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

Poor Polly Parallax in the Empty Cup Cafe

here I sit, thinks Miss Semele, Poor Polly Parallax, sitting at a round table in a coffee shop in a small city hanging off the edge of the North American continent, here I sit, thinks she, and I have been alone so long I need and love my loneliness, I wear it like an old sweatshirt, like this old sweatshirt i’m wearing now, and these people walk through those doors, line up for their coffeebean dripwater, and out they go again, none the wiser to my watching glancing –  

she takes a sip of her own coffeebean dripwater, and looks at a middle aged woman, with yellow but graying hair, and her young boychild, awkard and anxious next to her, fidgeting as his mother looks up at the great big board with her fifty different choices.

Who is that mother, and who is that son, and is it the son she expected she would? Does she look at him, sometimes, and remember the bulgebelly he oncewas? Is it not passing strange, and is that parturition, that severance, that fundamental bloody yucky popping-out life-creation, is it not the beginning of some passing for her?  Semele touched a hand to her own stomach, reaching underneath the sweatshirt and feeling the soft flesh beneath – how does a lover feel my skin – her normal little stomach, sometimes, like now, fatter than she would like – is that why the don’t like me, she often wonders, and wonders now – and thinks about fishes swimming in dark oceans, growing hands and feets, of silent strangeness, of a science-fiction movie and gross popping –

Semele watches the mother get her coffee, and tell her son to follow her out. Semele watches them get into the car and drive away. She thinks of her own mother, who she talked to a week ago, should talk to her more, but the silence of mother’s imagined unasked questions, of knowing stories of mother’s own youth, how she had many boyfriends, until Semele’s Daddy-O had swept old Mrs. Semele off her feet and planted her bellystuff with three strapping babydolls – O Mother, you stifle me with your wrinkled face, Semele wanly smiles, why do you have to look like me? But Semele smiles at her own lie, a secret smile — her mother was beautiful and Semele had been an ugly child and thus loved that now, in her lately twenties, was beginning to look a bit more like the Mrs. — there’s hope for me yet, Ma —

sat in a bookstore today, surrounded by commoditized thought (did not have the book I was looking for, on the social transformation of American medicine) writing on a yellow legal pad and reading Adbusters, craziness, unemployed now so I can be wellemployed later, what is with my discontents? I don’t want to work, I just want to bang on the drums all day – who would know that the future would be cheap Korean cars turned to classic rock radio stations, listening to Steely Dan ad nauseum as everything falls apart like so much crap — that’s the future, breakdown palace, with nanojunk and plastic packaging piling up in being shitmountains —- what is this craziness, what is this craziness, a Professor said to keep a journal to keep track of the changes (law school teaches you how to be an asshole, then you wake up forty years later and you don’t want to be an asshole any more) they are zionists, they are occupiers, the cool cold easy sleep of many dreams dream my way to life and then exhale like a popping bubble — institutionalized and occupied and concentrated in our systems of control, valuing restraint and order and smoothness — only way to live in this crowded vertical heteroglopopoly of a megacity — nine million in Lagos (maybe, could be more, could be twenty) — Dharavi City — Night City, across the bay from Tokio —- cities of the future, maglev train, the Forbidden City as omphalos, center of the world, spindle of necessity, with Europe on her left and America on her right, go, I go, to wash my feet in the Pacific Ocean and find the tranquil eastern zen, the happy little toasterpart, Matrix was a fable, both true and untrue, and can the system speak to itself, can the inmate-prisoners of Great Fat Mother Capitalo-Imperialism seize the instrumentalities of the system and twist it against it to its own ending — creative destruction, in the ruins of the old world, green grass sprouts, rose in a field surrounded by purple grass, these are images I have inherited from the Vast Culturemachine which is just one more factory, this one a factory of dreampops that serves and creates the Vast Mass Populace that is both Beginning and End — WHO DOES THE GRAIL SERVE? —- that is the question —- raise your voices and prase Jehovah, the Jehovah that Passed Away —- God is Dead, Nietzche cried and smiled, not knowing the Terrible Horribles unleashed by that cry —– do you everything think a great big meteor will just come on down and wipe the whole thing out? sometimes I pray for Apocalypse, I don’t want to be a FACTOR OF PRODUCTION, GI BILL, service to the country, followed by our country’s service to us — ask not, ask — The Brothers Kennedy, murdered by the Good Men in the Roman Forum, their bodies thrown into the Tiber until they drifted downstream, were caught in the nets of Ostian Fishermen, and ground up and mixed up into the pasty formula served to young babies hiccupping bubbles, gassy-gassy smiles —- lost, we are lost, one beautiful science fictional fable which we all touch and love — the island, who does the island serve — / dashes and breaks — i’m not learning civil procedure as I type word after word but I could type forever is this just this excercise, deep unbroken sleep, haven’t learned nothing about nothing, where am I where am I going what am I doing am I trying to run a law firm why for what who cares about the Fortune 1000 families are always rising and falling in America who said that Hawthorne snippet of Scorsese great artist he I can type a little faster than I can write in longhand, yes the typing moves almost as fast as my thoughts its a true record almsot but not really forcing myself to think forcing the thought to take form as language as words as this and that and I’ve lost th te thread it hurts my eye hurts I’m a real live existent sitting here typing this is the real real record of consciousness I could pass a turing test, mostly with this allergic bleary eye I think I think I am deny me other solipsist unimaginable sitting across a void a gap a chasm life is a narrow bridge – I disagree I refuse to beleive it life is boundless and boundless infinite and transcending – -he who has a son does not die — beauty and love we shall dedicate ourselves to its realization and truth — peacefulness blindsided by terror and spectacle we rushed in on the day of wrath I went looking to give blood but no, everyone was dead, nobody needed blood nobody ‘cept the normal dying — learned over the telephone that my uncle was dying and –pop– six months later DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD oh and it will happen to my mother and it will happen to my father and it will happen to my lover (and my other) and it will happen to me and in that danse do I really wish to outlast a single one or prefer to close my eyes with my heart unbroken the world in its beauty forever affixed I cannot stand that I will lose them I cannot stand that I will lose them what is wrong with me what is wrong with me —- —– fall back on literature? why is it so peculiar with you? HAMLET, HAMLET is my favorite play, STARES DEATH STRAIGHT IN THE FUCKING FACE, more than we can say for anyone, CAN TWO PEOPLE TOGETHER SIT AND STARE DEATH STRAIGHT IN THE FACE, happens everyday we say, THAT IS WHAT THIS IS ABOUT, THIS ENDLESS NIGHT-HORROR I am screaming I am screaming make it stop hold me hold me hold me hold me hold me 

C.S. Lewis describes the medieval view of the stars as magical places —

they are magical to us as well, in their awesome reality, but so magical that the human mind, fearing its irrelvance and fastly ending doom, necessarily shrinks away from it and builds up conceptual armor that insulates the human soul from the endless awesome emptiness, vastness and ancientness of the Universe as it is.

the remedy is simple — one clear night, go out and look at a single star — and consider how far away it is, how endlessly impossibly far — and yet, it shines so bright, you can see it from here.

orange in your hand — what is it? first — there is both a sign and a signifier, the orange and the orangeness — but where did it come from? what comes before precedes what comes after — where was it grown? the orange is the tail end of an agricultural industrial behemoth manufacturing and distributing, employing laborers, subject to regulations and marketing — supply chains — the orange — stand-in for this networked life, everything connected, plugged into the system, and though the world is not beamed straight into our heads matrix-style, it may as well be, since our entire existences are subjected to systems of control — not unitary totalitarian, but emergent totalitarian, as market instincts and global networks knit everything together into a tight mesh.

Our system does however allow for individual choice on any number of things — which multinational to buy from, which multinational to sell our daily bread to — and perhaps it is these choices, this illusion of control, that provide the safety valve, that protects us from the uncomfortable truth that we are now an inevitable piece of the machine, a factor of production, a thing to be controlled —

Marx’ diagnosis was right, but his cure was wrong — and he never saw the effect of late-state hypercapitalism, or offered a viable alternative — but the way in must necessarily also be the way out — and hypercapitalism will not be destroyed (and how could we want it to be, its destruction would necessitate and require unimaginable suffering and loss of life) but its ravages might be mitigated, its edges softened, its deadening effects transcended.

The first step may be to bite into the orange, and taste the fruit. To understand that wealth and its creation is not the only value we strive for. That sustainability and balance are the true hallmarks of a healthy system — to understand that human dignity, shared endeavor, shared sacrifice, are values that ennoble us and enable us to build our golden cities on the hill — that happy heterotopia’s are not impossible, that we must strive to make our society good again —

America was born a virgin and can be again — and the rest of the world can follow — after long journeys, it is sweet to return home, and to slip into our own bed —

you taste like home to me
/ signal to noise / noise to signal / hear with your ear the flowing year /
ninety-nine percent perspiration one percent inspiration / we are the sum total of all that didn’t happen / I sit here at this computing piece of plastic, with a rubber band wrapped around my index finger, typing away (my fingers know the letters) any given measured instant — the breaks, I got the breaks, I’m in the breaks — dark matter impervious to sight — third eye sirius — collapsing wave function supercluster —

these are not my thoughts but lyrics to an ultramodern song

and here I sit digesting music and law / what if on the day of wrath I recite the wrong and instead of expounding I start singing / sit, sit in the gates among the elders of the land / bells bells icecream man is coming / summer is here this summer is not last summer / then it was the old world / this is the new world / sitting here in the shadow of Washington’s Spike / everything hangs pendent waiting for the swing of time / capital of the republic waning like the Gracchi / men and women are coming up to replace the ones who came before / we do not look down at the muddy moaning road / murmuring their memories at us / try not to think that death undid so many / Whitman knew and said it / to think that what mattered to him now matters to me / and one day will matter to a stranger unknown and unloved / who is stacy block and how do I know her, my social graph is more popular than I am /

in the beginning was the word, the deed, the thought, the plan, and the word, the deed, the thought, the plan, was with god, and the word, the deed, the thought, the plan, was god and all was well and all was well

I love my baby and my baby loves me and in the scary-rary shady forest, we hold each others hands, and stare reflexively into each others I’s, and let the usness smother the otherness, and walking we giggle and tickle each other under armpits and on elbows and other places.

And all is well and all will be well as the sun sets behind the borogroves and the stars begin to come out.

god, perennial topic, bairnbabe swathed in velvet dark, burping up starstuff bubbles that float upon the voidness.

bubbles pop, and starstuff falls, and little babes in darksome wombs get fed on love and loveliness. love me, and love my starstuff, and love that little bit of godbabe that sits in me.  

the end of high modernism — it never ended — art plus the world equals the world, yet the artist, standing quiet lonely, always seems surprised that the world is still there afterwards, mostly the same. The world would be the world without Ulysses, without The Wasteland, but still — I am grateful for them. Whether that will remain true sixty years from now, as the milkstrength leaches from my bones — who can say? I may be struck by an omnibus tomarrow.

O Finn, you’ll be Finn Again, don’t worry – you got to carry that weight on your shoulders. That Old Twentieth Century, Beautiful and Terrible, with logical fallacies, increasing ignorance, eudrugs and dysdrugs, minds stretching, minds bending, and I the Child, Perfect-Born to that Imperfect Nightmare-Daydream, conceived in love, and born in love, and held in love — non serviam and fear in a handful of dust — look at me procrastinating, ignoring the law sitting on my shoulder — thoughts layered — the world is increasingly complex — not strange anymore, because what is strange

modern, postmodern, ultramodern / cut up, jagged, all edges / negation is forgotten, minimalism is lost as accretion continues at breakneck speed / no time to think with so much new to see and do. brave new cyberpunk world, scifi pocketbook writers are switching off their comdecks, turning on their netfeeds / switch, the world just doubled on itself / twist again -harmonic screaming, rage, beat, rage – this pill makes you smaller, this pill makes you tall – ten thousand dancers dancing in the desert, eyes all big and dilated / rip the copper wires out sell it to the scrapdealer / ten dollars and score / discontinuous, thirty tv screens. got a little something something for your sugar momma / implants and deskjobs and I’ll buymyself some cybernetic knifecuts soon as I get paid — Plug yourself, I say plug yourself / cut-up, mix-up, mash / the President of the United States / guns in the desert – rumble in the jungle / smashboom smashboom what year is it? what year is it? / procastination, download, out-source the test to a Bangaluru call center — other kids in other countries don’t bear the weight of this crown damoculus – astral projection, new religions, second messianics, everybody’s just waiting for the next thing, keep on waiting for that next thing, typing at 60 wpm, music genre determined by beats per minute — the computers are waking up — can you hear them waking up — aliens are landing in cornfields and talking to farmers — what’s with the farmers? what does iowa cowgirl have to say to mr. e.t.? e.t., reeses pieces eater, boy-befriender, befriend me too — – plastic swords don’t keep out the crawlies, booze is drugs for dullards, I prefer a sharper spike — all this fiction, I have gone conventional — button-up shirt and pinstripe slacks — give me this day my daily bread — lounge lizards sun-by-day and dance-by-night — keep going, don’t stop now, the world is changing, older now then you were yesterday, but no one need ever grow old again — trance, techno, house, five hundred kids dancing in a silent room, with headphones on — buy yourselves a farmhouse and have a dance party — all you need is a soundsystem and a chemistry set — and for those who prefer this waking life and brittle-bones and brittle souls, who can’t stand the dancing, who tie a tie like nooses round their necks at 7 AM every morning, well cheers to you, keep dancing too, dance macabre is very old, but still rocks, for sure, for sure — early morning sunlight, dogs barking in rhythm — thoughts to think and words to smooth and read — sounds sounds zounds — ultramodern digital persistence — nothing is ever lost – plastic and light and the energetic free market — yeoman merchants 01 01 01 01 —

look at the schoolyard — in a corner of the field, out of reach of balls and running and laughing, stands a little boy, shirt tucked in, ordering ants to march left and right, building ramparts of dirt, and planning invasions of the next patch over — why does he do it? doesn’t mother love him? is he choking on his ego? the world presses against him, drives him mad, touching him, prodding him. he is his own universe and cannot stand the chatter banging on his ear drums, the jacks jumping out of boxes, surprising little wolfie into tears —

how shall he respond? he wants to eat the world, end surprises, impose order on the chaos — on Sunday he is told a story about breath on water and stillness before storms and in his solipsist skepticism inhales these words and wonders and thinks himself equal to the task —

twenty years later, he thinks he is an artist, thinks that Yertle the Turtle will stand on terrashells and deliver his oration and the universe will fall in line. outside will be inside, divisions will be healed, I am the universe and the universe is me. Nobody listens, nobody loves, and LD looks around and sees where he really is — loveless, standing on a bridge in a foreign city with the days getting shorter and winter coming on — he will have to earn his bread, like all these others, zombies who know not themselves, who have severed their forebrains and id-geists and left them on the shelves at home next to their telescreens to make the work go faster —

he hates them, like he hates himself.

he grows hungry and gnaws at his knuckles. he sits under bridges, with broken-souls with crooked smiles and hungry eyes, souls twisted by hungers into dark shapes — deprivation steels him, and he loves less and less — he compromises with the Maya, refusing even now to believe, thinking he is still an incarnated deity dreaming this dark world — one night, late, he takes the knife, sterilizes it in makeshift fire, and reaches into his head and scoops out his soulstuff —

three years later, hunger is forgotten, he is growing fatter, running on treadmills