Excerpts & Interpolations

Even Before I Am Capable of Pronouncing the Words

2008-04-01T18:26:00.013-04:00

"Simply as a result of having defined myself in relation to some man as his son, and of my having defined him as my father, something happens which, however intangible it may appear to be, weighs just as heavily as the carnal procreation, which unites us. And, practically speaking, within the human order, it weighs even more heavily. Because, even before I am capable of pronouncing the words father and son, and even if he is gaga and can no longer pronounce these words, the entire human system around us already defines us, with all the impending consequences that that brings with it, as father and son." 1

Image: http://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/2007/12/31/personal-space-invaders-the-top-science-and-tech-privacy-threats-of-2007/ (accessed: 1 April 2008).

1 Jacques Lacan, trans., John Forrester, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book 1: Freud’s Papers on Technique 1953–1954 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1991), 156.

- CB

The Peony Flower and the Cherry Blossom

2007-09-27T18:31:00.000-04:00

I have seen the story told on a still day the two blooms took notice of their vicinity and approximation. “How very much like the sun we are,” said the Peony. “White as the pure dawn that hints over the line of the earth, when all colors become one, before dissolving over the firmament.” The Cherry Blossom thought and nodded in approval and hastened to say, “Ours is the fleeting flourish. As we share this moment of revel, there will also be the waltz of the crane, the graceful tremble of it’s wings against the wood grained air, climbing for…” the Blossom paused. The Blossom began again, “…This is the way of the long drum, the slow drone of the flute coupled with swift soft strand plucks. As the wind blows we will wilt.” All things having been spoken, the Flower fell at once to meet the stone path of the road. The sound was as the lion roars. Not long after, the Blossom found itself caught in the protracted wind, found as the crane, drawn onto the séances that exist in the elapse of time.

The beauty swirled around your blond hair
Like spring snow.

Image: http://ilovemilkandcookies.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html (accessed: 27 September 2007)

-Dru Parrish

Twilight & Rockets

2007-06-29T11:27:00.000-04:00

Autumn glows of daylight illuminate the barrel vault sky stitching a red orange bloom to the visible atmosphere. It fashions the canopy backdrop for a bending sea of iron Goliaths splintering the surface of man to search for grandeurs greater and higher than their wanton comprehension. I cannot but help how the flights of my boyhood delights are now paraded in front of me, as though they were mine, my own carnival, personal and private and for my disclosure alone. We have new methods now, old ideas revitalized in newer models of industry filling the heavens of earth with the dame’s violet, seeking to scatter confines to the winds as they power themselves upward with the volatile science of gasoline, binding my corporeal to follow the mental into to a masses of carbon-fire dreams.

Image: http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth213/Leonardo_garrard.html (accessed: 29 June 2007)

- Dru Parrish

Wiggle Room

2007-06-22T10:57:00.000-04:00

It isn't a surprise that political campaigns thrive on spectacle. Where you're from, what you've done, and your stance on issues alienate people; talking too much about any of these leave a candidate open to an attack which could take the rest of the campaign to recover from. Only sensationalism has the ability to bring people together without the danger of a counter-attack. Something tells me that's why we're seeing more of it earlier.

With the actual election still more than a year away, there is not much incentive for candidates to do too much in the way of policy. An attack could come from the opposition or from a colleague, and all attacks made in a primary race are used by the opposition later on if they think a weakness was discovered. But how does one create hype without substance? Hillary Clinton gives a perfect example with her latest campaign ad.

There isn't much right now that is more popular than The Sopranos, and the more popular the better since people will automatically identify with it. Her ad spoofs the ending scene of the television show, changing the plot instead to revolve around the choice of her campaign song. In a stroke of brilliance, Ms. Clinton is able to get people talking, and the foundation of their talk, if they can get past the association between the show they like and the candidate they are supposed to like, will be the song. People will be wondering now. What is that song? Will it really be Smashmouth? They'll go to the website or ask their friends. They'll look at other candidates and judge their songs in comparison to Ms. Clinton's. A whole month of herself in the spotlight, wreathed in spectacle, surrounded by cultural references loaded with charm.

Image: http://www.nssk.no/2005/Bergen-05.html (accessed: 21 June 2007)

- Vincent Saint-Simon

Things Put In Their Proper Places

2007-06-17T23:30:00.001-04:00

Now-that-I-think-about-it: I don’t know (these hand-me-down hands performing [as in an actor on a stage] operations [as in (if I knew how) to operate heavy machinery] of [or, let’s say, upon the fabric of] the everyday on yet another of Father’s Days) how much longer I can take this. I wish (actually... would you like) to compare Oedipal complexes(?) and that you were here with me now, friend. I’d tell you all about how just a few weeks ago I asked my father (now retired) to read (out-loud [so I could record his voice]) Marx for the very first time—"Chapter 6: The Sale and Purchase of Labour-Power." We could listen together (I like how you laugh). I’d tell you all about how I used to find him in the dark at the kitchen table before work "meditatin’" over scars that stretched to the tips of his stiff fingers—rotating (as in returning from war) everyday upon waking. Out of politeness I’d ask you about your father. Together we’d nod and smile, drink our coffee, and close our eyes slowly—worlds apart. As I'd imagine (as I do now) I never gave a thought to how the grass was always cut like it was in the backyard.

Image: http://keystonepallet.com/ (accessed: 17 June 2007)

- CB

Does the Puppet Ever Become a Real Boy?

2007-06-16T16:47:00.000-04:00

"The continuation of an article on Page D5 of Wednesday's Sports section about legal problems that University of Florida football players have faced this year incorrectly included a player who did not face such problems. Gators kicker Jonathan Phillips has not faced any legal issues."1

"An obituary on Monday about the philosopher Richard Rorty misidentified the source of the quotation, “There is no basis for deciding what counts as knowledge and truth other than what one’s peers will let one get away with in the open exchange of claims, counterclaims and reasons.” It was from Charles Guignon and David R. Hiley in the introduction to the book “Richard Rorty,” which they edited; it was not from Mr. Rorty."2

"A spokesperson for the London Police Force did not tell the Star that it appears that a female police inspector was the shooter in a murder-suicide in London, Ont., as reported in a June 8 article. London police are continuing to investigate the incident to determine the sequence of events leading to the deaths."3

"Test scores: An article in Section A on June 6 about rising test scores and the No Child Left Behind law incorrectly attributed the following statement: "These gains fall well short of the law's goal of getting all students performing at grade level or better by 2014." This analysis was the reporter's, not that of researchers from the Center on Education Policy."4

"In a June 4 story and a Sept. 28, 2005, story about members of Congress indicted since 1980, The Associated Press incorrectly identified the grand jury that indicted Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, D-Texas, in 1993 and early 1994. She was indicted by a Travis County, Texas, grand jury, not a federal grand jury. The same error was included in a Sept. 28, 2005, story slugged BC-DeLay Indictment-Glance."5

Image: http://seis.natsci.csulb.edu/bperry/Mass%20Wasting/RockAvalancheDiagramFallS.GIF (accessed: 16 June 2007)
1http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-corrections,0,501484.htmlstory (accessed: 16 June 2007)
2http://www.nytimes.com/ref/pageoneplus/corrections.html (accessed: 16 June 2007)
3http://www.thestar.com/Corrections/article/223480 (accessed: 16 June 2007)
4http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/corrections/?track=leftnav-corrections (accessed: 16 June 2007)
5http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1153AP_Congressman_Probe_Glance_CORRECTIVE.html (accessed: 16 June 2007)

- Vincent Saint-Simon

Those Parts Forgotten

2007-04-22T19:39:00.001-04:00

It was atop a CTA platform, (I was late, like Spring was) as I waited for a train, that the city disappeared. Forever, in every direction, there was only the the sun and the invariable landscape of the Midwest. The same sun, that a lifetime ago tanned an American arm, faded its tattoo, and triggered a pair of squinting eyes—in Con Thien, in Da Nang, in Phu Bia—today, triggers a squint in my own eyes.

What’s it called when dead skin cells, like words, quietly fall from our bodies to become the dust on top of things—plastic bags caught in trees, all the spit on sidewalks? When my father opens his mouth to speak, like most people his age, it seems as if it's always the same stories that come out from it, like a life composed as if by reoccurrence. Such reoccurrence, or over-determination (as in dream analysis), such stories time and again, when seen through their negative, should always gesture towards the unspoken, the forgotten, the repressed. For it's only in the silent times between stories that you can hear it: the cry in the negative. And, further still, perhaps it's only through such repetition of the story and the negatives that rest between each telling that one can pay homage to a life that’s lived those parts forgotten and give voice to the trauma of the everyday, of the quotidian—a trauma that muffles the cry of, clings to, and conceals each of our official lives.

Image: http://plts.luthersem.edu/cli/crosscultural/CCMissionexp/pictures_china.asp?pf=y (accessed: 21 April 2007)

- CB

One Morning in March

2007-04-09T18:06:00.000-04:00

It was as if they cared only for the immediate universe of the breakfast room, speaking loudly to one another about the hardships of maintaining the inner workings of an ancient city rotting from the inside out. In a steady and old voice, “It becomes a problem of poles and wattage, and transformers at the tops of poles that you can see through to their bolts. Forget about getting the weight of two men up there anymore.” His voice rang with the regret and depression of a cursed lover. He sounded betrayed and abandoned by a city decaying in front of his eyes. A weathered hand brushed his mustache clean as his eyes turn downward and away. He sits for a moment before letting a little chuckle to himself to ease the spirits of his table. It reminds me of fantasy grandfathers and images of elephants from boyhood. They leave to lumber into a truck like sleeping giants. Going off into the distances of Goodbye.

Image: http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/gedney/photographs/MI/MI05/MI0559-72dpi.jpeg (accessed: 9 April 2007)

- Dru Parrish

Stinky Old Fire Insurance

2007-04-08T08:27:00.000-04:00

This morning I found a small gray suitcase in somebody’s trash near my house. It contained: letters negotiating the painting of a house (dated 1954), vehicle registration forms, old paper smell, formal typewritten letters on onion-skin paper, craggy 1950s man handwriting, loopy 1950s woman handwriting, and a massive stack of insurance policies. I mined the envelopes for stamps but I feel funny about keeping the paperwork.

Mr. Glen Richardson bought a used 1948 Crosley (a car) on July 15, 1950 for $150 even. I am a voyeur, I am stealing information, I am touching handwriting, making up personal details, this couple is probably dead and somebody trashed their papers and I am pillaging it all for my stamp collection, for my history lesson, for the card-catalog of stories I keep in my brain.

And I can’t help but think that these pieces of paper are as interesting as any novel, any fancy film, all the blogs, billboards, operas, sitcoms, myspace pages, podcasts and poems I could ever filter my life through.

You know, my friends Lakshmi and Eric just had a baby and he’s beautiful. Last night at a too-loud party, a cop spit the word “boy” at another friend of mine (a grown man) while enforcing the quiet. The crocuses are blooming, the next-door neighbor tries to watch me when I pee, I wish New Orleans was in the news more, I wish I didn’t have to go to work tomorrow, I wish I could have met Glen and Vera Richardson, Madison, WI circa 1953.

Listen, I can’t keep these documents, but I can’t trash them either. Maybe I’ll put them back on the street for somebody else to find. Maybe (if you don’t feel too weird about it) you can email your mailing address to this blog and I’d love to send you a package of found paper. And then I won’t be a writer and you won’t be a reader and we can just be two people mooning romantic over Glen and Vera’s stinky old fire insurance.

Image: http://info.detnews.com/joyrides/mywheels.cfm?id=39 (accessed: 25 March 2007)

- Nicole Rainey

Four Parts of an Hour

2007-03-13T20:13:00.000-04:00

As a first time submission: I am somewhere in hesitation. I am as unsure of myself as I am as unsure that anyone is reading this and is currently putting any care into these damn symbols. But I suppose there is reason enough to pursue any action regardless of consequential banality. It is with this pretense that I proceed.

As a confession: It has been some time since I have felt useful. My interaction with those around me is sort of, almost, superficially cursory. Forget the ‘sort of’ and the ‘almost’, it is superficial and cursory. There is no challenge save for the mundane motor skills I am required to perform in exchange for money… that and the daily tests of my patience by monotony. I cannot seem to get my head out of my hands. My coffee goes cold too quickly. What is more depressing is that I can’t help that my brain, like any other muscle, is atrophying from misuse. It is becoming harder and harder to retain my thoughts or develop them. Am I to become the clumsy beast destroying what I touch? Can I hold nothing sacred?

As a prayer: I am to set foot into the graces of light. I kneel before an idol whose glory is to ask forgiveness. Going through the motions leads to the moment where I am not pretending and all my pleas become prayers not merely the gesture. I ask amnesty in exchange for sins.

As a thought: All words seem to be ether. I have been agonizing over the right words for so long that I scarcely know how to begin again. I think now to those gentle walks from yesterday when I became lost and thought and found that I had walked 17 city blocks out of my way within the depths of thought and words and now sitting at a table staring at a man talking to his friends. Does he stress for the same sense of understanding that I do, or are the exploits of repeated vulgarity somehow more descriptive to his audience? How does he ignore a grief so immense that it becomes a castrophany to even the deaf?

Image: http://kleas.typepad.com/kleas/2006/09/index.html (accessed: 13 March 2007)

- Dru Parrish

The Japanese Mailman

2007-03-11T20:24:00.002-04:00

HAPPENING NOW: the Japanese mailman is delivering his mail. Remember how he used to stop and quote for us, in Japanese, ancient poetry, and, how he would hold on always, until just be for he left us, to its translation?

[dialogue poem]

If the thunder rolls for a while
And the sky is clouded, bringing rain,
Then you will stay beside me.

Even when no thunder sounds
And no rain falls, if you but ask me,
Then I will stay beside you.1

We moved about a year ago, not courting intuition but with a definite plan: she was to get a job and I was to pursue the only thing I was good at: my struggle with a medium. It’s the nature of all forms of expression I guess, a struggle with a medium. A ringing telephone, an unread e-mail, a new city, a mystery and what it anticipates in a field of expectations. Then she says something like, “I love Chicago,” on a walk we took down a narrow street between buildings that reminded me of something out of an Al Pacino movie. It was late on a Sunday morning, turning over only to see her eyes still closed (she was awake), smelling like the bath that held her for so long the night before, saying, “I can hear seagulls" (in a city nowhere near the ocean) I'm asking, "what do they say?" As if I could've understood even if she told me. She said, "...things." She should've said: "To you my dear, the message is its form, can only ever be its form, and that will have to be its singular beauty." She never told me, but fell back asleep, leaving me only with something like, "I love Chicago," and our Japanese mailman.

Image: http://www.aztriad.com/dl081405.html (accessed: 11 March 2007)
1From the Hitomaro Collection, Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-nineteenth Century. Compiled and Edited by Donald Keene. New York: Grove Press, Inc. 1955. p 40.

- CB

One Man's Legacy

2007-03-11T19:07:00.000-04:00

Image: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38303&page=8 (accessed: 27 February 2007)

"Some comrades in the army have become arrogant and high-handed in their behavior towards the soldiers, the people, the government and the Party, always blaming the comrades doing local work but never themselves, always seeing their own achievements but never their own shortcomings, and always welcoming flattery but never criticism.... the army must endeavor to eradicate these faults."1

"Mao died full of self-pity that he didn't make it. ... But he never spared a thought for the 70 million deaths that his pursuit had cost the Chinese people."2

"Mao's face is the most reproduced next to Jesus Christ."3

"WolfHound: I dont know why everyone is bashing china. But yea Mao was terrible from my eyes. If Mao didn't have a cultural revoultion nor a terrible economy plan. China would be a lot richer today. To me it seems Mao harmed China's economic growth greatly. Deng Xiaoping was much better he turned China around and built the building for a succesful chinese economy. But then again im not chinese nor have I ever visited china. But I did do a lot of research on this for my business project."4

"A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another."5

1http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch24.htm (accessed: 27 February 2007)
2http://www.moreorless.au.com/killers/mao.html (accessed: 27 February 2007)
3http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/opinions/ci_5318051 (accessed: 27 February 2007)
4http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=392118 (accessed: 27 February 2007)
5http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch02.htm (accessed: 27 February 2007)

- Vincent Saint-Simon

Twister

2007-03-07T11:51:00.000-05:00

Windswept yesterday I smoked a cigarette outside while mere hundreds of miles away funnel clouds touched down violently on our earth. I'm told one of them rushed full-steam toward a high school and vacuumed the whole thing before ascending into heaven with about three-fourths of the freshmen class and a smattering from the other three. The newspapers this morning were all big headlines, tears, frustration and pain, fathers and sisters, and one man looking toward the sky with pain and awe written straight over his face.

I'm told that parents often never recover from the death of their children, and for some I'm sure that the events yesterday took the petty concerns over money and materials up to heaven just as surely as it smashed their children back to the ground with enough force to throw them through trees or stables. I wonder what they're depressed about. Half of those children would have ended up divorced. One fourth would end up in jail or war, one of three of the women would be sexually assaulted or raped, most would never leave their hometown, and none would make a significant contribution to our culture. Lives of pain and poverty in a country that cares for neither, and a wholly unbiased force mercifully intervened, taking the bodies and leaving for the families only their lasting potential, a radiant force that now will never be shattered.

There are optimists in this world who empathize with the weeping many who lost children yesterday, who believe that sometimes potential fulfills itself during life, that those who show talent follow through to change the course of history. Come forward and show yourselves. What lives do those optimists live? Eventually did you have to sacrifice your energies to causes less worthy of your time, or were you simply born without much talent?

Image: http://www.whitehousehistory.org/04/subs_pph/PresidentDetail.aspx?ID=38&imageID=151 (accessed: 6 March 2007)

- Vincent Saint-Simon

(Untitled)

2007-02-25T13:06:00.000-05:00

Therefore, everyman, look to that last end that is thy death and the dust that gripeth on every man that is born of woman for as he came naked forth from his mother's womb so naked shall he wend him at the last for to go as he came.1

My brother shoots heroin, he dies by the sword—
I will help him; I know not how.
My sister kneels weeping, raped by the Dogs—
She is starving; I know not where.
Six years back, I was promised a sign—
A savior; I know not what. A car bomb, a bedpan, a bullet, a boil,
A national crisis, a desperate cry.
Sunken eyes branded blossom petals of red.
A tulip of fire will bring life to an end—
It is coming; I know not when.

Image: http://www.life.uiuc.edu/edtech/entomology_slides/pages/31236-poison-powder-cloud.htm (accessed: 24 February 2007)
1James Joyce, Ulysses. New York: Vintage Books, 1986. p 316.

- Vincent Saint-Simon

A Ticket Ripped in Half

2007-02-25T12:38:00.000-05:00

An orange sun is rolling across the sky like a severed head...1

In the United Arab Emirates I met a man, a refugee, from Afghanistan. Fleeing his native country for the peace and poor wages of the UAE he told me the secret of how he escaped certain death—he left the rest of his family so no one would immediately realize he was gone. With a couple days head start he was able to make the border and then kept going, twisting through Saudi Arabia to the land of the Bedouins. Just as a ticket is ripped in half when one goes to a movie, so his ticket to freedom was also destroyed. His children were executed, his wife raped and shot for the conspiracy; he now lives alone.

Image: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2372.htm (accessed: 24 February 2007)
1Isaac Babel, Collected Stories. New York: Penguin Books, 1994. p 91.

- Vincent Saint-Simon

Like Dumb Objects

2007-02-25T10:49:00.002-05:00

A word in another’s discourse. A sign that can be read as quickly as any you’ll find driving down a street. An always already accounted for symbolic gesture suspended somewhere between a so-called “relational aesthetic” and the information super highway. The kind of gesture made as if to say, “touch me please only if you don’t mean it.” Like that moment in March of 2003: just a trading of polite remarks across a lush and well-set dinner table. And today, or rather last night (I wish you could’ve been there), they were talking “revolution” as if it were a problem to be solved before the bell rings. As if people haven’t, in most cases, died in revolution. As if death were not an option or possible or something. Is it the difference between a wave, a handshake, and a punch in the face? And, I can see how it is now, within this text generation, that we’re forced into believing more than ever before. Because people don’t have to believe they’re starving, tired, or that they’ve just been punched in the face. And, perhaps all this fuss over active—isms and art, not the impoverishment of meaning but its excess, and the “gesture” finally revealed as that which actually maintains a (safe) distance, should, if nothing else, spotlight the vacuous space that exists today between the mind and the ground that it treads upon. Words: like breath that we watch when spoken dissolving into the night of existence. Like Beckett’s mouth. Like Not I. Like, “Imagine… the position she was in.”1 A position, to such an extent that her mouth, that all mouths, are now to be left alone, while still propelling words out into the world like dumb objects or hand grenades.

Image: http://www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/2006/05/ (accessed: 3 February 2007)
1Samuel Beckett, Not I, (1972). http://www.ubu.com/film/beckett.html (accessed: 19 February 2007)

- CB

Your Space

2007-02-24T12:28:00.002-05:00

I can remember a time before we realized that we were disconnected, before the world was flat, when pictures were worth a thousand words, yet some things were still left unsaid. But, today your pics, like the art that I’m surrounded by, instead, owe a thousand explanations, each one more boring than the last. You’re simultaneously the cause and the symptom, the center of your own attention, deficit, and disorder. But, today you’re not boring because you’re uninteresting and nobody cares, but rather because you’re always interesting and everybody cares. But, interesting like how we’re all interested in what time it is. And, it’s precisely this kind of pandering normality that renders your pics obscene, not the disgusting activities they capture. The camera to your face could easily be a gun in your hand. Again, you’re made up as the one armed reflexive photographic subject, deformed by an itchy desire to see yourself through the voyeuristic eye of the anonymous beholder. Reaching out: as if the stretch of your arm could distance the record of the event from reality of the moment, as if to negate any responsibility, as if to offer, to the delight of the anonymous other, both your body and the camera that captures its image, implying that you too are complicit and share in the lustrous pleasure that the other enjoys.

Image:http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=63045201 (accessed: 3 February 2007)

- CB

Self-Hearing Ears

2007-02-24T12:16:00.001-05:00

Entering the dark room I found her already asleep—pause—and the silence passed through me like a tremor. There are many who lay down with out a her, or a him, or another. Thinking this I felt the opposite of alone. Her warm body, her warm life, flooded my mind with somewhere elses and other times. But, at the edge of consciousness I became aware of a faint tap, of the blood running through my ear against a pillow (like a whisper)—tap, tap, tap. At that moment I was a self-hearing ear tickled by the sublime terror that comes only with the re-cognition of an eventual death. Musing over just how many self-hearing ears there were, and were not, I felt the opposite of together. And I thought, “at this precise moment in history, where ever a mind’s concern could be, it would be no where if not consumed by the notion of complete human extinction.” Plato makes the case that the impetus to create art, like procreation itself, is a desperate move on our part towards immortality. Art (or any cultural object), like one’s offspring, should be understood as an attempt to extend one’s self, one’s Being, past life’s terminal point. But, this logic presupposes a human posterity. And, it begs the question, what is a universe without the presence of a self-hearing ear, without the presence of a human posterity? What is the nature of a consciously aware mind that’s without any hope of extension? And, is it not now that we should most fathom the nature of this future subject—a future subject that may have effectively denied itself the possibility of a distant other—a distant other required so that there be meaning to present endeavors, to this kind of extension?

Image: http://www.biosbcc.net/ocean/AAcontinent.htm (accessed: 21 February 2007)

- CB

Rhinos

2007-02-24T11:59:00.001-05:00

The White Rhinoceros or Square-lipped rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum) is one of the five species of rhinoceros that still exists and is one of the few megafauna species left. Behind the elephant, it is probably the most massive remaining land animal in the world, along with the Indian Rhinoceros, which is slightly larger. It is well known for its wide mouth used for grazing and for being the most social of all rhino species. The White Rhino is the most common of all rhinos and consists of two subspecies, with the northern subspecies being rarer than the southern. As of 2005, South Africa has the most Southern White Rhino (Ceratotherium simum simum). Their population is about 14,538 (according to recent WWF findings), making them the most abundant subspecies of rhino in the world. Wild-caught southern whites will readily breed in captivity given appropriate amounts of space and food, as well as the presence of other female rhinos of breeding age. For instance, 91 calves have been born at the San Diego Wild Animal Park since 1972. However, for reasons that are not currently understood, the rate of reproduction is extremely low among captive-born southern white females. The Northern White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni), formerly found in several countries in East and Central Africa south of the Sahara, is considered Critically Endangered. Their wild population has been reduced from about 500 in the 1970s to only about four today.1

Image: http://7art-screensavers.com/screenshots/wild-animals/rhino.jpg (accessed: 3 February 2007)
1All information taken directly from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rhinoceros (accessed: 22 February 2007)

- CB

Antimatter

2007-02-24T11:10:00.001-05:00

Where does it come from? What kind of a negativity is it that we should find it rooted so deep within side of us? Is it the reverberating effect from some forever ago cosmic accident, some violation of cosmic symmetry, that has come to create in all things an imbalance? Or, is it best understood as a cavity that consumes its host from the inside, moved by some carnal desire, and fed by the excessive consumption that was its initial cause. Perhaps still, this negativity is of our own design, where certain parts have forever been purposely extracted from our positive selves, then embedded within the world, so that we may find among its many things, objects staring back at us? And, either way, is it not precisely when we confront this deep seeded negativity, this gap, this antimatter that we find hidden deep in side of us, that we are moved, provoked, thrown into the frantic activity of searching for this or that thing that would for us, if we should be so lucky, point the way back to the place where we came from, restoring balance, symmetry, and order among our many shelves?

Image: http://meisterplanet.com/journal/2005/11/ (accessed: 3 February 2007)

- CB

Nothin'

2007-02-23T12:33:00.001-05:00

“Hello.” “Hey Curt, where ya been.” “I’ve been busy dad. I was gonna call you.” “Oh, okay.” “So what’s goin’ on?” “Well, I went over to Best and guess what I got?” “What (laughing)?” “I got Clint Eastwood’s new war picture: Flags.” “Oh?” “And, I bought these other movies too: Heroes of War: Front Line Combat, Pacific Battle Front: Heroes of Iwo Jima, and Vietnam: War in the Jungle. But, they ain’t movies, ya know, they come in four CDs.” “Oh, so they’re documentaries?” “Yeah.” “I’d watch those.” “Yeah, they’re really good. It tells you all about it, in the Vietnam one, ya know, from all the way when the French was in it and everything, Kennedy, and Cambodia. Boy, was it bloody, some bad shit. Did you know that in 1968 we lost a thousand troops a month?! Oh God. Now that was some bad shit. But, I enjoy it, it’s interesting. Seeing all those guys though... makes you swallow... it’s sad.” “I know Dad. It’s good though, I mean, now that they’ve finally given you disability and you can rest, now that you’re retired and home all day, you can finally do what you want. I think this interest in military history is good; you need to keep your mind occupied. If you keep watching these films and enjoy ‘em, there’re tons of books written on the subject; you should go with mom to the library and get some.” “Yeah, I’ve learned a lot. I’m really glad I bought ‘em. Because, ya know, when I went to Vietnam, ya know, they just sent you over there, and then, if you came back, you got spit on and called a baby killer. They didn’t tell you nothin’, well, they told ya a little bit, but nothin’ like what they can tell ya now. And well, I just thought, I wanted to know the whole thing. So I’m really glad I got ‘em. It’s real interesting.”

Image: http://www.labs.net/dawghouse/ (accessed: 3 February 2007)

- CB

Suburban Poetry

2007-02-23T12:08:00.001-05:00

Clumsily thumbing through old e-mails, authored by even older friends, it seems as if details always make for the best poetry. Growing up, surrounded, we were without details; it’s a wonder we saw anything at all. To escape the pleasantries of vinyl siding and the impressions left by the frantic pacing of our “going no where” on living room floors, we would come together, weekly, at Tiffany’s, a local late night diner, the kind sprinkled throughout the Midwest, to share, into the early mornings of the days before class, stories of books that (we knew) we had never read nor would ever write. Long-winded spectacles of pretense and denial augmented by the automatic “I don’t know” at the end of each sentence. Our problem was that we were always trying to see, through all the spilled drinks and billowing ashtrays, the bigger picture—of a human endeavor that we were just not a part of. The brand of suburban poetry we authored only required that one ignored the grammar and spell check on one’s personal computer and would inevitably find its death in a violent mix of power chords and Peavey amplifiers. We had then the kind of ambition born of community colleges and cheap anthologies—the kind we thought movements were made of; ignorance it seems is sometimes the best kind of idealism. And, today I’ll sometimes catch myself looking over my shoulder, longing for those simpler times. It was always easier to think in places where everyone else was not.

Image: http://coloradospringsnewhomebuilders.com/gallery3.htm (accessed: 3 February 2007)

- CB

A Third Point

2007-02-22T11:56:00.001-05:00

Standing in line, we were somewhere near the front, but still closer to the middle. On the coldest night of the year we were part of something that stretched two blocks and around the corner. Waiting in line between strangers we were okay with talking to, we danced strangely, all of us, by instinct, in a desperate attempt to keep our toes. I’ve always secretly enjoyed inclement weather. When the temperature of the wind makes everyone miserable, when everyone cares, like how we all care what time it is. When an entire city is unified by its shared suffering, as we were that night, unified by our shared goal to see a film for the first time. As an hour passed and our line compacted I thought of something I had read: “Today more than ever, the lesson of Marguerite Duras’s novels is pertinent: the way—the only way—to have an intense and fulfilling personal (sexual) relationship is not for a couple to look into each other’s eyes, forgetting about the world around them, but, while holding hands, to look together outside, at a third point (the Cause for which both are fighting, to which both are committed).”1 And, maybe our cause that night was no more than a film screening, but, there is something in talking about the weather.

Image: http://www.cynical-c.com/archives/2005_10.html (accessed: 3 February 2007)
1Slavoj Zizek, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, (2003). p 38.

- CB

Halftime Shows

2007-02-21T11:26:00.001-05:00

I returned home just in time to watch it but I was late for dinner. Lucky though, my mother microwaved for me some leftovers. Around the TV that filled the warm space of our suburban living room, I joined them where everybody, and the chairs that held us, pointed at everything except each other; it wasn’t much of a room. In sitcoms the TV that characters “watch” is most always the camera that captures their play at watching, like in life, the TV that stairs back at us is that thing we see through to watch ourselves acting. What new obscenity did they hope to exhibit in this most recent episode of theatrical violence? Was it that shot, when we were dripping with the other’s blood, and as if to cover our shame, we brought our hands to our face, but only so we could watch as the cum mixed with the blood, creating the stuff dreams are made of? Teenagers practicing in front of mirrors, stripping before tiny digital cameras, video taping their most recent crimes, was it not enough that we performed these global sex acts explicitly, that we should be privileged to watch them live, effectively denying the history of our position and the eventual future it would lead to? If anything, these images should emphasize the performative aspect of war, like Super Bowl halftime shows, or, how rock n’ roll has nothing to do with music. But, there wasn’t much else on, what else were we going to watch together, when every channel was broadcasting the same thing—live; how could we turn away? Surrounded by family, full stomachs, and the safety of objects, we were brought together that night by our shared (tele)vision, but we were spending the real time alone.

Image: http://galleries.aebn.net/beta3/index.cfm/fa/gallery/genre/bigdicks/clip/0065/refid/aebn-005232/tid/9/layout/mgp_layout2.cfm (accessed: 3 February 2007)

- CB

Boomerang

2007-02-21T11:17:00.001-05:00

“Yes, I can hear my echo, and, huh, the words are coming back on top of me. Huh, the words are spilling out of my head and then returning into my ear. It, huh, puts a dis—tance between the w o r d s and their apprehension or their comprehension. The words coming back seem slow. They don’t seem to have the same forcefulness as when... I speak them. I think it’s also... slowing me down. I think that it makes my thinking slower. I have a double take on my self. I am once removed from myself. I am thinking—and hearing—and filling up—a vocal void. I find that I have trouble making connections between thoughts. I think that the words forming in my mind are somewhat detached from my normal thinking process. I have the feeling that I am not where I am. I feel that this place is removed from reality. All though it is a reality already removed from the normal reality. The words keep tumbling out because I want to hear them. I want to hear my own words poring back in on top of me...”1

Image: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/tv/cnns_pipeline_to_reair_911_coverage_as_it_unfolded_42719.asp (accessed: 3 February 2007)
1Nancy Holt, as she talks and hears her own words electronically delayed. Richard Serra, Boomerang (1974). http://www.ubu.com/film/serra.html (accessed: 21 February 2007)

- CB