my last days as a flâneur..

Is it true? Hardly. However, the last few days I have been paralyzed. Suddenly, all my momentum towards all these things I want to read, do, write, see, came to a halt due to my sudden inability to do anything. I stare at my computer screen but nothing comes out. I am forgetful. I read and fall asleep. What is happening!?
Partially, I think I have suddenly become overwhelmed with everything I have put myself up to doing. I feel as though I am suffocating underneath a stack of books and to-do lists. On the other hand though I have suspected that it might have to do with my social life. While in school or after a lengthy amount of time of reading and studying I feel like one’s speech is often times improved. Big words and clear sentences emit from your mouth. Slang suddenly disappears. However, when one is going out the bar almost every night, screaming at someone about really nothing over loud music and thick smoke(yes still legal in Oregon)…your speech(and thoughts for that matter) become less coherent and clear. I think it makes me uninspired too.
I told my roommate the other day I don’t think I like a majority of my friends in this town. This isn’t true per se…however, I have come to realize that while I do enjoy and like a majority of the people I know here; there are only a few who I actually like keeping regular company with. Unfortunately, it is almost entirely impossible since hanging out with them almost always means hanging out with the entire lot.
Furthermore, I have found myself enjoying staying at home all day and being a curmudgeon. I had three days off in a row last week and the entire time, I read and drank tea with my cats. Being only 23, I highly doubt I could say that my days as a socialite are over. No, I still enjoy shaking my ass, talking loudly at bars or starting a dance floor at shitty house parties way too much. However, I do see myself winding down a bit. Perhaps those 4 vodka tonics can be reduced. Getting to bed early and staying in might be just what I need to get “re-motivated”. Truely, however, I am sure that Summer is the culprit.

And tomorrow August appears.

August is a computer screen half empty, a tired mind, an unfinished novel, an uninspired day of reading, sitting on the window sill, drinking water and being culpable for the malaise, the empty mind, the unproductivity of words, the empty bottles of whiskey and beer amassing and decomposing through salty condensation and advertisement labels peeling at the edges of clear brown glass next to the trashcan of his kitchen. It's waking up late and wet, two hour of rest on the couch in the mid-afternoon after doing absolutely nothing, lukewarm tea cups scattered across tables forming rings and collecting ash decorated by crumbs of crust off of warm, frail sandwiches, cracked skin, hard toes, shortness of breath and stubborn lungs. It's spiders on the wall, hissing of moths and bees hiding in trampled grass and groomed hedges, the acidic smell of rotten fruit and vinegar of trashcans bothering the nostrils.

Oh August! I am overwhelmed with the congested imminence to the fluids of life that it forced upon me once a year during this month. Everything is damp and slamming into the senses.

Across the room in shades of grey Anna Karina smoked a cigarette facing an old man in a Parisian café, “I’d like to live without talking”.

Doesn’t everyone in August?

Truely....I blame summer.

More later I promise…

le grand flâneur....Monsieur Baudelaire

"stinky", the trashcan. and Thomas Bernhard

My first word was "trash". No joke. When I was young my father owned a janitorial business where he would clean office buildings and banks. I guess I would often accompany him, pretending to help. Supposedly this was the reason for my first word being "trash". As I got a bit older, I continued to wake up early in the morning or even stay up late at night and help my father clean banks. My job was always to get the trash. Eventually, for numerous reasons, my father gave up the career as professional custodian and did other things. Life went on.

Currently; as I go to school, write for a newspaper, write for pleasure, and try to start a zine, I work at a pizza cafe. I work the kitchen and yes...make pizzas all day. I don't really make much money but everyone in Portland works some sort of service-industry job. The big joke is that its a city full of highly educated and intelligent(and overqualified) waiters. Nevertheless, I could work elsewhere and make more money. I use to be a vegan cook at a hip little joint downtown. They offered me a good sum of cash to return. I declined. While no one really makes a lot of money in Portland, there are other jobs I could get and be making more. Lots of them don't include a uniform or a corporation either. However, wherever I could possibly work, I wouldn't be earning a very high sum compared to many other bigger cities in the country.

Upon visiting California, i discovered that a friend of mine works for a big corporation in Orange County that is almost solely responsible for making O.C. the way it is. This corporation is pretty much the devil. Nevertheless, my friend who is currently still attending college, is making almost 70k a year. He told me that if I ever move back he could easily get me a job there. I don't think I will ever do it but it would be a lie to not find it somewhat enticing. Nevertheless, I know I could never do it. His jaw drops open when I tell him how much I make an hour. He is shocked I would even "waste my time" making so little.

My point in all of this is that the collar on my shirt is blue as blue can be. When I was 15 I went to work for Arby's and worked over 35 hours a week. (this is illegal by the way but that's another story) My entire two years living in Santa Barbara and going to school, I worked at least two jobs (at one point I worked 4!). At age 23, I have had already over 25 different jobs. While I have in the last year or two started to gear my life so that more attention is focused on school and less work, I have never really stopped working since I was 15. And while working blows almost always, for me its a necessity. I have never been supported by my parents completely nor have I ever been able to crack the code that leads to free money from the government for students. (any suggestions?) See, while I have issues with capitalism, america, and the protestant work ethic which i know is so finely ingrained in me, i also sort of feel a sense of pride(?) in all this work. It's shaped who I am and how I deal with things. Its allowed me to meet junkies, immigrants and others who exist on the fringes of society. In a lot of ways its shaped my politics and my opinions. Regardless of how much I would like to not admit it, the amount of time I have spent doing crappy, shitty, dirty jobs is very much an important part of who I am.

So one day, I found myself sitting in a cafe on campus. I was in a class that quarter that was focusing on Greek Classicism and its influence on German Thought. I was reading a play by Goethe when I hear a voice say, "mind if we sit here?". I pull down my book and there are 4 guys, all disheveled philosophy or english majors, some are in this class with me. I shrug and they sit. A second later they strike up a conversation about Nietzsche. Then Hegel and that leads somehow to Foucault. And they are going on and on and on and on about good ole bald Michel. And then...they look at me and notice i haven't been saying much. And ask me about what i think about whatever the hell they have been talking about for the last 10 minutes under the impression that I had been listening. However, the truth is I had stopped listening at the beginning. And I had started thinking about how none of these guys had probably ever cleaned a theater before, mopped kitchens, cleaned shit off of walls, done inventory or had to deal with corporate bosses who try to get you pumped for work with fuckin cheers like the ones heard at high school football game just so the store could make "quota". In fact, there is a good chance that none of these guys, as nice and intelligent as they are, have ever worked a day in there life. As big of a generalization as it maybe, i see these guys all over school and its always some fucking philosopher. There lives do not exist outside of theories. They are not the only ones. There are the ultra-hipsters who seem to be able to hang out at either a cafe or a bar everyday, all day. Or the pseudo-hippies who dance around with paint on their face and funky bikes all day and night. These people, some I hate and some i am friends with, are fundamentally different and honestly; are kind of out of it. And as much as I can kick it , talk about Foucault or ride around on my single with them, there is always this gap that seemingly can never be fully bridged.

Sure, many have it worse than me. And this isnt a "woe is me" plee nor am I saying that I am better than them. However, it has always seemed to be that looking at life, from the position I am in, that alot of those theories either make a whole hell of lot more sense, or just seem utterly bourgeoisie and completely out of touch with the dirty, concrete, blue-collar world I live in.

I was having a conversation one time with some friends of mine and the significant other of one my buddies interrupted our conversation with the intent of ending it. We were talking about pornography, what are the boundaries which porn is defined, and the possibility of healthy elements of pornography. The conversation was actually quit amusing. Nevertheless, she piped up and said,

"i am not really concerned with such subjects. I am more interested and focus my time on more important issues like the existence of god."

(btw, she was a philosophy major...)

This comment is a perfect example of what i am trying to express; that there is a fundamental difference is the way you see the world and live your life coming from my side. And its so hard to deal, talk, discuss anything with people on the other end.

I must digress, that I am not trying to come off like if you have never mopped a floor then you're an asshole. I am merely saying that things are different, its frustrating and in my experience in talking about philosophical theories I always try to bring it back to my blue collar life. Man's struggle to find meaning and understanding to his finite existence can not be found or wholly understood in a classroom or sitting on a couch drinking bottle of wine while eating brie. Man's struggle is trying to find meaning and understanding to his existence as he mops up vomit in a bathroom.

That being said, there is trashcan outside of my work that we have christened "Stinky". He exist on one of the most major shopping streets in Southeast Portland. Needless to say, on the weekend, Stinky tends to overflow. It is our job to take him out. Since I usually open on Saturdays and Sundays, I am left with the task now and again to take out Stinky before I leave. This usually consists of picking up the numerous drink cups and wrinkled up tissues overflowing out of Stinky as old, cold coffee or some other substance spills all over your shoes or runs down your arm. Remember also that this all takes place on a busy Saturday, as mothers, fathers, cute girls and boys walk by consistently. So there I am, taking Stinky out with my bare hands, there is a dirty diaper on top and its sunny. Flies are swarming around and a hole has ripped in the trashbag. So i am easily putting it all into another bag. And for whatever reason, this job doesnt bother me nor make me sick. Rather, it's sort of humbling and at the same time fills me with this pride as stupid as it may be. People are making faces, avoiding me within a 5 foot radius. Cars are driving by, little kids are sticking there tongues out. But...i dont care...somebody has to do it. Somebody needs to allow enough space for you to properly dispose of your 32 oz frappucino cup. That person is me.

I am currently reading "To the lighthouse" and there is a point where Mr. Ramsey is contemplating something philosophical when he thinks of the average layman and there is a line where he realizes that, " the liftmen in the Tube is an eternal necessity". It kind of makes Mr. Ramsey sick at first because he is ambitious and want to make it someday to R but he is stuck at Q. Nevertheless, within the page he comes to terms with this idea. And is fine with what he is and has done. i like that. And while I dont want to be just the liftman in the Tube..I am alright being him for awhile. So remember the liftman while holed up reading books of philosophical theory. Its not that I am not interested in such theoretical subjects, ideas and philosophies...i've dabbled and continue to dabble in alot of it...i find it interesting and helpful on essays and in conversation and sometimes it is even inspiring. Sometimes though, its hard to know how to utilize and understand such theories while cleaning up an un-taped dirty diaper that falls out of Stinky one Saturday... experience that and then maybe then I will pay attention and talk about Foucault with you...

+such trifle things i talk of. I should be wrapped up in more important subjects like the existence of god....+

And now a perfect finish: excerpts from an interview with the late writer Thomas Bernhard(you will see the why this fits nicely):

Does the fate of your books interest you?

No, not really.What about translations for example?I'm hardly interested in my own fate, and certainly not in that of my books.

Your characters and you yourself often say they don't care about anything, which sounds like total entropy, universal indifference of everyone towards everything.

Not at all, you want to do something good, you take pleasure in what you do, like a pianist, he has to start somewhere too, he tries three notes, then he masters twenty, and eventually he knows them all, and then he spends the rest of his life perfecting them. And that's his great pleasure, that's what he lives for. And what some do with notes, I do with words. Simple as that. I'm not really interested in anything else. Because getting to know the world happens anyway, by living in it, as soon as you walk out the door you're confronted with the world directly. With the whole world. With up and down, back and front, ugliness and beauty, perfectly normal. There's no need to want this. It happens of its own accord. And if you never leave the house, the process is the same.

There is nothing but striving for perfection. You want to get better and better...

There is no need to strive for anything in the world, because you get pushed towards it in any case. Striving has always been nonsense. The German word "Streber" (striver – meaning swot or brown-noser) means something awful. And striving is just as awful. The world has a pull that drags you whether you like it or not, there's no need to strive. When you strive, you become a "Streber". You know what that means. It's hard to translate into another region.Well, I know what it is.You know what it means, but I don't think people in France know what a "Streber" is. I don't think they have them.

But this quest for perfection does play a role in your books.

That's the attraction of any art. That's all art is, getting better and better at playing your chosen instrument. That's the pleasure of it, and no one can take that pleasure away from you or talk you out of it. If someone is a great pianist then you can clear out the room where he's sitting with the piano, fill it with dust, and then start throwing buckets of water at him, but he'll stay put and keep on playing. Even if the house falls down around him, he'll carry on playing. And with writing it's the same thing.

So it has something to do with failure then?

What has to do with failure?The quest for perfection.Everything fails in the end, everything ends in the graveyard. There's nothing you can do about it. Death claims them all and that's the end of it. Most people give in to death at 17 or 18. The young people of today are running into the arms of death at age 12, and they're dead at 14. Then there are solitary fighters who struggle on until 80 or 90, then they die too, but at least they had a longer life. And because life is pleasant and fun, their fun lasts longer. Those who die early have less fun, and you can feel sorry for them. Because they haven't really got to know life, because life also means a long life, with all of its awfulness.

What kind of intellectual aims do you...

These are all questions that can't be answered because no one asks themselves that sort of thing. People don't have aims. Young people, up to 23, they still fall for that. A person who has lived five decades has no aims, because there's no goal.

You're always presented as a kind of loner in the mountains, the man from the farm...What can you do. You get a name, you're called "Thomas Bernhard", and it stays that way for the rest of your life. And if at some point you go for a walk in the woods, and someone takes a photo of you, then for the next eighty years you're always walking in the woods. There's nothing you can do about it....and suddenly here you are in an urban context like this Viennese coffeehouse.

Urbanity is a quality you have to possess from within. It has nothing to do with the exterior. No. Nothing but stupid notions. But humanity has only ever existed in stupid notions, there's no helping it. There's no cure for stupidity. That's a fact.

Many of your readers, including so-called highbrow critics, have repeatedly subjected your books to negative readings.

I really couldn't give a damn how people read my work...

When people ring you up and say they'd commit suicide with you?

People hardly ever ring up anymore, thank God.

But would you go the other way and call yourself a humorous writer?

What's all this supposed to mean? People are everything. Each individual is more or less everything. Sometimes he laughs and sometimes he doesn't. People say it's all tragic, which is stupid too, because I...

Alongside your writing, does your work also involve reflecting on writing itself, as in the case of Doderer or Thomas Mann?

No, that's not necessary. If you're a master of your trade then you have no need for reflection. When you go out onto the street, everything works for you, you don't need to do anything, you just have to keep your eyes and ears open and walk. You don't need to think anymore, not if you're independent or if you make yourself independent. If you're uptight and stupid or if you're striving for something, then nothing will ever come of it. If you live in life, then you've no need to make any special effort, it all comes to you of its own accord, and it will leave its mark on what you do. It's not something you can learn. You can learn to sing, if you have a good voice. That's the one condition. Someone who's naturally hoarse will hardly become an opera singer. It's the same everywhere. You can't play piano without a piano. Or if all you have is a violin and you want to play piano on it, that won't work either. And if you don't want to play violin, then you'll just have to play nothing at all.

But when you describe yourself as a destroyer of stories, then in a certain way that is a theoretical statement.

I said that once did I, well, people say a lot of things in fifty years of life. The amount of stupid things people say over the decades, myself included. If people were always held to the things they say. Of course, if a reporter is sitting in a restaurant somewhere and he hears you say the beef's no good, then he'll always claim you're someone who doesn't like beef, for the rest of your life. Meanwhile, maybe you ate nothing but beef from then on.

A publisher once...

What is that; a publisher? I can put the question to you: What is a publisher (Verleger)? A bedside rug (Bettvorleger), there's no doubt what that is. But a publisher, without the bed, that's harder to answer. Someone who misplaces (verlegen) things, a muddled person, who misplaces things and can't find them anymore. That's the definition of a publisher, someone who misplaces things. A publisher, he misplaces things and manuscripts which he accepts and then he can't find them anymore. Either because he no longer likes them or because he's muddled, either way they're gone. Misplaced. For all eternity. All the publishers I know are like that. None of them is so great as not to be the kind who misplaces things. Who publishes something and then it's either ruined or impossible to find.

Does breathing play a role in your texts, in the sense of breathing rhythm?

I happen to be a musical person, and writing prose always has to do with musicality.

like with a singer...

Well, breathing isn't easy. Some people breathe from the stomach, some from the lungs. Singers breathe only with their stomachs because otherwise they wouldn't be able to sing. You just have to transfer breathing from the stomach to the brain. It's the same process. You have many little lungs in there, probably a few million. For the time being. Until they collapse. Because bubbles burst, and lungs collapse. There are those who still have lungs at 90. And there are those who have none left by the time they're 12, who just stand around like idiots. Most people are like that, 98 percent, maybe even one percent more. Every time you speak to someone, you're talking to an idiot, but charming. And because you're not a spoilsport, you carry on talking to people, going out for meals with them, being kind and nice. And basically they're stupid, because they don't make an effort. What you don't use wastes away and dies off. Since people use just their mouths but not their brains, they get very well-developed palates and jaws, but there's nothing left in their brains. That's the way it usually is.

You started out writing poetry.

Oh please!

What does that mean to you today?

Nothing whatsoever, I don't think about it at all. You don't think back over every step you've ever taken, do you? You'd have to set billions, hundreds of billions of thoughts in motion. Like with walking and running. You can't be constantly retracing where you've been in your mind, or you'll never get anywhere interesting.

You deliberately keep your distance from other living writers.

No, not deliberately at all. It comes naturally. Where there's no interest, there can be no inclination.

Sometimes you hurl abuse at them too, like Canetti or Handke for example.

I don't hurl abuse at anyone at all. That's nonsense. Almost all writers are opportunists. Either they affiliate themselves with the right or with the left, joining ranks here or there, and so on, and that's how they make a living. And that's unpleasant, why shouldn't that be said. One works with his illness and his death and wins prizes, and the other runs round in the name of peace and is basically a nasty stupid fellow, so what's the big deal?

From a non-Austrian perspective, this comes as a surprise-in France, you are often named in the same breath as Handke...

Well, that breath will change. A new breath with come. But habits like that last for decades. They're impossible to eradicate. If you open a newspaper today, almost all you read about is Thomas Mann. He's been dead thirty years now, and again and again, endlessly, it's unbearable. Even though he was a petty-bourgeois writer, ghastly, uninspired, who only wrote for a petty-bourgeois readership. That could only interest the petty-bourgeois, the kind of milieu he describes, it's uninspired and stupid, some fiddle-playing professor who travels somewhere, or a family in Lübeck, how lovely, but it's nothing more than someone like Wilhelm Raabe. What rubbish Thomas Mann churned out about political matters, really. He was totally uptight and a typical German petty-bourgeois. With a greedy wife.

For me, that's the typical German writer combination. Always a woman in the background, be it Mann or Zuckmayer, always making sure these characters get to sit next to the head of state, at every idiotic opening of a sculpture exhibition or a bridge. Is that where writers belong? These are the people who always make deals with the state and those in power, who end up sitting at their elbows. The typical German-language writer. If long hair is in fashion, then he has long hair, if it's short hair, then his is short too. If the left is in government, he runs to the left, if it's the right, he runs that way, always the same. They've never had any character. Only those who died young, mostly. If they died at 18 or 24, well, at that age it's not so hard to maintain some character, that only gets hard later. You get weak. Under 25, when no one needs more than an old pair of trousers, when you go barefoot and content yourself with a gulp of wine and some water, it's not so difficult to have character. But afterwards. Then they all had none. At 40 they were all absorbed into political parties, totally paralysed. The coffee they drink in the morning is paid for by the state. And the bed they sleep in, and the holidays they go on, all paid for by the state. Nothing of their own any more.

Your style is so distinctive that it has prompted numerous pastiches and parodies...

If they can earn money that way and pay for a summer holiday, three days at a decent inn, unfortunately they mostly only go to places with Michelin stars, where they have to pay 2,000 Schillings for a meal, I wouldn't begrudge anyone that if they enjoy themselves.

But how does something new like this come into being in the old material of language? Are there traditions that one refers to, even if that means going against them?

There are always traditions, conscious and unconscious. From reading and being alive since childhood, all that comes of its own accord. And because you're constantly throwing out what you don't like or what's bad from the beginning, you're left with what you want. Whether it's stupid or not is another question. Whether or not it's the right path, no one knows, every individual has their own path, and for that person every path is the right one. And now there are four and a half billion people, I think, and four and a half billion right paths. The misfortune of human beings is that they don't want to take the path, their own, they always want to take a different one. Striving and struggling towards something other than what they themselves are. Everyone is a great personality, whether they paint or sweep streets or write or... people always want something different. That's the misfortune of the world.

You sometimes give the impression of biting the hand that feeds, for example when you describe Heidegger as a "weak-minded pre-Alpine thinker" and...

He didn't feed me. Why should he have fed me? But he's an impossible character, he has neither rhythm nor anything else. He lived off a few writers, he cannibalised them, to the last, what would he have been without them?

I was thinking of the word "Lichtung" (clearing).

That word existed before Heidegger, 300 and 500 years before. He was nothing, a philistine, gross, nothing new. He's a perfect example of someone who unscrupulously eats all the fruit other people have jarred and who gorges himself, thank God, which makes him sick and he bursts. Gets stomach ache.

When critics accuse you of proto-fascist tendencies...

Fascist, I don't like that, the word, but I've been called everything. The things I've been called. Communist or fascist, anarchist, everything.

What, in your view, is a conversation?

I don't usually have them. To me people who want to have a conversation are suspect, because that raises particular expectations they're unable to satisfy. Simple people are very good to talk with. When talking is supposed to become conversation, that's when things get gruesome! That fine expression "everything under the sun." It all gets thrown in together and then one person stirs this way, the other stirs that, and an unbearable stinking turd comes out the bottom. No matter who it is. There are collected conversations, hundreds of them, books full. Entire publishing houses live off them. Like something coming out of an anus, and then it gets squashed in between book covers. This wasn't a conversation either.

Yes, of course not.

It's always: "you've been listening to a conversation" and so on, and at that moment, everyone who heard it has already forgotten it. Because it was nothing. There's the famous "Nocturnes" series. They sit there for an hour and a half, there's a philosopher and a pseudo-philosopher, or mostly both pseudo-philosophers, one wearing a polo neck sweater and the other a tie, doesn't really matter because everything is contrived and stupid, and they just talk constantly and talk and talk. If you look in the Süddeutsche Zeitung at the amount of interviews they've published over the past three decades, no one gives a damn about a single word of all these conversations and books. It's all just for the workers at the paper factory, so they have something to do, which might make some sense. Because they have a terrible life anyway and lose all their limbs, at 50 most of them have lost a leg or five fingers. Paper machines are cruel. At least it has some meaning, the family can get something extra. I live next to two paper factories, so I know how it is. In ten years you'll see how stupid it all was. But it all helps you get ahead, gives you something to live from, and life involves doing a load of nonsense. Life consists of one long succession of nonsense, a little bit of sense, but mostly nonsense. No matter who. Be it great, supposedly great people, all the usual names, me included, Cioran, aphorists. All pathetic and leads to nothing but the end. You can sit at home, put your books on the shelf, and when you look at them, you think: "Sad". But you still keep churning it out, like you get into the habit of drinking a cup of coffee in the morning, or tea. Tea is smarter, because you work less. The same applies to writing. You become addicted. Writing is a drug, too.

Has illness been a driving force behind your writing?

Yes, perhaps, possibly. Since it's been there with me throughout my life. And as you can see, some people are always critically ill but they go on living for ever. For all these people it's always been beneficial. An illness is always a form of capital. Every illness you survive is a great story, because there's no way anyone can steal your thunder with something similar. Only you shouldn't count on it, because one time it'll go wrong. Although it doesn't matter, because you're no longer around to notice. It's money in the bank.

You say you like talking to simple people.

It's always a pleasure.

And do you find such simple people in Vienna?

I've got simple people at home at the moment. That's most agreeable, even if they do make a mess. Their minds haven't been ruined by education.

But you have to pay them to come to your house.

I don't need to pay my simple people. I have hundreds of them where I live in the country and wherever I travel. They're not always easy to stomach either. You need both. It's important to master as much as possible. You have to be here and be there. If you only frequent one section of society it's stupid. You end up stunted. You need to take in and cast off as much as possible all the time. Most people make the mistake of remaining within a single caste and class, only mixing with butchers because they're butchers, or only with bricklayers because they're bricklayers, or with labourers because they're labourers, or counts because they're counts, or kings...

Or writers because they're writers?

Well, I'm my own, so I've no need anyway. No one can teach me or tell me anything, so I've no need to go to anyone. Because people in general are false and twisted, I go elsewhere. I don't need any writer. Sitting down with someone where there's nothing but envy and resentment from the outset, I've no interest in that, so I don't deal with writers.

Thank you...

What? Everyone lives until they die. And a great deal happens in between. But for most people it's of no interest. Mostly only for the person living it. The truth is that each person, even if he is interested in others, is interested only in himself. It's all about indirect benefits. It's the same everywhere, whatever it is, children's villages, the Sahel, hunger in Nicaragua. Mister Ortega puts on just as much of a self-serving theatre act as Mister Reagan, whichever way you look at it. People only do things they think will help them get ahead and keep going. Even if you become a nun or a monk, that's all you have in mind, you have no choice. In fact, if you want to be a monk and serve, that will make you especially ghastly and misanthropic. That's the way it is, I believe. With faith. As it were.

(not that i agree with everything he is saying but still...so rad...and seemingly fitting)

desiderata

6 days of work led to a new, spur of the moment haircut and alot of drinking. summer is settling in and all the restlessness that comes with the endless sun. the small publication i am planning on putting out in december has, i think, officially begun its transformation from an idea to actuality. the name will be "desiderata". there should be a benefit show to fund it in september. i already got some people who are going to send submissions and a few helpers besides just me and madeline. today is the first day that i have been able to begin writing out a mission statement and figuring out the different sections of it, etc. in case you are unaware, i have been wanting to produce a small publication magazine for some time now. it basically started from a dissatisfaction with most "zines" out there and the specificity of them. opposed to focusing on one subject or medium of writing, i want to include an all-encompassing grab-bag of various subjects. imagine a magazine where you can read an essay, a piece of fiction, an article about science and learn something about the environment AND look at art. and imagine if it didnt focus on the left or the right...but chose to try and display both. mind you, i am well aware this isnt the most original idea and there are other publications out there like this. however, a majority of them are major publications. going to the journalism conference in d.c. with the nation was really inspiring and i think the best thing said the entire conference was; "hey...if there is something that you feel is lacking out there...then fucking do it yourself." simple words...but to hear them come from a girl who is only 27 and the assistant cultural editor of the nation and then to later find out that she got this job from pretty much just doing really good-looking independent publications since college...made kind of a difference to me. (check out her small pub: ://www.thecriermag.com) so why not? the more i do and the more that happens... i will keep updated on here...other than that...lots of work...reading...trying to write at least 1000 words a day (does this blog count?)...i actually...for the first time...um...ever...have gotten an idea for a whole entire novel. maybe a novella...maybe a long short story...who knows. we will see...

heres something silly:

3 albums to maintain the gloom of winter through those boring hot summer days:

the cure "pornography":

so you probably like the cure. and yeah...i know....you got disintegration and you've wept all over the goddamn cd...but dude...pop in "pornography" (the 3rd lp by The Cure) and let the raw, young, and poetic mr. smith, who didnt care about making a dime because he was probably just going to end up a backup guitar player for siouxie sioux anyways at this point, remind you the reason why you like to suffer, why life should never be full of happiness, why you sometimes wish you had the idiotic passion of your life at 16...let it bother you that you dont write poetry anymore...let it make you ask yourself why you've forgotten your emotions in place of intellectualism...listen to it.

bauhaus "in the flat field":

much rawer and darker than "pornography" and even sort of dance-y. not to mention their t-rex cover of "telegram sam" is better than the original. forget peter murphy solo, love and rockets and all the rest of the crap they put out after this. "in the flat field" is a band that studied joy division and projected what they would of become with better equipment and more drugs. fucking scary shit...

magnetic fields "get lost" and "house of tomorrow" e.p.

these two releases get overshadowed by the massive "69 love songs" and even "i". however, they are essentially what "69 love songs" would of been if it had been paired down to a single lp. (those of you who are familiar i am sure could pick out 20 songs from the entire collection and would be fine with leaving out alot of the rest) anyways, stephen merritt brings his melancholy lyrics and monotone voice and places it over repetitive pop music. catchy, sometimes it makes you want to jump around your room with a frown... but its also sort of maniacal and dark as well. perfect music to listen to when all you want to do is smoke cigarettes and wear a sweater but its a hot summer day and everyone else is smiling, wearing shorts, and riding bikes.

haircut: sometimes summer makes you do crazy shit. yep...thats steps in the side. and yes...its a comb-over. sorry for the shitty photo. the funny thing is that in portland...this haircut is really popular amongst the lesbian population. so i basically look like a lesbian. heres to androgyny...

i am sure it will last all of two weeks..

Brief musings on Baudrillard, Carvaggio and other things.

Lately, I have been slowly and randomly reading "Fragments" by Jean Baudrillard. (I can see eyes being rolled as I type this) Its basically a collection of random thoughts and observations by the late thinker on a variety of different subjects and issues. None of the thoughts are longer than a page so I sort of enjoy it because wherever I am I can break it out and read a few, think about them and go on my way. A good portion of what he writes is actually pretty funny. However, overall B. can be pretty irritating. He seemingly attempts to strike down the validity of every argument, thought or discourse on any subject within contemporary society. He tries to expose the absurdity of EVERYTHING which mostly lies in the semantics which issues and topics are discussed, presented, etc. While I am not well-read on post-modernism, it seems to be that he is very representative of this. If anything, I think B. is very much a product of the last 50 years or so. He seems not so much a thinker who provides insight to the modern world but rather observes and discovers the absurdities of it. (as if we didn't already know...thanks for the reminder Jean.)

However, to give him credit, I do enjoy reading these "fragments". They are often times funny even if I don't agree with him. In addition, his theories on the simulacra are interesting and I find a lot of what he says to actually be supportive or if anything, inspiring for my creative writing endeavors.

"Oxymorons: a glimmer of despair- an élan récessif-the non-praying mantis-virtual reality"

I like that last one. "virtual reality". I have become increasingly interested in the idea of of dual realities or alternate realities. This has been spawned by the increased technological advances of our society. Our generation is so "connected" to various forms of media. Internet, advertisement, cell phones take up so much of our lives and our time. It really hit me when upon reading about the reactions from Virginia Tech students after the massacre, so many of them explained their experience by referencing film or television.

"it was just like a movie....or t.v...."

When did this occur? When did our reference to reality become representations of our reality?(i.e. television, movies etc.) To further spark my fascination, the discovery of the website 2nd Life almost makes me dizzy. Here we have an entire world on the Internet, through telephone wires and receivers, it actually doesn't exist other than our computer screens, where people buy and sell land, have sex, make families, create businesses all with real currency. Yes, REAL currency. Baffling? It shouldn't be anymore. Its hard not to think what kind of field day Baudrillard would have with this one.

My tendency with all this was originally to reject it. To decry the death of a bike ride, a walk in the park, a real-life lap dance in replacement of a 2nd virtual world. However, there is no non-reality...no virtual reality. Rather, it is just as real as anything else. I will not disagree on the negative affects of social world, social interaction how such mediums of media(reality?) are causing. I predict in less than 20 years there will be a world filled with adults who are extremely socially inept because they grew up on this. However, I will not reject it but rather I want to observe it.

This brings me to literature.

The novelist Christa Wolf spent a part of her life under the DDR.(that's former east Germany not the video game...) Obviously, working as a writer under such oppressive circumstances was trying and many of her fellow artists fled to the west. However, there was a small group of artists who stuck around. Wolf explains(i believe in an essay accompanying her novel "Cassandra") that she and her fellow artist friends decided to stick around because they knew they were living through and amidst something terribly unique. And while in hopes of obtaining freedom of complete artistic expression they could of easily escaped to the west, they chose to stick around because they wanted to watch and be apart of this important period. To see what art and literature they produced under such circumstances. To watch it crumble. To be apart as not only an observer but as apart of it as well. I feel similar to the current state of not only the United States but of our ever speedy and technological world. As I get older of course it is my tendency to scoff and the new and to shake my head at the young. Of course, with an intense love for Europe,travel and a disgust with our corruptness I want to run away from this country. Nevertheless, I choose to stay, observe and try not to be so ready to reject or run away.

That being said, when I write I am not trying to create a simple reenactment of our lives, as if I am a scribe recording the daily movements and words of our somewhat mundane days for nothing more but what it is. Literature seems to be overrun with the need for a good story equipped with a moment of epiphany and a coming of age experience all in 300 pages or less. What about interesting, fascinating and bizarre content? I want to create a million different realities which run from the insane and unexplainable to the mundane and simplistic. That is our world and the people that exist in it.

Nevertheless, this is dangerous. There is a small desire in me to still constantly recognize the existence of an objective truth. Where does this exist in today's world? Have we obliterated it completely? Perhaps, my writing endeavors can best be summed up under an oxymoron: "surreal-realism". And there I am...left in a bloated pile of irony.

Finally, Caravaggio. I am also slowly and randomly reading a collection of essays by Robert Hughes called "Nothing, if not Critical". Hughes, who as far as I can tell is a pretty main stream critic of art. By which I mean to say, he doesn't really offer anything too new or edgy to say. Nevertheless, his opening essay about how money and the desire to own art has ruined the museum and the exhibit revealed some leftist leanings which i enjoyed. The book is broken up into time periods, in which Hughes gives a brief biographical run-down of important artists from those movements, why they are important and what he feels about him. The reason for me reading this book is an attempt to get a basic understanding of what I guess could be summed up as "the canon of western art". I recently read his essay on Caravaggio. I have never really been able to appreciate art too much before the 20th century. However, Caravaggio has always fascinated me. There is an intense realism in his art that is dark and scary and powerful. Hughes questions where Rembrandt would be if it were not for C. After reading about his crazy life and his importance, I only like him better. I feel that he is a good representation of a sort of realistic depictions that still are important today. He reveals his subjects in all their faults and mistakes and ugliness. I like this and always have. I can almost always appreciate a reminder of our finite existence and the scars that we receive along the way. Caravaggio is an example of art which acts as a good balance for me between looking forward and learning from the past.

(image: st. jerome by caravaggio)

the holy.

(many thoughts have been circulating around many different things...til my next real blog...here is a "story" i got published in the school lit mag...)


The holy.


Two older gentlemen are sitting at a small table outside any other street café. One is wondering where his immunity system has gone.
“It slipped out the window last night, crossed the street, flopped into the sand, and got carried out to sea by way of the rising tide!”
“Oh my! That is not good.”
“No, not good indeed!”
They cough and something disappears from each other’s mouths. They don’t notice.
Meanwhile, a young writer who is sitting alone just tables away is distracted. An American girl; not blond, not blue-eyed, very tan, is jogging by. She looks to be the same age as the young writer he thinks; early twenty something. Her face is shielded by sunglasses and a lowered hat. Her hair is pulled back. Her stomach is exposed. Right above the waistline an outward curve has formed. It is slight and quietly moves to the rhythm of her steps as she jogs. It’s frightened. It’s trying to be destroyed. It quakes and shakes yet holds on. One more night like the two nights before and it can get its strength back it thinks.
The writer drops his pen frustratingly upon the paper he has been scribbling most recent tragedies upon. Emotionally he tries to write of emotion without using such exact and specific words like love, hate and feeling. He doesn’t believe in any of “it”. “It’s all an illusion created by the world” he says. “By literature” he says. “by poets and romantics” he says. He is going to “change things” he says. He is going to be the destroyer. “like Kali” he says. He pulls out a paper design and leaves it on the table.
He is gone, out past the group of people walking on the sidewalk and spilling out into the street. They seem angry and start as four or five, have become 10 or 12, and are gaining people by every block. They will be meeting up with hundreds more just like themselves. They’ve come to warm the city, to brighten it, keep the steel fingers rough to the touch. They are making the glow of the metro. They’re keeping the signal steady and visible from afar. All are holding bags of paper, plastic or of other material. Some carry two or three. All brows are tilted inward while all teeth remain clenched. The bags hold the words, the bindings, and the covers which feed the fire. Inside are words of worlds written once by MR., REV., PROF., DR., and others. They all spoke of rainbows, a golden path or a green city and other such places like Q. But Q has never been found, only talked about. Families broke like porcelain; lives have been taken by others hands like candy, in search of Q. The grass has been combed, the snow sifted, the sand replaced and the water filled. The word is finally seeping out. The word that causes the fire. Such texts are no longer printed. No one will carry them, no one will buy them. There is no market. Instead, the shelves of decaying bookstores, clothing stores and restaurants owned by mother and pop are being filled with the text of others who found dissatisfaction of the search early on. Their words are beginning to replace the sides of trains and subways, are being painted across billboards and brick walls, re-engraved upon statues and tombs. The crowds move silently closer and closer. The fire chants their words.
A young man trips on a crack in the sidewalk while watching the crowd move into the distance while on his way home. A neon glow flickers upon the clouds. A small dog pees on a trash can which a passed-out body lays nearby. Televisions are off. Shades are being pulled in curiosity. Human touch is becoming stagnant in its familiarity. A woman is crying in the back of an apartment complex, two stories high. She is alone. Her partner has left, bought in, believed the full-page ad on page 3 of the Times. He left her to the overly bright bulb formed upon her kitchen ceiling to constantly expose the rotten objects of reminders. It lies in the warm hum between the refrigerator and the wall, saccharin images of the past, smoke and glass. She stops her whimpering to the sound of voices outside her door. She rushes to it, places her wet cheek upon the four or five layers of mauve and is still. Her right hand firmly pressed against the door. Her eyes close. Footsteps.
“…my second step out of bed this morning I fell down….I slipped on the wet, bathroom floor…”
Sigh. Eyes are blurry then clear. Blurry, clear. Glasses. It’s a couple in the hall. One finds the key and stick in door number 122(123?) Their prize is another dark room like the rest. Their tongues are green from spirits. They sway with the floor and fall to the ground. Moments later their howls can be heard throughout. Moths fail to fly. Paint ages with the seconds. The smooth sidewalk and the cracked concrete resist a reaction. Everything is uninhibited. A slow, consistent oil spill begins to darken the sky. The clouds now look grey and the air is algid. Eyes and lips foretell of rain but it never comes. It remains that way stuck in transition with unsure footing…hesitant, or maybe just a tease.
“No…
Come on baby…”
“No, no…
Just once?”
No, no, no…
Please?”
“No”
A candle is lit, the electricity is cut. Windows are opened. A cigarette exhales.
An old lady is putting on makeup without the use of a mirror or unnatural light. The overwhelming blue and red hues of her eye shadow and lipstick are smearing across the deep ripples of her sagging skin. It’s beautiful. She is beautiful. She is more beautiful than any one else’s body, laugh or smile, ink or sound at that moment.
Startled she suddenly stops at the sound of teenagers yelling out profanities. The old lady looks out her window down and smiles. It falls out and splatters across the sidewalk seeping out into the street affecting anyone who nears the loose flesh smeared in makeup. The teens walk through it and it sticks to the soles of their shoes. They are leaving their names on road signs, bus stops and thin street shop glass in various mediums. Marker, paint or semen, their presence is undeniable and their strength is magnificent, even in its misdirection.
Bottles sit snug preparing to be emptied, while other related vices ready themselves for usage. Bugs that are uncomfortably still between thin, decaying walls will soon move with the sound of moans and screams exploding from mouths in moments of hate, anger, ecstasy, love and other things that don’t exist.
She calls him then hangs up. She quickly calls again. She wants to tell him that she misses him, but she is…. is…ready for this again? Does he feel? The same?
A loud folk song spits out her stereo. The sky shrinks and expands at the last sigh of daylight.
“Hello?”
“Hey”
A young man gets up from the seat by his window.

Content

Content.
This blog needs more of it. Now that I am aware of at least 4 people who read this blog I guess I should start putting more stuff up here. Its not like I don't have stuff to post, it is more a lack of real satisfaction with what I have written. Alot of what I have written is of course in the form of an essay for school. Many of these essays I am proud of but would like to expand on and perfect. Something which I was not able to fully do in the face of a deadline.
Deadlines.
Something I am use to writing for the leftist school publication (which we just won a local award for. weird.) However, this summer I dont have deadlines. So I am striving to really perfect some things I have written. For when they are finished, they will possibly be, beyond just newspaper I write for, published.
Published.
I have a fear of posting my creative writing online. Therefore, I will only publish creative writing on my blog that has already, previously been published. If you would like to read more of my creative writing then email me and I will send it to you. This fear is from people stealing what I wrote. Not that it is amazing or something....but what if it is.
Is.
Writer, journalist, grad school for creative writing. All the above I have concluded in the last week are my...dare I say...passion. Still, unlike many of those who surround me, I will refuse to call myself a writer for the time being.
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Now here is an article/essay I have been working on. I really want to work on combining culture, arts, etc and contemporary politics and social situations of our world. I would like to expand this more with quotes and/or comparison to other war films. Maybe not though. Enjoy.
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Going Beyond War: The lessons of Kanal and Das Boot

There is no question that war is hell. This seems to be becoming even more apparent as the situation in Iraq continues to fall apart and the daily tally of people killed continues to rise. Recently, I re-watched two war films; Kanal and Das Boot, and it occurred to me the strikingly applicable nature of these two films to our current situation in Iraq. Both films present that war leaves little room for humanistic statements on the worth of the individual or any philosophizing over morality and ethics. Furthermore, each film displays the dehumanizing affect of war through its treatment of those involved as mere pawns in a greater game. Through its anti-heroic stories, the very realistic and devastating consequences of warfare are revealed and serve as a reminder of how atrocious war can be.
The films focus both focus on a small group of individuals and display their struggle to survive as they are forced through the most extreme situations ultimately to no avail. At the bitter, ironic conclusions of these films, we are left to question the purpose of what these characters have just endured. These films testify that amongst the heroic stories of combat, there are an equal number of stories of warfare ending in no heroes and no valiant victory. Ultimately, we are left with a group of young, dead soldiers whose simple desires and wishes have been cut off for a sometimes vague and seemingly purposeless aim.
Despite both these films being over 20 years old (Kanal over 30), they seem to make stronger statements about intricate aspects of war that many other war films seemingly lack. In comparison to other war films such as The Bridge Over the River Kwai or even the more contemporary The Thin Red Line; these films succeed in breaking down the dualistic paradigm of definitive protagonists and antagonists. Unlike most war narratives, Kanal and Das Boot through an attention to the grim nuisances of armed conflict, create stories based on the plight of the individual soldier and succeed in creating a different dialectic of war that argues for the preservation of the ultimate human gift; life.
In an interview accompanying the DVD of Kanal, the Polish director of the film Andrzej Wajda stated,
“I think that the strength of Kanal lies in the fact that it is limited to this certain group of characters and pointing out that they died.”
Wajda plainly reveals the simplicity that Kanal is about the horrors of war and does not allow for any heroic or victorious themes. Furthermore, the film quickly reveals that its aim is not politically or historically based. Rather, Kanal plainly reveals the reality of the final hours of the characters and displays the extremities they had to endure in a very personal and intimate way. Kanal recognizes the participants of the Polish uprising, but in no way glorifies the situation. This is where Kanal is most affective.
From the very beginning of Kanal we are told to watch these characters closely for this is the last hours of their lives. In the same scene we are revealed that this group of individuals is very common people with no lofty aspirations. They simply want to live; something their Nazi oppressors are trying to prevent. Thus they are cast into the roles of soldiers and forced to endure the most extreme of situations. As we watch them descend into the sewers as a last ditch effort for survival, the obvious physical analogy to “hell” is revealed. But what evil or action have these individuals taken to be cast into this abyss? Kanal leaves us with no such explanation but continues to focus on the slow demise of their last hours.
Evidently in war such reasoning does not exist. Thus, Kanal concludes with no victory or success achieved and no point or explanation given. Conclusively, it only reveals the realities of the devastation that war can cause and that bravery can ultimately lead to nowhere. Through its refusal to name a hero or reveal any hint of hopefulness for the future, Kanal ultimately becomes a film that manifests into a blaring anti-war statement that holds strong even today in the face of the Iraqi conflict.
While in Kanal the soldiers were fighting for liberation of their city and country, Das Boot displays a group of men fighting on the side of Nazi Germany. However, it is quick to display that hardly any of the men support nor are necessarily members of the Nazi party. This facet of Das Boot creates an interesting element to the narrative that further strengthens its themes and seems only further applicable in today’s situation.
While these men may fight under the jagged black curves of the Nazi swastika and thus technically fight in support of Hitler, we can still view this film and sympathize with these men without any moralistic or political dilemma. These men are soldiers who choose this position and were assigned to the submarine. Their position is first and foremost a job to them and comes before any socio-political agenda. We bear witness to the captain openly criticizing Hitler. Another scene depicts a home sick sailor writing letters to his French lover. These contrasts allow Das Boot to reveal the strange complexities of war and the individuals that participate in it with glaring relevance to the current Iraqi conflict.
One of the most essential elements of Das Boot, is its ability to display the sailors as ordinary human beings taking part in a global conflict. The American troops of today’s Iraqi conflict are no different than the World War 2 Nazi sailor depicted in Das Boot. Whether fighting under the pretense of fascism or democracy, these individuals are individuals fulfilling their duty to being a solider.
With each passing frame of Das Boot, it becomes increasingly more apparent that the higher military regime that gives their orders holds their lives with little value. The individual does not matter. War becomes Us vs. Them and the assigned mission must be achieved at any cost. The fact that these men are given orders by a political body they don’t necessarily support makes the struggle throughout the film seem even more absurd and further displays the situation as truly tragic.
The conclusion of the film only further highlights the absurdity of the situation. The shockingly realistic and anti-heroic scene that Das Boot closes with causes war to seem wholly inexplicable. Ultimately, the film is a grim depiction of warfare with a perceptivity that allows its themes to go beyond that of a specifically German experience, but of an experience that has and must be endured by those individuals on both sides of the conflict.
Das Boot speaks for the individual participators who serve as pawns to help carry out the work of war. Through focusing on humanistic elements of these individuals, the film reveals the blurred lines between the enemy and the ally.
Upon their conclusion, neither of these two films provide condolence or any elucidation on their tragic outcomes. The viewer is left questioning the purpose of such struggle and as the final credits finish one is left asking who is to blame. No answer is given. Rather, Kanal and Das Boot break down and rule out all our preconceptions and ideologies of war and leave it up to us to recognize the only deduction that can be made; when the fingers start to point and accountability must be allocated, liability for the death toll on both sides of the conflict must be first attributed by those highest in command and not entirely on the individual soldiers. However, these films do not leave the soldier free from consequence. Opposed to the true offenders, who direct these individuals from afar and never have to bear witness to such ugly tribulations, the films display that a soldier’s punishment lies in the psychological weight they must bear for having actually experienced, witnessed and partaken in such atrocities. It is here that lies essence of these films; their ability to depict war through the humanistic and tragic outcome of the participating soldier while leaving it up to us at the final scene to take that last step towards its ultimate thesis.
Ultimately, Kanal and Das Boot are a grimly refreshing alternative to that tired old dualistic conflict of the hero and the villain, the good and the bad by depicting war as an event that results in none other than the death of individuals. No matter the politics or what side you choose to align yourself, the grim and unfortunate reality is that war equals death. These films are ultimately a great aide memoire of such unfortunate truths.