kar trouble was right– my problem of the past few days, of fogginess and sluggishness and crabbiness and whatnot, was by and large hydration. late this afternoon commenced the drinking of many tap waters and the return of the feeling “OK”.
not that the past few were without merit– yesterday when i finally left the house me and baby bear went and got some technical pizzas ($2 smalls on tuesday), then walked around elm park looking at the new public sculpture installation, all of which is pretty great, and boy are we kicking ourselves for each talking ourselves out of it when the email arrived. boo us! my favorite piece was the small garden of enormous, striated buttplugs. also good was the three burned wooden obelisks crawling with all color of tiny insect, and the far-away listening tube for spying on park bench mashers and playground bullies. en route we saw jon “the prince of worcester” shirley, and all together we set up our own sculpture in the park, which was an artificial christmas tree we found on the sidewalk in a box. jon was on his way to look for the huge turtle that lives in the pond, and then he did look for it, and then he found it, and it was great– maybe three feet from nose to tail, with a head as big as a flatiron. we also saw several turtles of a more manageable size, and ducks, and a heron, and those fish that eat your spit when you spit in the water (you know, stupid fish). drove in with nik and jose lynn to providence, for that show at the stairwell, which was fun but as implied above, i was pretty out of it. eli keszler played solo drum set with bells and bowed cymbals, totally awesome and inspiring, as it was the last time. the other bands were on tour together, and it was a good tite jazz band called “other people do the killing”, and then that same band but with a singer, which was called “puttin’ on the ritz”. it helped that it was a beautiful night outside with fresh salad on a sidewalk table, but this second act really cleared the room, and even i eventually left– not offensive or actionable, just one joke that isn’t funny anymore over and over again, the joke being “inept lounge singer”. pretty miserable really, but the band, i thought, was great. i played not great, messing up a lot and to some degree “just getting it over with”, but there were times i forgot who and where i was and what i was doing and why, and how i got there, and that made it all worthwhile. again, super out of it, feeling better now.
still chuggin’ on this grant, which interjects at a well-trod fujichia fiasco node, being that 1,) i need a single specific project to bump, and 2,) i need to talk about it like it’s peanut butter or some other life-altering thing, knowing that people know that i know that it’s not. also it has to be something that i not care about enough to just up and do until nine months from now (when they announce the winners) and it has to be something that doesn’t really make money (for reasons i won’t go into right now). it’s cool, i still have a good 23 hours until it’s due. my connectch told me that they fund miles and miles of exactly the sort of dumb shit you’d think they would, and the only thing between me and the money is my ability to talk like i deserve it, in the money language that they speak. fuuuuuckk.
went out for a brain-cleaning walk and a stop at coffee shop to read more yesterday’s answers, and wound up buying jam at the supermarket and running into annie and dave p. some classic old lady rolled up to annie and demanded to know what happened to her face (annie has two lower lip piercings) and didn’t she know that that metal was going to “go right through [her] body” (?) ? annie told her she was turning into a cyborg, the lady was disgusted with us, saying we’d be sorry. i told her “life’s for living”. it ruled. i love supermarket encounters!
incidentally, the crossword oracle was surprisingly on point today– i got INTO ATOM (compare with INFRA ELLE ATOM from a few days ago), CURRY FAVOR NOTE, TRAPS INGENIOUS, LOOP SAGEADVICE, USUAL RARE GOOP, MINTEDITION VAT, and both ORANGES ESP SST and STEM SSTS FLEET (from two different puzzles).
drawing above by james mcshane, of something i think about constantly. it happened to him, he said it was “not that bad”.
gray rainbows abound and move up the food chain- wednesday fishes, friday cats. well. a cat, but it was gray at least. we had an art opening at the store (drawings and paintings by john guida) and it was pretty tight and someone’s school librarian brought cookies. also a tabby cat with a big fluffy tail walked in and stayed and was adorable. after everyone left it was me and the cat hanging out and me saying “what am i going to do with you?” while the cat sat upright on its haunches purring into my armpit. well, i called people for advice and the general consensus was “if you love something set it free” so that’s what i did and the next day it didn’t come back, so yes, it probably was just a neighbor’s cat out exploring, regardless of how freaked out it seemed by being outside.
next up: gray puppies, gray ocelots, gray horses, gray coelecanths, gray minivans, gray girlfriends, gray skies, gray monuments, gray goo, gray oceans. something has to give.
UPDATE: i just want to stress that this cat was super adorable, and followed me around the entire time.
i just wrote up a nice big post here at the clark library, then i went internet searching for a nice picture of sun ra to include and the GD computer conked out. anyway here’s a terse UL of the important LIs:
- big up to whoever wrote “FUCK OFF” and “508 GORE HOUNDS” over the ICP neighbor’s “CLOWN” graffito on the fence outside my house (it wasn’t me).
- sun ra as a being who already holds all the music that will ever be written, whose job it is to release in an order that makes sense, and to progress the species, but the path from 1940s orchestral big band to minimoog elbow music can also be taken backwards, which is what i’m doing right now.
- i’m having an art show at the store, the opening is this friday from 5 to 8pm, with cookies and suicide soda.
- me and jon “angel” knapp are showing “space is the place” soon.
sun ra freedom synth
christmas eve dinner at my aunt’s was nice, as could be expected. among her other decorations (pictures of the swedish elf who leaves oranges in your shoes) she had a dry erase board on her fridge with her own scrawled spiritual/motivational notes. in addition to things like “full responsibility” and “see yourself as god sees you”, at the bottom it read “salad and desert”. totally.
did you know that india banned beauty contests in 2000, despite being home to the reigning miss world and miss universe pageant winners? neither did i, until i found a trivial pursuit card stating this very fact on the street a few days ago. what a great move. as alan lomax said about jelly roll morton’s louisiana (which equally applies to india): “the most beautiful women raised on the spiciest food (and courted with the hottest music)”. ever since eating at udupi the other night i’ve been saying this quote to myself, along with this nonsensical bit from an old national geographic: “large eaters of highly-spiced foods relaxed from fatigue in interminable feasts” (as i was telling peter- all national geographic writers are 100% living it, and marked less by clarity than by “in it”ness and “get psyched” vibe).
other auspicious trash- walking up the hill to nick’s house to hang out with aross and jbruce, an apple came rolling towards me of it’s own volition and at quite a clip. i laughed and hopped out of the way, and really felt like i had but a brief and brilliant cameo role in a star-studded slapstick historical epic. not that i’m necessarily sowing seeds of discord– something about the pitch of the hill and the irregular nature of the apple made the whole thing seem like a sped-up goofball chase scene. and for what’s it’s worth w/r/t sowing, i’m not trying to not, as maybe this incident shows. i mean, life’s for living, right? a dog’s gonna bark and an apple’s gonna roll.
- salad *and* desert
- spice-fueled beauty, music-fire as romantic capital, the engine
- fujichia: an apple’s gonna roll
