Riding the moodshift shift
So what a strange weekend that was, huh?
I wanted to make a portrait of all the things bought between the three of us at the Mile High Flea Market, but didn't. It would have looked something like poor cinema, crappy candy, plastic toys, and a wooden polar bear, all suspended by turkey legs, with a gallon of salsa poured on top. A real masterpiece.
Speaking of masterpieces, I WON Iron Chef: Phil's Kitchen (secret ingredient = peanut butter). The secret? Wheat saltine crackers topped with peanut butter, carnival popcorn, cocoa puffs, Ms. Butterworth's syrup, and a special peach garnish I pulled out of the freezer. It was delicious, kind of, but I don't recommend it at all.
And then there was Monster Jam. What the hell. And Fantasia, and Edward Scissorhands, and a Beck dance party, and someone I hope sticks around a while.
Which gets me thinking, when new people pop into life, what a great time for a change in character! I suddenly realize that I haven't really had to think about anyone but myself for almost a year, and the change, or wanting to change, points out all the little imperfections that are always around but never really noticeable when you're dealing with just yourself. But man, screw that -- I am who I am. I'm not punctual, ever, with anything, but I'm not, let's say, into incest. So instead of consciously changing myself, I'm just not going to let myself get hung up on the little mishaps. I think that's more in line with what I've been all about recently anyway -- simply maintaining a more positive side of me that I never used to know. It's still strange, though.
Unrelated: Magdalena Tulli's Dreams and Stones is a book I hate and love, and I'm not sure yet which has the better of me. It's a book you can easily read in a single sitting (I did, but why would you want to?), but the actual process of reading it is very unpleasant, mainly because it's a series of brilliant, unrelated, sometimes nonsensical passages that become related with the more nonsense that's piled on. Or something. It's all pleasantly sticking in my head now, but I'm left a little uncomfortable at how I can retroactively love a book I hated to read.
So, to end, a paragraph from Dreams and Stones followed by Draco, the fire-breathing backhoe:
"Even events themselves are not needed to set flowing that which is meant to flow. In fact only words are essential. Thus on a rainy day an incautious pedestrian dies at a busy intersection and a drunk driver causes a fatal accident, from one moment to another becoming a criminal. The family, plunged into sorrow, bids farewell forever to a father and grandfather, a teacher of many years, while children carry their ink-stained backpacks to school and rejoice at the fact that their test has been canceled. The police escort the culprit from the lockup to the courtroom; at the same time a taxicab is taking a woman in labor in the opposite direction to the maternity clinic. If someone should desire a telephone connection between the courthouse and the delivery room it is technically feasible, but the gaudy, hollow buoys of words that mark roles and the course of matters render such a telephone a needless waste of time, a caprice and even a suspicious subterfuge, a trick employed in bad faith. The words criminal and escort fix figures in their roles, in freeze-frame. Names delimit the boundaries of what is possible. On a different day, another person dies at the same intersection; in the courtroom, another trial begins (the escort and the arrestee have the same journey to make, though the section numbers from the criminal code cited in the charge sheet are different). A woman in labor rides to the maternity clinic in a taxicab; perhaps rain is falling again; the same children carry their backpacks to school and, on the way, are gradually imbued with the mournfulness of grammar and of exercises involving trains. The victims of accidents, the police officers, criminals, schoolchildren, the women in labor and the cab drivers have no choice: They have to make their way in the direction laid out by the street, to enter and exit through doors, and to do so during the hours they are open. They never come into the world or die, except in connection with the circumstances that precede these events and then follow them; they are utterly bound by rules determined by the relations between words. Nothing will occur that cannot be named, and everything that can be named will sooner or later occur."
To which I say, Raawr!
I wanted to make a portrait of all the things bought between the three of us at the Mile High Flea Market, but didn't. It would have looked something like poor cinema, crappy candy, plastic toys, and a wooden polar bear, all suspended by turkey legs, with a gallon of salsa poured on top. A real masterpiece.
Speaking of masterpieces, I WON Iron Chef: Phil's Kitchen (secret ingredient = peanut butter). The secret? Wheat saltine crackers topped with peanut butter, carnival popcorn, cocoa puffs, Ms. Butterworth's syrup, and a special peach garnish I pulled out of the freezer. It was delicious, kind of, but I don't recommend it at all.
And then there was Monster Jam. What the hell. And Fantasia, and Edward Scissorhands, and a Beck dance party, and someone I hope sticks around a while.
Which gets me thinking, when new people pop into life, what a great time for a change in character! I suddenly realize that I haven't really had to think about anyone but myself for almost a year, and the change, or wanting to change, points out all the little imperfections that are always around but never really noticeable when you're dealing with just yourself. But man, screw that -- I am who I am. I'm not punctual, ever, with anything, but I'm not, let's say, into incest. So instead of consciously changing myself, I'm just not going to let myself get hung up on the little mishaps. I think that's more in line with what I've been all about recently anyway -- simply maintaining a more positive side of me that I never used to know. It's still strange, though.
Unrelated: Magdalena Tulli's Dreams and Stones is a book I hate and love, and I'm not sure yet which has the better of me. It's a book you can easily read in a single sitting (I did, but why would you want to?), but the actual process of reading it is very unpleasant, mainly because it's a series of brilliant, unrelated, sometimes nonsensical passages that become related with the more nonsense that's piled on. Or something. It's all pleasantly sticking in my head now, but I'm left a little uncomfortable at how I can retroactively love a book I hated to read.
So, to end, a paragraph from Dreams and Stones followed by Draco, the fire-breathing backhoe:
"Even events themselves are not needed to set flowing that which is meant to flow. In fact only words are essential. Thus on a rainy day an incautious pedestrian dies at a busy intersection and a drunk driver causes a fatal accident, from one moment to another becoming a criminal. The family, plunged into sorrow, bids farewell forever to a father and grandfather, a teacher of many years, while children carry their ink-stained backpacks to school and rejoice at the fact that their test has been canceled. The police escort the culprit from the lockup to the courtroom; at the same time a taxicab is taking a woman in labor in the opposite direction to the maternity clinic. If someone should desire a telephone connection between the courthouse and the delivery room it is technically feasible, but the gaudy, hollow buoys of words that mark roles and the course of matters render such a telephone a needless waste of time, a caprice and even a suspicious subterfuge, a trick employed in bad faith. The words criminal and escort fix figures in their roles, in freeze-frame. Names delimit the boundaries of what is possible. On a different day, another person dies at the same intersection; in the courtroom, another trial begins (the escort and the arrestee have the same journey to make, though the section numbers from the criminal code cited in the charge sheet are different). A woman in labor rides to the maternity clinic in a taxicab; perhaps rain is falling again; the same children carry their backpacks to school and, on the way, are gradually imbued with the mournfulness of grammar and of exercises involving trains. The victims of accidents, the police officers, criminals, schoolchildren, the women in labor and the cab drivers have no choice: They have to make their way in the direction laid out by the street, to enter and exit through doors, and to do so during the hours they are open. They never come into the world or die, except in connection with the circumstances that precede these events and then follow them; they are utterly bound by rules determined by the relations between words. Nothing will occur that cannot be named, and everything that can be named will sooner or later occur."
To which I say, Raawr!