Impossible Mike
http://topologyoftheimpossible.com
refuse reality, live forever.
LAWN AS CRAFT NOTE
“Jean would feel obliged if the editor would tell her if lawn billiards can be played on a croquet lawn?
Is there a book of rules on lawn billiards?”
LAWN AS CRAFT NOTE
AFTER FRANCIS PONGE
Lawn, a piece of land, a delineated piece of land, specifically referring to grass, specifically grass in a residential setting, each individual house with it’s own lawn, each lawn the responsibility of the owner or occupier of the house.
A piece of land separated from other similar pieces of land by intangible lines, ‘property lines’, ‘county lines’, ‘state lines’ or by tangible lines: buildings, sidewalks, roads, curbs, fields…
Snake Plissken’s Ninth Postcard to the Daughter of an Ex-US President
Utopia,
(if you are not Utopia but just happen to have picked this up out of the sea, first, thanks for doing so, you’re being a responsible nautical citizen, because you never know if it will simply say HELP or DEAR DAD, RUM-RUNNERS KIDNAPPED ME AND I WOULD RATHER STAY WITH THEM THAN WITH YOU. AND, NO, IT ISN’T A “SEX THING.” LOVE, CASSIE P.S. I EXPECT TO KEEP RECEIVING MY ALLOWANCE, HOWEVER or I HAVE FOUND ATLANTIS AND SHOULD THE PORTAL REMAIN OPEN, IT WILL NOT ONLY BE AQUATIC ARCHITECTURE THAT WILL ARISE IN A SEETHING FOETOR BUT THE DEEP ONES THEMSELVES, BANISHED FROM SURFACE AND SIGHT BEFORE OUR TIME, AND ALREADY THE HIDEOUS, THROATY CALL OF Y’HA-NTHLEI BOOMS GURGLING FROM THE LEAGUES BELOW, I BEG OF YOU, DESTROY THE ELDER TRIDENT, DESTROY IT NOW, CAST IT INTO FIRE, OR IT WILL BE TOO LATE FOR US ALL BECAUSE THEY WILL WANT TO INTERMARRY AND HAVE KIDS AND THINGS WILL GET REALLY FISHY AND TERRIBLE, I’M NOT BEING RACIST, I’M JUST SAYING LOOK AT INNSMOUTH, THE ECONOMY NEVER RECOVERED, FIRST THEY TOOK ALL THE JOBS AND THEN THEY MOVED BACK TO THE SEA AND LEFT THOSE BUSINESSES HIGH AND DRY, AND WHO WAS LEFT TO CLEAN UP THE MESS, I’M JUST SAYING YOU KNOW WHAT THOSE PEOPLE ARE LIKE, I MEAN YOU KNOW and second you have no business reading this, prithee give it to its intended reader and keep your dripping nose out of the business of two distanced hearts)
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THE GENERATIONS OF AMERICA
These are the generations of America.
Sirhan Sirhan shot Robert F. Kennedy. And Ethel M. Kennedy shot Judith Birnbaum. And Judith Birnbaum shot Elizabeth Bochnak. And Elizabeth Bochnak shot Andrew Witwer. And Andrew Witwer shot John Burlingham. And John Burlingham shot Edward R. Darlington. And Edward R. Darlington shot Valerie Gerry. And Valerie Gerry shot Olga Giddy. And Olga Giddy shot Rita Goldstein. And Rita Goldstein shot Bob Monterola. And Bob Monterola shot Barbara H. Nicolosi. And Barbara H. Nicolosi shot Geraldine Carro. And Geraldine Carro shot Jeanne Voltz. And Jeanne Voltz shot Joseph P. Steiner. And Joseph P. Steiner shot Donald Van Dyke. And Donald Van Dyke shot Anne M. Schumacher. And Anne M. Schumacher shot Ralph K. Smith. And Ralph K. Smith shot Laurence J. Whitmore. And Laurence J. Whitmore shot Virginia B. Adams. And Virginia B. Adams shot Lynn Young. And Lynn Young shot Lucille Beachy. And Lucille Beachy shot John J. Concannon. And John J. Concannon shot Ainslie Dinwiddie. And Ainslie Dinwiddie shot Dianne Zimmerman. And Dianne Zimmerman shot Gerson Zelman. And Gerson Zelman shot Paula C. Dubroff. And Paula C. Dubroff shot Ebbe Ebbeson. And Ebbe Ebbeson shot Constance Wiley. And Constance Wiley shot Milton Unger. And Milton Unger shot Kenneth Sarvis. And Kenneth Sarvis shot Ruth Ross. And Ruth Ross shot August Muggenthaler. And August Muggenthaler shot Phyllis Malamud. And Phyllis Malamud shot Josh Eppinger III. And Josh Eppinger III shot Kermit Lanser. And Kermit Lanser shot Lester Bernstein. And Lester Bernstein shot Frank Trippett. And Frank Trippett shot Wade Greene. And Wade Greene shot Kenneth Auchincloss. And Kenneth Auchincloss shot Bruce Porter. And Bruce Porter shot John Lake. And John Lake shot John Mitchell. And John Mitchell shot Kenneth L. Woodward. And Kenneth L. Woodward shot Lee Smith. And Lee Smith shot Arthur Cooper. READ MORE >
SPECTRUM HUNTER
Discover a collection of haunted media, a benevolent tribe of new wave witches, a goth teenager with real magic powers, and much more!…When TC’s older brother Tyler goes missing, TC and Rotten Robbie set out on an adventure to find him. The trail leads them deep into the core of the uncanny Spectrum Hunter cult where they encounter bizarre rituals, puzzles, illusions, and a pantheon of adversaries. Inhabiting deserted malls, the Spectrum Hunters erect strange sound stages that form a treacherous labyrinth. Surveillance cameras document their unusual habits and the subsequent videos are sold in clandestine locations. But is it just effects? Or are the Spectrum Hunters playing for keeps?
Mutants
2 13 12
Peace be upon Allah
Peace be upon two rams gliding the sunset
Peace be upon music and peace
Peace be upon fires, may peace be upon him
Peace be upon brittle dark antelopes
Peace be upon the ranging palisade
Peace be upon calibration
Peace be upon whirring, and soft mantles
Let peace happen as a slander
Peace be upon cryptic vibrations, peace undulate through chunked hearts of mazes and flow through
Peace be upon hemorrhages and racked tall lands
Peace be upon fostering and the mental
Peace be upon stone harvest
Peace be upon magazine
Peace be upon mutation assiduity
Peace be upon fostering, and the stellar ovum climes
Peace be upon sepaled letters gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous Peace be upon clever little hearts and the king’s feast and his many supplicants
standing by like bright shields and the unbearable wilderness
Peace be upon the wooly mammouth, his stead and likeness
Peace be upon methamphetamine, storm and groat nape
Peace be upon the living chalk and the eternal turtle and the joining together of turtles in peace
Peace be upon the waist-high in wheat
Peace be upon sectioned unknown lavish tidings
Peace be upon Hercules, forgotten
Peace be upon the curtain hanging from the arch of the viaduct
Peace be upon the startling desirous buried foot, let peace
rain down upon him in great sludge rivers traveling under morning fresh mists
Peace be upon turtles, large and small
When I was young I kept small turtles,
I watched the turtles set themselves on rocks
I gave the turtles a lamp, and water, and small fragments of food
I cleaned the tank and stirred the water and fostered moisture
I watched over the turtles and by watching over them cared for them
There were two turtles that were sisters
Let peace rope out like a gooey schlong
Let peace be upon time, as it never happened and ineluctable equationing
Peace be upon calmness in the bodies’ dead faces
Peace be upon villages that surface and erode in
the ash hallway
Peace be upon fretted blood geysers
Peace be upon the shoulders menaced by the still and tedious mountains
Peace be upon sharpened up
peace be upon selections and selecting things and deselecting and the good warmth of laundry
The turtles were capable and I was capable
The turtles, free on the lawn humping across slivers of chalk
Thinking of the grass as world
Peace be upon the bell mint and the timeliness of the bell tone
That stupid, opulent selfish tone of the bell the struggle for pearls
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THE RULES
- Read more, write more, submit less
- Buy other people’s books (seriously, do this)
- Make books with people you admire
- Never comment on the internet (just stop)
- Don’t read blogs that piss you off (just stop)
- Avoid Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr
- Work on craft (it’s okay)
- Review books written by people you don’t know (challenge is healthy)
- Let someone know when they’ve written something you like
- Care more
Three Reasons I Envy Novelists
i’m not a writer. i make paintings instead. i’m perfectly happy making paintings – and i’m not a particularly jealous person – but since this is a literary blog, i thought i’d talk about a few things i like about books that don’t translate to paintings…
1. books involve big time commitments. on a few occasions, i’ve been the creepy guy in the art museum who won’t stop looking at a certain object. it usually takes about 90 seconds of oggling before i become self-conscious. by the two-minute-mark, my neck hurts, my friends are wandering off and i suspect that the security guard in the corner is quietly resenting my presence.
by contrast, books take HUGE amounts of my time. even short ones. i’ve recently begun listening to audiobooks, and they make this aspect of reading hilariously literal. wanna listen to middlemarch by george eliot? it takes thirty one hours and thirty seven minutes! nearly two days of my life are needed to apprehend its contents, let alone comprehend them.
i think there’s an inevitable intimacy that comes out of this. i have to trust a book more than a painting. there are people in my life that i genuinely care about who i wouldn’t want to listen to for thirty one hours and thirty seven minutes. books are like long-term relationships.
some paintings are like long-term relationships, but most are like quickies or unwanted advances. if someone looked at one of my paintings for a day in a half and decided the experience was worth the effort, i’d either marry them or bake them a pie or file a restraining order. READ MORE >
Hope you had fun at the circle jerk vomit competition, please don’t tell me about it
Here’s what I was preoccupied with while the city of Chicago suffered [last month].
1. Bonanno
“The ‘alternative’ ideal of a life based on the art of ‘getting by’ is also disappearing. Small-scale handicrafts, little self-produced undertakings, the street selling of objects, the necklaces… Infinite human tragedies have unrolled in dingy, airless shops over the past twenty years. Much really revolutionary strength has been trapped in illusions that required not a normal amount of work, but super-exploitation, all the greater because it was tied to the individual’s will to keep things going and show that it was possible to do without the factory. Now, with the restructuring of capital and the new conditions resulting from it, we can see how this ‘alternative’ model is exactly what is being suggested at an institutional level to get through this moment. As always, they see the way the wind is blowing. Other potentially revolutionary forces are now shutting themselves up in electronic laboratories and burdening themselves with work in dark, stuffy little premises, demonstrating that capital has won over them yet again.”
– Alfredo M. Bonanno, Let’s Destroy Work, Let’s Destroy the Economy ( available for free here )
An Arab Melancholia
An Arab Melancholia
by Abdellah Taïa
Semiotext(e), March 2012
141 Pages / $14.95 Buy from MIT Press or Amazon
In consideration of the memoir, or autobiographical non-fiction, It could be said that I take issue with the genre. Generally. As a mode of writing, the market tends to be overrun by a multitude of examples of the dominant narrative—that of the straight white man—and when the Other breaks into the limelight of that best-sellers table at your local Barnes & Noble, it’s generally within the context of a very approachable, almost white-washed context. Books for the middle-class to buy and read and convince themselves that they know about the world. I realize this might sound unduly harsh, but my experience has lead to the building of this experience, whether it’s fair to the publishing world as a whole or not.
I think that Semiotext(e) demonstrates an awareness of the shortcomings associated with the overarching title of “memoir”—instead of using the term in any of their press materials for Taïa’s book, the term “autobiographical novel” is used. This is an important semantic justification, in that it removes the book from the context of the zeitgeist that it would immediately find itself outside of.
But perhaps form follows function, as Taïa himself is a gay Morrocan writing explicitly about his experiences. Not only is he doing this, he also seems to be the first “openly gay autobiographical writer published in Morroco.” This is honest writing from a marginalized position.
In her article, “Experimentalism, Why?,” Camille Roy offers the suggestion that ‘experimental’ writing, being inherently marginalized, is a perfect mode of writing for the marginalized writer to explore. Taïa’s prose is ostensibly straight-forward—he eschews linearity, sure, piecing his narrative together by presenting fragments of the past out of order—but the language itself displays characters (people) in conflict, events, dialog, psychological insight. And there is, in this case, nothing problematic about that.
The novel begins by invoking Taïa’s childhood, and importantly, offers an incident which immediately removes Taïa, as the first-person narrator, from the conext of the ‘victim,’ particularly vis-a-vis his homosexuality. Considering that the rest of the book addresses, ostensibly, a break-up that marks Taïa far more than he’d like, this is a wise textual move. It refuses the reader the opportunity to develop a sentimental empathy; we cannot pity Taïa because we know he is strong—his sadness is a considered sadness, a larger issue than simply the immediate frustration encountered when facing the reality that YOU love someone who does not love YOU back. This is a symptomatic melancholia, the vague opportunism of the world when it encounters someone (our narrator, Taïa), who stays stubbornly romantic.
The tableau offered to launch the book offers an almost ecstastic holiness, a self-considered realization, a contra-monde mode of being decided early-on in youth—an ecstasy interrupted only by death. A death of the self, both literally and metaphorically.
Death haunts the book, or perhaps just that unknown that we call death when no other language seems adequate. An accidental electrocution, a wavering plane, the crushed spirit. Taïa pulls through all of these paroxysms with a renewed will, a hope, a decisive intent. Perhaps this is not the best narrative to inject into middle-America’s current “It Gets Better” campaign/obsession (problematic in its own right). But this reality is what the book leaves with its readers; an insistence that through everything there is always something else that follows. It’s neither a hesitant optimism nor a beaten-down acceptance, a nihilism; it’s something else, something more human. The weight of the world cannot be taken on as the Sisyphean boulder, but rather we have to just forget about the world and make sure we’re moving forward.
2 Comments
March 29th, 2012 / 6:59 pm
March 29th, 2012 / 6:59 pm
“CASTRATION IN THE CHURCH AS A THEATER OF CRUELTY”
I understand the necessity of addressing the issue of gender imbalance in the publishing industry–I understand that this is something that isn’t being talked about enough and needs to be talked about more, but part of me always wants to insist that the entire program that is feeding this dichotomy is where the real problem is. Positing the issue of statistical counts of biological Male vs. Female bodies in the publishing industry is excluding any outliers to this constructed binary, the opposition of Male to Female bodies inherently erasing any room for discussion of the gray area. That which lies between, or somewhere on a spectrum outside of this opposition, is completely eradicated.
Of course, statistical analysis of anything, where numbers reduce actualities and items must be rounded down or up because we as humans understand that .4 of a person doesn’t mean anything–this is a structural analysis that always seems to miss the forest for the trees. Even within the realm of women-bodied authored writing, there is (often) an insistent phallocentric pathos that leads the narrative, generally within the construct of heterosexual relationships (the penetrative function of the penis is ostensibly what we all actually mean when we use the term “patriarchy”). If we want this overwrought homogeneity of patriarchal rule to end we cannot simply count on the binary of female-bodied versus male-bodied authors divorced from their content to be the deciding factor that we focus on. This changes nothing. The function of phallocentrism immediately ignores any sort of feminist thought, immediately assuming the role of the prick as presence and the vagina as void/absence (though we must consider the fact that Kathy Acker is one of the few people I am aware of who was able to subvert the dominant paradigm while writing what is arguably phallocentric sex).
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