Sudden St.

Synonymity

On September 28, 1066, William the Conqueror of Normandy arrived on British soil. He defeated the British in the Battle of Hastings, and on Christmas Day, he was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.

One of the most important consequences of the Norman conquest of England was its effect on the English language. At the time, the British were speaking a combination of Saxon and Old Norse. The Normans spoke French. Over time, the languages blended, and the result was that English became a language incredibly rich in synonyms. Because the French speakers were aristocrats, the French words often became the fancy words for things. The Saxons had "house"; the Normans gave us "mansion." The Saxons had "cow"; the Normans gave us "beef." The Normans gave us "excrement," for which the Saxons had lots of four letter words. The English language has gone on accepting additions to its vocabulary ever since the Norman invasion, and it now contains more than a million words, making it one of the most diverse languages on Earth.

from The Writer's Almanac, with Garrison Keillor.

Oooh, Spooky.

My house makes Egyptian art.

Exhibit A: The Eye of Horus.

Exhibit B: Kneeling Anubis

(his head is to the right, bowing before the 'monolith'... admittedly, it looked a lot more like Anubis before I put on my glasses)

Of course, this is to say nothing of the fact that the front yard is visited by the occasional rain of toads.

I feel like I'm 12

I am in the midst of cataloging, re-bagging, pricing, and re-carding my old comic books, which came to Austin along with my sister. This is actually as lame as it sounds. My only consolation is that now Roo is going to have to do it too.

On the other hand, I'm looking at all these old, acid-absorbed sheets of card stock and I am thinking: Get back into stencil art.

Back

This hunted look says it all. Let us never speak of what happened in Chicago, except to say that I found myself in several situations where it was relevant to use the word eschew.

Chicago-Bound

The wife and I are spending a week in the Medium-Sized Apple. If you know of any cool places to go, especially if they involve art, music, books or pizza-- drop a line.

Shiva Went That Way >

Spiritual Evolution progresses toward Simplicity. An exceptionally intelligent and talented human being is perhaps the lowest and least evolved of all creatures. Geniuses and masterminds are in actuality the most conflicted and confused of all souls and constitute the lowest rung on the karmic ladder. Viruses, single-celled organisms, and even so-called ‘non-living’ things like crystals make up the highest rung, the penultimate category preceding Enlightenment.

If you are a good-hearted person who has propitiated the karmic obstacles of your past lives, and are now slated to evolve spiritually, chances are pretty good that you will reincarnate into a retarded person. As a retard, your pleasure and time for meditation will increase drastically, while your personal responsibilities will diminish to near zero. Your primary purpose in life will be to teach other people the true meaning of love, and to enlighten those who are incapable of it.

(This state can also be achieved artificially through substantial brain trauma, huffing nail polish remover, and Alzheimer’s.)

Your next embodiment may be that of a baby born with no brain. Perhaps you will have a brain stem that sustains vital functions, but only a few cc’s of actual gray matter. Your time will be brief but illuminating.

After that, you may become a sperm whale. Here you may stall, since it’s quite common to experience several life cycles as an aquatic mammal. Newly incarnated whales, narwhals, and even seals are inclined to retain past life knowledge. Even at the tranquil depths of the Pacific, memories of past human suffering may cause you to grow depressed, until you finally beach yourself out of pure ennui.

Next time, dolphin. And since it’s difficult to live a non-righteous life as a dolphin, or squirrel or lemur, the final descent is fairly automatic. And, as your manifestations become simpler, so too will you experience geometrically shorter lifespans.

You’re an amoeba in no time.

what seemed accidental was essential

If I Ever Live to See Another shovel Hot-Dog Mouth girl by the seaside, it'll be Too Soon

The Hollow Men

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Found Art

March 13th, 2006. 2:30 in the afternoon. I was in the thick of traffic, attempting to drive under I-35, to get back to the bar to unload $200 worth of Goodflow lemon and lime juice. SXSW had just begun, at least for me.

I got caught at the red light at 8th Street and the access road. There, in the shadow of the thundering overpass, I saw a guy on all fours. Well, not 'on all fours' in the classic sense, because he had an obviously prosthetic leg sticking out of his right pant leg. He seemed like a roguishly good looking sort, with long locks of brown hair hanging over his face, and I thought he looked not unlike Tom Waits on the cover of Used Songs, except wearing baggy denim from head to toe, which gave him the appearance of a well-kept convict.

It didn't look easy, to be that tall, have only one leg, and be crouching on his hands and knees on the dirty asphalt, where he stayed, throughout my red light. He was on the ground, writing something, I saw, with great earnestness, patience, and attention to detail. With a black sharpie, he carefully scrawled something on a broken piece of concrete.

My light changed and I went on.

That night, while drinking at Club Deville, I told this story to Craig. Since Deville is only two blocks from where I witnessed the one legged man writing on concrete, he of course insisted we go to the spot, to see if the mysterious writer left his words behind. I said if I found it, I'd feel bad taking it. Craig said if I found it, then it was left for me.

It was cold, we were drunk, cops were all around, but there it was, resting on the base of a massive concrete column. I was surprised how uncurious I had been to read what was left, how it took Craig to get me to walk and see.

As we walked back to the bar, now beginning to shiver, we read and re-read the following:

Did you hear the one about the frog and the scorpion who needed a ride? … A scorpion needs to get across the river but couldn’t swim right? etc… (here it goes) What did Frog say to the scorpion when it asked for a ride across the river? “Hell no!”

“I’m missing a flipper anyway and can only swim in circles, you twisted tailed-poisoned assed crawfish lookin’ mother-fucker.”

Craig said he was pretty sure it was a proverb. I admit I don't know what a proverb is, so I can't argue.

Oh, Yeah.

I never did de-code the reference in the title of the 2/24 post. Here ya go: