I am scared. I'm scared that I will end up loving people who make me feel good or better about myself and not because I actually love a person significantly, with deep love, with anything deeper than what I feel for almost all people when I give them the time of day. I am almost constantly in love with all people -- it's probably why I avoid too many of them at one time. Because I can't love a mass of individuals I cannot distinguish one from the other.
A great practice to communicate with a distant someone your lived experience and environment is simply to draw it for them -- let your eyes become hands, let your mouthings become drawings, and paint. Touch everything you see as a thing, as a thing reflecting light; as a space, as a thing weighting space; as a thing in relation to ... other things. This is a gift. This is a shower of word blessings. This is loving.
Can I forget? How can I forget? How could I forget? Touch. It's heat. It's difference. It's extra-ordinary. It's extra-daily. It's not 2-for-1 discount, but it's a deal. It's definitely a bonus.
You lucky bastard.
Why feel this deep, why not feel, why I not feel, why I not feel? Why not feel? Why I not feel? why not? Why not feel? Why not?
I don't miss you, but I have you in the clutch of your imagination and in the gleam of my sweet teeth. Stay sweet. It's daily. But it's a plus. You may stay, but don't touch.
I have a wide range but very little cognizance or control over modulation. Something to add into the practice of daily art-love-making. Yeah.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
John and Mel Storm Vienna
In the spirit of the Extended Lee Family Fun-Filled Jam-Packed Holiday Itineraries, John and Mel continue the legacy of aggressive tourist ambition. THIS one entry is definitely for the family (rated G). With just 42 hours from meet-up to send-off, here is our play-by-play:
Noon, July 18th 2007, Sudbanhof South train station, VIENNA: It’s been a year since we last saw each other! Hello!
First on the agenda is to introduce John to what on earth Mel is doing here. We walk through the Schweizer garten park towards a vast complex of red brick barracks built post-1848 called Arsenal. Housed inside of military warehouses converted into dance studios for the Impulstanz contemporary dance festival and workshops Mel is here to participate in, classes were in spaces large enough to accommodate observers, and John got a good earful of Mel’s comments and criticisms while watching what was going on. Since it adds to our checklist, it will be worthwhile to mention that we at least walked past the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (Museum of Military History), and were tickled pink by the objects of warcraft and destruction (such as fighter jets, helicopters, and dud spuds) that surrounded us during our grassy lunch picnic on Arsenal grounds.
Below: An interview with artists being held inside one of the Arsenal converted dance studios.
We had every intention to visit the Belvedere Royal Palaces and gardens, considered some of the finest secular Baroque buildings in all of the Europe, also housing the largest collection of Klimt paintings. We fail. We sit beneath shady trees eating a chocolate croissant and topfen country-cheese pastry instead. Hoorah!
It’s hitting 38 degrees and we’re probably already sunstroked. Heading home to the apartment Mel is subletting in the quiet fourth district, we manage a quick shower and snack before setting off again, this time with flatmate Neal Jagtap (an Indian-American law student interning for the UN) to introduce both gentlemen to the tanz-theater arts scene.
We see most of Vienna’s majestic Ringstrasse buildings—such as the Parliament, Opera House, Rathaus (Town Hall) and boulevard thoroughfares—through the windows (and against a foreground of sticky armpits of fellow passengers) on the tram up towards Schauspielhaus theatre, where we meet up with Mel’s choreographer friend from Slovakia/New York, Palo.
John orders both a Pepsi and a local wheat beer, with just 20 minutes to curtain. It’s hot.
The theater’s red foyer embraces us and the flood of eager viewers (it’s platz frei) with floor-to-ceiling light boxes displaying images of shag carpet. Art. We secure somewhat central seats and are vigorously assaulted by what is perhaps the most difficult introduction to Europe’s tanz theatre scene I could have imagined for both Neal and John—French choreographer Alain Platel’s duet for acclaimed performers Benjamin Verdonck and Fumiya Ikeda interpreting a children’s book narrating the lives of Congolese child soldiers: “Nine Finger”. Awed by relentless virtuosity and raw emotion, we detox post-show with a petition signing, animated discussion, and another round of drinks.
Below: John, Palo, and Neal on the tram
Tram-hiking ourselves towards the city center, we stop for street food as only the late-night starving and reckless do. Neal receives a 3 Euro hot dog embedded in a hollowed bun, and reveals that this is the infamous Käsekrainer, or, cheese-filled sausage. Seeing as how the guidebook comments that this snack is “fondly referred to as an Eitriger, or pus-stick”, who could resist? Its excessively mouth-coating oil and cheesiness dressed with ketchup and mustard, we continue the heart attack with sandwiches from the doner kebab stand—-very salty, and in buns instead of pitas. Walking home, we pause by a public art exhibit outside the Kunsthalle Project Space where letters and words made from water droplets fall from a 20ft high truss, downlit by hanging lights to make them visible against the night sky. Art.
Day 2 (Hour since arrival: 21) begins with fruit, cereal, yogurt, and an iPhoto show-and-tell of this-is-my-life and here-are-my-friends and here’s-Sue-and-Duleesha’s and oh-my-it-has-been-a-year-since-the-wedding-how-time-flies. Phone call with Pat and Soo-Jin--it’s their 32nd anniversary! John tries out some of Mel’s stretches and thinks they’re quite painful. We get out of the house and walk towards the center of the city (Innere Stadt), about 15 minutes away. We marvel at Viennese architecture and eat ice cream along the way.
Below: Vienna street
Below: St. Stephen's Cathedral
St Stephen’s Cathedral (Stephansdom), according to a friend who has been a regular summer visitor to Vienna, has been covered by scaffolding for the last five years. Unsheathed this year, we beheld it’s yellow-green-black tiled roof in awe, both from the ground and from up the 343 steps of the cathedral’s 450ft-high south tower (completed in 1433 after 74 years of work). It has undergone numerous phases of building and repair due to the ravages of the Turks, the Napoleonic French and the Allies. We descend, dizzy and counting, to the happy embrace of Ottokringer beers served by a not-so-happy waiter dressed in too-high pants and alotta hair grease.
Tea-time. Dinner-time. When?!?! Now!!! Hungry. Hot. We manage to trudge 200m to taste the indistinguishable eggy-topped rye bread canapés at “must-visit” Trzeniewski, fueling the onward mission to subterranean Zwölf Apostelkeller, said to be “the sort of place your distant Viennese Uncle Fritz would take you…the labyrinth of vaulted Gothic and early baroque cellars have a Harry Potter-esque charm.” Both John and Mel have neither read nor watched nor desired Harry Potter, which perhaps is what inspired us to make the epic journey to what turns out to be a strange, empty, and unfriendly baroque dining hall.
We order piles of “local” food, no thanks to the eager translation of our green-vested and mean waiter, “Herr. Leopold.” (Mel is convinced that all these old waiters, as hoary as the gothic facades themselves, must switch nametags every other day to the point where they no longer know their given names.) Over the course of a couple hours of tremendously rude service, we manage to make Uncle Leopold smile and his gargoyle gang snicker in the corner by asking him to take a photo with us ... not OF us ... WITH us. Here we are, a happy family. Then John and Mel take all the cutlery with the extra rolls of bread we didn't ask for but that costed us a Euro each.
Below: John being a Gothic beast. And Uncle Fritz, uh, Leopold. And us.
A gelato cone at the wildly popular Zanoni & Zanoni finished us off and gave spring to our steps heading back home for a little rest before this evening’s performance.
Near home on Fleischmanngasse, we sit outside with cold homemade ices teas, laughing at the seating in a nearby public space being divided into individual seats instead of benches until we realize that this may be to prevent homeless people from sleeping there.
Hoofing it to meet friends for the performance at Kasino am Schwarzenbergplatz, we pass by the masterpiece of baroque architecture, Karlskirche (Karl’s Church), with hints of Roman and Byzantine on the exterior pillars depicting the life of Emperor Karl VI in spiraling carved stone relief, for about 5 seconds. Of equal curiosity are the young people lazing on orange beach chairs at the reggae bar facing. This is the post-modern. This is progress!
We proceed to watch the acclaimed Christian Rizzo's new piece for a solo dancer, "Comme crane, comme culte", which translates roughly to "Like cranium, like worship", which translates in the viewing of it, roughly to "Like a load of poop on my 12 Euro ticket". Again with the lovely Palo and a more neurotic American dancer friend, Mike, we try to hob-nob but very ungraciously drink out of other people's abandoned bottles of water until we ourselves hobble out to find better, cheaper refreshment. The day ends back at Stephensplatz with a milkshake AND ANOTHER serving of ice cream. It's. Still. Hot.
...John leaves to the airport at 6am the next morning. We clocked 42 hours, 2 dance-theatre performances, 2 weiners, 12 scoops of ice cream, 1 major tourist attraction, and 4 new friends (including Uncle Karl. Uh, Leopold). Lots of love to the rest of the family -- wish you were here! (but then we wouldn't have gotten away with just 1 major tourist attraction!)
Noon, July 18th 2007, Sudbanhof South train station, VIENNA: It’s been a year since we last saw each other! Hello!
First on the agenda is to introduce John to what on earth Mel is doing here. We walk through the Schweizer garten park towards a vast complex of red brick barracks built post-1848 called Arsenal. Housed inside of military warehouses converted into dance studios for the Impulstanz contemporary dance festival and workshops Mel is here to participate in, classes were in spaces large enough to accommodate observers, and John got a good earful of Mel’s comments and criticisms while watching what was going on. Since it adds to our checklist, it will be worthwhile to mention that we at least walked past the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (Museum of Military History), and were tickled pink by the objects of warcraft and destruction (such as fighter jets, helicopters, and dud spuds) that surrounded us during our grassy lunch picnic on Arsenal grounds.
Below: An interview with artists being held inside one of the Arsenal converted dance studios.
We had every intention to visit the Belvedere Royal Palaces and gardens, considered some of the finest secular Baroque buildings in all of the Europe, also housing the largest collection of Klimt paintings. We fail. We sit beneath shady trees eating a chocolate croissant and topfen country-cheese pastry instead. Hoorah!
It’s hitting 38 degrees and we’re probably already sunstroked. Heading home to the apartment Mel is subletting in the quiet fourth district, we manage a quick shower and snack before setting off again, this time with flatmate Neal Jagtap (an Indian-American law student interning for the UN) to introduce both gentlemen to the tanz-theater arts scene.
We see most of Vienna’s majestic Ringstrasse buildings—such as the Parliament, Opera House, Rathaus (Town Hall) and boulevard thoroughfares—through the windows (and against a foreground of sticky armpits of fellow passengers) on the tram up towards Schauspielhaus theatre, where we meet up with Mel’s choreographer friend from Slovakia/New York, Palo.
John orders both a Pepsi and a local wheat beer, with just 20 minutes to curtain. It’s hot.
The theater’s red foyer embraces us and the flood of eager viewers (it’s platz frei) with floor-to-ceiling light boxes displaying images of shag carpet. Art. We secure somewhat central seats and are vigorously assaulted by what is perhaps the most difficult introduction to Europe’s tanz theatre scene I could have imagined for both Neal and John—French choreographer Alain Platel’s duet for acclaimed performers Benjamin Verdonck and Fumiya Ikeda interpreting a children’s book narrating the lives of Congolese child soldiers: “Nine Finger”. Awed by relentless virtuosity and raw emotion, we detox post-show with a petition signing, animated discussion, and another round of drinks.
Below: John, Palo, and Neal on the tram
Tram-hiking ourselves towards the city center, we stop for street food as only the late-night starving and reckless do. Neal receives a 3 Euro hot dog embedded in a hollowed bun, and reveals that this is the infamous Käsekrainer, or, cheese-filled sausage. Seeing as how the guidebook comments that this snack is “fondly referred to as an Eitriger, or pus-stick”, who could resist? Its excessively mouth-coating oil and cheesiness dressed with ketchup and mustard, we continue the heart attack with sandwiches from the doner kebab stand—-very salty, and in buns instead of pitas. Walking home, we pause by a public art exhibit outside the Kunsthalle Project Space where letters and words made from water droplets fall from a 20ft high truss, downlit by hanging lights to make them visible against the night sky. Art.
Day 2 (Hour since arrival: 21) begins with fruit, cereal, yogurt, and an iPhoto show-and-tell of this-is-my-life and here-are-my-friends and here’s-Sue-and-Duleesha’s and oh-my-it-has-been-a-year-since-the-wedding-how-time-flies. Phone call with Pat and Soo-Jin--it’s their 32nd anniversary! John tries out some of Mel’s stretches and thinks they’re quite painful. We get out of the house and walk towards the center of the city (Innere Stadt), about 15 minutes away. We marvel at Viennese architecture and eat ice cream along the way.
Below: Vienna street
Below: St. Stephen's Cathedral
St Stephen’s Cathedral (Stephansdom), according to a friend who has been a regular summer visitor to Vienna, has been covered by scaffolding for the last five years. Unsheathed this year, we beheld it’s yellow-green-black tiled roof in awe, both from the ground and from up the 343 steps of the cathedral’s 450ft-high south tower (completed in 1433 after 74 years of work). It has undergone numerous phases of building and repair due to the ravages of the Turks, the Napoleonic French and the Allies. We descend, dizzy and counting, to the happy embrace of Ottokringer beers served by a not-so-happy waiter dressed in too-high pants and alotta hair grease.
Tea-time. Dinner-time. When?!?! Now!!! Hungry. Hot. We manage to trudge 200m to taste the indistinguishable eggy-topped rye bread canapés at “must-visit” Trzeniewski, fueling the onward mission to subterranean Zwölf Apostelkeller, said to be “the sort of place your distant Viennese Uncle Fritz would take you…the labyrinth of vaulted Gothic and early baroque cellars have a Harry Potter-esque charm.” Both John and Mel have neither read nor watched nor desired Harry Potter, which perhaps is what inspired us to make the epic journey to what turns out to be a strange, empty, and unfriendly baroque dining hall.
We order piles of “local” food, no thanks to the eager translation of our green-vested and mean waiter, “Herr. Leopold.” (Mel is convinced that all these old waiters, as hoary as the gothic facades themselves, must switch nametags every other day to the point where they no longer know their given names.) Over the course of a couple hours of tremendously rude service, we manage to make Uncle Leopold smile and his gargoyle gang snicker in the corner by asking him to take a photo with us ... not OF us ... WITH us. Here we are, a happy family. Then John and Mel take all the cutlery with the extra rolls of bread we didn't ask for but that costed us a Euro each.
Below: John being a Gothic beast. And Uncle Fritz, uh, Leopold. And us.
A gelato cone at the wildly popular Zanoni & Zanoni finished us off and gave spring to our steps heading back home for a little rest before this evening’s performance.
Near home on Fleischmanngasse, we sit outside with cold homemade ices teas, laughing at the seating in a nearby public space being divided into individual seats instead of benches until we realize that this may be to prevent homeless people from sleeping there.
Hoofing it to meet friends for the performance at Kasino am Schwarzenbergplatz, we pass by the masterpiece of baroque architecture, Karlskirche (Karl’s Church), with hints of Roman and Byzantine on the exterior pillars depicting the life of Emperor Karl VI in spiraling carved stone relief, for about 5 seconds. Of equal curiosity are the young people lazing on orange beach chairs at the reggae bar facing. This is the post-modern. This is progress!
We proceed to watch the acclaimed Christian Rizzo's new piece for a solo dancer, "Comme crane, comme culte", which translates roughly to "Like cranium, like worship", which translates in the viewing of it, roughly to "Like a load of poop on my 12 Euro ticket". Again with the lovely Palo and a more neurotic American dancer friend, Mike, we try to hob-nob but very ungraciously drink out of other people's abandoned bottles of water until we ourselves hobble out to find better, cheaper refreshment. The day ends back at Stephensplatz with a milkshake AND ANOTHER serving of ice cream. It's. Still. Hot.
...John leaves to the airport at 6am the next morning. We clocked 42 hours, 2 dance-theatre performances, 2 weiners, 12 scoops of ice cream, 1 major tourist attraction, and 4 new friends (including Uncle Karl. Uh, Leopold). Lots of love to the rest of the family -- wish you were here! (but then we wouldn't have gotten away with just 1 major tourist attraction!)
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Home Beacon
...is beaming. I just watched a melodramatic YouTube video promo for Singaporean theatre company Wild Rice's latest production: "not just a gay play, a great play". Why are all these gay men so attractive. Why was I not born a gay man so I could fit in. That's partially a joke (the hashed and rehashed: "I think I am a homosexual man trapped inside a heterosexual woman's body"). But any Singaporean will tell you the truth about economies of scale. And I am tired of being Foreign Fetish Beauty Oddity. How strongly my feelings towards repatriation bind me to do it is sadly proportional to how I perceive my prospects of mating.
Walking along city streets in New York City, a young woman alone will be accosted by appreciative if not prying eyes and the occasional grunt of approval. When the man dares speak, you will hear any range of salutations, such as:
"Sexy!" (in the declarative, rather than the nominative)
"You go the gym a lot?"
"Can I talk to you for a second?"
"Hey Mama"
"Hello Asia"
"Hello Korea, Japan"
Most often you will hear these towards the direction of south-by-south-west (your blind spot), since man in question is stationary (sitting on a stoop, loitering outside the bodega, riding in slow circles on his bike in front of a group of boys on the stoop or a group of boys outside the bodega) and you are moving (being productive, trying to achieve, having a place to go, people to assist, and a future to secure). If said man has been in the approach himself moving at a constant velocity, he would have decelerated in order to appreciate you in totality (front-view and back) before making his declarative assessment. So, usually, you hear these things in passing.
With relative frequency you will hear a more musky, inviting voice tell you "God bless you", either from the old and/or pious, usually accompanied by a gentle shaking or rocking of the head in as much wonderment and awe as I imagine myself reserving for the Grand Canyon.
And, depending on your neighbourhood, you may actually be approached with a run and a wave, almost as if you were a taxi cab, much as if the urgency of the appeal will make you stop and give him the time of day. Unfortunately this is often the case, since it is an appeal to your basic humanity (does he need help? did I drop something? no shit, is this guy going to get himself run over?).
"Hey, where are you from?"
(I am looking for coconut milk, this guy followed me into the store)
"You from, what, Thailand?"
(I have not made eye contact) "No."
"Vietnam?"
"No."
"Korea?"
"No." (why do they have preserved olives and capers and yet no coconut milk?)
"Japan?"
"No."
"China?"
(I accrue good karma for the sake of finding my coconut milk, which is actually so I can complete the dessert I have already half made for my date later that night with Barry--I look him in the eye, and smile. I've been through this shelf already!)
"C'mon, where you from?"
(My Asian Mystery is sending ninja daggers through his flat-flapped cap and into his frontal cortex: I AM NOT INTERESTED)
"Singapore."
"Oh, wow, Singapore, huh ... "
Etc. He will ask me my name. I will sigh. I will tell him. He will lean his torso backward, tilted, while his arm lightly pokes my shoulder when he propositions me with an invitation to "can I see you again". I will smile. I will say no. He will ask why. He will ask me if I'm married. I will continue my hunt for dessert ingredients. I am not even paying half a mind.
This is not an isolated incident, for me or any woman of any race. Some have it worse. Some have it dirtier. Some have it with gleaming, rose-tinted reverence for the Zen Buddha Jasmine Yangtze aura they share with the stock-photoed women in the back of the Village Voice.
And frankly, I like it. Sometimes. It's affirming. It's challenging. It's a game. It's non-invasive. It's Brooklyn. It's Manhattan. It's b-boys of the 70s going flip and ape-shit over Bruce Lee movies when Canal Street was still as mixed as Lower East Side is now and Chinatown's gangs were Latin and Black too. This much I know from the weird white guy who likes to narrate this part of history in the Chinese bakery on the corner of Canal and Center Streets and which sells a scallion roll for only 60 cents.
I raise all this in order to raise how it feels different to be a young Asian woman alone here in Budapest and Vienna so far. I'm sorry, but they're Germanic. This area is the one that is fueling the sex trade and mail-order-bride industries. And if we had children, they wouldn't even have crimped hair or caramel skin. And there is always always the question of pure form, which should emphasize graceful and efficient execution (is she into men? is she into me? will she give me a smile? will she give me a number? can i at least watch her walk away and break even in effort-reward?), rather than knee-jerk mental ball-scratching (if I yell at her in what I know of her native tongue maybe she will uh Hey! Ni hao! Ni hao! Shay shay! Hallo!).
Because they don't say much, it's actually harder to tell whether or not to be on your guard. Because one assumes a general Viennese prejudice, it's unclear if the isolated and very, very odd salutation you do get directly are candidly respectful or shielding some deeper contempt. Because the men here who holler are old and wrinkled and have dirt beneath their fingernails and you know would have tickets to Phuket in a heartbeat if only they got enough on their unemployment. And this is all within the central districts of town. Mike lives up in the 22nd and talks about how the prostitutes on his walk home make fun of his gait and cackle and holler.
One thousand and twenty-four. That took a little over an hour, including research.
Ni Hao, Ni Hao
Walking along city streets in New York City, a young woman alone will be accosted by appreciative if not prying eyes and the occasional grunt of approval. When the man dares speak, you will hear any range of salutations, such as:
"Sexy!" (in the declarative, rather than the nominative)
"You go the gym a lot?"
"Can I talk to you for a second?"
"Hey Mama"
"Hello Asia"
"Hello Korea, Japan"
Most often you will hear these towards the direction of south-by-south-west (your blind spot), since man in question is stationary (sitting on a stoop, loitering outside the bodega, riding in slow circles on his bike in front of a group of boys on the stoop or a group of boys outside the bodega) and you are moving (being productive, trying to achieve, having a place to go, people to assist, and a future to secure). If said man has been in the approach himself moving at a constant velocity, he would have decelerated in order to appreciate you in totality (front-view and back) before making his declarative assessment. So, usually, you hear these things in passing.
With relative frequency you will hear a more musky, inviting voice tell you "God bless you", either from the old and/or pious, usually accompanied by a gentle shaking or rocking of the head in as much wonderment and awe as I imagine myself reserving for the Grand Canyon.
And, depending on your neighbourhood, you may actually be approached with a run and a wave, almost as if you were a taxi cab, much as if the urgency of the appeal will make you stop and give him the time of day. Unfortunately this is often the case, since it is an appeal to your basic humanity (does he need help? did I drop something? no shit, is this guy going to get himself run over?).
"Hey, where are you from?"
(I am looking for coconut milk, this guy followed me into the store)
"You from, what, Thailand?"
(I have not made eye contact) "No."
"Vietnam?"
"No."
"Korea?"
"No." (why do they have preserved olives and capers and yet no coconut milk?)
"Japan?"
"No."
"China?"
(I accrue good karma for the sake of finding my coconut milk, which is actually so I can complete the dessert I have already half made for my date later that night with Barry--I look him in the eye, and smile. I've been through this shelf already!)
"C'mon, where you from?"
(My Asian Mystery is sending ninja daggers through his flat-flapped cap and into his frontal cortex: I AM NOT INTERESTED)
"Singapore."
"Oh, wow, Singapore, huh ... "
Etc. He will ask me my name. I will sigh. I will tell him. He will lean his torso backward, tilted, while his arm lightly pokes my shoulder when he propositions me with an invitation to "can I see you again". I will smile. I will say no. He will ask why. He will ask me if I'm married. I will continue my hunt for dessert ingredients. I am not even paying half a mind.
This is not an isolated incident, for me or any woman of any race. Some have it worse. Some have it dirtier. Some have it with gleaming, rose-tinted reverence for the Zen Buddha Jasmine Yangtze aura they share with the stock-photoed women in the back of the Village Voice.
And frankly, I like it. Sometimes. It's affirming. It's challenging. It's a game. It's non-invasive. It's Brooklyn. It's Manhattan. It's b-boys of the 70s going flip and ape-shit over Bruce Lee movies when Canal Street was still as mixed as Lower East Side is now and Chinatown's gangs were Latin and Black too. This much I know from the weird white guy who likes to narrate this part of history in the Chinese bakery on the corner of Canal and Center Streets and which sells a scallion roll for only 60 cents.
I raise all this in order to raise how it feels different to be a young Asian woman alone here in Budapest and Vienna so far. I'm sorry, but they're Germanic. This area is the one that is fueling the sex trade and mail-order-bride industries. And if we had children, they wouldn't even have crimped hair or caramel skin. And there is always always the question of pure form, which should emphasize graceful and efficient execution (is she into men? is she into me? will she give me a smile? will she give me a number? can i at least watch her walk away and break even in effort-reward?), rather than knee-jerk mental ball-scratching (if I yell at her in what I know of her native tongue maybe she will uh Hey! Ni hao! Ni hao! Shay shay! Hallo!).
Because they don't say much, it's actually harder to tell whether or not to be on your guard. Because one assumes a general Viennese prejudice, it's unclear if the isolated and very, very odd salutation you do get directly are candidly respectful or shielding some deeper contempt. Because the men here who holler are old and wrinkled and have dirt beneath their fingernails and you know would have tickets to Phuket in a heartbeat if only they got enough on their unemployment. And this is all within the central districts of town. Mike lives up in the 22nd and talks about how the prostitutes on his walk home make fun of his gait and cackle and holler.
One thousand and twenty-four. That took a little over an hour, including research.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
This one's for the family
So I meant it, earlier, so, about my parents. My parents have been married for 32 years and 2 days. That is an approximation of 11,682 days of effort, struggle, partnership, shared experience. I have been involved in approximately 76% of this union. Um ... since birth, that is. I calculated.
It may seem odd to many who have known me over the years as being somewhat older than my age or "world weary" (citing a report card circa 1996) that I continue to obsess and confess about parents, family, relationship, searching, personal hygiene, hope, love, and other vulgarities, with such adolescent naivete, relish, and sense of righteous subjectivity. But as I meet the next generation of promising upstarts from Swarthmore, for example, and am asked by this bright buggy-eyed youngling with a Corona in his hand "Woah-what does it feel like to be 25?!?" I happily answer: "right. fitting. Now please remove me from your active short-term memory because I no longer need to abide by the rules of the diverse social laboratory that was our shared environment, as much as I treasure the memory, as much as it has enabled me and allowed me to grow. Please, no--really, you still have acne, a weak palate, and are embarrassing me with your sense of entitlement." I've been wanting to be 25 since I was 18. I think I am finally in my own skin. I think I finally fit. I think I have finally relinquished being "set apart". I am so lonely "set apart". I can finally cling to a status quo of pop cultural references and haphazard knowledges that I like. As I've been perhaps not so much proudly as cognizantly telling as many people as I can obtain a first impression with: "It's taken me 25 years of hard soul work to become as superficial as I am right now."
So my parents, yes, my parents have made a name for themselves, as a unit, as world travellers. They have made a fantastic team in this way, good representatives of our national and familial culture to others, and faithful, if not aggressively devoted opportunists of other cultures and histories. No stone unturned, I believe the phrase goes. No passport stamp uncoveted. Now, don't laugh -- you, too, shed an inner tear with the consolidation of the European states. You, too, are a collector of sites and I-was-heres. And surely I've written about this, too, that is, the ontological premise for the tourist photograph. Maybe this blog. Maybe my harddrive. Vintage: 2006. This is turning out to be a season of theme-making. I am in my skin. I am beginning to make sense.
So my parents, my parents, yes, so dedicated are their walking boots that when calling to wish them a happy anniversary in the company of visiting cousin John, I was greeted sooner with a "what are you doing in the house, why aren't you showing John the city?" than I could deliver a hung-over "but yesterday..." itinerary check-in. There is potentiality in everything. There is not a second to waste. They taught me that. They taught me to live like that. I mean it. I celebrate it!
My parents have a love of the itinerary. OK, to be fair, my mother has a love of the new (experiences, sites, nature, currencies, bank notes of these currencies, all of which require a solid itinerary to discover and execute/amass), while my father has a love of organization, and receives a performative joy from displaying organizational prowess, i.e. the tabulated, shaded, bold-typed, underlined, and italicized Microsoft Word itinerary. Somersaults, high kicks, and the triple-axel. My parents have a love of the itinerary. In honor of which, I am producing one, in retrospective (since all days are by nature full, it being very difficult or very impoverished to have NOTHING to do and to do nothing--and I say this with no small recognition of human beings who do, by injustice or unfortunate circumstance, live this way), of my 42 hours with dear cousin John Davys in Vienna. But for the sake of extended family who may have an interest in this dedicatedly EVENT-driven and NARRATIVE-based account and who yet may be unsympathetic to the otherwise circumloquacious Musings of my Um -- we start a new page.
It may seem odd to many who have known me over the years as being somewhat older than my age or "world weary" (citing a report card circa 1996) that I continue to obsess and confess about parents, family, relationship, searching, personal hygiene, hope, love, and other vulgarities, with such adolescent naivete, relish, and sense of righteous subjectivity. But as I meet the next generation of promising upstarts from Swarthmore, for example, and am asked by this bright buggy-eyed youngling with a Corona in his hand "Woah-what does it feel like to be 25?!?" I happily answer: "right. fitting. Now please remove me from your active short-term memory because I no longer need to abide by the rules of the diverse social laboratory that was our shared environment, as much as I treasure the memory, as much as it has enabled me and allowed me to grow. Please, no--really, you still have acne, a weak palate, and are embarrassing me with your sense of entitlement." I've been wanting to be 25 since I was 18. I think I am finally in my own skin. I think I finally fit. I think I have finally relinquished being "set apart". I am so lonely "set apart". I can finally cling to a status quo of pop cultural references and haphazard knowledges that I like. As I've been perhaps not so much proudly as cognizantly telling as many people as I can obtain a first impression with: "It's taken me 25 years of hard soul work to become as superficial as I am right now."
So my parents, yes, my parents have made a name for themselves, as a unit, as world travellers. They have made a fantastic team in this way, good representatives of our national and familial culture to others, and faithful, if not aggressively devoted opportunists of other cultures and histories. No stone unturned, I believe the phrase goes. No passport stamp uncoveted. Now, don't laugh -- you, too, shed an inner tear with the consolidation of the European states. You, too, are a collector of sites and I-was-heres. And surely I've written about this, too, that is, the ontological premise for the tourist photograph. Maybe this blog. Maybe my harddrive. Vintage: 2006. This is turning out to be a season of theme-making. I am in my skin. I am beginning to make sense.
So my parents, my parents, yes, so dedicated are their walking boots that when calling to wish them a happy anniversary in the company of visiting cousin John, I was greeted sooner with a "what are you doing in the house, why aren't you showing John the city?" than I could deliver a hung-over "but yesterday..." itinerary check-in. There is potentiality in everything. There is not a second to waste. They taught me that. They taught me to live like that. I mean it. I celebrate it!
My parents have a love of the itinerary. OK, to be fair, my mother has a love of the new (experiences, sites, nature, currencies, bank notes of these currencies, all of which require a solid itinerary to discover and execute/amass), while my father has a love of organization, and receives a performative joy from displaying organizational prowess, i.e. the tabulated, shaded, bold-typed, underlined, and italicized Microsoft Word itinerary. Somersaults, high kicks, and the triple-axel. My parents have a love of the itinerary. In honor of which, I am producing one, in retrospective (since all days are by nature full, it being very difficult or very impoverished to have NOTHING to do and to do nothing--and I say this with no small recognition of human beings who do, by injustice or unfortunate circumstance, live this way), of my 42 hours with dear cousin John Davys in Vienna. But for the sake of extended family who may have an interest in this dedicatedly EVENT-driven and NARRATIVE-based account and who yet may be unsympathetic to the otherwise circumloquacious Musings of my Um -- we start a new page.
Addendum: Owned by Google
So there is a slight disadvantage to this dashboard widget, which is that it has no scroll sidebar, so the more I write the more I push the window down past the edges of my screen, thereby losing my capability to press "Publish". It is also impossible for me to move the window higher into the vertical nether reaches past my weather report and yet-unsullied Stickie. It appears that I will be forced to become much more journalistic (succinct and/or episodic -- given my continuing verbosity, as well as gradiose ambition to hit 1000 words a day, I have a premonition that it will be the latter. Incidentally, if I could program/edit programs, I would make a filter that would play a sound effect of choice at the word count threshold of one's choosing, which may or may not be attached to another sound resembling a typewriter "ding" everytime you hit "enter". This, alongside my beloved vision of creating the web server ".dot", and the subsequent mother host site of "dot.dot", is among many in my archive of Unreasonable and Wayward Dreams. I read on the plane to Budapest about somebody who dropped their career in ___XXX___ financial promise ___ in order to become "an inventor". I lie. It wasn't on the airplane. It was in something almost as non-descript as an airplane magazine. And it's going to irritate me for a long time--longer even, than my eyeballs are going to irritate me right now since I forgot to take them out before jumping into bed with my thoughts and keyboard--that I can't remember.What I can remember is that I thought to myself, "God, what about her parents. Hard enough saying 'I'm going to take the higher path (if you flip the world upside down) and be an artist." Imagine if I came home and said, 'Hey Ma, I'm gonna be an inventor." Although this would add to my list of -TORs I could become (reference: What's In A Name? This blog, 2005 somewhere). I am still in parenthesis. Who was it that coined "parenthetical thinking?" Was it the same schmuck that talked about "rhizomatic thinking"? "Schmuck, in German, means jewellery. Speaking of parents ...
Owned by Google
I have finally discovered how to put Blogger on my dashboard. No more logging in; no more firefox fatigue. It will probably also make my musings a LOT more stream of consciousness than they have ever been, except then I suppose I don't feel as motivated by the sense of "common purpose" or "generalized, anonymous audience" as I do when doing this live. Sort of like how you work out with less intensity with weights at home than if you go to the gym. Lifestyle, it seems, is all about whether or not you achieve the feeling of purpose and production than the end point or product itself. Collectivity, it seems, is largely about Every Body doing their own tasks but in constant presence of others doing the same. "I want participatory privacy, in public," I confess to my friend Mike on 7/17, "which I suppose is like ten people taking shits in ten individual port-a-potties made of one-way glass."
Mike is also here for the festival, and has been here 4 or 5 times. He is a delightful handful of pining gay adolescence and soulful cerebrality.He thinks he has Asperger's Syndrome, a nervous system disorder related to autism and yes, which would explain a number of his behaviours. He proposed tonight to stage a solo for Every Life Lost In The Iraq War / Every Measure Of Land Lost From The Melting Of The Ice Caps / Every Bureaucrat Profited From THe Wastages Of Modern Living / etc. I am adlibbing a little. But in the bathroom later, I am thinking this is a great idea. Can we make it a global relay of very mild ambition. Can we do it humbly and authentically. Because I wouldn't want to aim to make of it another hype-generating do-gooder Live Aid. But it is something "to do" in the face of individual helplessness.
Mike is also here for the festival, and has been here 4 or 5 times. He is a delightful handful of pining gay adolescence and soulful cerebrality.He thinks he has Asperger's Syndrome, a nervous system disorder related to autism and yes, which would explain a number of his behaviours. He proposed tonight to stage a solo for Every Life Lost In The Iraq War / Every Measure Of Land Lost From The Melting Of The Ice Caps / Every Bureaucrat Profited From THe Wastages Of Modern Living / etc. I am adlibbing a little. But in the bathroom later, I am thinking this is a great idea. Can we make it a global relay of very mild ambition. Can we do it humbly and authentically. Because I wouldn't want to aim to make of it another hype-generating do-gooder Live Aid. But it is something "to do" in the face of individual helplessness.
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