unfulfilled ambition, feasting on the fear trip, hanging out on the laptop, writing all the time to no one and making love to memories. Im the uber mench. The height of German Romanticism and the journey inward, into the psyche, the self, letting go of the ego and letting God, and where did it lead? To National Socialism to genocide? --I think its when Nietzsche begins by unmasking the relations of power lurking behind claims to truth, a technique that was developed by the Enlightenment when it was trying to put religion out of its misery, but Nietzsche turns the Enlightenment on itself. He concludes that all truth claims amount to nothing more than the will to power. But by undermining both religion and the

Enlightenment nihilism was inevitable. The people revert to the comfort of their folk traditions.. And where does Heidegger fit in? --Heidegger like most men obsession with violence and power was a slight sickly creature who became obsessed with living like a lumber jack. He subscribed to Lebensphilosophie, a trendy philosophy of life and vitality. Similar to todays Green movement. --In the sense that both seem to have a sharp dichotomy between technology and this category they call "Life". And similar to the Neo-creation Intelligent Design in that they borrow the critique of scientific understanding. While at the same time seeing it as narrow and barren compared experience and intuitive understanding, and most of us not being specialists or experts live our daily lives much in this fashion. A mish mash of collective folk wisdom and scientific fairy tales, that we cannot personally verify and hardly ever try to. Because we feel powerless and impotent to change anything. So what we adopt a form of irrationalism to cope, to tell the story so theres hope of a happy ending? --Like all philosophy, Heidegger feels that theres something wrong with the condition of humanity, that everyones forgetting somethingwhat weve forgotten is how to be, that because of the subject-predicate logic of the Latin language, weve lost the real Greek meaning of the term. Which is what? --Unconcealment . So the problem with Western culture is a semantic misunderstanding of a word? --Or the language shaped the misunderstanding. God, no wonder everybodys an addict. --Maybe a similar thing is happening in the States. Maybe this pursuit of happiness, has become a right to be happy, and then the necessity for complete security. But I dont see how this evil. Isnt the ideology or the reason inconsequential, doesnt only have to do with power and the desire to hold onto power? --Because the morality the majority of us live by is different than the morality of those in power that control our lives but at the same time need to seduced in order to give our individual power to those who rule us. And the bet is, and thats where the real (paradigm) shift happens, is that those in power need the tools to gain public consent. And what is that? --Mostly our money. At least it was. I think moneys on the way out. But thats what the war machine relies on, the war machine is an old powerful dinosaur, it works on money and the consent of people. But it always works on a high technological hinge, everything from the appartus of the equipment to the graphics programs used to manipulate the media, the new wars or the new evil is the completely numbing down of the global population until it resembles a grade five classroom, and we know who the computer nerds the technocrats are going to side with mommy and her basement.

Thick walls and lots of love.

Lets go somewhere. --Where? Im fine, I just got my book, my drink, the suns shining, Im zoning. We could go to an art gallery or go look at some churches. --Lets go later when it cools down. Do you have anything to read? I dont feel like reading. I wonder how the kitties are. Id never forgive myself if something happened to them. --I worry about them too but you cant change a thing here. You want a drink? Absolutely, I need to unwind. (Add another conversation related to grief) --My emotions of are stretched and twisted around the great cycle of life. --Do you know anything about the evolution of the airplane from the bicycle? The Wright Brothers made bicycles and then they made airplanes. The bikes not really an intermediary step, there were plenty of prototypes similar to the Kitty Hawk the Wright brothers used, there were already manned flight with gliders, and self propelled planes that had flown as far as the Kittyhawk, and years before. --So why do the Wright brothers get the credit? The story is that the Wright brothers had lent the British Museum of Aeronautical Engineering their plane, apparently the Smithsonian in Washington wanted it, so Orville made a deal with them, saying if he got them the plane, they would have to recognize their flight in North Carolina as the first manned self propelled flight. --And thats the rest of the story God, I havent heard that in ages. Sustained Periods of Sobriety --The key is sustained periods of sobriety with ritual break down. Sobriety lets you feel to a greater degree the pain it takes to be, to live. With a head full of drugs constantly theres nothing to break down, everything is already broken. Speaking of drunken inanity I saw Norman Mailer trying to bite off Rip Torns ear, after Rip hit him in the head a few times with a hammer. --I always thought that it was Rip Torn who tried to stab Dennis Hopper, or was it vice versa. I know it was Norman Mailer who stabbed his wife in the breast. --Why the breast? Why not in the heart? I wonder if Mailer was the one who propagated the story, its definitely more poetic.

Like the Burroughs story about shooting his wife in the head, where he says lets play William Tell. If youre just playing William Tell somehow its okay. --But if its a game it connotes that there was some kind of mutual consent. If you stab your wife in the breast its poetic. And theres the line by Mailer that if Bob Dylans a poet then hes a basketball player. Im surprised he didnt say boxer. Didnt he have pretensions about being a boxer? Or he sparred for a bit. --A la Hemingway, both writers who exaggerated their prowess in the ring. Why does Allen Ginsberg call the songwriters wordsmiths, hes a poet but theres the subtle difference. Wordsmiths however popular and notable, need the medium of music to shape their lyrics, a poet creates his own music with his words alone. --Except no one reads poetry any more. Who was the best selling poet last year? Whos the poet laureate? Only really clever people are into poetry. Tennis --Lets get the fuck out of here and hit some balls. This four walls stuff is driving me nuts. Christian Counseling --Why dont you see a shrink then? Isnt it free? You need a recommendation, but yeah its free. --Why not do that instead of paying Bill a hundred dollars an hour? I could but theres no guarantee that the doctor I get will be a Christian, and from what I understand they want to medicate away your personality. --You think thats a bad thing? Youve been acting like a sociopath for the last decade, youve got no conscience, youre manipulative, youre obsessed with the opposite sex. Maybe youve managed to dupe Bill, you pay him all this money and then you lie to him. I dont lie to him. --Ive been there when you did. He asked if you were taking coke, you said you werent and then went to the toilet to snort a line. What the fuck is that? Maybe this Christian counseling thing works for some people, but it seems like youre extremely self destructive and you have little remorse for what youve done to your family. And you plan it all out, its like you get off as your plan unfolds. So what do I do? --Go to a real doctor and get some help. The End of Personality and the Death of the Ego --Maybe the lack of personality is an evolutionary change. As the types of personalities are dissolved, categorized and pumped out through the media pipe.

Maybe collective writing is the wave although it never seems to be very interesting those novels the whole post grad class writes a chapter of, Ive never read one, and the idea doesnt seem to be particularly exciting, but maybe with the end of personality no one will be much interested in a single perspective. Dont we have that with films, you got writers a boss a bunch of technical equipment, photography, choreography, editing, directing, music, acting, actors, and millions of dollars. --True enough, and most people get their stories from the movies, as opposed to novels. Theres very little cache in being a novelist, theres more media devoted to the Academy Awards than any literary event, who won the Nobel Prize for literature last year? Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, these guys were celebrated, respected. Writing now seems to be a womans game, maybe not writing but writing books. --God, I sure hope not. Remember when Replacements came out, about that guy making a soul band in Ireland. With the big fat guy, who sang Mustang Sally? --The very same, anyway I was watching it on TV and they had English subtitles for the English, presumably because their accents were so thick you couldnt understand them. Bu the effect was strange it didnt enhance your understanding of the language they were speaking, it made you read it, it made you stop listening, the experience was different. Why is it considered snobbier, more elitist if you sit around and read as opposed to listening? Because reading is more difficult. Listening is easy, and watching video is almost impossible not to consume. Trying going to a bar with a big screen tv and try not to watch. --But that doesnt make the medium worse, doesnt it make it better? That people now can pass information in a way that is more palatable, and works on mnemonic mechanisms in the brain. If reading works for only a minority why is it a superior medium? Isnt that precisely why? Because these media are effective they are prone to abuse. --Abuse, meaning that those who control the media use it to advance their gain or to consolidate power? People who read books are smarter and therefore less likely to be swayed by poor arguments or propaganda. --Case in point I guess, only in conversation could you let a statement like that float by, you cant see it you cant pin it down and if you dont care or arent listening you might accept such a poorly reasoned statement. You couldnt pass a first year philosophy class with that kind of logic. Beat it Back --I wish I could write a novel in a few weeks but Im not a big fan of the Benzedrine. Besides, Kerouac had already written a massive book, the Town and Country, which must have taken a long time and editing and reediting. By

the time On the Road came around he was ready to let loose. But I wouldnt agree that the best novels are written quicklymaybe the funnier ones.

--The ways of the past are nostalgia meant to seduce you from your destiny. But they are the only ways that you can use to communicate. --Im not interested in communicating Im interested in writing. Have you been drinking? --You mean generally, or today? Theres mythology that you can relate to, a ritual that you dont mind, the drunk as allegory. --Thats what Im trying to evoke. Whats that? --The tree that rotates like a snake on fireworks night. Nag Nag Nag Isnt it time youve dealt with some of your legitimate problems. It seems like youve got a lot youve been putting off on the back burner, like youve repressed them because you have no idea of how to deal with it. Youve been living with the sword of Damocles above you must be getting old. You say that your writing is important but all these vices and addictions keep you in such a tight loop you no longer have the stamina to formulate anything. You worry about a few grey hairs betraying your age and yet you drink like everyday is New Years Eve. --I need to invest in a personal life manager. I cant seem to get any better. You need someone to point out whats staring you in the face? These parking ticket are more than a sign of arrogance, theyre an abomination. Ten thousand dollars. Are you completely fucked? Do you have any conception of reality? You seem intelligent enough and perceptive when it comes to other peoples foibles. You seem to think that the worlds a joyride and yet you detest it. --I dont detest it. Just the one that you live in. Just this city, just the pollution here, this boring industrial nothing. this dead end, this end of romance. --Im not saying absolutes are impossible, but Id find it tough to bandy them around just to manipulate people. --Perspective changes, dissolves in the world of hate and flesh and blood and passion and pride, in longing, in longing and in forgiveness. His wall paper is non existent, he lives in a see through house, a glass house, but what he really wants is to construct mirrors of eternity.

--There is nothing beautiful more to someone than the sound of their own name. I think David Carnegie came up with that one. Its true that people very rarely use the other persons name unless they want to specify who theyre talking at. You dont think this post modernism is some kind of illogical cult that gives credence to the weak. Nothing has to make sense theres no reality. How as a philosophy does it serve you? How does it make your life any better? --Im not really thinking about better, in fact Im not wondering if hierarchies are dissolving because of advances in technology. Hierarchy is always intact even as technology democratizes relationships it enslaves us in other ways. What happens when the power goes out? --Maybe the universal, the integral, does exist somewhere, but the William James and others before him point out that due to our limited sense perceptions we can only know perhaps a little of whats going on or what reality is. And most of us for the most part construct some kind of mish mash of theorizes and ideas, and yet think that we are getting close to the answers. You wonder if the Taoists didnt get it right about living your life gracefully, not being overwhelmed with the search for truth, maybe they already figured out that it was unattainable. The Chinese did seem to have a big jump on everyone technologically and philosophically. Ringu I cant help you coach today. --Is there something wrong? My ring. --Is it hurting your finger? Yes it hurts. --Can you get it off? Oh, its swollen? 100 --Can you imagine a story being based on the author trying to write a hundred pages of dialogue? Even a full length screen play generally has a plot. --Whatever happened to the guy that wrote Adaptation? He had that one Eternal Sunshine. The Jewish guy, Kaufmann, Andy Kaufmann. Wasnt Andy Kaufmann the comedian? --He definitely was the comedian. Then who wrote the movies?

Non --The only necessity is to be plugged in to the global circuitry, the great exhibition of non works in non galleries, non stories in non books, living not beyond his means but beyond his ends. The Word on the Street --Thats why its important to get rid of the real street and get together on our information super highway and our relationships become virtualized. When you hear of disparaging difference between high sexualized internet conversations compared to the grotesque reality of ever having to see the person. --Because physical contact is the toughest to lie to, the eye, the ear, the mind, even the manufactured smells, but manufactured tough hasnt been multi nationalized, theres no international chain of whorehouses or massage parlours, its always been an underground trade, almost an embarrassment physical human touch, because its closest to the earth, the first sense. If the Beating of My Heart is Too Slow for You --I was like a stallion mesmerized by the swish of her tail, her blue eyes and tight t-shirt sunshine. But she put on a weird attitude like she stupid, like she thought it was cool, that it would serve her better, she might have been stupid. She was spring break, the best thing that happened to her. Shes young. --Shes twenty-one, young enough, cotton candy, white jeans, but why no brains, why so little, so vacant. Why is this girl in charge of eighty Columbian boys? --Its old school, out of high straight into the one room school house. The real reason is that they take in more cash paying her ten bucks an hour than me at twenty-five or thirty. The schools apparently in financial trouble so she gets her debt munchers to come in from Columbia at five gs a shot, for four weeks of school, she doesnt want to pay four teachers, so she pays me to ring lead these twenty something girls, who flirt more with the fucking kids than they do with me. She sees her self the owner as virginal nun like more than the real lesbian she is. She likes the young things around her but she dont like the little blonde with big tits and a spring break under her belt, but with no vow of poverty there is no remission of the flesh. So the kids blast in from Bogota and Millen, both massive cities with share of everything, but when they come we, the teacher want to think of them as backwater hicks and the shit we got going on in Windsor is cutting edge culture, maybe some where, but no where these anal retentive dykes are hanging, ie. in a house with an old man and the internet.

So, what was the deal these girls were penned up with the kids twenty four seven? --Precisely, they had no outlet and you could tell they were dying for some action, and not just, any excitement to break up the monotony of having to wake up at your job every day, they were pirates on a ship of prepubescent boys, and even on the boat like the pirates they flirted, I was thinking I was the dry land. The oasis. --I was the fountain. I was a resort town after winter; ready for the tourist season. It turned into a sex romp. --More like a farce. It would make for a good Broadway play, a chorus of thirteen year old boys from South America living with two college co-eds, one the brains playing second fiddle to the blonde with no personality and killer cans. I come in with this old broad to help run he show during the day, a strictly nine to four thirty gig. The old broad is the matriarch, the perpetual frown, the tough life, the hater of sex and all things sexual. Im in her cross hairs, she digs we because were peers, I get all the references of her age and everything she came from or ever wanted to be, she covets wealth and happiness but cant under why it doesnt come her way, shes working to support her kids still at college and her busted up old man. Because of a Beautiful Mob Mentality This nineteen year old broad who was basically running the whole experience and had negotiated the kids didnt wipe her chin when she ate ice cream she was a baby with one trip to the Spring Break Experience, she tasted it, life it a ritualized fucked up fashion, a the ice cream actually hits her shirt so she has to rub her boob with a napkin she dampens in the drinking fountain. God, these chicks would argue about who had the more disgusting room. As a point of pride? --In a way, I mean maybe when I was ten I took pride I not bathing and rolling in dust, but come on, maybe thats the shit thats hot now, living like a fucking retard, heavy sloth, with no self respect, no identity, but tits and sunshine, and a great big world that owes us a great big party. But even sunshine and tits were over their heads, it was over everybodys head, but wed all started together on it like a water fight or a food fight that happens because of a beautiful mob mentality, and more or less everything was arriving on time. When did you realize that it had gone full tilt, that you were actually a mob? --I remember it because there was a weird Mexican Mennonite mommy there with her seven year old and two year old, and they were full blown into the middle of the melee. I wonder if its because theyre used to partying like that, Columbians, Mexicans, spring break girls, its a culture. --Maybe theyre not used to our rigid police state mentality, where if you go too far youre good and fucked.

Youre the under sexed bachelor, poor enough to work summer to make ends meet, keep the kids inline but still have fun and learn, One Crazy Summer meets Dead Poets Society. --But with a heart. Its going to be funny though. --Definitely, lots of potential for the old bedroom farce, the pie fight, the swimming pool scenes with the kids trying to pull off the girls bathing suits with scratch marks on their arms and shoulders. At one point I was literally screaming, Get out the video camera! and I was serious, I meant it Thats your story. --Two fish identical and holy. Two virginal sluts identical and holy, passing the sacred fruit from neck to neck, the unacceptable sacrifice, you cant just give God a bunch of fruit, you got to mix it with mammal, bodies and blood, an orange floating on four orbs of flesh --Its cinematic it would look good on video, the water, the lens, the girls, the dialogue was barely decipherable, shrieks foreign tongues, so the jumping off point, is when the busty blonde from her pent up self, figures her way in with with is to push me in the pool, like its funny, like its a ritual an act of intimacy, and as she pushes me I shout, You fucking cunt! No big deal, Columbian kids never heard it before, cunts dead you dont hear it anywhere anymore. But the girl heard it, but she knew she deserved it, so it took up the intimacy notch, it took us to a point that not everyone got to, to call a girl a fucking cunt and knowing she deserved it, couldnt have imagined it but when it happened was better than she dreamed of. So now you got to change your clothes. --Exactly, its the reverse of the guys dress shirt in the morning, its the I got to wear her clothes, the pajamas she took from her father, she had to take me to her room, in her bikini, he needed to change out of her bikini too, two birds with one stone, mint green bikini, I went first as the story goes, --These arent ideal for containment, do you have anything like boxer shorts that might fit, you got to have a pair of your dads kicking around to go with the pajamas, is my line, but I mean, plus it gives a chance to go through her underwear drawer a models them These might be cute. That one where she gets her cutest half ass cheek ones bright as a yellow sun, with a little bow, the ol we got to joke cause its heating up, Gods handiwork, where words fizzle into eventual nonsense. I get the feeling that nothing happened or I might have heard about it before now. --You might not have, but youre right, at the moment where the pajamas were doing little, and I was using all the light and angles to my benefit. And then the knock. Which was? --On the door, the younger, the ugly one with an okay body but a funny face, a better mind, the lesbo bait for the boss, The Knock, hope Im not interrupting

anything. Probably saved my career, not getting caught with a twenty one year old girl in her room while we were on duty, on the clock, but if the knock hadnt come. You dirty dog. (Maybe a Good Lead In for the Pool Party) This is the novel youve been working on? --This is what Ive been writing lately. Is this an attempt to save your self? --The fact that I write this poorly and irregularly at this stage in the game does bode well for the writing, but this is what I write, this is what I do. These girls in the situation in this scenario, the cross cultural adolescent, pre post generation gap. Tactility versus the literate professional and specialized, laws, spring break culture, age of consent issues, pedophilia, reverse style, child sexuality, hierarchy, role playing, games, Catholicism, pent up rage, offspring of a nation, private school education. The 2006 Tigers --Sewing my pants listening to the game. Do you have any beer? --In the fridge. Theres a glass in the cupboard. Hows it going? --Almost finished. You want one? --Sure, what time is it? Past noon. --Except I only woke up a half an hour ago. Where did you end up? --Page ninety four. No, last night. I saw you staggering out. --I took a cab. Howd you do? Good, I guess, Im alive, but I feel like my central nervous system was injected with ammonia. --Why are you here? You need someone to hold you accountable. --How are you going to do that? By forcing you to finish it, by reading the latest, by using your guilt and pride to force you into a conclusion. --Youre right I havent brought anything to an end in a long time, I need to see this finished its taken me way too long, too long to transcribe. If you dont finish you dont even fill the clich of a writer, you become a living clich a slurred poem to oneself, an anti social alcoholic, a mentally ill bore At least you have a sense of humour even if doesnt really come out in your writing.

--But if I get this done right at least I can be a living clich. Better to be a clich than the people who hate clichs or people that act like clichs, usually theyre even worse at doing than the clichs or people they hate. I am frustrated with my life, like what its a movie, a book, my life is something that isI dont know, sometimes I feel like Im along for the ride and then I think about it add it up take, but when I do both implicitly, at the same time, when I am conscious in the dream, ecstasy, when life tastes perfect. The greatest story ever told. --How long was the Epistle of Mark. The shortest if I remember, if thats your point, just the facts. --Not a lot of descriptive passages, not exactly descriptive as hell. Unfortunately my pages arent as sensuously thin, thicker but with a little less influential as far as the trajectory of a civilization or hemisphere goes, they dont exactly stick to your fingers on a humid Sunday. Death, I Hate the Nature of Life --When Bear died my heart broke, several timesto see something born, I mean come from its mother and hold him in your hands, and feel him die when he is injected with death, to dig his hole in the garden and bury him, to see him vomit his insides out, to see the ants crawl on his tongue and to see the flies buzz around his eyes, in the grass, and crawl away alone in the alley, I cant conceive of it, it breaks my heart, its not some fucking video game, where everything is an experiment, to do it over and over until you win the game, or beat it, when God gets it right, Only in reality. --But when Ive prayed really hard, when Ive meant it, God has always backed me up every single time When admitted I was an adulterer to wife and denied his existence , and was shacked up with Lily, and my whole concept of what I was, and what life was, and my relationship to it was shattered, when I could no longer had the right to pray, he was there, the Great I Am. The great who cares, I cant see the super natural in anything thing, the sooner we give up on it the better, when you consider the wholesale hatred and genocide, and the suppression of free thought and intelligence in the name of God. --Amen, but when I prayed for God to save Aarons life when he has asphyxiating on a piece of Lego he lived, when I prayed that Dave would beat his cancer, when I prayed that Id beat my charges, I havent ever prayed for much, some girl would call me and a tornado would kill us, and that didnt have cancer, and I know it wont always be true because it isnt the nature of things.

Tuned Out Why is there a similar etymology of adult and adultery? --I dont think there is, adult comes from the idea of growing up mature, from adolescere . So whats the etymology of adultery, it looks like its got the word adult in it? --Avoutrie, from Old French avoutrie, which came from adulterare to corrupt. What I was going for was to go from a state of innocence to an adulterated existence, as you grow up and mature you become adulterated, you become worse and you use tools like wisdom, bitterness, experience as a way of crushing the foolish dreamers around you. Viva la Resistance And so why do you think youre in love? --I got all the symptoms. I feel nauseas when I see her first thing in the morning, if shes not around I panic, when I do talk to her I dont know what to say and then say something idiotic, or that I dont really think. When I see her buddy buddy with other men I get jealous. Ive been dreaming about her. The only reason I do this extra curricular after school is to spend time with her. I want to touch her but Im afraid, I like that shes Chinese. The love part is inconvenient, it makes no sense, it makes me distrust my sanity, my judgment, theres no reason for it. And what are you going to do about it? --I wonder if I should do anything? Because its easier not to. --Everything says I shouldnt. Shes too young, shes the wrong culture. Youre afraid. --Yes I am. It feels like Im translating some kind of hieroglyphic. Maybe shed go out for coffee at least and you can see if its just an obsession. --Im thinking of asking if she wants to come over, over Christmas. Does she have no where to go? Yeah, Im the Great Samaritan, waiting for my good karma to come back on me and chew off my jaw, and cease to dialogue.

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--KK called this morning. Hows KK? --Fine, hes getting the space for his studio on Tuesday. And thats still the plan, his wife working as the dominatrix? --Apparently shes into it, he discussed it with her when he met her she agreed to marry him, he got her a tit job down in Columbia, after he got her over from China. Im pretty sure she knew what she was getting her into. They got a little house, hes bought her a 94 Accord that she can take into town. I mean this is from the horses mouth. And hes not worried shes going to split when she gets enough dough to be on her own. --Maybe thats where the bondage part comes in. He keeps her tied up in the studio And wheres Kev while all this is going down? --At home editing medical journals, lifting weights. Whos there for security in case one of these old business freaks gets out of hand? --Maybe hes hired someone, I hope he has, but I wouldnt bet on it, hes such a skinflint. I cant see him throwing money away on a guy to stand around doing a whole lot of nothing. --He was asking for your number. You didnt give it to him. --No, I told him I hadnt heard from you in awhile and didnt have your new number. I surprised you wouldnt want to talk to him. You werent there when he lost his mind. --I dont know if I ever saw him sane. As I recollect you were ready to go with him to Croatia. I wouldnt have gone without you. --You mean you were just bluffing. Youre lucky I went or you might have come home without your head attached. Except I came back with you. --Only in reality. (Perhaps insert the Butcher of Brac) Beauty is Truth --Every heroine needs to be attractive. There are many more stories about ugly men than women. At the worst the female protagonist can be plain, with subtle refined features. --Usually, even when men do the writing the breasts are never too big, the breast is like the writing you want it to be enticing but not sloppy. But better to side on enticing, you can always tightened it up with a brasserie.

--But when you get down to it, if you get down to it. By that point the critical faulty should be turned off enough that brain will make it numinous enough. Is there a difference about what we like to read about as opposed to what we see. --I wonder if thats where the magic of reading lies in the pictures that you create in your brain and how well the writing lets you achieve that. Over writing and the brain is taxed with reading too much, and this may just draw attention to the authors ability or desire to compose. Its a bit like playing music with Kev, he composes so much of the song that it leave little else, it doesnt mean its not good it just doesnt leave as much room for you to participate. The majority of the audience or the public desires this, they like the fact that they can be entertained, they dont want to think about it. --But for what ever reason we dont see that as art. We see art as slightly more inaccessible, not as easily gotten, who doesnt hate it when everyone gets into the band that was yours or the author you thought youd discovered the newest artist, --I remember once Bradburn telling a story about a girl who wasnt exactly attractive but got by on the fact that she saw herself as worthwhile and popular and maybe a bit sexy, and then there were beautiful girls, who the young uninitiated saw as unappealing precisely because their female peers saw them that way. Maybe you should steer this in the direction of a romance. --A high romance. Maybe thats where you really understand women, Ive never really forced myself through a romance in the drug store sense of them, but Im sure theyre fascinating, to see what women want, what drives them to sexual abandonment, mystery, problem solving, language that is strange and decipherable, precision and richness of five generations and travel over five continents, and servants and scribes, intimacy without claustrophobia, weight with suffocation, a sense of smell, or innocence and sweat, action you cant forget the action and the suspense especially the romantic sort, the ol tension. With the great themes of injustice to give that sense that one is owed, but asks for nothing, a desire to return to the golden age of rich moving slowness Claim to Fame I always get what I want. --Thats too bad. Not too bad for me. --Maybe, but thats not what I want, I dont want to hang out with some ego, some seven year old only child, I want what I want and I want it now. That doesnt appeal to me. Theres only room for one inflated ego in your life.

--I lost interest when you told me that your claim to fame was making out with Lenny Kravitz backstage. I dont give a shit about Lenny Kravitz. Outtie.

Im not going to give you money for booze and pro-line, but Im not going to let you starve to death either. --Im fine I got a can of Stella and big can of Colt Forty five in the freezer, got the Tiger game on, the typer humming away, all in all for a poverty case I feel good for now. Hows the writing? --Crap, I dont feel anything from doing it, Im not feeling sad, theres no Matthew dying like in Anne of Green Gables, theres no dress with the puffy sleeves, even if its corny, it touches people, it makes them feel, not a bunch of snide comments, a bunch of drunken double talk. You have a good story, the Croatia story, theres something you should finish. --Im thinking of throwing it in there somewhere. In what youve been working on? Hows that going to fit? --No clue. Cant wait to get done and get to a story something around me lately, thank God I still have the songs to get my contemporary shit out of my system. Its the connection between your little stories and your music. If you can do that, package it. Oh Life is Bigger --Rain falls on the earth about a billion years after the creation of the sun. How long after that does life begin? --Six million years. Exactly six billion, how do you you know for sure? --I got a feel for these big numbers. How long after do we respiration? --The holy spirit the breath of life about a billion more years. You shy away from the exponents? --generally I like to see those zeros stacked up, I like the pin hole aas related to a larger space, you make a pin hole on a canvas, you measure the pin hole you get the calipers out and you compare the pin hole to the entire canvas, that helps me understand bigness or big numbers. Tact --Theres got to be a connection between tact and tactile, as far as having manners and being able to empathize, to put your self in someone elses shoes. Tact, its from the Latin, touch, Dont you fucking tact my ride muthafucka.

--Why you having to get all etymological on me yo? Small Shorts --Hes the consummate player, he can hit any shot from any side, he can serve and volley, hes mentally tough and one of the best conditioned players in the world. Hes got no weakness? --Because he does hit a one handed backhand it can be inconsistent, especially if the weather isnt ideal, and hes never won the French. Youd think his conditioning would help him on clay. --Its not that he cant play on it, but Nadals better, hes younger and quicker and practices on it more often. I dont think hes ever lost a match at the French. Its hard to root for a guy who has to perpetually pick his under wear out of his ass. --Why not wear shorts? he could bring back the old style, the small shorts, the nut-- . Mac was saying the same thing, he and Mary Carillo going on about how they should bring the old shorts back, let the men start showing the leg a little. --Being a lesbian Mary is still objective enough to appreciate a well conditioned tennis leg. Why not? You can still appreciate Daveed? --Daveed. The Michelangelo sculpture. --I know the one, it just sounds funny, Why do we call it Daveed instead of David? Its like calling Krakow, Cracow. --But not a lot of people call Paris: Pearee. Okay, The Thinker, then, everyone loves The Thinker. --Mac combined his personality with tennis genius, a beautiful player to watch, he had the touch of a painter at the net, and despite his brat personality there hasnt been a bigger ambassador for the sport in twenty years, the guy still plays on the legends circuit, the grey hair, the teenage kids. Didnt he play Davis Cup too? --Exactly, an ardent Davis Cup supporter. And he had the lefty thing going, the right brained anti-hero aspect. It was Lendl that finally toppled from the pedestal. --The French Open, Mac was up two sets and lost. Im sure it still tortures him when he cant sleep at night. You watching the Lions? --Looks like we got the Super Bowl in the bag this year. Just one? --Yeah why not go for the dynasty? You got any tickets?

Yeah, I got one from yesterday going. I need Cleveland to cover the spread. And I got four more going. Theyre all shit. --Yeah I got a couple. My one oclock and my four oclock. Got my religion on the go, got my hope on. Thats about all you got when you parlay four games. --Tigers two oclock. Post season clincher. --I hope to God they get this game.

--I really dont know I blame it on the economy and the environment, why not its pretty powerful stuff that were dealing with, thats the thing about the will is that you dont really give a shit about it, you care about your self what you thing your stories what your interested in watching waiting and consuming and the relationship that give us pleasure and laughter. Why not write something that you would like to read. Youve read enough good writing to know what it is. You got a shell with no egg inside. No one will what it is that do, what your job is, or the names of your friends, or who you love, or even the brand of booze that you drink, everyone needs a touch of humanity. I get it but mentioning the book within the fucking book is so fucking done. --This is my story. I have a car but no license because I owe thousands of dollars in traffic tickets, I owe 600hundred rent, I need insurance which I havent had for more than a year, I owe money on the 407, I owe money to three cell phone companies, to two cable companies. I owe my dad six teen hundred. I owe Paola twenty eight hundred. I owe a teacher at work forty. I owe Andzej in Lodz a thousand American. I owe Kevin three hundred American. Jamie two hundred and fifty American. I owe Kevin three hundred American, Griff a thousand zloty, Ruby about a hundred and fifty zloty. So what do you do? --Keep plodding on, what choice do I have? Go to Japan Korea and make some cash come back and be the greatest guy in the world. Having some money in your pocket doesnt make you a sell out it makes you a man. --I know but I never thought itd come to that. I didnt hope it would just because everyone said it, but it doesnt have to be everything. Instead Im contemplating shipping off to the land of Karaoke culture, the escorts, the hibernating volcano, anti weed Las Vegas sushi nightmare, moneymoneymoney and mo money. Its all money and thats what makes us sick, because at the end of the day money talks and your money is your word if youre a good guy youre straight up with the cash, your word means nothing money talks, and what does it say. When you are asking when you ask a man for money is for him to let go of the branch of the tree he is holding on to, to let him self fall to the forest floor. What happened to your smoldering sensuality? --Now I just smoldering.

We never taste the rain, or feel the tepid bath water, or the smell of oil cooking on the pavement. All we get are the facts, the austere Canadian facts. --Thats why Im blaming the environment, the culture, everyone but myself; Im like a husky in the Sahara. In Warsaw in the old days no one work that much, if you put in twenty hours it was plenty so it left time for indulgence and sensuality, and for productive free time. You felt good. Youre not feeling good these days? --No, I feel pretty good, Im lonely but not desperately lonely like in Toronto What makes you feel good? --Same old, a bath, a book, and a little buzz, sunlight, blue sky, laughing, tennis, vacation, freedom. You like writing on the typewriter. --I do, I like the feel of the machine, the only thing I hate is that the ribbon is so worn and not easy to find, so Im pounding the letter into the paper, its like Im writing Braille, Tactile. --But it makes it tough on the eye to read. The kids had had an interesting point about writing. They said that when you wrote with a pen you formed letters, but with a word processor or a typewriter you form words, the letter is already done. What do we lose by not being able to form letters? --Control, the digi--verse you cant really touch, not most of us, we use it, we hardly manipulate it, when your software fucks up and the word processor is writing the same sentence twice for no reason and you fuck around with it and one time it works and doesnt the next, is there a different process a different order of operations? Consciousness: Humans and other Animals I was reading an article in the Globe this morning on string theory and the lack of empirical evidence to support it. --So physicists are artists essentially. Which was the point of the article. --So maybe the tools of perception arent necessarily accurate, or good enough, the whole its true, its a scientific fact, as a way of verifying reality. Their problem is not much different than the dilemma philosophers ran into, eventually you make it up using the best tools at your disposal --You dont think we tend to mythologize consciousness. In the sense we possess it, I mean people think that they do, and nothing else in the universe save God has a taste of it, and the bit we do have, we tend to puff up. --But God is full consciousness, comprehending all at once.

--A work, a sculpture, a building, a photograph, ok but a crime and event, a song fades but lives deeper within us because it is less tangible and for that reason more valuable. Rain Delay After a rain delay I am alone with my two cats Ruby and her baby Jasmine. Paola is across the park, her friend Sarahs coming by for a beer. The Tigers have a chance to clinch their first division in nineteen years. Ninety six wins, a good season, a miracle considering two years ago they put up the worst or second worst on record. Tough start, K.C. opens with lead off double. Tigers havent been swept by KC on their home field since Eighty. Pudge hits a two on single. Ordonez scores from second, one nothing lead, none out. Nausea hits, the feeling of everything you hoped might actually happen, might be true. Tigers squander a bases load one out inning hitting into a double play donk Thank God we got Bonderman on the mound. Going for his fifteenth win. Two out KCs got a runner on second. Three two pitch Bonderman looks for the sign. Son of bitch paints the corner. Everybody hits, four nothing Tiger lead thanks to some aggressive base running. Inge hits two run home run. Bonderman needs to pitch this inning well. No hits. For fucks sake no runs at least. Do it quick get this mother fucker over and the citys going to flip. Not over yet. KC scores two. So much for hitless scoreless. God, I hope I didnt jinx with the mention of hitless scoreless. Here comes mother fucking KC six three game. Everyones trembling. KC again. Six four. Here we go. Zumaya comes in for relief, gets two to pop up out of the inning. Thank God for Inges three run homer or this motherfucker would look a lot worse. Tigers get one back in the fifth. Seven four. Tigers go into the eight up three. KC ties it up seven seven in the eighth. Bases still loaded, two down, in comes Jones. KC goes ahead eight seven. Ninth Canadian Matt Stairs cranks a single shot to tie it up. Eight eight.

Tigers lose it in the twelfth. Lose the regular season race to Minnesota. We get New York on Tuesday, in New York, after giving up five straight to finish the season. Tuesday night New York. Kenny Rogers is charged with assault after scuffling with a fan after the lose to the Royals. Leyland tells the New York media hes a big Yankees fan. Elite prognosticators pick a Yankees sweep. Fans in the area will be satisfied if the series goes to four ecstatic if it we take it to five. Crazy fucked up if we take the pennant, whatever else is greedy. Unless we got a good shot at it. If its there for the taking... Verlander comes up big. Gives up three runs on a bunch of hits, would have liked to see him battle but had to follow the game on internet, while in class, gave the kids a test to write. Zumaya comes in the eight and throws eight pitches a hundred plus on the gun, strikes out Jeter, strikes out Giambi, strikes out Afucking Rod. Game three, night game, eight o clock start. Kenny Roger pitches his best post season start of his career, timely hitting gives us six, Kennys shuts out the Yank. Pitching in the post season. Game four, this afternoon, the new ball park, Thanksgiving weekend. Crisp hard high pressure sky, trees beginning to change. Paola and I drive to my parents, the whole familys going to be there for this one. When we show Aaron and Amber are having a smoke the Shoppers Drug Mart parking lot because theyre too ashamed to smoke in front of my parents. When Aaron gets back with Amber he goes back out to pick up Cheryl and the kids. Weve been through the coke ritual before. Dave did a stint at the fundamentalist rehab in Detroit, Eight Mile. He does a year in re-hab, skips a week early misses his graduation, gets back on the coke. Maybe not. Maybe his car is really broken. comes back starts it up again Star without me, Ill be there in a half hour. Dave was an impossible narrative, the story was blown to smithereens, an impulse of total diffusion and circulation. He was liberated from himself, each became atomized into a void and then split, a particle, a speck, an even tunto itself with no frame of reference The great rehabilitation was a story of hope and desperation. So Dave pulls a no show? --A complete piss off. But he knew that everyone was thinking about him. The way a person imagines their funeral, with everyone bawling about what a tragedy it was. I wonder if thats a common thought among people who suicide. Do they usually imagine their funeral? --Most people do, whether they commit suicide or not, have some notion, I mean thats why people make preparations.

Tigers take the Yanks. Tigers sweep the series with the As Ordonez crushes a towering shot into the left field bleachers. The players and fans go nuts. Kenny Rogers whod been charged with assault after getting swept by KC at the end of the regular season, pours a bottle of champagne on a cops head, everybody laughs, Kenny might be on roids, crazy fist pumps, everything is forgiven. Now, problem is now we got a chance. We have hope, especially with a weaker National League. St. Louis comes out of the National League. Tigers start Verlander. Pujols hits us hard. Cardinals take the first game seven two. If we lose another the bubblell be burst we can pretend that it never happened we can pretend were back at the American League pennant, we can remember Kenny pouring champagne on the cops head and Ordonez left field bomb. Chilly out, we arent used to baseball this time of year. Now you hear talk, well the Cardinals have been sniffing around the past few years made the deserve it, maybe this is their time. They paid their dues. Well have our turn. But thats not the truth, sometimes you never get back, sometimes it takes twenty thirty years to have another. Sky is overcast, strong breeze coming down from the north. Cardinals take the World Series four one. Back to the Machine --Just checking out my laptop. Is it any good? --It looks good. Ill be able to type out what I have and see whats there.

Doesnt it seem fucked up. --Yeah completely, but its only because the end bit is entirely new. --Death resists us but in the end she is seduced by our mortal charm. All thats left is the blatant self evidence of actuality of what happened, and time as I see it now is the most beautiful illusion, it goes beyond the tricking of the senses, it is intrinsically bound to conception of reality, we can easily admit that our eyes and ears can be manipulated, that even our commerce and ideas are controlled and manipulated, but to get beyond time, that morality, our obsession with being not the best we can be but that we are essential good, is

only bound up with time, fucking is fine, as long as you do it linearly and with the same person, longevity, eternal life are the death of the conscious experience and the absence of pain.