disreputable under better circumstances, but no less jaunty for it, a clownish fellow unravels a familiar tale that goes underreported. “in Fort Bliss they made lovely amounts of money for pursuing death at a distance.” the faces in the audience, painted in leering grimaces all too fixed upon the emaciated speaker, flicker & snap into place like the image on an old TV screen. “with what we’re facing, tell me how to summon the will to eat breakfast, let alone the will of enough people to find suitable weapons!” yawning enthusiastic laughter at this line, no more effective than the next. outside on the marquee, a name written, KING OF KILLS, but everyone inside is still breathing. “here’s a tip: don’t trust anything you read in Playboy.”
Month: July 2022
#5
here we enter a labyrinth more knotted than any terrestrial corridor. the walls are scaled up beyond the givens with which mortals dither this way and that as they attempt to achieve some angle, some line of force upon which to rest, in equilibrium…as if one day the sun stood still, but, due to some forbear’s arrogance—the stain of which ascetics frantically bleach out—the earth bears forth strife between the forces of darkness and lucidity. why not? if only the darkness weren’t so difficult to face…worse than knowing no one watches and weighs is the fear that maybe something is, something doing calculus while lying in bed, something requiring agents of enforcement that flank left and right limits so bound by some constant as yet discovered…and not only enforcement, but seduction…yes…what better way to test souls than with temptation, the Devil’s lesson for Ivan…everything is ritual to redact….
towards a tikkun of the shekhinah
perhaps the feeling that it’s so hard to communicate nowadays, that there’s been some fateful line crossed technolinguistic-sociopolitickepistemologically, that all is decadence and alienation, perhaps this is merely the nature of being human. we seem to be on the forefront of whatever realm is dictated by the gods of language, ie Thoth/Hermes/Mercury, whose caduceus also symbolizes commercial trade and the ambivalences that endeavor requires. it is a struggle. whence the opportunity to use language, as it uses: to shape the possible, to broaden the scope of the possible. to create. “creation” and “formation” are translations of the Hebrew יְצִירָה (remember, read it right to left), yetzirah, as in Sefer Yetzirah, or the Book of Creation, which outlines a sophisticated linguistic theory for how the universe is created, out of nothingness, from the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. it is also an important work in the development of Jewish mysticism, specifically the Qabbalah (KAH-baluh, not kuh-BALL-uh). scholars generally date Sefer Yetzirah to the Talmudic pediod, though some suggest a more recent, early Medieval authorship. “early” and “recent” of course relative to the ordering of events demanded by the reign of commerce.
as much as commerce (1. social interchange broadly speaking 2. market activity 3. sex) governs the conditions of existence, the principle that gives broad shape is Time, which is felt as growth, loss, pain, transformation and death. something is changing (he says less meaningfully than those words could mean), and decisions must be made. on a long weekend desert bender, I hoped to gain clarity/distance/perspective on how to reapply myself to the task at hand, and all I thought the first day back at my job was “I need more time for Work”. there’s a job interview in two weeks. if it goes well, I will not have more time. resting from Work for six days made Work on the seventh day kind of a drag. it is likely that soon I will need to move out of my apartment. J’s roommate will be moving out of their house in two months.
too much worry, too conservative, too egotistical—all I need is space to act out ideologies, jokes, stories. combinations of words, made up of letters. also need the allowance to be a little bit, or maybe a lot bit, crazy. need to throw a short story I workshopped with friends through another edit at least. also nurturing an idea for some ~cyberliterature~.
do, for there is nothing to “be”. be, a verb? yes. here now, even. there’s no where else, is there?