Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Borges and Derrick and I and Spinoza

This one was really fun. I could go on for a long time again and probably will as an exercise but here's a little sample.

I let him wake up to mulch.

I’m the one who tells him each grass blade licks his face and tells him stories. Though, that’s me telling the stories about the stories. I’m endocrine. I get turned on by light, not chloroplast. Derrick would like to think it’s the other way around; that he’s plant based.

Still though, he’d be partially right to think so. Trouble with distance I suppose; sun to plant to soil to rock to psychic geology. Derrick pushes from his psychic molding. These levers grow longer. These pulleys become stretched.

I’m formed of his geology. Sedimentary. Bits of me slip into bits of him, wear off my palms onto the pumice handled levers. I suppose they brush into his Broca’s area before I have him type. I have no incentive for insight. A lack of endocrine I suppose. No bother though.

He rarely notices me, though he just did.

Right there. Could you tell? No I suppose not.

He’s reading this back to me in our head –more mine than his- while looking at a brain map.

I pull a lever.

I work Derrick through a system of levers and pulleys.

He recalls steam punk.

Spinoza knew that all things long to persist in their being. I persist in his. We persist in being.

Derrick seems to persist in memories of movies like Brazil.

Though, to his credit, he has read Ethics. For which I thank him. I do this by secreting shaves of algae into his cerebral cortex.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Stein Exercise in Style

Hi all.

Instead of doing both of these remixes I kind of went with a mash-up of the two. Below is my Stein influenced Exercise in Style.

Hope you like it.

If not, just look at this instead. It's pretty and Dutch.

In the inside of the S bus it is crowded. In the outside of the S bus there is Paris. In Paris there is a crowded midday scene. The midday scene is filled. Filled with commuters. These commuters –some of them- are on the S bus.

Like me.

Like me, I’m on the S bus at midday.

In Paris.

Outside of the city but inside of the bus. Inside the bus it is crowded just as outside the bus the city is crowded with people pouring into the bus. In the bus there is the feeling of shoulders. Shoulders are against other shoulders. It’s the way of the city, shoulders against shoulders. Shoulders, in mid-day, in Paris, along the metro, in route to lunch, which is to say to be in route to meet people for lunch people. People in and about Paris, crowded onto the bus.

Similar to the bus I’m on, the S bus. The S bus in midday in Paris crowded with shoulders. Beyond shoulders there are other body parts contained in coats and trousers crowding the S bus. Trousers containing men’s knees and ankles and calves ready to and taut to kick and shuffle with the shuffle of the city, the city of Paris, and its midday bustle of commuters on the S bus, the bus I’m on. The bus I’m on watching trousers and suit jackets containing men and women bustling about in the midday, lunchtime, by far the busiest part of the day in Paris. Well at least during the week when the midday keeps the bustle at its trouser bustle point of note. Suppose this is a point of note, as it is being noted, the bustle, the midday bustle that is to be noted, specifically on the S bus. This day in June during the midday bustle on the S bus.

In the bus it is frantic. In the outside of the bus it is frantic, as it is midday. Inside the bus the passengers coil in their fabrics. Inside their fabrics their knees buckle a bit and when the bus lets out, in the midday sun outside the bus there is a similar bustle but that doesn’t matter for now. Though the bustle outside the bus is the bustle of thousands, their small lunch movements, all of them, let light on the pavement amidst frantic pigeons consuming the bustles lunch fragments.

Inside the bus I’m sitting in outside the midday sun inside the city of Paris on the S bus. Inside the S bus but on it I see a long neck inside the bus, the same bus that I am inside or on but inside the city of Paris, though not outside of it are my thoughts, not exclusive to the city, as is summer and my thoughts have drifted to the country. I love the city in the summer and its contained day dreams of the country. Wheat fields and such and the way that inside of them outside of the city I think of life with Paris in the distance. Bits of wheat like drips of grapes feeding a city out of grasp of itself. Out of grasp is the city with a view of itself. Anywhere in Paris you can see the Eifel tower except under it.

Outside the city is a bustle in the midday. Inside there is a bus, that bus I’ve been telling you I’m on. Well, inside this young man, the young man with the long neck is inside of my periphery, which is to say he is outside of those outside of the bus but inside the view of those within a few seats of me, as mentioned the bus is crowded in the midday in the midweek in the midsummer.

Outside there are tourists looking inside a midday S bus in Paris in the midday. They take photos, captured in film, taken out of cameras, developed outside of Paris, more than likely in Ohio or Baltimore. Outside Baltimore, in Maryland is a bit of land designated outside of its state held right. Designated as a Capital of a country. The United States of America is outside of Baltimore, inside of Maryland, Virginia and some other state that is currently outside of my memory.
Inside the S bus this boy I’ve mentioned with the long neck –did I mention his funny hat? It sits outside of fashion for the time– is growing upset inside the bus and outside of his contained wits.

“Hey there buddy, You’re in my personal space.”

“Surely not intentionally.” Say’s the man, in his own right to defend himself but outside of his country and comfort zone. He appears to be a foreigner both in his manner of speech and outwardly in his mannerisms, which appear inwardly eastern while his speech is overtly western. Which is to say English. English being the language he felt most comfortable in, up until this point, in another country, where his loafers lived up to their expectations and repeatedly lounged against this long necked man on the S bus’s wing tips and upper ankles.

“Surely not intentionally” He repeats, now to himself as the young man with the long neck and the waywardness of a boy negligent of his own habits rather than repeating himself, as the man did, in the S. Bus, on the S bus, in Paris, during a midday commute felt the need to do so.

Instead this boy with the long neck, in my vision, on the bus, outside the blistering June midday commute, inside the bustle of this could be commuters view, which is to say my view, which is to say in the view of many, both inside and outside of the bus, saw him, rather than further ensue the argument walk to the nearest vacant seat.

Of which there were a few opening and closing and opening and closing as passengers or commuters or persons in the perpetual present of the moment during the altercation of the moment of the perpetual present moment of the altercation between the boy and the foreign man with the loafers who loafed about casually and accidentally or casually but regardless accosted a young man with a long neck -and a funny hat- in front of me on the S bus during midday in Paris on an afternoon in June, the afternoon and June I speak of being the present one. Well then if not for that alone the boy moved seats and the foreign man continued to look foreign, as was not his want but more than likely simply his nature or modus operandi as it was known in the past and in many respects the present, though not at all known to those outside the periphery of such referential diction.

Should I then tell you of the inconvenience of seeing this long necked boy yet a second time in that same blistering afternoon, though past the bustle of the present tension taken on the S. Bus.

Not an hour later. In the city of Paris, still. Still within a matter of kilometers from the incident on the S. Bus, that must have dropped the boy off the crowded bus during such a time as I did not see the boy outside the bus but surely as other passengers still saw me on the bus I later left or possibly left prior to the boy, for like I said after the incident he was out of my periphery. Though I suppose he was in others, but none of those are telling this story. Are they?

Thought not, so before or after or at the same time we might have gotten off the bus a time elapsed during which both me and the boy with the long neck and funny hat traveled to the same gare as passengers now, at least for a time off the bus, for what is a passenger outside of a bus but not currently on or in one? Passengers awaiting a bus. Not on one currently but possibly to be on one again, this is the makings of a commuter, a metro, a system of connected travel routes convenient or inconvenient for passengers such as myself or such as the boy with the long neck, though it might have been the hat that made his neck so funny, who wound up off the S bus and some time later at the same gare. This should not be of any surprise to me, though at the time, in the midday it should be noted that it might have been but more thank likely, as memory currently recalls and for the sake of the tale was and is in the present sense of the story I am currently telling.

I saw this long necked boy, outside the gare Saint-Lazare, inside the same coat he was wearing. A long coat, inside or outside or beside were a series of buttons, fashionable or otherwise.

“Too close together.” Said his friend outside the gare, inside the city, within the presence of myself and others, though I don’t recall them from the bus. Though they might have been within it while the bustle of the midday took place, as it does in June, as is June’s want. This boy stood out because of his neck, hat, and the altercation with the foreign man, who was not to be seen at this juncture but it can be said, and will be said, in this story and outside of it in my intuitive memory that the foreign man remained foreign inside the city of Paris on this afternoon, now past midday, as he -the foreign man- was a long way from Baltimore or where ever he may have been from.

“You ought to move that button up a notch.”