tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-189195122024-03-07T02:52:47.742-05:00restless nativenightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-51299058073031057342007-10-31T00:16:00.001-04:002007-10-31T01:02:22.799-04:00me with me, she with shegotta get out a quick one about a review of all things. the new yorker review of frida kahlo's show in minneapolis. perhaps it's the same show as the one that was at museo del barrio a few years back. not sure though. god that one was protested on by spics in new york who were mad that the museo didn't have any porto rikkins in there at the time. i was just livid cuz of all the people to protest, frida, frida? really? she who has given spic chicks of all stripes a whole vocabulary of flavor, please. everyone, porto rikkins and mexicans and all the other random spiclings from lands no one's ever heard of (like myself), owe such a debt, fuck em if they don't understand. anyway, this reviewer does, peter schjeldahl, he killed it. i know i'm doing a critique of a critique but i'm good at that. i might have mentioned that in a previous post. anyway, he admits to his near-cultishness in the end, to being a fan and he loves her so well in this piece. he gets how she gets herself, how in her self-portraits she's not looking out at the viewer but at herself looking at herself, exuding "a superbly indifferent confidence." perfect. he talks about her pertaining more to an avant-garde called new objectivity more than to surrealism and i wonder if that has to do with objectivist stuff i've learned about in poetry, the precursors of language school folks, sort of abstract and precise at the same time, stuff i am all about. i saw a little portrait of hers at moma in august among all the folks, dali and miro and magritte and everybody and i was just swelling around all them but when i got to her, i bust open. it was so little and intimate her piece. an early one. her sitting in a chair, dressed in a man's suit, her hair cut off in pieces on the floor and the lyrics and music to a song in spanish clearly sung by some dude about how i don't love you anymore cuz you cut your hair. here it is: http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A2963&page_number=3&template_id=1&sort_order=1. it's "mire si te quise fue por el pelo, ahora que estás pelona ya no te quiero," "if i loved you if was for your hair, now that you're bald i don't care." i was so thrilled that she put songs in her paintings cuz i put songs in my poems. i was so happy to see this lady staring out at herself like i do at me in the lens of my camera, in the reflection of my computer screen. schjeldahl also called her "blissfully scornful of self-importance," more perfect phrasing, more words to live by, to become. she is a great latin love of mine, one of the first, way before bolaño, as self-aware and brilliant and a lady, dammit. so glad to be reminded that her self-portraiture wasn't about ego but about self-exploration, the dissecting of the only specimen that deserves such terrible, amazing scrutiny.<br /><br />and now, to address the new day, happy halloween! after the article, i ignored the tedious work at home i had to do and donned my outfit for tomorrow/today, the reprisal of my role as she-hulk, this encore performance for my niece. i still fit in the torn jeans and shirt but it don't matter if it's tight cuz she-hulk is busting out of her shit too. i will get to work but frida and halloween and the 3-dolla trader joe's wine makes me dream, be me and not me. excuse me while i paint my nails black.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-54506744011604268522007-10-24T02:13:00.000-04:002007-10-24T03:17:54.577-04:00mythogynygreat art comes for you where you are. it is so large it finds you, small you, in the middle of your turmoil, of your frenetic living. i am talking about savage detectives and emperor's babe, the latest book i started, but really right now i am talking about a tv show. mad men. it finished its season this last week and i've been watching it thru on demand. <br /><br />talking about a show is in some ways as hard as talking about a novel because great shows have epic qualities. of course this one is from people involved with the sopranos so clearly, epic qualities, complex characters and storylines, layers constantly peeled off. some reviews say it moves too slow. i think that has made me pay more attention, slow down for it. the payoffs coming later are so satisfying i stand up from my couch and clap. i should apply that slowing down to my life but that is a whole other show that needs a lot of work.<br /><br />mad men is about advertising guys on madison avenue at the beginning of the 60s. the secretary pool is like a harem and the wives are tucked away upstate while the men roam manhattan, lying and selling. it's about mythology and misogyny. it is totally irresistible to me. tonight it even slapped me awake from the foolishness i live. the lead man is basically clark kent, jet black hair, looks like he's gonna bust out of his suit, but his alter ego is not a hero, he is all the shame that america loves hiding. i could even lend him my updated alter ego moniker, pena honda, deep pain, deep shame, said with the head buried in the hands. it's a shame of poverty and unwantedness, his more than mine but mine is certainly related and empathic, empathetic?, pathetic at times yes, connected to the blood that has felt such hurt.<br /><br />the leading lady in the show is not his wife but his secretary, who is not his daughter but he treats like one, or at least like some kind of little sister. she is smart of course and of course becomes the first lady to write copy in that taliban-ass office. she is young and her mythology is just forming in some devastating ways. one episode has her in the throes of an affair with a junior executive one moment, celebrating her first successful copy the next, and losing that boy in the last. it's much better than that even. i don't want to give away too many details even though i know most everyone i know who reads this won't see it for months if ever cuz of lack of cable, or lack of its priority in their lives. but at this point the details aren't so important. it's the feeling it's giving me. that what i suffer thru ain't shit. that it's time to be an adult no matter how much i fight it. that i can be a smarter person. that i can see thru illusion once and for all. that i shouldn't discard my instincts. that self-preservation matters. it destroys too but it matters. <br /><br />the last episode found me where i'm at cuz it dealt with nostalgia, a.k.a. saudade, a.k.a. mythology. inkaquatic thought i was gonna be more brutal about all the abusers of the word but when i got to it (see "the abuse of saudade") i realized that's just not the point of the word. not that the writers don't deserve some lashing for their superficial use. still the important thing is the feeling. clark kent of mad men, his name is don draper, sort of, he talked all about it. something about a greek root for nostalgia that is about a literal pain from an old wound, a twinge in the heart at the memory of it. i discussed saudade with kalyban and we wikied it and there were other words in german and japanese that he latched onto, more nuances for this missing feeling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade, scroll down to "See Also sehnsucht and mono no aware"). don draper, a.k.a. clark kent, a.k.a. pena honda, was using nostalgia to sell product and he uses family portraits of his own, him and his barbie doll wife and 2.4 children, the ones he won't be with for thanksgiving cuz he's selling product that sells memories, in this case the carousel projector that provided those suburban slide shows for decades. not like i would really know anything about that, i'm not that generation or that race or even really that nationality to know about that kind of american nostalgia. the only way i know about is from watching tv families like the brady bunch watching slide shows in their episodes. <br /><br />it's tall tales upon tall tales, us creating ourselves constantly, an idea as frightening as it is empowering. it gets frightening when say the show connects the nixon-kennedy election to the fraud of today, the illegitimacy we've always lived with in this country, all of it as fixed as any sport. it is empowering when it shows one mistress of clark kent's, a jewess too smart and self-worthy to believe illusion, calling him out, calling him a coward, someone she doesn't know. she wanted to believe that surface as much as anyone in america does, especially anyone outside of what is considered american, but she couldn't ignore the truth behind the myth when it peeled back before her. it made me unwrap the reality of the crap i've been living with today, the fixation, the refusal to see what's true. yes, about men, but about me, about history, personal and large. it's a lot that some two-dimensional character has that much to say to me but that's how i'm gotten to, mythologically. the reality is not enough. i need the parallel, the reflection. the only way i see me.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-54427291091043255102007-10-18T04:06:00.000-04:002007-10-18T04:53:04.101-04:00timekeeperi am the nightbreaker yet again. fighting sleep like my five-year-old niece. i thought i shouldn't go to bed without singing of the unsung. i had my music class tonight, the latin band, a sporadic thing that's what comes closest in my life to a workout. it is spanish chanting, harmonizing for someone so used to disconnection. it is where i blend in in some productive way, something that contributes to some worthwhile whole, not just a disappearing act. <br /><br />i am one of the guys, one girl among guys but over years, a guy or a sis, with a sound like theirs, made up of many tongues, not just the obvious ones. there is english and spanish but there is also trumpet and bari sax and bongos and timbales and jokes and moans and looks and gestures. it's ten to fifteen of us in a little room coming together wednesday nights when the jobs or the stresses don't get in the way. <br /><br />tonight i was energetic cuz i am between work and have had plenty of rest. there is monthly blood rushing thru me and that can throw off the notes sometimes, as if my instrument, this body, is out of tune, an equilibrium thrown off. it wasn't so bad today cuz the blood is a few days underway but there was a little tension in the muscles that can make the sound coming out of me a little sharp and eager. i got to a mellow place at one point going over a phrase with the director and the bassist, over and over, till i forgot the other people in the room and rode the notes, followed them towards something true. that's when the sweat on my forehead cools and i don't make eye contact with anyone cuz i've stopped seeing. it's all about the hearing. my head is tilted in the direction of the giant speaker in the corner and i'm inhaling the sound of me becoming the song. <br /><br />today i felt my part in the band. we are all crucial pieces and there are times i believe i am not one cuz i'm not holding anything in my hand, except maybe the mic stand, holding onto it to ground me. but in this case i see it is as wrong to think you are nothing, you have nothing to contribute, as it is to think you are everything, that none of it could be without you. i am part of the time-keeping, the coro chant i get to do is often people's favorite timepiece in these songs, the one that is most obvious. what i bring is as essential as the rasp of the güiro or the clang of the cowbell (cowbell of my heart i used to call it). i make something as steady as those beats, something a little smoother even, ghostly words that get broken down into their parts, syllables, notes, spirits, as they are uttered. today i was repeating asi no se quiere a nadie, ah see no seh kee eh reh ah nah dee eh. that's not how you love someone. over and over. that's not how you love someone on a roller coaster of notes. i was hearing it and telling it, inside and outside of it, to me and the band and the walls and the windows. that's not how you love someone. this is how you sing that's not how you love someone. <br /><br />i'm in that class because of a past love long gone. i abandoned it for a long time cuz i couldn't deal with the memory. but time passed and i have time to keep with a chant and a note that know a better truth than what's past. every time they come out of my mouth new time gets made. it makes me glad to be the savage beast i've always been cuz the cure for me is easy, cliche, well-known. the song soothing me, making me as i make it.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-47520949130782844782007-10-15T02:17:00.000-04:002007-10-15T02:23:29.960-04:00baltz waltzball imagery everywhere. wow. i just got a clipping from a magazine a friend pulled out for me that affirms my theory. ball imagery is all the rage. for me it started with tell me you love me on hbo. lots of balls right away, flashes of penis but really ball shots, from-the-back type shots, creatively concealing dick but revealing balls. dick makes things like way too x-rated or something like it’s against the law, but balls get around the law. and the from-the-back shot is more getting around the law, the penis. <br /> <br />i saw eastern promises and that is notorious for the naked fight scene at the end. viggo mortensen, a specimen rolling around in a nude knife fight. and ballz, everywhere. behind the back shots, short curved knives like eastern penises and quick teasing flying ballz. gruesome and i couldn’t look away. <br /><br />i say ballz like da bullz, da bearz, ballz. <br /><br />there was also this story i read written by another friend. i was just discussing the ball rage with him some minutes before and he hands me the story he had been working on. smack in the middle, ballz. a consideration of ballz, the protagonist mulling em over in the shower, one thought of as alien-like, wizened.<br /> <br />maybe it should be baltz, like waltz.<br /><br />and now this clipping from time out new york, their sex issue. they rate hi-res porn and the classic dvd wins out cuz who wants high-res balls and pimples and hairs and shit. the pull quote said something about “high-resolution balls were the deal breaker.” i could see how that could be misconstrued as anti-baltz too but that would be wrong, they’re just pro-blurry baltz. <br /><br />most of these balls in the ball trend of today are just whizzing by. there’s no pause or close-up in tell me you love me or eastern promises, none of the historical treatment of bressesses, the gaze fixed on those twins. that’s the beauty of the baltz nowadays. they’re ever elusive. dangled before you and gone before you can reach out and stroke em. my friend who gave me the clipping would say lick em but it’s not his blog. right now i’m saying stroke em. the world outside the blog can add or remove whatever detail.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-19115617311832986182007-10-09T00:09:00.000-04:002007-10-09T13:23:20.273-04:00the abuse of saudadeit's just me and the memories. there is no one around already. me and a screen full of memories. i was watching hip hop honors tonight because of tribe called quest. there were many great other acts, whodini especially but tribe broke my heart. they were my true love 15 years ago. on the video where they talk about how they came to be, phife and q-tip were on opposite sides. they brought back jarobi. he was on like one and a half albums but he was around in the beginning. phife looked run down. he looked ill. i didn't know what was going on with him. it killed me. to me he grew stronger with every album. q-tip was always the lead but phife held it up. and then from what i understand they fell out. that is the story of so many lives, so many i know, so many lives that crossed with mine. <br /><br />when they got onstage it was excellent. phife seemed energetic, they were ready to go. they did it, they were alive and performing. i don't think they've been on a stage together in a decade, way more if you count that jarobi was there. i think he came back just to help hold them up. i rhymed along but i was stifling tears. <br /><br />in the middle of it, i was thinking about this word that has been abused quite a bit lately by a few writers. inkaquatic knows. saudade. she says sow-dah-d, like cesaria evora and i say sow-dah-gee the way i learned in the gajillion brazilian songs i've heard and in rio thirteen years ago. there have been some writers that we respect, black american writers, that can overromanticize the romance languages and then call spics overly sentimental. well, the first i learned of the possibility of such abuse was from a black brazilian friend who was so close to me and now is a memory, like an image on a screen. she, fifteen years ago, was sick of the romance that americans, black and white alike, made of the world south, of the tongue south. she and i, like tip and phife, like me and a few great inspirational friends, have gone our ways and i see that saudade is more than nostalgia or romance or illusion, it's regret. it's shame and loss and hurt. it's someone else's and it's very mine. it's very hers and his, my friends who are not anymore. who exist in some other dimension, on some street of cracked concrete in brooklyn, on some dirt road on a mountain in brazil, going on in their own universe, as i go on in my own. the romance word is not to be abused. it's to be whispered to yourself in front of a screen like a memory, to reconstitute the disembodied you, the collapsed memory of us.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-50495798609339446172007-10-07T02:03:00.000-04:002007-10-09T00:36:49.602-04:00reassemblingi am back by request. hasn't been that long. i am so moved cuz of a movie again. the immediacy of a movie, the immediate movement it creates. there were actually two movies today. maybe three. all connect as always in my scary mazelike funhouse head. i watch the movies in pieces often. perhaps i've said this before. cuz of the repetition of cable, cuz i have no tivo. so i won't write about the movies as wholes, in one paragraph. i'll do it as i saw it chronologically:<br /><br />last night:<br /><br />the year of the dog - i started watching this. got like an hour into it. got it from netflix. i've been slowing down with that lately. have two other movies i haven't watched for a month. this one is an indie by mike white who did school of rock but i love him more for chuck and buck. school of rock rocked though. i love chuck and buck cuz it's secret name is chuck and buck suck and fuck. this year of the dog stars molly shannon who i often find a little too much but she was mellow and there were plenty quirky indie characters some played up more than others. laura dern kinda overdid it but there could be someone as annoying and blonde and suburban as her character in the world. a little bit of the same with regina king but i was so happy to see her be something totally different, perky and prissy and in denial and hot, like a black white girl. she was a real-life annoying possibility too. <br /><br />today:<br /><br />hollywoodland - i saw this some weeks ago at my fam's house, they of the endless cable and large-screen tvs, from whence i came. i watched it for what i heard about ben affleck in it, that he is not half-bad, to see if that was true. he plays the dead george reeves, the 1950s tv superman. it's about whether he was murdered or committed suicide. adrien brody is a shady private dick who looks into the death. it's long and done in flashback and i think it got mixed reviews but it has grown on me after several viewings. i got to see it from the very beginning but had to stop cuz i was hungry and needed to go to the supermarket and get some food for this bare fridge. fuckin workin in an office makes me forget about my fuckin needs. i stay eating out and not dealing with the barrenness at home. so yeah, so i watched like an hour and a half. i do enjoy the failure tales, that's really what it is. george reeves is hella disgruntled cuz his career is going in a direction he doesn't dig and i guess that's why everyone digs ben affleck in it, cuz he's got a well to tap into with that one. he wears a fake nose too, like nicole kidman in the hours. it sometimes makes me notice that it's him more, him in a fake nose. but he sinks into it. there is a comic sadness, he stays cracking a joke when he's real down, like chandler on friends. using humor to mask the pain. don't we know about that. <br /><br />star wars part 3, the one where darth vader is born - of all the recent star wars, even perhaps of all the star wars, this one is hard for me to fight watching. it is great contemplative shit. i just have it on as background while i do whatever, use the toilet, wash the dishes, read some articles on the net. there are just little lines that work for me. like yoda with some shit about fear of loss leads to the dark side, something like that. yoda my guru. i know that this particular series of star wars is hella cheesy but this last one that considers the formation of darkness is just irresistible. oh and i think this time around i changed my mind about how i felt about padme. i was calling her a chicken for the longest and she is in a way but she is the one too that says all the important shit about the war and the government's deception. but she wants love to make everything ok somehow and i would get mad at her cuz she was so fierce with the larger picture but the smaller one, she couldn't see cuz of luv. she couldn't see that not only what was going on with the senate was evil, so was her man. her man was a problem and i just kept telling her, i am so sorry your man is the devil. i also thought that obi-wan got punked by anakin too so padme wasn't alone in the chicken coop. i understand punkedness as of late since i had to deal with a friend who's way harsher than i thought and i was way softer with her than i wanted to be. but i'm soft like a punk chicken, like padme and obi-wan's love child. at least today, in the last 24, 48 hours. i definitely have some anakin days, where the chancellor is my guru and he's all, notice, young devil, how anger focuses you. i didn't see this whole thing cuz i've seen it a million times. saw like the first two hours. i know the rest. i always try to catch some of the hotness of the end, the creation of darth scenes, true terrible beauty, can't look away. <br /><br />hollywoodland - the last hour. i was doing other things while the part i saw earlier recapped for me. answered some e-mails, ate a late dinner, folded laundry, drank a little wine, smoked a little bud. i saw the middle to end part i always miss. bob hoskins got to be a surprise in the end. he was a movie mogul married to diane lane who keeps ben affleck as a boy toy. bob himself has some japanese hottie as his toy. they all go to dinner together, the married couple and their side things. when ben affleck is gone, bob is real sympathetic and stands by his lady, tells her he ain't going nowhere. he does it smoothly. i have decided i do like ben in this, he is this role and he knows it and works it. i also dig this one random aspect of the character. he has a mexican friend that he sings sad spanish love songs with, excuse me, with whom he sings sad spanish love songs. ben affleck, singing, in spanish, and well. glad he learned something from jennifer, i'm sure he licked her enough to get some spanish on that tongue. perhaps he was singing a farewell song to her. i thought it was funny that a failure has a spic friend. ben even gets called beaner at some point. <br /><br />the year of the dog - got me. the last hour got me. molly shannon kept it together, never went too nuts with a character that clearly was. she became a crazy dog lady which is really worse than being a crazy cat lady cuz at least most cats fit in a house. not all dogs do. not 15 of em. it was disgusting and hilarious. the mellow pace leads up to this excellent epiphany that made me just burst outta nowhere. i totally cried. it was totally what i was talking about with my friend who was way harsh and that got me in so much trouble. about finding what you love. it requires sacrifice, a willingness to leave a lot behind and she talks some game but doesn't seem willing. i have to understand that. i was happy to see a lady, an imaginary lady who was willing. crazy and willing. brave. i am kinda getting sick of cowardice, especially my own. i have dealt with so much of it. especially my own. i do and don't know what that means for me. it means i have to face more shit with the writing certainly but besides that, i don't know. even just dealing with the writing, or putting it out there, has made this last month or two different, not so routine, surprising. i've tried to meet a lot of people who do this and the more i meet, the more i meet. the more i meet, the more i want to speak and write, the less i want to secretly hate and quietly complain. people do that openly and formally, on the page, among people who get it. no need to hide. i think though i am learning something about sympathy too, about not being so harsh. <br /><br />i hope i love these words and writing as much as the crazy dog lady loves her animals. right now i think i do. bolaño reminds me to love again. tonight, the requester of this blog entry wondered what will happen when i am done with the book. i am about ten pages from the end now. i think he meant what it will do to my writing. i will have to give it time. but already i see that i am not afraid of fucking with time like bolaño does, like it does to me. i always thought i didn't understand complex structure but i live in it, we all do. this world is breaking us apart into so many pieces, everyone in so many pieces. i think of all the disembodied friends i have, who are just voices on a phone line, words in thin space, cyber air. i think of the way we receive information, all that stuff that seems so accessible but really can be just so many more new ways to misunderstand. a broken existence like this little day of thoughts broken by movies broken by errands broken by voices. i got thru it. there was a second i thought i wouldn't.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-77601182081835636162007-09-21T13:32:00.000-04:002007-09-25T12:07:05.720-04:00what bolaño is doing to me (bolaño pt 2)he's making me observe writers and write about it. it's dangerous business. he had time and distance. i'm processing right now. but that is the nature of this age we're living in, everything moving way too fast. little perspective, fuck it. it's not like what i'm saying here is so extreme. names are removed but unfortunately that means i can't cite the excellent poem i'm bringing up here that made me see things clearer.<br /><br />i just listened to a poem online. it was about the word faggot. i burst at the end cuz it had a sound that was made for that, bursting, as i do, tears popping outta my head. i really needed to burst. I was all tense, mildly hungover, at the end of a cup of coffee, confused by a night out with a bunch of poets, not so terribly confused but confused enough. there was something reserved about how people dealt with each other. there were guards up and then down at certain moments but mostly up. it didn’t feel terrible but it didn’t feel great. only at the reading when I was hiding in the back and just listening to the work, to the words, did it really feel ok. and then right after, with the wine and mingling. there was mingling right after the reading, standing in some parlor, everyone stopping and talking and then meandering about and crashing into each other and stopping again and talking to each other and laughing. at the dinner table later on, there was much less of that. <br /><br />listening to this poem right now, a great lyrical emotional thing, it seems clear to me, tangible like sitting in the back, hearing the readers last night. there is an urgency. there is a song. there’s dealing with a word so hard that most can’t deal i think and this poet wrapped it around her finger and then let it go. she was completely intimate with the word and that’s just my preferred reality, facing a hard thing and freaking it, just working that thing until it’s yours and then gone.<br /><br />she is dealing with an ugly thing, isn't afraid of that ugly. last night there was something pretty in the poets, a reserve that was dropped at times in a way that was surprising and necessary but I wanted more. i wanted them to get really ugly, to get loud. There was clearly thought and consideration and rage in them. I wanted to see them just release it. when we sat down to dinner, I couldn’t really deal with the reserve and I wished I had made an earlier exit. I wished I had some energy. it had waned with the wine and the sangria, just more wine. I preferred not to engage much rather than be too ugly, too loud, too wanting to make a scene. maybe we should have been standing instead of sitting at that table, too many strangers drinking. <br /><br />i wished this poet above had come along. I wished another poet who brought lots of energy earlier and called all kinds of shit out had been there too. some lively ass folks unafraid to be loud. it didn’t feel appropriate for me to be the one to do it. I needed a gang. but then that just meant I went along with what was wrong in that picture.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-27249004247805615942007-09-06T01:01:00.000-04:002007-09-25T12:07:52.799-04:00pleasure in what's lost (bolaño pt 1)it's been three weeks. too long. my only excuse is the summer. now that the school year has started it's time to get on with work, even though i'm not in school and have been avoiding it, the teaching in it mostly. but i will keep up with my writing and reading. my summer reading has been such a companion and it is kinda wrong that i have only turned to it in this space now but here i am with it. the savage detectives, roberto bolaño. <br /><br />i am at page 422 in the english which is pg 449 in the spanish version i was so generously given by inkaquatic. a real gift in the middle of the summer. this book took almost ten years to come out in this country. it was huge in spain and latin america in 1998. i don't think i would have been ready for this voice then. the latin voice that dominated in this world at that time was junot and i find it interesting that it took the same decade for him to put together his recent opus. i'll read that when all the hype dies down, perhaps when it goes paperback. i find it interesting because i think my tastes have changed in that time. i've been craving a contemporary latin american voice more than an american latino one. there i said it. i have a million reasons for that statement but mostly let's just say i don't always feel inspired or renewed by that american voice. i feel like it can often be the same old conversation, the same old sound over and over. i've been in the mood for a larger sound, bigger than this place, not just this country but this city i'm in that can so dominate with its voice, something that transports me outta here. <br /><br />i heard some of that new sound, new voice in latin american movies, like y tu mama tambien and duck season, all the almodovar from the eighties to recent times, but i haven't gotten a chance to read it really until now. and i'm behind, a decade behind. and i still can't really read the spanish.<br /><br />even here i didn't know about this dude till this year and americans told me about it. the new yorker had a big piece on him and i had just spent a month in spain when i read it. i ate it up. i knew from the review that i was ready for him. and then i got two copies at a book sale, cheap, two, cuz everyone was sleeping on it. i was awake for it. <br /><br />so since the piece is so huge and i can barely begin to describe i'll attempt something and deal with where i'm at in it now. i am about to start the 21st chapter of the second part of the book. it has three parts. the first and the third are written as a journal, all entries dated, by one character, a minor poet in big-ass mexico in the '70s. the second part is made up of 26 chapters each containing first-person testimonies of a sort, all of them are dated and they list the name of the character and the place in the world they're speaking from, mexico city, tel aviv, barcelona, paris, san diego, madrid, london, and so on. the structure is smooth. i still wonder who they are speaking to though. in only one entry so far is there a direct address to one of the main characters. i have paid attention and that is the only time so far. they are all talking about their interaction with two lost poets who themselves started out wandering in search of another lost poet. that alone is enough for me to ride these almost 600 pages all the way through. i don't think i've been through anything that long in a long time. if ever. i am excellent wanderer though and this author was too. he can ruminate and a half. <br /><br />he's writing about writers and writing mostly and i read some review talking about how he mocks all of it by making it some kind of detective novel, as if it were as important as real crime or something, this literature business. i have to say though, as much as i enjoy the cheeky voices in here, i take them kinda serious too. like some advice book about this writing thing. for instance, i felt this next passage sincerely: "Do you know what the worst thing about literature is? said Don Pancracio. I knew, but pretended I didn't. What? I said.That you end up being friends with writers. And friendship, treasure though it maybe, destroys your critical sense." i felt this, doesn't mean i'm wholly ready to agree, but i felt it, seriously, and somewhat absurdly. it's not groundbreaking but it's well-said. and with a million other well-said lines, i stay travelling with this. <br /><br />right now, i was in a testimony as i call it, of this lawyer actually from barcelona but in rome. he is a literary mogul, rich enough to own his lit mag and be the main contributor to it as he says, a big fat blowhard constantly quoting shit in latin. i have decided to read a chapter in spanish and a chapter in english. i decided that about a week ago, more than halfway through the book. i have this beautiful paperback from barcelona where it was originally printed. and that has a table of contents which for some reason the english version does not. i don't know why that was decided upon that way. it makes the english more mysterious which, as a foreign novel, it doesn't need any more mystery. americans will barely pick this up as is, much less without a map. garcía márquez had the family tree in hundred years. bolaño had a table of contents filled with all the acquaintances and lovers and inner circle frienemies connected to the main characters. that is one of the many differences between that definitive universe of marquez that i so once loved and this fragmented planet of bolaño's that speaks so much to what i understand now. <br /><br />back to the latin-quoting lawyer and the spanish version. when i read it at home i can have the two books at my side. i can't carry both when i'm on the train, it's too much. so i got to look up this passage in spanish: "Then I gave him a copy of my most recent book of poetry and let him know that he should limit himself to revewing verse, since the fiction reviews were penned by my colleague, Jaume Josep, a divorce expert and homosexual of long standing, known by the hordes of ass peddlers in the dives off the Ramblas as the Little Martyr, in reference to his shortness and his weakness for rough trade." in spanish it is: 'Después le regalé mi último libro de poesía y le advertí que sus reseñas debían circunscribirse a la disciplina poética, pues las de narrativa las pergeñaba mi colega Jaume Josep, experto en divorcios y pederasta de larga trayectoria, conocido en los tugurios anexos a las Ramblas por las hordas de chaperos como El Enano Sufridor, en alusión a su debilidad por las macarras de natural violento e irascible.' Instead of "homosexual" it says "pederast" in the spanish and "chapero" in an online spanish dictionary is "hombre que se prostituye con otros hombres," man that prostitutes himself with other men, but clearly ass peddler is the superior term. "tugurios" is "dives," learned a new one there. "El Enano Sufridor," "the Little Martyr" is literally "The Suffering Dwarf." and "macarras de natural violento e irascible" is handled much more deftly in english with "rough trade" cuz english has a term for it i guess where as spanish often has to explain something with many more words, as my american spanish translator friend in madrid pointed out to me. he was the one who challenged me to take on the spanish. i was given it but was letting it collect dust cuz i was afraid of it for a minute but his words and an article about the book in the washington post that mentioned how hard the translation was cuz there were spanishes from several different countries to deal with (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/07/AR2007040701186.html.) made me face it. <br /><br />it's interesting to me that it took americans to make me face the spanish. and in the book itself there is of course discussion about translation as it is in voices from america and europe. as i was wading knee deep in the book with all its trancontinental voices, my translator friend from madrid was staying with me here in new york and inkaquatic was in barcelona blogging. i have spent much of this last summer month tweaking poems and ordering them and wondering where they fit, how they might be published and this book has addressed a lot of the gray areas that i feel i'm wandering into, the shady characters i feel i have to deal with and might have become myself, as i put the writing together in some public way. i looked up more about bolaño on spanish google, google.es, and found something he said about writing, just that it takes patience, a lot of it. i think publishing takes it as well, moreso even. the website i think i read it on was pretty hot. spanish though for those of you who don't speak. maybe there's a translator on it: http://www.clubcultura.com/clubliteratura/clubescritores/robertobolano/index.htm. manifestos and his computer portraits are on the site if you poke around. he was wandering for years. left college early i think and had a million odd jobs like night watchman in a park, an occupation that shows up in the book. i would like to see his poetry. that is another mission as it's not published in english at all, at least not in the us. it might not be much published at all, lost poems from a lost poet. <br /><br />i will write more as it strikes me. i still have much left on the book. so many more things i'm sure i haven't said. for now, i'm gone, a lost poet happy to accompany this wandering book.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-9213943039427431882007-08-16T04:04:00.000-04:002007-09-06T03:21:07.471-04:00good ole colonialjust a quick one about a movie that had me from the first few minutes. stumbled on it on cable, my favorite way to consume. the man who would be king, with an ole sangwich of ole papis back when i'm sure, michael caine and sean connery. wow, solid from beginning to end. really just gripping. i almost always fall for all that colonial crap and man this was a classic. rudyard kipling getting told a story of these two british "scoundrels" as the description on the info band at the bottom of the screen put it. masons, military men, liars and thieves. light-hearted and devilish. and the land they come to conquer for a short time is very anti-devil as you're quickly shown. they go from india to some made-up stan beyond the khyber pass, where osama's chillin now. whoo, if that's what this nation is up against, we are done. it is a wrap. that shit is probably still that warring and dusty and ancient. so many ideas in this thing, luck vs. fate, king vs. god. blurring these lines not a wise idea. not with dudes on horseback playing polo with men's heads. also a lesson to learn, don't fall for the local ladies, no matter how fine. wow, there was this scene of this one lady who comes in to seduce the white man asleep in his hut. she waves her skirt at the sleepy devil, whipping up the smell of her clearly pungent vagina, wafting it over the dude and he wakes up sniffing so happily, my god. that detail just did me in. and the loveliest of all the dusty ladies was none other than the real life mrs. caine, who goes by the name of shakira, a petite guyanese east indian who probably has a million doppelgangers in queens. another detail i really dug, an old-school shakira working her south american south asianness. overall, i am always pleased with movies such as this where the whiteness is clear, no question that the white man is around for nothing but mischief. he refers to his own whiteness, just that lets you know what you're dealing with. that the whiteness is in jeopardy and must be asserted is always the next reference. love it. lay it out, the true feelings. i was interested in the fact that i enjoyed watching the antics of these devils, was very familiar with how they related, i liked their company, they entertained me. i am trained in such ways considering the education i've gotten so of course there is appeal. but it is always worth scratching the appeal, testing it, digging for substance. man, and there was the middleman too, that malinche person, the translator, an asian trained in british ways, so ready to reveal and submit. i wanted to say the dude who's all, yes kemosabe or sahib or something but i'm mixing all the references. you know the guy. you might be him a little, i am, a little. with a murderous streak though, ready to switch on a dime and play polo with some colonizer heads. dare to step foot into my mountain desert.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-11479382260142103702007-08-04T02:59:00.000-04:002007-08-04T03:32:15.136-04:00grime and beautyyay j.lo! a decent spic movie! i am pleased. went to see el cantante with two buddies tonight. experts in spic matters themselves. we all enjoyed it. i did feel it was choppy in parts and it was missing that crucial childhood bio footage that music biopics seem to specialize in but mostly it was hot. marc was a really respectable hector. he was natural and inside the tortured singer man. and j.lo managed to make the movie about her and yet prop up her man. it was based on the wife character's interviews and she got to be the most fully puerto rican character she's ever been, a control freak drama queen, fine as fuck. she was cursing and drugging and fucking and laying it on it on thick with the accent and it was good. but i would have appreciated some more nudity. there was some nipple flashing thru a dress but really with all the other dirt goin on, nekkidness would have worked. marc was hot too and there was john ortiz as willie colon, a real papi. more flesh all around would have really made it four stars. it's amazing to think that spics are really coming full circle, that they can be portrayed as grimy and fucked up and heroic as anyone else. perhaps there is an arrival finally. i think no one will know it except spics but whatever, we know. we can move on from here, not be so fuckin prissy and uptight about what is often a grimy existence. a beautiful grimy existence. <br /><br />afterwards the buddy experts and i had some beers and more. that movie left us all craving, addicts that we are, coming off watching this celebration of the tecato. and with every intoxicated sip, the recollections of the film got better. like i say it was choppy, there were things i felt were missing, like the childhood trauma that leads to the adult addiction, as in ray and the brother's death by washtub and the subsequent heroin addiction, walk the line and the brother's death by spinning saw wheel and the subsequent painkiller addiction. there is an allusion to a brother's death in cantante but no visuals for it. perhaps i shouldn't crave such cheesy formulas but the explaining it all away with the mention that "we don't talk about what hurts us," a line from either hector or puchi (the wife, j.lo), didn't quite satisfy. the buddy experts thought there wasn't enough dancing. it starts with some but not enough. i thought it was shrill a lot especially as it was dominated by the wife character. but it gets quiet in this hypnotizing way near the end and that was amazing. it was a scary quiet that was very necessary. there was the narration by the wife character that is dramatic and quiet in its way, cheesy but effective. she was old, j.lo was old and i was happy to see her comfortable in an old self. finally, beauty stripped, finally, some truth told. a truth very specific and because of that something that might work for everyone.<br /><br />another expert friend told me some review said it had no sense of humor. i had to say that reviewer was probably white, american something. there was so much funny stuff in it. what i think was the mostly puerto rican crowd in union square was rolling. there were a million nuances that i think only a very latin film crew would have caught, funny nuances, tragic one. we're still such a mystery to everyone but ourselves. there are some white folks but whatever, it's not about them getting it. it's about us getting ourselves. that conversation with this "mainstream" is done. we're too many to not discuss us with us. if others want to eavesdrop, fine, but it's time. i'm amazed the time has actually come. good to see it. <br /><br />i'm sure i will add more to this in a clearer state. i had to get something down now, fresh and inebriated. it's only right, in the spirit of the film. yay hot dirty j.lo. grimy marc. yay, pr and ny. long live.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-31462429780362495392007-08-02T01:35:00.001-04:002007-08-02T02:39:15.557-04:00mother tonguefeeling real good after a beach day. it is the beginning of another heat wave and i am free from an office. i am free! i am tan and i am free. i was playing with the niece in the water all afternoon. i have a great image of her laying back in my arms in the water, we're spinning and she's smiling and floating, new freckles in the sun. i handled her well today overall. she can make a toy of anyone but you can fight back by laying there lifeless like a toy too. she has infected me with a cheesy pop song from latin america, something she heard with her cousin on vacation, staying with her mom in the motherland. it's enrique iglesias, dimelo, and i usually can't take that dude but because it gets her to sing in spanish i entertain her and cue up the youtube video. but now it's in my head, dimelo, dimelo, dimelo. reminds me of being in honduras with my brother's girl cousins, singing chayanne when we were fifteen. tu pirata soy yo, y mi mar es tu corazon, mi bandera tu libertad, mi tesoro poderte amar. gay. i am your pirate, my sea is your heart, my flag your freedom, my treasure being able to love you. gay. <br /><br />those cheesy spanish pop songs can getcha when you're over there. the good trick of it is you reclaim the language which this little girl needs to do right now. my theory is the language and her mama are one in the same. the more of it she loses, the more she loses her connection to her mother. she has to deal with being the child of fake divorce, what is it when babymamas and daddys break up? babymama/daddy divorce, that is too long, a better term has to be devised. anyway she deals with that and then on top of that, immigration, the daddy in the us, the mama in honduras. huge separation. and all we can do here is notice when she recalls a memory and help her explore it. she is so little and has dealt with this is such crazy ways. denying spanish and her mother at the same time, not wanting to speak to her on the phone and then not wanting to speak in spanish, saying she can't do it any more. but that's all she spoke when she got here a year ago. and that crazy honduran spanish too. i can't even imitate it. just a lot stuff i need immersion to reacquaint myself with. now that she's seen her mother again, there is a reconnection, so we have to pounce on it, make her remember. we is me, my mother (abuela), my brother (her daddy), my father (abuelo). we talk to her in the language and fake her out, get her to sing in the tongue she claims to have forgotten. she's talking like honduras, as she used to call spanish, and doesn't even know it. if we don't harass about it, the words will return.<br /><br />when we were in the water i was trying to make her forget her fear by focusing on our beach umbrella in the distance. i told her see we weren't that far, there was our um-ber-rel-la, eh-eh-eh, ella, eh. there is our um-ber-rel-la, ella, ella, eh eh eh. so there the cheesy english pop songs helped out. she was all, you know that song and i was all, yeah, i know things. she said that she was waiting for abuela to come join us at the beach and when she finally did, i told her, there is your ah-bu-eh-la, eh-eh-eh, there is your ah-bu-eh-la, ella, ella, ella, eh-eh-eh. the wordplay, the pop songs, always such an excellent distraction from what's really going on underneath, soothing like that big water that held us today.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-80843620484863636402007-07-30T00:57:00.000-04:002007-09-06T03:25:28.846-04:00home moviessaw too many movies this weekend. i will make a little outline and fill it in:<br /><br />hijos de la guerra - children of the war, a latino film festival entry about the big salvadoran gang ms-13. it covered the history of it from the '80s to today and had great, terrirying footage of riots inside prisons and massacres in the streets and gang jump-ins, but about 85% of it went unidentified and really lost impact that way for me. as many of the voiceovers were unidentified as well and it just lent this air of vagueness and inaccuracy that was kinda irresponsible considering that the filmmaker was trying to fight a myth about these guys and the fact that they're blamed for all of central america's ills as of late. you fight myths best with accuracy and some real reporting. central america was a mess before the gangs came about. instead of ms-13, perhaps he should have considered doing what the beginning of the film promised, dealing with how governments, the us and those of central america really created this monster. he has access to the gang members but doesn't really dig into how corrupt the governments are. there is a discussion of the war in the 80s that's not that satisfying and the mention that politicians in CA use the promise to wipe maras out for votes but don't get into that the maras probably do some jobs for the government/military/police and/or probably fight the gov/mil/pol for shit like drug trafficking routes and profits. the film does go into the idea that the mara is not nearly as organized as it's described but doesn't frame itself that way overall. you do get the sense of them as a menace and you never ever want to visit this part of the world ever in your life, which most people can avoid, but i can't so i want to know how to deal with this in some realistic way. the friend i went to see it with thought it needed a real narrator to bring it together, like some michael moore. we did appreciate the footage especially the sight of deported criminals, dudes in shackles crossing the tarmacs in the us and the third world, good visuals for a broad story that's been in the news for years. but maybe a movie about the really organized gangs should be considered, these governments of the americas.<br /><br />nanny mcphee - saw this getting ready to go hang with my niece for the weekend. boy does she need a nanny mcphee like a muthafucker. was feeling that emma thompson wrote the thing and it was her baby. did not know that. the wedding dress made of snow at the end was fabulous but i am disappointed by the idea that only the powers of a magic witch could correct the buck wild children.<br /><br />zodiac - my father and i watched this into the wee hours of sunday morning. it was hella long but there were many reasons to keep watching, a scary, fame-hungry killer, a complex plot, and a few meng sangwiches i was putting together in my head there, jake gyllenhall and robert downey, and, don't really think he was that hot but i was liking his commitment to his work in the movie there, so mark ruffalo and jake gyllenhall were making a good sangwich too. basically you could add jake to many sangwiches and they would probably work, he has been sangwich-worthy since brokeback. anyway, the movie, it is a mystery and all and i don't always understand those and this one is particularly labyrinthine (i think that is a word), but even when i was lost i was enjoying it and truly frightened often. one scene in particular scared the hell out of me but then confused the hell out of me cuz they dropped some of the plot as well as some characters after it. i had to get on imdb and ask some people on the board about it and there was agreement on this confusion. it made me feel good to know that i had understood this genre, with which i often have a hard time, enough to know that it was wrong somehow, that there was a hole where i thought there was a hole. my father dug the scary confusion too and that along with my mother being back from honduras and taking care of him the only way he prefers patched up our relationship a little, which has been shaky cuz i can't be the nursemaid he married. <br /><br />little miss sunshine - saw the last half of it the other day on hbo and all of it tonight. the last half alone won me over. this is one of those films i resist cuz of hype and see secretly at home many months after its cultural peak. i was such a big fat sucker for it, a privately in-my-own-home laughing/crying/clapping talking-to-the-screen sucker. i mean it's about american failure, my secret favorite subject, one i can barely write about but this writer gets it on the money, the actors get it, the directors, excellent. even the frickin yellow van they're driving in, gets it, it's a character and a half. i called my mother around the time it started to check in on her cuz she had dropped me off uptown and drove back home and i could hear the movie on the other side of the line. i had it on and hers was echoing steve carrell and greg kinnear. i was all "are you watching that? watch it, it's fabulous" and i talked to my brother and told him to watch it too, that it was all about our family, who i like to call the potentials. i was trying to figure out what character i was and it took about two seconds. i was the gay suicidal ph.d. of course. i could be the little girl too though, especially her concern with being a loser and i wished i had a fabulous heroin-addicted grandpa who knew just what to say to her cuz he's got all the perspective in the world being old AND on drugs. but i let the little girl be my niece and the grandpa be my father cuz they where the exact same striped pajamas and v-neck hanes t-shirt, not cuz my father is so positively affected by the prescription drugs he takes. he is negatively affected in that he lives in delusions such as me being a "good" daughter and hopping to his every command and still believing i might join the military or move back home or some such nonsense. so glad ma is back to take care of that monster she made. i am just monster jr., she knows that. finally hanging with him for a civil minute, my father would call me by my mom's name, vilma, the same way my ma calls me my father's name, mando. they are each other's conversation partners but i also like to think that perhaps i am enough of both of them that they call me by each other's names. i am vilmando.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-29016042359985679162007-07-22T02:13:00.000-04:002007-09-06T03:39:08.032-04:00tragic putasfor movie night tonight i saw princesas. it's from spain and it's real name was putas. it's about this one spanish prostitute who becomes friends with a dominican prostitute. i think it was set in madrid but i'm not sure. anyway, it was a little long, the spanish hooker is a little too philosophical and her lines could have definitely been edited cuz she even repeats herself and it gets too sentimental that way but overall i liked the ladies who played the roles a lot. they were just likable but i guess hookers should be. the dominican girl was very fine and she was good even though her character is seriously downtrodden. i guess that was the point, her existence is far rougher than the spanish girl's cuz she's illegal and mulata and all of that. oh yeah, she is a tragic mulata, and a tragic immigrant. it gets bad for her and there are some really painful scenes that she seems to bounce back from awfully quickly so it never quite gets so bad and i was glad to be spared great tragedy. it was like everyday tragedy, which could be sadder in some ways. besides being about the plight of hos, it's definitely all about racism and immigration in spain, and how it affects the hooker community. there are scenes with a group of white spanish hookers chilling in a salon looking out at all the african and caribbean hos on the plaza working streets they used to, the white hos gettting all mad cuz those bitches make it like a jungle out there and many such comments about savagery and dirtyness. and then there is the main character who is like them but not and becomes friends with the downtrodden dominican ho. they both have their dramas with the mens but of course the dominican has it worse with some scary spaniard taunting her with the idea he can get her her papers and that gets crazy and there is one scene where basically she has to do what it takes and her face is just hard to look at. but it was all of interest to me to see this spain, i'm into all things spain-ish lately with my recent trip and it's all informative for me.<br /><br />spain has been making an appearance in my life this week. i forgot i had this on my netflix queue and it came just as my freng goes to barcelona for the week and the dude i stayed with in madrid came to new york and brought with him the fabulousness of cheese and ham that i've been savoring for the past two days. there's a bottle of wine too that i am too thrilled to possess. i would love to go again and be mistaken for an immigrant taking some spanish hos' work. i was thinking about how them dealing with the immigrants out there. i did think i would pass cuz i have gotten shit in america for being light but the spanish are still europeans and they know a foreigner, especially from latin america, when they see one. i don't have to be a mulata, i can a mestiza and be different. i was asked more than once about my face and features and what i am, they knew i wasn't them. their faces are harder, more angular, mine is softer and chunkier like the indians lurking in me still despite my pale skin. there was no passing. there was no tragedy either, just the one of not getting any while i was out there but that was for lack of trying. all those spaniards are hos, men and women alike, ready to go. "follar o no follar," as my buddy out there recalls of their straightforwardness. to fuck or not to fuck, truly the question. she is worried that she will be confused for a dominican whore but it's probably that or spinster, no in-between when you're not a youngun anymore. let's hope we get confused for whore.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-90183069259861400242007-07-21T23:33:00.001-04:002007-07-21T23:54:52.998-04:00consuming the streetso i decided to step out of my cave and satisfy some cravings. this is what i was missing out on the street below:<br /><br />a few of the ladies on their usual stoop but then<br />a row, i counted at least eight, folding beach chairs with asses in them <br />against the wall of the building<br />there were about ten other people standing around them<br />there was the whole backseat of an suv ripped out and positioned near the bodega<br />soft like movie theater seating, gray and fuzzy, comfy for the corner boys<br /><br />there is an unbelievable breeze out there <br />and everyone was out on their porches<br />their concrete porches<br />talking shit<br />watching everyone<br />like they did<br />way south<br />of here<br />letting the breeze stroke them<br />through the slow night<br /><br />so much thicker here though<br />more people<br />more gray<br />less green<br /><br />me i was out there in basically pajamas<br />a long white shirt<br />and loose grey pajama pants<br />i think they're workout pants<br />but i wear them sleepily<br />the only lady i saw <br />dressed like me <br />was the young lesbian <br />who lives on my floor<br />i won't explore that<br /><br />the ladies on the street <br />were all wearing shit pressed tight to them<br />there were some girls about my size<br />not small<br />rocking tight shit<br />flesh revealed in all the right parts<br />i don't have the attitude for all that<br />but was as glad to see them unashamed<br />as i was to see the gay lady of my floor<br />similarly unpressed<br /><br />the boys i barely paid attention to<br />as i expected them to pay little to me<br />in my loose-flowing garments<br />though i did see<br />the light-skinded jay-z <br />i always greet<br />in the bodega here below <br />and inside my building<br />he wasn't behind the counter this time<br />was just hanging as the guys do there<br />the corner social club<br /><br />i was on a hunt for a haagen dazs ice cream bar<br />vanilla and dark chocolate<br />i settled for milk<br />in three stores they were out<br />cuz clearly the dark chocolate is the superior product<br />and will sell out<br /><br />i was preparing for the rest of my night<br />a movie night<br />and stocked up on the ice cream<br />and some more power-crack to go with my popcorn<br />the power-crack is easy to find here<br />it's the hood<br />they got that magic red juice at the ready<br />for the street consumers<br /><br />i was out there<br />consuming <br />the street <br />as i tracked down <br />my fix<br /><br />a little more exciting <br />than the morbidity<br />the self-absorption <br />of the hiding day in the cave<br />the previous postnightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-2128530329760378362007-07-21T22:41:00.000-04:002007-07-21T23:00:20.853-04:00hiding dayi suck at keeping this but i'm trying again. try, try again. i'm having a day all to myself in my cave of an apartment. it's a pretty city day but i need my home. i need to recover from a long week of many things to do. inane work and not-so-inane work but all work and after it all all i want to do is destroy myself, just wreck from the outside in. that is work too. i was drinking and smoking for a good six hours, a work night. talking all this shit that revealed my insecurity as soon as i released it. but it was released and maybe that's all i want. release, for it to be gone from me. the rapist knows i need that. she knows she needs to prescribe no pills, i self-medicate. she knows i need a mother figure, someone who'll be nice, who'll nod her head kindly. she needs that check i provide too, as i need mine. we do what we have to to get our checks.<br /><br />i am morbid girl today but so be it. the thoughts accumulate, the real thoughts, when you're alone and not beholden to someone else's wishes. sometimes i want to be beholden to something else, to forget me and what's in the nooks and crannies of my head but there is always some moment i have to return to me and it all weighs on hard. when i'm working an office job, that moment is saturday. the stop day, the stop and remember you're alone day, the stop and watch too many whatever movies are on, the stop and regret what came out of my mouth in the middle of the partying the night before, the stop. and then some crying, over some memory triggered by a chick flick i would never admit to seeing, over some thinking about what i haven't done for my family, what i haven't done for myself. and then back to the wrecking of the prior evening. digging into the bag for the medication, finding something better on the tv, something better to forget to. <br /><br />i meant to leave the apartment at some point today. but it was hiding day really, i let my magical green couch of sleep suck me in. i need a hiding day every few days. don't know if that's a good thing but it's what i need.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-19197571003975432042007-07-02T13:48:00.000-04:002007-09-06T03:39:37.353-04:00word-eating mayaupon the recent dvd release of apocalyto, the film i railed against vehemently in a post somewhere below, i am writing to eat my words. i am also restarting this blog, in conversation with inkaquatic, who has put in her own two cents about the movie. i saw it in the theater when it came out in november. i had my arms crossed for the first thirty minutes, my mouth in a snarl. it was cutesy and odd at first. but when they get to the temples and then the chase, i undid my stance and leaned in, almost off my chair. <br /><br />i relived that again with friends this weekend. it was even better in the 2nd go 'round, watching it without the possessive posture. rereading what i said about mel, i feel that i was only right to question what was gonna go down, especially after "passion," but perhaps being removed from the subject, not so close to it as he was with christ, served him better. he got so heavy-handed and preachy and violent and just forgot about story in passion and apocalypto was the place for him to explore what real, open ideas of humanity he seems to have. he put together ideas about the maya that i've read about in whole new ways, ways i could see clearly. i guess that can be the function of film, to uncomplicate. it isn't a historical document but it uses history very well. the temple scenes were as grotesque as they were gorgeous, i was totally torn by this gruesome empire and its fabulous fashions, all the jade bling that the ahaus (maya kings) rocked, i loved it and it hurt me. <br /><br />it does get ludicrous but mostly holds together, especially that last hour in the jungle. the lead character learns to use the forest as the movie learns to use the forest and it's just magical. i could not fight that, it was real homage to a natural world and a smart way to go with the action and story, not getting to caught up in the details of history and using the drama of nature. i do still think that he is some kind of hollywood conquistador, and i will forever envy the white men with access to great storytelling devices, but at least this time he used his powers for good.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-1139647483116110272006-02-11T06:52:00.000-05:002007-09-06T03:44:39.837-04:00hypergraphiaaquamarina reminded about these pages i have floating out in the world. it's lovely to imagine that. i should fill more of them and set them free so here i am. <br /><br />and i have a new fetish, the little laptop that makes me want to click away. the novelty hasn't worn off yet. i dig this tactile thing to makes you want to put something just to touch keys, bang something out. it can be a fetish writing, writing just to write to fuck around and be happy to play with making marks on a page. i remember thinking that when i saw the basquiat show last summer and then i got into him for a week and rented that old movie he made, downtown 81. how he liked to just mark up a wall, how good the spray paint can must have felt. i think he says something about it somewhere. you could tell from his handwriting how he loved the sheer act of writing, he made his own font, that all caps style of his. <br /><br />i was reading something at the time called the midnight disease, a neurologist talking about why people write. she was interested in some illness i think it was, called hypergraphia, like you just ooze writing, you need to be constantly writing, it might not be great but it's just the putting it down that you have to do. i know i enjoy the feel of a good pen, a new color, a clean journal sheet. and now these letters individually represented, alphabet buttons, new games for the fingers, the hands. <br /><br />i've been teaching the kiddies again and i'm always fascinated watching how they get to a page, if they get to it. they do this whole writer's block dance about their pencils, don't got a pencil, can i borrow a pencil, gotta go sharpen my pencil. and then i don't make it easy cuz i am judgmental when it comes to writing. i know they're children but i still have expectations even though i swear i've tried to get over that sort of thing in this detached adulthood of mine. one poet teacher chick did a good job of explaining one day how the discussion that arises from the work i share with the children, from the process of getting it on the page is the real lesson, the product shouldn't be the emphasis. but still i want them to make cool things and i still don't have control of how that happens. i still want control despite this detached adulthood. i haven't learned shit.<br /><br />i actually have other writing and editing to do but it's a slow process that and i haven't been that thrilled with that work. it's ok, it's a collaboration between pisceses and it went as such things might, four fish going in different directions. tons of miscommunicating fun. i would rather not face it right now but i have to get it done by some point tomorrow.<br /><br />i just want to have some real joy right now. twas a long week of office and school. i got some fancy stuff to eat tonight, prosciutto and manchego and grapes, got some good smoke, and a friend brought over some lovely drink. a cheesy movie came in the mail, hustle and flow. decent entertainment for the night. they sang their own stuff, that was respectable, the classic white boy writer tropes were not. nothing to be too hurt by though, i refused to care that much tonight. <br /><br />i'm watching videos right now, jamie foxx is singing on a split screen. <br /><br />i enjoyed my company. he talked about spain as we ate our winter tapas. i liked imagining we had made a little spain in my hole in washington heights. they apparently know to chill and i feel that capacity in my blood. <br /><br />there's some noreaster fixin to hit tomorrow. i'm writing with a southern accent cuz of hustle and flow. i think i would enjoy further burrowing into my hole here, hibernating in my tenement cave. como un cusuco en su something my mother says. a cusuco is some indian shit i never heard of, i think it's like an armadillo or something. there is some shit on her tongue i just think she be making up sometimes, indian shit vaguely remembered. she could be right, in the middle of central america someone might understand what she's saying. a cusuco tucked in deep in its hole, happy to be hidden, warm in its own flesh.<br /><br />i think i'm gonna wrap me up in some cloths and forget, keep me from the cold. night. mornin'.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-1135327278156881112005-12-23T03:10:00.000-05:002005-12-23T04:01:42.816-05:00my mayaugh, mel gibson is doing a maya movie. it's coming out next summer. they're my maya, not his. i'm too heated. tired and heated. tried to let the jealousy make me write but what was coming out was not fun. i don't know what this voice is, this story voice, this fiction voice. i get lost in it and can't find my way to me. should i sound like how i write here? probably not either but at least i make sense to me here. i don't feel i'm doing to fight the hollywood's version of a story i wanted to write.<br /><br />all the pain that man put people thru with that last garbage of his and now he has to take on my people. i mean, ok i might not be totally maya but whatever, they're the metaphor of my life, a broken civilization, washed-up like me. he don't feel them. he just wants to conquer them like the white men before him. i know i'm fucked i'm too but i'm not gonna make the people a summer blockbuster, i'm not gonna tell THE tale, i want to tell a tale, i want, i want, i want.<br /><br />this is all it is right here, the tale, a tale from me. i feel a kinship cuz it's in the blood somewhere, after i saw the temples there was no turning back. the temples were just a few hours from my parents' hometown. for uppity hicks like my family feeling close to great civilization when you live like any ole working class fools is only appropriate. but they are truly amazing, i've never felt the blood stir like that, i felt it in the one drop cuz you know there's no full-bloodedness for generations in my world. if there were they would just get called stupid indians by the mixed breeds. my parents still call each other that now. after dissing black folks my father's favorite epithets have to do with himself and his dumb indio ass. i'm always fascinated by the self-hate as much as i am by the temples, the ruins, what once was, what we never knew really.<br /><br />and then this fucker, this right-wing sadist is gonna come along and tell this history, fuck him. it's called apocalypto. it's about how a civilization destroys itself from within. he has something right there. but his propaganda help spur these new crusades we're living in here and he's gonna preach about people destroying each other. i wonder how he's gonna deal with these pagans, hardline christian that he is, how will he make them digestible. maybe it will be easy cuz they're so far removed, in time and reality. it's set thousands of years ago and he's in mexico getting modern-day maya to act as extras. this man has some balls, that's his whole point, to swing his balls around. europeans did the same 500 years ago, come ball-swinging into some supposedly new world, new cuz they just got there when other people had been there. hollywood the new conquistadors.<br /><br />just have to rant tonight. tired and mad. the journal wasn't enough. i had to say something here too. i'm sure there's more to say but i'm done right now.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-1132299021936145382005-11-18T05:30:00.000-05:002005-11-18T02:30:21.946-05:00bleh bleh blehto aquamarina (addressing your comment): i wasn't really jealous of uma, i related to her cuz she wasn't trained by a master, she was tortured by a master. i mean, yeah, she could get herself out of a coffin six feet under ground cuz of the torture/training but she's a killer too. i coulda been a killer, i coulda been a contender, but somewhere along the line i lost that bloodlust, that ambition. maybe it's all the smoke in my brain. maybe it's all the things i think i saw in all the places i've been. if i'm jealous it would be because i fear i've lost some skill in losing the ambition.<br /><br />the rest of this post is not necessarily for aquamarina but you're like the only reader of this. i'll let other folks know about this little blog where i blurt all this bleh bleh bleh after this post. anyway, i'm often thinking about this ambition thing in some way and sat down at the computer tonight cuz i wanted to shake off some of that, particularly as it relates to my literal worth. i'm the working broke right now and i believe i've kept a stiff upper lip about it but tonight i felt a little trembly, like the center was about to give and i would burst from the inside out all over the papers telling me what i owe and the little calendar i was making for myself of when and how i would pay it back. i had been ripping little post-its, putting dollar amounts of what i get and what i have to give next to every friday on the calendar. it helped for a second, you know, i was trying to get organized, see what was feasible, but then the OCD stopped comforting me. the day-glo post-it chart wasn't fun anymore, it was getting confusing and hurting me in fact. i'll actually be OK according to my calculations but just barely by the skin of my ass.<br /><br />and it was distracting me from other shit i wanted to think about like the poetry classes i think i will understand only years and months after they're done. i just think and hope i learn everything by osmosis cuz precision and training and like, discipline, those things are no longer in my repertoire. i mean, i'm sure some of these poets aren't that precise or disciplined but they seem to have some sense of what they talk about. what happens to me is i believe i understand and then i try and put something down on paper and i get funny looks from the teacher like, um, no. they're not being mean, they just react to what's not working, which is my understanding of let's say gertrude stein and all the funky shit she was doing and some ancient egyptian curse-writers and all the funky shit they were doing. it's all fascinating to me but my understanding i think is kind of surface and somewhat bullshit. and sometimes i feel like i get some of this stuff better than i ever have, or feel that i couldn't have understood things in this way until now, like in the past, i just don't know what i was thinking. how could i have read gabriel garcia marquez at fifteen and really have an understanding? i mean i was a smart kid but i was probably bullshittin too. cuz i read that shit again like two years ago and all i could think was i didn't understand shit when i was younger. i got things a lot better now, as you can see cuz i explain what things are so precisely, shit, all i can call it is things. but no, i do get the sense of time, this rootedness in the ancient, but yet getting this idea that we're dust and repetitious as hell in the meantime before we return to dust, that humans do the same old shit and nothing is modern and nothing is old, it's all the same, mostly. so yeah, that's something but do i have a clue as to how the man approached that kind of work. no. and that's how i feel in the poetry classes. i get it but it doesn't really translate into my writing. that whole long paragraph just to say i don't know a damn thing.<br /><br />that's how i feel at jobs a lot too. i have to get jobs, right, to pay bills, but i get to these jobs and with every day that passes i feel more and more like i don't what i'm doing. i know what the task is, i've done it millions of times but the repetition seems not to improve my ability but erode it. like i get tired of it. it does not thrill me. cuz it's true i don't do thrilling things. currently i am let's say an information assistant, i gather trivia, a trivia gatherer, trivia as it relates to a particular piece of writing. shit i really could give a shit about. but i have to give some small shit, enough to get the check and pay the bill. ay vey, here we are again with the money. this circular thinking sucks. but i'm trapped in this cycle of worthless work on this "dark planet of insanity" (a psychic's description i have appropriated). and i want to write things that break cycles and i read things that do but i can't get to those places yet.<br /><br />i don't want to write about my life but most of the time it's only my life that gets me writing. i'm interested in other people's lives often as they relate to mine. i can wear their skin and pretend i'm somebody else but it's insincere and self-centered always. if i insist on writing about my life i want it to be new somehow but i just ranted a paragraph ago about how nothing's new, it's all been done, history, writing, living. i've been attracted to these poetries i don't understand because they're new to me. i might not love them all the time but when i get the explanation of what they're trying to do, i can appreciate it, to a degree. to the degree at least of its newness. and maybe i just fetishize that, but i get so bored with this life i'm from, this circle i've been in. i just wanna see someone scramble it in a way that entertains i was gonna say but maybe it should be deeper than that. that changes things, scramble it in a way that changes a mind or a life, like i was reading today, john cage, something like that, change society by changing a mind. that's large and small at the same time. cuz it's small too it doesn't scare me so much.<br /><br />i stopped to look up the john cage thing i was reading earlier. there's a tone in it that's so mellow and not abusive. that's not my tone. abusive is part of my tone. i think about that too, that it rings true for how i understand things but sometimes it's too much. i wish i could say i don't know without being mad at me for not knowing. i think it's a family thing. i want to elaborate but it would drain me too much right now and i am delirious from waking up to go somewhere in the morning. how i miss my bed. when i walk the few blocks to work after the train ride i pass by a train station for the B, D, E and the other morning i read BED in orange and blue. i sleep on the train down too, sleep on it up going home. i feel like a baby rocked in my crib when i put my hood on, or my sunglasses, and tuck myself into the bucket seat on the 1. never been mugged, thank the train god for that.<br /><br />i'm getting tired. just wanted to bleh bleh bleh. this whole life could be bleh, bleh, bleh. my mom once tried to make me eat a salad at wendy's and it was just nasty and while she ate that fi-dolla grossness i was staring out at the highway in south brooklyn, it was like a flat sky day, i could see the verrazano but it wasn't that pretty cuz of the dull sky, and i took the yellow wendy's napkin and wrote, life is bleh like a fast food salad. ok that's it, that's what i'm leaving you with. i'm passing out.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18919512.post-1131875983697127022005-11-13T07:59:00.000-05:002005-11-13T04:59:43.710-05:00beatrix kiddinghave to subtract seven minutes from the bedroom clock to figure out the time, uh, damn the time changed before i could, 4:07 am, there. lowered the volume on the tv in the living room, turned on the little space heater. ready to go. this is my hour, haven't gotten to see it much lately in the past few weeks cuz i've had a day job. my body rebels in the bed though, my mind moreso. i do it to myself but i've done it to myself all my life. that is my excuse. been up late for as long as i can remember. ma and pa never minded. i was always late to school, especially from junior high school on, but i did well then so i guess that was how i made up for it all. was absent a lot too but still did work. anyway, now work gets harder to do, sleeping getting easier. except at night, during the day sleeping easier.<br /><br />looking forward to the sunday sleep-in, the afternoon breakfast, the video vegetation. just came back from the weekend family visit, a little more morbid lately but still required. my father's in the hospital, not as bad as it sounds but not great either, hospitals never fun. coney island hospital not on the zagat survey of hospitals. but close to the family home and gets my father semi-quick treatment for what ails lately, this time asthma gone haywire after a flu shot. and really it's ma, working full-time and not able to be full-time nursemaid too, had to get him care she couldn't give. he was alright, a little bug-eyed and talking kinda crazy, about some lady who died earlier in the year that he sees in dreams. this is common. he's seen dead people for quite some time. ma says he's obsesionado, but she is too just plays it cooler. as the child of obsessed, possessive people i am all of them and more but play it the coolest. nothing's cooler than leaving, which i get to do, spend my hours with them and then break the fuck out.<br /><br />was chilling with my brother before i left. he hasn't broken out and he's quite a few years older. he's paid with his soul for staying there but it seems like he's on the brink of something. yeah. i would like to think that he is. he's another long story. just to say we watched part of amores perros, the second gael movie of the night. i had been watching crime of padre amaro with ma when he walked in. that was bananas, but blasphemous so it wins points for that. and gael is a papi, of course, you could watch him all day long, but i hear he's short, like my height, don't know about that. my brother was proud of his assessment of padre amaro, that he was doing all that to save his job as a priest, what was the point of that, and just was enjoying his observations during amores perros, like with this one heavy, grimy mexican dude he was all, "fernando valenzuela is a good actor" and that the brother doing all that to his other brother, fucking his girl and paying her and all this violent shit too, he was all he really wants to actually fuck his brother, like there are guys who get obsessed like that, did i read the paper about some brothers in brooklyn, one who killed another cuz he was the favorite. we were laughing about all that. when i say he was proud and enjoyed his observations he would stop to point out how succinct his points were, like damn i'm good kinda stuff. i told him it might be good if he didn't stop to pat himself on the back each time.<br /><br />oh and kill bill 2 was on and i was saying my favorite part of it was when she's training with that vicious chinese teacher who just fucks with her and makes her beat a board with her fist and sleep like a prisoner and i told him i laugh at it like i relate to it cuz my training growing up felt that torturous. all it was though was my father and brother tormenting me with schoolwork from young, like multiplication table drills and shit like that when i was seven. they were some vicious chinese teachers though. i didn't laugh then. i'm still twitchy like uma thurman on the cot in the cell but i don't think i can break thru a board with my fist anymore.<br /><br />alright, so i see this is just rambling, not gonna be too deep, might drone on a bit though, very little editing involved. what else do i want to remember. oh the dancing in the living room. why i come home, look forward to my space. was in my robe and fuzzy slippers and the feels good inc video came on, the gorillaz with de la soul and i was psyched, did a nice little interpretative dance there, it's got this quiet part that makes me spin slow and this rocking part that makes me spin fast and freak the air and generally get stupid. i don't have as much cable as they do in coney island but i have a great dancefloor. for that alone i need to be in my home. could have stayed there tonight but i have to fight that, es que alli no me allo, what ma says, i can't find myself there. i find myself here, the killers singing again on the tv, me wandering on the screen. good night, it's 4:57-7, so 4:50. it's better when i put the work on the page, i can't do it in my head.nightbreakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10930960322595220573noreply@blogger.com2