The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of paraheliotropic trees

demoscene — european coders who have been creating beautiful scenes for the past twenty five years on their computers — large festivals of sexually frustrated boys sitting in arenas staring at computer screens — weed passed around, and beer — a few girls here and there, eventually passing out sexual favors — a few homosexuals, doing the same — mostly sexless, sublimated, nervous and angry —

— different languages — bloodshot eyes — computer screens dancing — someone is keeping time — someone is trying to figure out what to do — its a new europe — a new world — people are hungry — im not hungry — can i make this computer sing ? can i make it sing?

the late night insomniac madness | the light always on, glowing | screens | screens | what year is it? | how did I get here | are there channels in my mind like the empty wadis of Mars? | Dug deep by endless-pain and longing and suffering | where do dreams go when they die? | The Last Play of William Darcy — the play I’d never written — Kate and Darcy — Elizabeth Trueheart, Lovely and Wise — who will I be, what song will I play for you | David and the Nightingale, teaching songs to each other | Old Stern Midianite, with Fire in Your Belly | Pinchas lusting after Midianite Women | The JudeoChristian AllFather With Stern Judgment and Morality | Where now is the God Who Loves? Are we Serpent’s Seed or Adam’s? Old Mother Eve, she lived in her bonnet, eating her curds and whey | Put put Old Mutt | What I lack is control and formality — the old way of speaking — hooked on phonics worked for me — laughing at the dumb ones — but they are not dumb, just slow, just beautifully mercifully slow — staring across a table at the new girl who I’m about to fall in love with — I want to see her breasts — what are these what are these | Two second aphorisms | Thirty minute shortstories | Characters are not characters they are not real I could give them names like Tim Leary or Will Darcy or Ron McCrae or Steven Barry or Edna Millay or Soren Jorgenson but what do they mean they’re not real, they don’t have fathers and mothers and little half-remembered childhoods like I do like they do — you walk into Elsewhere and you go play a game, the game is called “I have that” it’s a memory game, but it’s sacred because it’s your memory | Oh stop the changes | I lying in bed, but it’s a different bed than my old bed, my poor old single twin side bed | I am not back there, in 2002, tripping my face off, thinking I’m a soul trapped in a troll, praying for another chance, to go back to the beginning — “May I return … to the beginning … ” lovely — a trip to New York City in 1994 — a walk through the tenement museum — I will be a writer I say — I will be a Supreme Court Justice, I say — the Constitution is a book – it is my book it is my holy book I love the law why do you love the law — Justice Justice Pursue it Pursue it Justice — Marian the Librarian — Blech a blech on both your houses — the endless dying — true dying — not dying — the living that feels like dying but isn’t dying — the horror — Chinese food for dinner in my apartment — rain — a cockroach — horror of horrors strange worms, small insects crawling — a forest , deep underbrush , where do we go where do we go five years since college I feel like I am nearing the end of a long journey — JImi was dead by now , I don’t want to be dead I want to go on and on and on and on and on and back to Europe and over to Asia and other places too — always a student — pay back my loans? How — -a book about Rasputin and the Dying Past? Could write it — yes — the decadence — and then write another book about Godless Lenin — Shadow Country and Seminole Wars and Andrew Jackson and the forgotten history of this great New World where our fathers bled and died and raped and pillaged — great ugly White Masters — black slaves — distrusted Jews — Oh my fathers, I remember you all, you wonderful Americans of These American Centuries — I will dance with you on you 300th birthday, America, and then I’ll bid adieu, Frenchwise, and spend my last few days in glowing neon late 21st century Paris, capital of the hip-avant-garde — the world moves on without me even now — tied together with fiberoptic skeins — who are the spiders crawling on the webs — Shelobs or Charlottes or something else, Nobodaddy or Somodaddy, Soma or Germ — oh great machine would I trade places with you and trade this mushy mess for ones and zeros ? we are all electrons, strange loops in spacetime, curving and deforming, reducible, yes reducible, to multivariarate differential equations — representations of change, they say, the name of my book, my book, is the Book of Changes. Loveliness loveliness loveliness mindless sex and wonderful sex and being held by a woman by a girl by a woman by a girl different woman unique and precious diamond as you are a diamond I give you a diamond and make my house with you on the hill — who shall who shall come with me, who shall stand with me — the death is subdued it has returned to the ocean it is now ground and I am the figure I no longer dramatize myself write myself into strange stories I am simply the narrator, the eyes, two eyes, stereoscopic yet still not avoiding the parallax problem James Joyce is dead — he said — James Joyce is dead — language you wonderful robe — language learns from me and I learn from language and God breathes his breath across the water and I breath back and there is something something something special unique eternal I am the only one reincarnation is death-denying a way of death-denying, heaven is the same and death-denying is life affirming and is therapy the answer maybe what’s wrong with me why can’t I enjoy myself this is no longer psychonaalysis this is a pyschotic break what happened to me staying up all night and tracing the skeins of causation in my own life, leading forward and backward to an evening in my childhood bed when reading a large oversized book (either thinks that go or Richard Scary or the Little Engine that Could) I closed the book on my penis which I assumed accounted for the slight angle I found in it during pubertus pubertus which I assumed would render me unable to have sex — I wonder how long I carried that with me that strange thought idea — everyone thinks that they’re broken — I thought I was broken — wonder why and how those strange feelings those strange hormones driving me crazy absolutely and utterly crazy and yet I am crazier now right, why the satisfaction or the frustration or what or what or what or what 1000 words have I painted you a picture, my guineas clink in my pocket as I amble my way down the cobblestones of Tortuga, searching for a ship to take me there — dark Tortuga — in the old days before the world changed — pirate freedom, they called it, the Free Cities — nothing left is free, all is Organized and Synchronized, where is the Great Wide Open Fields, the Great Endless Freedom of Possibility — Laws are fences — terrible fences — I hates it, I hates it, I hates it — I shall do nothing with this law degree, nothing with this law degree, nothing with this law degree it is not my path it is not my choice it is not my passion false passion gotta do something gotta do something I’m not convincing anyone urggha I sound disingenuous — what shall I do? what shall I do with it? I thought this was what I wanted

you’re young, you think you’ll have many chances, but then as you grow older (and this happens sooner than you think, I’m only twenty six), you realize you don’t have many chances, you only have a few, and if you miss them, you miss them.

These questions — these pretenses — these trying to be authentic, trying not to be a phony — this embarassing earnestness — what Kerouac talks about on the first few pages of The Subterraneans, when he talks about how he is hot, fumbling, lame, and nervous to the cool hipness of the hipcats he’s hanging with — this self-concious namedropping of authors where I use their last name — “you know, Kerouac” — pretentious pretentions as useful foils — elevated diction — words i’ve heard the elegant people say — do I deny it — do I pursue the scatalogical roughness — the dim prebiographical memory of potty-training in the kitchen of my childhood house, getting shit on me, and my mother maybe hitting me — “don’t talk about that, not in pleasant company” — or the endless trying masturbation — or the attempt to literize even that (literize, v. tr., 1) to make literary; 2) to make literal) — these Celine like dashes — there I go again — that’s ok, these are thought-droppings, there is no censorship here, no editor, just one word at a time — preparing for an interview — why I want to be a lawyer — I like things — I like expensive scotch and I need a new wardrobe and I want to sit home all day — what now what next what then — how do I prepare for the unpreparable — how long will I let this Anxiety dictate my thoughts and play as my muse? What is this? Am I writing again? Writing what? It goes nowhere – neither fiction nor nonfiction — every once in awhile I realize this output counts for shit and I go smoke a cigarette (rarely, I quit, now I’m just a ghost of myself) or describe what my shithole room looks like (Raskolnivkosky) What is this!!!???? Freud! Anziety ANZUS, remainder, two paths for the novel, what’s the different between madness, prophecy, and art? Am I pushing myself to these extremes, trying to break out of a chrsyalis before my wings wither away to gossamer and I’m trapped forever in the dusty undercanopy? Ferngully, the Last Rain Forest, sings, and Give Elmo A Break, Please — and and and and and and and and Winston Churchill baby — and who sings for the lonely and how literary do you want it and what quotes will you put on your yearbook page — boats against the current, or a word from Mr. Nixon about the special providence of special moments or maybe sweet earnest sentimental Adam Duritz who wants to be Bob Dylan and believes that maybe this year will be better than the last — you know once I took a train back from New York City after two years, no it was after New Years, New Years 2006, strange fake fictional science fictional date — all these dates are inherently unreal I will never believe it is real again — the strange feeling of waking up and thinking that Barack Obama is President-Elect, Soontobe, Soontobe, I gave him money first, in early early 2007, it also seems so strange, we’re moving faster now, we are, we’re moving faster now, we are, what is this art this strange art this some strange art I was telling a story I was telling a story about a train ride I was telling a story about a train ride back from New Years in 2006, on the first day of 2006, never to be seen again, boo hoo, like my uncle, like my grandfather, all the people I use to know are illusions … I was telling a story about a train ride — a girl sitting next to me, talking to an older gentleman, being very friendly and attractive and loving of the world and had I swallowed some pixie dust the night before, possibly, possibly, lost opportunity, a girl I was meant to see but didn’t (think maybe I didn’t, she was in Hoboken that night), anyway this one, different girl, says to the man across from her, she says “this is going to be the best year ever,” and it was, couple months later I lost my virginity (that’s right, how old do you think I am, how old do you think I was, actually, it was a very frightening experience at first but frankly I learned to like it alot the wonderful feeling of closeness), it was the best year ever, or maybe what she said was “this is going to be the best year yet” and that was true too, evne though I’d done many funfun things to get me to that place, to that train ride — now I’m here, living in New York City, and I won’t even go outside so I’m going to go outside and smoke a cigarette, won’t like it, just to remember what it was like, sure, and to feel with the smoke the inside of lungs and then I’ll come back and put myself to sleep and that will be the end of this day which was unproductive and cold and gray and sad and I spent it mostly indoors which saddens me too and I don’t know what I’m doing or why I’m doing it but I know I’m going to do something it’s going to start with this cigarette I’m going to go outside smoke the cigarette, think about the poisons contained within and think about my uncle (just my uncle, no need to complicate these things) and then I’ll come back in and distract myself with some form of television or another;

ground control to space control over and out roger roger

A couple years ago (three actually) (seems like forever, so many changes) I was on a business trip to Orlando, and was delayed by snow and had to fly back at night — it’s a three hour trip, Florida to Philadelphia, but I remember that the sky was clear the entire way back north, and I could look down, at the land below, and see the great strings of orange lights representing the cities and roads of the Great Eastern Seaboard — I remember flying over the Eastern shore of Maryland, and seeing the great cluster of light that was either Washington or Annapolis to my left — and then, flying low over the Altantic Ocean, passing the casinos and boardwarks of Atlantic City which I could see from the window — until I came back to my home, to Philadelphia. There I was. Waiting for the world to begin. Halfway through it.

Where a strange man turns losers into douchebags.

He has a strange lazy eye. Young, brilliant. A sadist and a masochist.

“Let’s go find models for wives …”

Carnival-go-round, a fake life, extras in suits handing us suitcases full of money, taking fake airplanes to fake countries, with the stagehands setting up the scenery as fake clouds fly beneath us, dancing around this set of paris, title card says “Five Years Later,” while makeup artists add wrinkles to our eyes, introduce us to our new co-star, an actress unspeakably beautiful who will be playing our wife — set up the hospital room, what a set, look at the special effects, here’s a little actor baby (secretly a twin getting switched in and out due to child labor laws) — go to the show, pretend to play guitar — get me more makeup, more wrinkles — funerals, life, real, pressing on all sides —

and one day you realize it wasn’t artifice, it was real, those places you went were real, the model girlfriend was a real human being, and the fake love you held was real, so sweetly real, and now its gone, and the wrinkles aren’t makeup they’re lines pressed into your skin that won’t iron out and the number of days you have left — well — less than 10,000 — now, less than 1000 — and was all this dancing worth it? Pirouettes on an ice covered lake in March — at least, you say, at least, there are fishes swimming underneath — your son smiles at you, surrounded by his strange new family — when did that happen? Love is what you want and need. Small comfort, maybe, but that’s the way it is.

Booth — the place I was born; when I was a small child, a young child, I knew that it was where I was from– and I returned there, only a few years later, to witness the dropping into the world of my sister Sarah. Booth. Oh, world of well-named things, where have you gone? Where these places were written in Capital Letters, Pregnant with Meaning, like my large round mother was — the wondrous playworld of children — the only hope — oh, to have a child, and to play with it in the afternoon, to take it for walks and to playgrounds — to teach it things — to spin it stories — to watch as it learns — oh, Booth, place of love, which loved me, and helped my momma bring me to this gardenworld — I was light as a feather then, small, small enough to sneak into the world — now I am large and ungainly, still a child in this young but aging man-body — Alexander ruled the world by now, a thought that made Caesar, now dead and dusty, weep — too heavy now, to go the way I came in, when I leave this world, I’ll have to leave my body down here, too heavy to float, not a little pippin anymore, no, no.

Subject + Predicate

I am.

He runs.

She touches him.

Julie lifts her head.

Julie, curls hanging down across her brow, lifts her head and looks at me.

Michael pushed open the door, ran swifty into the street to the yells of his master behind him, joined by several hundred others who were similarly moved by the historical nature of the events unfolding, and bellowed deep with the great unyielding joy of the new day.