Street Hassle on Brownies

from blog, Atoms From My Youth by Rhombos

Friday, March 26, 2010

Less elegance for the sake of fun.

Last week I tried pot brownies for the first time. Me and my fellow cosmonaut, henceforth referred to as Herman, always seem to come up with the worst ideas when we're exploring the unknown universe.
I really wasn't prepared for how intense the whole trip would be, perhaps it was also somewhat of a mistake to get slightly intoxicated while eating them. We, the collective term referring to myself, Herman and Herman's girlfriend, also ate the whole tray in a matter of minutes, completely disregarding the fact that it takes around an hour for them to take effect. No matter. The night was pretty wild and, as usual when I'm out of my mind, I suggested going to San Juan for a session of pool and walking about, Herman's girlfriend silent protest was simply going to her room and falling asleep. A random black guy in a junker car was stopped by the police in front of my friend's apartment, no surprise there, but it did throw us into a sort of paranoid frenzy, we tried our damnedest to remain as calm as possible as we made our way down to my car... right, second note to self: avoid driving right when the THC is exploding like a million fireworks in your head. Once we wormed our way inside I realized I had forgotten my media player at his apartment, there was an overbearing and all-encompassing need in me to show him Lou Reed's Street Hassle which at the moment felt like the greatest masterpiece man could ever muster. Heeding this primal call I rushed up to the 5th floor where his apartment is situated, a trek that felt like it lasted a lifetime with interminable staircases that seemed to keep angling wildly in all spatial directions. Media player recovered, I clumsily shut the door behind me and floated down the stairs, I was moving far too quickly- faster than I really intended to, I had no idea how long it took me to fly down the stairs, but the door was within reach after what seemed to be aeons. Never have I moved so quickly yet slowly at the same time. It can be said that the trip really began there, after what felt like an hour we found the song and proceeded to listen to it while I drove down the highway. Everything was soft and unhurried, the sea of floodlights before me sunk endlessly into the night, there was no corner of its dark profile without illumination, light bled everywhere and on everyone. The song's string arrangement made me feel like the night was interminable, nothing felt more real than the infinite length of a second then, I thought back to all of my calculus classes and how we learned the limits of a given moment by what is essentially rounding out and creating an artificial limit for it, no such mechanic existed for us. Somehow we made it to our proposed destination where a police blockade was waiting for us. Herman kept trying to convince me to tell the cops that it was fine and that I was just on my way to picking up my new imaginary sister from Ben & Jerry's, but I couldn't hack it, I was laughing too much, I had to laugh because I was so light and so was time and space, so tearfully untangled that I just couldn't control myself. The song had ended and I hadn't even noticed it, the chords still flying around my head, I decided to park elsewhere to avoid the police. As it would later turn out, we had parked 30 minutes away from our destination, but we didn't care, we were so fast not even light could catch up to us, but relativity plays a mean trick on our perceptive ability, the faster you go, the slower you feel, I truly believe we traveled at the speed of light that night. It only took a moment to drag us to a store where I was promptly removed because I argued with the shopkeeper about the price of his bottled water. In my defense, I will never be high enough to buy a bottle of water for $2.25. I found no problem with his decision except for the fact that he pointed out that I was living in ignorance- the nerve! "If only he knew the places I dare tread", I thought to myself, but quickly let it go, the music was fading and all I could hear was the thumping noise of nearby dive bars, and then we found ourselves in one. We met up with one of Herman's friends who was, in turn, playing pool with one of his own friends, a strange brightly colored purple man with long white hair and a little too much cheer for my tastes. I assumed he was famous, he carried himself like a writer, this prompted me to automatically greet him, I thought for sure I had met someone so far above my league that this had to be a momentous occasion! Herman did not seem amused. We exchanged noise for a few moments, I felt a sick knot forming in my stomach and Herman was quickly leaving the establishment, in a bright flash we bought some water and were rapidly walking back to my car. I was plunged into that interminable moment once again, I wondered how the water was even able to travel down my throat if we traveled at the speed of light and how I was able to retain the mass in my body at such speeds, my atoms were champions for a night. I could barely speak out loud, there was so much going on around me, the noise that surrounded us was a powerful vibration that eased even my vocal cords, everything was a slow whisper, but Herman could hear me no matter how far ahead he walked. We reached the car eventually and headed to his apartment, admittedly I don't really remember how we got there, but it felt somewhat scary because I had no idea how it was possible to have enough control to control a vehicle so alien to my body. We raced up the stairs to his apartment like a game, the walls were cheerful sunlight and the stairs an upward sloping gravel road, it was the workout of a lifetime and I'm pretty sure it dehydrated me to the point of exhaustion, but it felt like it was worth the time. Once inside I couldn't bear the weight of my breath and I fell on his couch, the next few moments were spent wrestling my conscience as the dark of the night closed in slowly and I dozed off without so much as a physical protest. Sleep was upon me finally, I could feel my muscles relaxing and soon enough, like a soldier ready for his execution, so too my consciousness laid itself to rest.
I can't wait to do it all over again.

In My Language- Autism

LVR's- "Inanimate Objects Treat Me Better"

Exploring conversation with inanimate objects and methods of quelling loneliness through machines.

Shot with a still camera in Venice Beach Cotel, Hostel March 24, 2010.
Machines that I interact with include the still camera, the fan, and the faucet.
Title quote by Tawd b. Dorenfeld.

Ghost-Riding the Whip

Ghost-riding, frequently used in the context of "ghost-riding the whip" (a "whip" being a vehicle) or simply ghostin', is when a person puts a vehicle's transmission in gear then exits the vehicle while it is still rolling to dance beside it or on the hood or roof.[1]

Ghost riding is an activity that has been practiced in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years during what are called sydeshows. The popularization of ghost riding the whip is a byproduct of the popularity of Bay Area music and hyphy culture in general. The term "ghost ride the whip" was given nationwide exposure in E-40's 2006 song "Tell Me When to Go".[2] Oakland rapper Mistah F.A.B.'s hit song "Ghost Ride It", further popularized the term due to the song's consistent playtime on radio and television stations throughout the United States. The song references actor Patrick Swayze, lead star in the 1990 film Ghost,[3] sparking internet references to ghost riding as "going (Patrick) Swayze". Finally, ghost riding is a minigame in the hip-hop-culture-centered video game Pimp My Ride.[4]

As with car surfing, ghost riding can be dangerous and has resulted in two known deaths in North America.[5] However, some websites claim that ghostriding is responsible for up to eight deaths in the United States.[6] Ghost riding is often featured in similarly risky urban sideshows, which also originated in Oakland, CA.[3]

Objectum-Sexuality: Married to the Eiffel Tower

Wallace Stevens' most memorable, most enviable "The the"

The Man on the Dump

Day creeps down. The moon is creeping up.
The sun is a corbeil of flowers the moon Blanche
Places there, a bouquet. Ho-ho ... The dump is full
Of images. Days pass like papers from a press.
The bouquets come here in the papers. So the sun,
And so the moon, both come, and the janitor’s poems
Of every day, the wrapper on the can of pears,
The cat in the paper-bag, the corset, the box
From Esthonia: the tiger chest, for tea.
The freshness of night has been fresh a long time.
The freshness of morning, the blowing of day, one says
That it puffs as Cornelius Nepos reads, it puffs
More than, less than or it puffs like this or that.
The green smacks in the eye, the dew in the green
Smacks like fresh water in a can, like the sea
On a cocoanut—how many men have copied dew
For buttons, how many women have covered themselves
With dew, dew dresses, stones and chains of dew, heads
Of the floweriest flowers dewed with the dewiest dew.
One grows to hate these things except on the dump.

Now, in the time of spring (azaleas, trilliums,
Myrtle, viburnums, daffodils, blue phlox),
Between that disgust and this, between the things
That are on the dump (azaleas and so on)
And those that will be (azaleas and so on),
One feels the purifying change. One rejects
The trash.

_______That’s the moment when the moon creeps up
To the bubbling of bassoons. That’s the time
One looks at the elephant-colorings of tires.
Everything is shed; and the moon comes up as the moon
(All its images are in the dump) and you see
As a man (not like an image of a man),
You see the moon rise in the empty sky.

One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
One beats and beats for that which one believes.
That’s what one wants to get near. Could it after all
Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear
To a crow’s voice? Did the nightingale torture the ear,
Pack the heart and scratch the mind? And does the ear
Solace itself in peevish birds? Is it peace,
Is it a philosopher’s honeymoon, one finds
On the dump? Is it to sit among mattresses of the dead,
Bottles, pots, shoes and grass and murmur aptest eve:
Is it to hear the blatter of grackles and say
Invisible priest; is it to eject, to pull
The day to pieces and cry stanza my stone?
Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.

Clemente's Images by Robert Creeley

1)

Sleeping birds, lead me,
soft birds, be me

inside this black room,
back of the white moon.

In the dark night
sight frightens me.


2)

Who is it nuzzles there
with furred, round headed stare?

Who, perched on the skin,
body's float, is holding on?

What other one stares still,
plays still, on and on?


3)

Stand upright, prehensile,
squat, determined,

small guardians of the painful
outside coming in --

in stuck in vials with needles,
bleeding life in, particular, heedless.


4)

Matrix of world
upon a turtle's broad back,

carried on like that,
eggs as pearls,

flesh and blood and bone
all borne along.


5)

I'll tell you what you want,
to say a word,

to know the letters in yourself,
a skin falls off,

a big eared head appears,
an eye and mouth.


6)

Under watery here,
under breath, under duress,

understand a pain
has threaded a needle with a little man --

gone fishing.
And fish appear.


7)

If small were big,
if then were now,

if here were there,
if find were found,

if mind were all there was,
would the animals still save us?


8)

A head was put
upon the shelf got took


by animal's hand and stuck
upon a vacant corpse

who, blurred, could nonetheless
not ever be the quietly standing bird it watched.


9)

Not lost,
not better or worse,

much must of necessity depend on resources,
the pipes and bags brought with us

inside, all the sacks
and how and to what they are or were attached.


10)

Everybody's child
walks the same winding road,

laughs and cries, dies.
That's "everybody's child,"

the one who's in between
the others who have come and gone.


11)

Turn as one will, the sky will always be
far up above the place he thinks to dream as earth.

There float the heavenly
archaic persons of primordial birth,

held in the scan of ancient serpent's tooth,
locked in the mind as when it first began.


12)

Inside I am the other of a self,
who feels a presence always close at hand,

one side or the other, knows another one
unlocks the door and quickly enters in.

Either as or, we live a common person.
Two is still one. It cannot live apart.


13)

Oh, weep for me --
all from whom life has stolen

hopes of a happiness stored
in gold's ubiquitous pattern,

in tinkle of commodious, enduring money,
else the bee's industry in hives of golden honey.


14)

He is safely put
in a container, head to foot,

and there, on his upper part, wears still
remnants of a life he lived at will --

but, lower down, he probes at that doubled sack
holds all his random virtues in a mindless fact.


15)

The forms wait, swan,
elephant, crab, rabbit, horse, monkey, cow,

squirrel and crocodile. From the one
sits in empty consciousness, all seemingly has come

and now it goes, to regather,
to tell another story to its patient mother.


16)

Reflection reforms, each man's a life,
makes its stumbling way from mother to wife --

cast as a gesture from ignorant flesh,
here writes in fumbling words to touch,

say, how can I be,
when she is all that was ever me?


17)

Around and in --
And up and down again,

and far and near --
and here and there,

in the middle is
a great round nothingness.


18)

Not metaphoric,
flesh is literal earth.

turns to dust
as all the body must,

becomes the ground
wherein the seed's passed on.


19)

Entries, each foot feels its own way,
echoes passage in persons,

holds the body upright,
the secret of thresholds, lintels,

opening body above it,
looks up, looks down, moves forward.


20)

Necessity, the mother of invention,
father of intention,

sister to brother to sister, to innumerable others,
all one as the time comes,

death's appointment,
in the echoing head, in the breaking heart.


21)

In self one's place defined,
in heart the other find.

In mind discover I,
in body find the sky.

Sleep in the dream as one,
wake to the others there found.


22)

Emptying out
each complicating part,

each little twist of mind inside,
each clenched fist,

each locked, particularizing thought,
forgotten, emptying out.


23)

What did it feel like
to be one at a time --

to be caught in a mind
in the body you'd found

in yourself alone --
in each other one?


24)

Broken hearts, a curious round of echoes --
and there behind them the old garden

with its faded, familiar flowers,
where all was seemingly laced together --

a trueness of true,
a blueness of blue.


25)

The truth is in a container
of no size or situation.

It has nothing
inside.

Worship --
Warship. Sail away.

and they call me Alice...

I've noticed that Svankmajer's Alice has received a significant amount of hits at YouTube now that Tim Burton's fiasco has been unleashed. May this make you rage or wonder. We're all mad here.



Alice has already been gracefully translated to film for a first time in 1903:




And let us not forget to mention one of the most controversial renditions of the beloved children's book, Alice in Wonderland: An X Rated Musical Fantasy.

Winsor Mccay- Drawn Animations 1911