Details vs. the big picture. I cleaved to one because of predisposition but also to demarcate myself against ~ -- BUT, ive discovered something that no one else has -- dying and then rebirth -- over and over again -- as many times a possible over a lifetime -- which i cut short with solo drinking binges and running in shanghai, which i prolong by not eating meat (i know these things intuitively; without the news telling me). In any case -- details! shit -- things, people fiddling around under the undergrowth my adult self stands on.

been working my way through very old billy joel tracks -- im glad that my neck of the woods has been so well-documented -- when i was a sophomore i showed ~ around times square -- we agreed that X ragman looked exactly like BJ if only for his eyes -- still, that is an immesurable distance away -- the future flows forward like like endless vomit/dryheaving and recently ive become an enormous believer in it! there's no reason to comb over the zhuangzi and other such jack - shit when we all have infinately better versions lying dormant. SO - finally ive drained myself of all desire to join that ivory tower full of cowards.
why -- cuz we all maintain an unique place in the universe no matter how much we try to align ourselves with things more accepted. billy joel reminds me of brooklyn confessionals and plush carpet of New Jersey aquainatances that i run my socks over, and other things i'm so over .

Gus Vant Sant is by far one of my fav. filmmakers.:

"In the book, "Pink" refers to this other dimension that exists outside of the ones we inhabit, not heaven exactly, but a place of potential salvation. How did you conceive of this other place, this other reality?

The one thing that you can be really, really sure of is that there is more. There's more in the sense that there's a future, you know, an hour from now, something else that's a weird disconnected part of now, but its not here, right now. But you can be sure that in an hour from now there will be some more of what we have right now.

There is just definitely more. And that's the kind of wild, unbelievable thing about reality. It doesn't occur to you when you're part of it, because reality is all about what's real and what's in this reality, and it's not anything about what's outside of this reality. But if you just think about the other realities, it becomes unbelievably dumbfounding."

-Watched Gandhi yesterday. The biggest mistake my fam ever made (theyve made millions) was converting to christianity way in the foggy past of the 1st century, supposedly -- this hindu stuff is way in my bones -- the love of self-mortification. There was a time when I loved to walk around with my jacket open to the freezing cold and other such adventures, before...what -- my first love, booze i suppose. and loud music, and other readily accessible forms of self-stupification.
-It's a ridiculous thing to waste time but I do it constantly --it's been years since i've sat in one place doing something for any length of time. fucking computers. i could have been president by now. there's going to be a new consciousness - childrens are going to be able to deal with all these distraction in an hyper-effective manner -- gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet -- we're a bunch of cracked eggs. all that potential like some disgusting goo on the floor. though i supposed there are some productive people out there..

So on the way up to hanover last winter, up to some race to the bottom experience-mongering mischief, chewing my own sensual cud -- on ye ol Dartmouth Coach they showed a documentary on the Mars Rover and I sat in the back with my head against the frosty window and bawled my eyes out (on the inside). It's clean and right to be an agent of evolution, and yet all my gravity pulls towards something else--to be a COMMENTATOR, ugh. The source of much of my self-loathing, which I now discard wholesale, for the sake of streamlining..
The kind of X that I want to be needs a full gaze, an aquaintance with both the low and base and the good and righteous (and I do believe in such distinctions). A long term, ongoing project -- not about to cop out now.
New hobbies include starving myself until my eyes are wild and then looking through them. I want to discover an entirely new sensuality. It's been ages since Ive had a legitimate interest in flesh. It's the beginning of something new (finally).

a linguistic, epistemological
mini-theory:

Lose sight of the shore
Lose sight of the sure

Shore
Sure

Shore- God, Om, Round open
Possibilities
Sure –
a tunnel,
Masturbatory self-satisfaction, a closing

I run to the shore
To lose sight of the sure

furthermore death to all those embarassed by enthusiasm--
I'd like to write a long ecstatic letter about *new methods*, but there'd be no one to send it to!
phillip roth's the human stain: the aggregate of secretions, excrement, shedded skin, etc over yer average lifespan
how about paper excrement, verbal secretions. met ~ a few months ago -- a proper academic, crusty academic language flaking off his crusty soul. neausiating. i find it very easy to insult other people (obvi)
but here's what i mean:
the utter necessity of morality so as not to waste time; necessity of ambition for the same reason; only universals even in the particulars (for example, a shadow falling across a staircase); reject transcendence, only dig deeper and deeper into what's immanent (person looks at the sky, his pupils get smaller, he similarily shrinks into himself and becomes worthless which is to say all transcendence is the same, now - the big black eyes that miners have, to train for a new sort of vision..the pickaxe helps..)
related: "he discovered early that impacting one's fists into shut eyes generates a stream of hypnagogic imagery.."
asdfasdfasdfqw

Love strikes me as just so many prickly spokes on the wheel of samsara. And yet, I'm not willing to disregard it completely - i sense i'd be thrown into an almost entirely new (but not entirely!) sort of poverty if I do. Love has to be re-invented -- not my words, someone else's. I wont say whose lest I get obvious and tiresome.

Schopenhauer evidently has a lot to say on the subject:

"The aesthetic experience temporarily emancipates the subject from the Will's domination and raises them to a level of pure perception. "On the occurrence of an aesthetic appreciation, the will thereby vanishes entirely from consciousness."
The personality of the artist was also supposed to be less subject to Will than most: such a person was a Schopenhauerian genius, a person whose exceptional predominance of intellect over Will made them relatively aloof from earthly cares and concerns. The poet living in a garret, the absent-minded professor, Vincent van Gogh in the madhouse, are all (at least in the popular mind) examples of Schopenhauer's geniuses: so fixed on their art that they neglect the "business of life" that in Schopenhauer's mind meant only the domination of the evil and painful Will. For Schopenhauer, the relative lack of competence of the artist and the thinker for practical pursuits was no mere stereotype: it was cause and effect.”

"...Another image also comes to mind: Nietsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman's very eyes, put his arms around the horse's neck and burst into tears.

That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had removed himself from the world of people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I feel his gesture has broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse or Descartes. His lunacy (tht is, his final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse.

and that is the Nietzche I love, just as I love Tereza with the mortally ill dog resting in her lap. I see them one next to the other: both stepping down from the road along which mankind, 'the master and proprieter of nature,' marches onward."

___

Yo, sensation, emotion is felt in the body, And the human race has completely failed in giving names to things. Palpitations are felt in the heart and may indicate some sort of illness, but palpitations in the liver or the stomach are completely ignored, even if they are a function of (or in fact ARE) very real and interesting emotions. Note how much meaning we assign say -- the spleen, and the nothing we assign to things felt there. (Writing directly here). "...the psychic cataclysm experienced by Lautreamont and Rimbaud. Not madness, but the realization that the psyche is an unmapped continent..." -- more or less what i mean.

With the completion of X on the horizon, the dread of what is beyond that horizon– I mean of political life, the life of buying and selling, evaluation and valuation, where I always feel exposed, disoriented, unaware of (irritated at) what is expected.

Kill all
1. cowards
2. pedants

whats left? Artists, i-bankers, mountain-climbers, the like. The fusion of ideal and action, which is to pursue an ideal at all costs (money, soul, life – respective sacrifices).

“I don’t find stories about crazy people particularly interesting,”
said the impossible idiot.
It’s all a Rorschach test, dammit, almost every single piece of sensory data there is. And that you think it isn’t is a function of XX years of schooling in reality agreed over by adults, who are blind people led by older blind people. Who isn’t blind? Those who have vision. That’s why yea, I do think there is a link between instability and creativity/innovation (mutually agreed upon reality like a flashing airplane light on a building you’re about to fly into). A worthy sacrifice!

updates:
Busted my right knee open twice, the first time because of a failure of planning (running should go before drinking), the second time out of pure carelessness (in a downpour). Also put a name to a condition (conjunctivitis). Navel gazing going well - discovered a base state of anxiety - highly sensitive, unpleasant. Now what does this mean. I like to think in pop-biological terms, and religious questions are the most interesting. What does THAT mean. I dont care -- futures are for constructing, not for discovering. I have a new long term project: learning how to dream lucidly, which i'm deeply excited about. Kundera is a genius. So is Turner (the painter).



"Seven simple rules for a life in hiding:
One, never trust a cop in a raincoat.
Two, beware of enthusiasm and of love, each is temporary and quick to sway.
Three, if asked if you care about the world's problems, look deep into the eyes of he who asks, he will not ask you again.
Number four and five, never give your real name, and if ever told to look at yourself, never look.
Six, never say or do anything with the person standing in front of you cannot understand.
And seven, never create anything. It will be misinterpreted. it will chain you and follow you for the rest of your life, and it will never change"



writing i found on the wall:
To suk the x out of X – I’m not going to lie! Drunk again! Ate shaved ice and tiramisu – before that, karaoke. A standard story. Fleshed out by eperience. The best years of one’s X. I X with X, had breakfst at X, with random kindergarden teacher, Chinese, putting makup on her face, as most Chinese are --- sandard! Uninteresting.A hop and a step, at home that over looks the perl tower and other things that you mght be familiar with.And burnig hunger alleviated by – I don’t realy know.
Lets ge X everyday! I cant really imagine a better life. Except for the aging on one’s fce. TE Lawrence never drank and died eary on a motorcycle – the only way to go.
I cant remember the last time ive been denied someone;s X
A barometer!



nothing wrong or indecent, I swear, with showing eachother some raw matter. Before carving and polishing. Ginberg and Cassidy sat across from eachother crosslegged telling eachother everything that came to mind, without moving. It's the kind of intimacy I crave, to be honest. Sucking eachother in via the eyes and mouth, drop by drop

More than anyone i've ever encountered in real or electronic life, bob dylan knows how to live. Gary Snyder comes close though:
"In a culture where the aesthetic experience is denied and atrophied, genuine religious ecstasy rare, intellectual pleasure scorned — it is only natural that sex should become the only personal epiphany of most people & the culture's interest in romantic love take on staggering size"
It's as true in China as it is in the States, maybe even moreso.

some stories:

"At other times, their drinking was less productive. They fought like cats, sometimes with knives rolled in towels. 'As soon as mutilation had been achieved...they put the knives away and went to the pub'"

"Solomon wanted to commit suicide, but he thought a form of suicide appropriate to dadaism would be to go to a mental institution and demand a lobotomy. The institution refused, giving him many forms of therapy, including electroshock therapy"


and, about Nobokov's style:
"which is to deal with life as if it were a thing created by a mad poet on a spring night.."
yeaa.


Do you think very much about our generation? I try not to - prevents me from being bored to death. But I know exactly how to be a "spokesperson for our generation' ! - that's to read the newspaper front to back in the morning, willfully forget about it, and then write what comes in the evening. nothing simpler!

reading On the Road again (the first time was cross-legged on the floor of one brooklyn public library). a guilty pleasure, something i hated to look at - i've had great joys, mostly bacchanal....fuck.
Dean Moriarty is on one side saying yes, and Bartleby is on the other saying no, both drop-outs, both mystics..


furthermore, the next step:
"Marcus''s contention is that there can be found in American folk a community as deep, as electric, as perverse and as conflicted as all America, and that the songs Dylan recorded out of the public eye, in a basement in Woodstock, are where that community as a whole gets to speak," wrote Mark Singer in The Wire. But the country mapped in this book, as Bruce Shapiro wrote in The Nation, "is not Woody Guthrie''s land made for you and me...... It''s what Marcus calls ''the old, weird America''"-the "playground for God, Satan, tricksters, Puritans, confidence men, illuminati, braggarts, preachers, anonymous poets of all strips,"

some new favorites: Jeremy Reed (jesus, how has he been so overlooked), Baudelaire, Artaud, Rimbaud, Bob Dylan, I'm Not There, No Direction Home, Emmylou Harris


Shanghai means on the sea, but it's really not. Thus a lie.
In the summer the city has this quality, extreme humidity. It only takes the walk home to get drenched. Everything bleeds into eachother - the garbage and glitter, mixed together. It hits my nostrils all at once and it all stinks. No line whatsover between what's refuse and what's fake. We all look for things in it, and it makes us all beggars (my opinion of most of this SCENE). Shall I refuse...nahh.


And, to be frank: Why I hate, say, Tabard, "ethnic literature", and similar. I like my own brown skin well enough. These AGENTS politicize it (politics completely synonymous with boredom, trivia, noise, nothing). A most petty sort of no-saying. I'd much rather be exoticized, essentialized. I think it's time to invest in a sari.

yess, blogspot works in china now. so, to continue:



Smoking is a VILE habit, you and I both know it.
Last night’s cigarettes were justified, however. The rain fell straight down, leaking through the tent over the noodlestand. Offered by a stranger, four in the morning, close to home, and I in my apartment shorts (stop your head - I've found that asexuality suits me).

I dared myself to look into everything I avoid: bottomless inferiority, for example. THE VOID, for example. To be maimed and unfixable ans other nightmares, also. Life is an exception – it blows me away. He talked about going to go live in Los Angeles.

See: Rimbaud was a Buddhist:

"I is another. Too bad if a piece of wood discovers it is a violin, and to hell with those who lack this understanding and argue over something of which they are ignorant!"

yeeaaa.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, french poets, for curing me of my boredom.


I DESPISE journalists (barely avoided becoming one). "Social commentary" make s me want to throw up. History is little better.
X :What is your ultimate goal, then?
Y: to be dead, of course.


It only takes one encounter with ultimate reality to turn you into a dork; then live out your days serving with a smile, make sure feet are in contact with ground at all times. Another, and it's irreparable aphasia. All conjecture, of course.

meanwhile, ~ lives out his indentured servitude to his own approval-seeking intellect (his name rhymes with pee-ache-dee, if you force it), and all I really want is to be free and floating. It all ends the same way (underground, and strapped to a bomb).

Some analogies, for your amusement:

art: philosophy
small t : big T
france : ger-man-ee

I choose the first, for now (little tiddlations). it's tougher (so many hangovers, little certainty).

I wrote poem!!:

In the park
I made you my mark
between your knees
i stood in that space
and played with your face


(my best relationship!)