“Why do you always bring me flowers…”

“Because I love you.”

“…from the cemetery?”

“Because they don’t need them.”

“And why are they always dead?”

“Because we don’t like to bury people alive these days.”

“I mean the flowers. Why are the flowers always dead?”

“I guess because dead people don’t care if the flowers are alive or not.”

“I mean…why don’t you bring me alive flowers?”

“Where would I get live flowers?”

“Maybe a flower shop!”

“But the flowers are already dead there, too. They just look alive. But they are dying the moment they’re cut off.”

“But they don’t look dead. Why don’t you bring me flowers that look alive?”

“Because that’s a terrible metaphor.”

“Why does it have to be a metaphor?”

“Aren’t flowers always a metaphor?”

“Sometimes they’re just pretty.”

“So is a sunrise, but I don’t bring you that.”

“You couldn’t bring me a sunrise.”

“So is a butterfly, but I don’t bring you that.”

“Touché.”

“And sometimes flowers are not metaphoric at all: ‘Here are some genitalia for you to put on your table.’”

“But what’s the metaphor for flowers?”

“‘Our relationship looks pretty, but really it’s dying a slow, painful, smelly death.’”

“But what’s the metaphor for the flowers that you bring me?”

“‘My love will still exist, even when you’re ugly, dried up, and/or dead.’”

…and also, I made a list of places:

• Stargate
• the kitchen stool on the far left
• Pittsburg
• first
• in stillness
• the northeast side of the table
• Preposition Alley
• third desk to the right in row 4
• a skyscraper
• Lawrence Fishburne’s nose pore in The Matrix
• Grandma’s lap
• dese nutz
• in a frying pan
• Le Purgatorio
• under the table
• in my water glass
• Lion’s Gate
• under my hair
• the place of taking the waters
• the place of taking to the waters
• the waters
• SPACE
• nowhere
• the universe 2 back
• in a pig’s eye
• Weekee Watchee
• noneya

My pleasure.

https://robswordshop.blogspot.com/

 

The Simulacra by Philip K. Dick

 

Here begins the novel.

This point occurs just after the beginning of the narrative.

Here a second character is introduced.

The third chapter starts now.

Perhaps this section should have been removed.

This chapter is a flashback.

Here the author lost track of his narrative (accounting for why a reader’s attention wanders).

This must be the middle of the novel.

Nowhere else except here can be the climax.

The action, previously set in the past, now shifts into the present.

The last third of the book begins when the protagonist dies.

Either the author or the publisher made a strategic mistake.

Events within the story suggest continuance into the future.

This novel ends suddenly.

                            -Crux Desperationis 1, 2011

 

https://ubu.com/contemp/daniels/gates_menu01.html

 

You are welcome.

I apologize.

No. I take that back. I don’t apologize.

But I do realize that I’ve been pretty Debbie Downer on here lately, or Lame Ame, if you will. And that’s a part of the system of complaining that we have.

For example, I look at “How am I driving?” stickers on the backs of cars and think, “Pretty good, human. [slow clap, perhaps] Well done. I should tell you about it at the phone number listed below.” But I don’t. Life and time pass, and it slips my mind. (And of course there’s the ever encroaching fear that looms larger every day of using the telephone for its original use.) But of course if someone sideswiped me and then laughed about it and called me Stinky Arnold as they went by, then I would certainly call that number as fast as possible.

BUT THAT’S NOT THE POINT. That would be to put some positivity out there. So here are the most beautiful and amazing things that blow me away that humans made without making them for their beauty. I’m leaving out the ones that go without saying (i.e., the Taj Mahal, the art at street festivals, your mom, etc.)

-the grid of airplanes waiting for their descent into O’Hare (artists: air traffic control, pilots)

-lines of streetlights marching off into the distance between and around highways

-forgotten places made mainly of cement, but you can’t see the cement for all the graffiti.

-any human ever.

 

 

 

I can’t be the only one who, when reading Uncle Vanya, thinks of Wallace Shawn.* Brilliant casting. I’m reading and adapting my own little play this morning, and realized that I would very much like to play Vanya. Perhaps only in Act 3, but I feel so much for him. Maybe I just need someone to offend me so much that I would have an excuse to try to kill them.

Ideally, people shouldn’t be identifying with Vanya. We should all be treated better than that. But, as Dorn says in Act 1 of The Seagull, “What can I do? What?”

 

*Vanya on 42nd Street

WELL HELL(O) TO ALL OF US on this beautifully frozen apocalyptic morning!!!!*

In my excitement to slough off my newfound existential worry for the future of humanity, I’ve decided to stop going for sane and going for entertaining. JOIN ME in my dipsy doodle down the bunghole of the present and into the musings of my high mind** of better days.

• The 1990s smells like new CDs.
• FOAL-idge is, sadly, a correct pronunciation of foliage, although it’s non-standard.
• Peas=corn, but in a pod. Ergo: ear=cornpod.
• In Catholicism, you confess your sins. But if you forget your sins, they go away. That smells suspiciously of bullshit to me.
• Are Cenobites the equivalent of Hell’s engineers?***
• Did EVERYONE watch Saved By The Bell?
• Trump has a cumulocombover
• invent an instrument with a triple or quad reed. Why stop at two?
• most bands are tribute bands for themselves.
• everyone knows how to act, but the audience makes them forget.
• Briny Swine
• Is “The Tick” a retelling of “Man of La Mancha?”
• The U.S. is #1 in lobbying! U S A! U S A!
• the term “self-defense” is rhetorical.
• It would be awful to have a dog that’s a douche.
• singing is HARD
• kitchen tips are beef tips made of kitchen.
• do a play in the 0th dimension
• performance art: cutting through a tomato (it’s like ASMR for your eyes!)

Well, kids, that’s it for today. That was from Book #2, “The Blue One.” Hope your minds are all blown now.

 

 

*5:00 pm but what even are facts

**Sometimes while on The Marijuana, I am called by the universe to record notes.

***I’ve learned since then. No.

Good morning!

Every time I go to Atlanta*, I come back.** But when that happens, for some reason I fall into a sinkhole that is very tricky to get out of.

In the past, I’ve had things go wrong with my flights. I’ve misread the ams and pms, or I’ve missed it completely because security at Hartsfield-Jackson is truly a jungle of annoyances that can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 hours to navigate. So what I have done is sat at the gate for the day and sobbed for three hours. And then–voila! I’m fine and I come back and go about my life as I did before the trip.

But the last couple of times, flying has gone absolutely smoothly, with no delays or midair crashes or outages of my first choice drink. So instead of a purge and brisk renewal, I’m like a balloon someone is letting the air out of with a squeak. My chest is depressurized and my brain is clinging to all the terrible things happening in the world and my body is sinking into anxiety attacks at random times. It’s horrible.

It’s been a week, and it still sucks. My life is a bundle of joys that right now I’m looking at from the outside.

Mostly I just wanted to tell any other depressed people out there, I see you. I’m sorry life sucks right now. You don’t have to have ‘got this’. Ask for help if you need. Hang in there. Look at cat pictures. Call the suicide hotline: 988.

 

*To visit family, which is a major culture shock, although often very nice.

**Because that’s how traveling works.

I’m not angry at the majority of the news media on their coverage of the UHC CEO murder; just disappointed. So here are some headlines they are welcome to use that I think are much better:

Yet Another Body Thrown upon the Altar to Health Insurance–Let’s Make It the Last

US Experiences Unity Unlike Anything Since 9/11

The 1% “Solves” Healthcare with More Security for Them, Not Better Insurance For All

Horrible Old-World-Style Sacrifice Creates Massive Opportunity for Systemic Change

 

I expressed my disgust with the electorate and the election results.

She said, “But things are just as bad for Jews under either candidate.”

I gaped inwardly and probably outwardly and said, “You’re joking, right?”

She said no, and started talking about the war in Gaza: that the Jews are fighting for our right to live, but the Palestinians are fighting to exterminate us.

I said that most Palestinians were not Hamas, but innocent people trying to live, as well.

She said they were not. She said that Palestinian mothers raised their children to sacrifice themselves in suicide bombings.*

I said, “…I don’t believe that.”

She said, “That’s because you’re a good person. But it’s true.”

Then we had to end the conversation because we had to leave. Also, I needed time to process these ideas.

So I processed them, talking through them with my partner, who said flatly, “Dehumanizing people makes it easier to kill them.”

My responses now that I’ve “processed”:

1. No mother that is not mentally ill raises a child just to see them die. It also can’t be known fact; the only evidence is apocryphal.
2. Pirke Avot: “To save one life is to save the whole world.” In other words, to take a life is to snuff out the whole world. This is a Jewish value. If we are living according to our values, killing forty thousand and more Palestinians is absolutely unthinkable. It is genocide, no matter what jaunty spin you put on it. At this point, you are not “protecting” Israel. You are trying to exterminate The Others. We (Jewish people) should know this better than anyone else, and hold ourselves to a higher standard. Call it what it is: GENOCIDE. You can huff and puff and clutch your pearls about that word, but face your actions. Maybe you’re genociding because you’re afraid, because you feel threatened. Maybe you’re genociding because you need a scapegoat and European Jewry will do. It’s a moot point to the victims.
3. And I would like to take this argument back to our side of the world: Electing Kamala would have shouted the statement “we will not put up with racism, mysogyny, and” yes, AND, “antisemitism.” Electing Trump? The country has said, “Most of us have given permission to persecute whomever we feel like, so GO TO TOWN!”

“But groceries are expensive!” Hate to break it to you, but they’re not going to get cheaper. But now people won’t be getting any help for it.

 

Yeah. I’m disgusted. That’s my reaction to this worst of all timelines. Have a great fucking day.

 

 

*Terribly, this is not the first time I’ve heard this.

“Amy, we hate you. Go away.”

That was one of my origin stories. On Field Day, after moving around the bleachers for different seating, I was not getting the hint that three people were trying to move away from me.* So one of the three (we’ll call her Veronica) said those words that have stuck with me for the rest of my life.

And they affected everything. A ton of wonderful conversations have ended abruptly with me saying, “Anyway, I just wanted to say that and now I’ll get out of your way.” Relationships could have gone deeper but I didn’t want to bother them. Living with myself in my head, just knowing that people were only hanging around me to be nice, and if they had an excuse of any kind, they’d leap at the chance to get away.

I’m aware that I’m not the only person with this origin story. Some people don’t even get a concrete experience like I had; they just assume that this is the way it is. I guess this little post is for me and those people.

Last week, I was in Palm Springs for Ronny and Andi’s narrator retreat**. And I was nervous and anxious. But that first night, I let myself be. I was fully me. And I was comfortable. I was glowing. And everyone took me in without judgement, and with love.

The whole weekend was like that. Surrounded by my people, who were kind and understanding and mine.

Something I would go back and tell Little Me is that everyone has people out there. Lots of different kinds of people. And one of the delicacies of life is to go on a scavenger hunt to find those people.

And sure, there will be some people slamming doors in your face, or nobody home in some cases, or people who speak another language in flat monotone and don’t bother using their hands, but that’s ok. They’ll find their people, too.

I have found mine. Under rocks, in subway stations, and now in the heat of the desert. I’m gonna collect some more, and do what I can to use my little communities to make the world prettier. And I have people to help me. Thanks, My People.

 

 

 

*Why? Who knows. I’m fucking delightful.

**Which was absolutely delicious.