ay ay ay

I can't stand it! I love you all so maach!

7/20/08

Gojitmal

Back in like 2000 Zoe recommended this Korean movie to me, "Lies" it was called. I picked it up one night while visiting my mom. I spent most of the film staring in a sort of intrigued, tickled and horrified trance, coming-to every once in a while to lower the volume in flushed embarrassment. I remember having the impression that it was over the top - the passion too desperate, the sex scenes so long that they became exhausting - but I liked it, and have wanted to watch it again ever since.

Well, come to find out that right around the corner at Bloomsburg VideoStop, Gojitmal/Lies sits innocently on the shelf in the foreign section, where, because it has subtitles, no one would guess that it actually belongs in the pornography section. I scooped it right up, wondering if it had only been the fireworks of the early twenties that had made me like it before - would I find it distasteful, offensive, crass, pathetic? I remembered certain scenes that had given me a nervous, slightly shocked feeling, and I was pleased to discover that I didn't have any of that the second time around. Everything they did just seemed natural and full of tender passion and human experience. I think I understand the characters better than before, and maybe just having seen it before took some of the surprise out of it. Maybe you'd like to give it a try.

Let's Remove Our Clothes and Frolic Naked Among the Rocks

Yesterday we were scampering on the Morroccan granite and sitting in a saucer of milk; today I did wend my way out to the farthest marshes of the Kansas Road. You were right, Jophet - I was unprepared for the punch of Unity I would feel when the blue cottages of the Strawberry Patch came into view. I drove in and parked where I always had, in between the second and third cabins, got out and saw all around me exhausted bodies curled up together in bunks, sprawled in the grass strewn with empties, working out the kinks of "Dirty Old Town" or "Frauline", bringing a stack of plates and Sriratch out to the picnic tables, brushing their teeth at the spigot, giving/receiving piggy back rides to and from the lunch truck (Dame de tu lonche, mami!)retiring by 9pm, and etcetera.

A little farther up the road was the bathing stream where shimmery ghosts scrubbed themselves clean with pebbles and the greek olive oil soap was passed around until it finally came to rest in its Teddy Peanut Butter Jar.

I stopped for fuel at the Airline Diner and relieved them of their last whoopie pie (it was whipped creamy), and then I drove for five more hours back to Santa Clara. I stopped in on Frank and Paloma and we caught up for a bit. I told Frank what Jophet had said, about how some people in Cherryfield think that the Strawberry Patch housing is exploitative, and he shot back a lovely, familiar dismissive look as he noted that it was always better than where we were living for the rest of those years - "Running water right next to the house!" "Reliable stoves!" "A refridgerator!" "An outlet!" "Showers!" They loaded me up with fat blueberries and snap peas and sent me on my way back to Bloomsburg.

I heart carving spoons!

Jesse Ruocco, You are the Greatest!

Rosa & Len in Brooklyn

I love this picture.

Yesterday I was curled up on the floor in a fetal position listening to Asa read these words from a translation of the Yoga Spandakarika, the Song of the Sacred Tremor:

"How to be in harmony with the cosmos? It seems that certain preliminaries are indispensible: Rid yourself of all beliefs; leave metaphysics to the sectarians of the absurd; understand that hope is fear gone bad; confront reality directly; stop upholding the romantic dream of realization; forget sentimental neurosis; play with your own limits; look at your confusion; confront life without the bric-a-brac of the religious and the spiritual - without, for all that, becoming a narrow-minded materialist who would make a new God out of rationalism; dare to be alone; do not oppose Essence against reality; give yourself over to the pleasures of pure subjectivity; understand that everything is real; and finally, one day, know exhilarating silence. Can one say that such a person is a mystic? According to the Shaivites, yes. According to the Ch'an Masters, yes. According to the followers of Mahamudra, yes. In fact, all it takes is to say no to everything or to say yes to everything and to be an iconoclast who goes so far that he forgets the vehicle that brought him to this form of radical thinking. In short, it takes crazy wisdom."

Then Denise spoke about how being open is not just about collapsing into whatever painful situation that may arise, but also about developing the strength to be in that situation in a useful way. Listening to this stuff while performing various unprecedented arm balances made me feel like I am capable of anything.

This is sort of what the Utopalypse was like.

I discovered today that carving wood with a chisel and listening to it take shape as it splits along the grain is like reading the altheiometer. Working on my second spoon today, I decided to shape it by hand instead of with the band saw, (which is probably how you always do it, Jophet, right?) and I was all full of mental clarity and in communication with the wood. I felt like we were working together to create something, and that thing we were creating was what the wood was consensually becoming - it was very different than imposing my image on an inanimate object. What a good way to do it, much better than t'other.

Today, as Lenya was walking out of the door of the dance studio, I passed an elderly man who looked to be in his mid-eighties. Standing up straight, he would have been about five five, but he could not stand up straight. His back was hunched over and nearly horizontal, and his hips were turned to his right so both of his legs jutted out sharply. His pelvis also seemed to be tilted forward. He had white hair and a line of thick drool stretched down from his mouth by about seven inches. I could see the damp spots on his brown trousers where the saliva had broken and fell. In his left hand he carried a brown briefcase and his small steps carried him at a clip. I smiled at him as we passed and he looked up at me and gave me back a big bright smile. When I looked back a few moments later, I saw him slip into Mariela's Argentine Tango Room. Lenya was listening to my walkman and heard one of those pretty, breathy feminine voices that are so popular of late sing the line, "In my Present there is so much Past."
In other news, the garden is doing well. First lettuces, chives, basil, kale, radishes, and sungolds have been very soothing to Lenya's lucky heart. Don Bachardy came over for a spot of Arak this evening and he said the best, most true thing: "Everything I value in my life has come as a result of my queerness." I could have just kissed him for that.

There was one in Claremont, one on Sheep-Davis Road, one in White River Junction. Whenever there was welding to be done on the homestead in Santa Clara, we would get our gas tanks from Merriam Graves. When I was a midwife, I would ford the Merrimack River on my pony to get my oxygen tanks from Merriam Graves. Well, today at work the delivery lady was wearing a new uniform. Did it say the names of her company's founders? Did it seem to have any connection to place or history? No. The uniform she wore was printed with the bristly and awkward non-word "AirGas". Air-Gas?
"What happened to Merriam Graves?" I asked. "We were bought out," she replied. "Is "AirGas" a big company?" "Yes. Its Youge. They're all over the country, nationwide, you know. In fact, I don't even know where they are from...its...regional. They have all kinds of regional offices."

Raise up your head

Back in Bloomsburg, I would have to stand here for ten minutes staring at the screen in order to come up with something to say besides: love, friendship, family, trust, permutations, permeation, permanence, permanent markers, life is long.

If you go to songza.com and search for "The Finches The Road," you will hear a good song. I recommend the fourth selection from the top.

Now the party is started, and the ink in the skin on Ralu's back reads,

"What a piece of work is a man
How noble in reason
How infinite in faculties
In form and moving
how express and admirable
In action how like an angel
In apprehension how like a god
The beauty of the world
the paragon of animals
And yet, to me, what is
this quintessence of dust?
Man delights not me."

Rahel, the Unicorn of the Utopalypse, purifies nuclear waste with the touch of her horn. She is a powerful steed drawing the plough through the Earth so that every mouth can be fed; the pale horse of Death.

There is also a Siren and a Shaman Mechanic in our colony.

Utopalips

Many of us are relaxing our minds into this secret tide - I flew out of T.F. Green for my once-yearly return to Moldova and come to find out that the theme of Ralu's pre-Bastille Day Party is "The Utopalypse" (!) where we will all use Universal 500 model hand-grain mills, and at times the best footwear will be platform boots with crampons. Special prizes will be awarded to those who can withstand waterboarding for the most minutes and moustache trimming will be performed with an elegant scissor from Cronenberglandia. And then, when I calmed my mind and excused myself from the group work-day for a moment, this message came from the Dust:

"as the economy crumbles further under the weight of stacked illusions, we're going
to have to keep finding more creative ways to adapt. that might make us more
interdependent, more connected to one another. we're going to survive by unsettling
one another's lives a little more."

I shared it with the other buzzing bees and we have decided to make a banner of it for the party.