Dear Jeanloup Sieff,

I absolutely adore you.

Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

The title of this post is taken (yet again, shamelessly) from a collection of Charles Bukowski's selected poetry from 1955-1973. After days of working on applications and statements and grading and the like, I returned to one of my favorite poets. And, not at all to my surprise, discovered once again just how much he amazes me. Oftentimes, heads spin around, noses turn up, meaningful glances are exchanged between mutually understanding parties at the mere mention of his name, and even more so at the rather absurd suggestion that I think his stuff is worth reading again and again. So, underneath all the violent, alcoholic, womanizing, ranting, raving, tumbling, drunken, depressing, aggresive, sexist (indeed, misogynist), inappropriate, scatalogical, tiresome, deprecating, egotisical, rambling, nonsensical bullshit, sometimes one finds beauty of the most rare and mysterious persuasion.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, that's fine. Chances are that Bukowski wouldn't have either. Here's a poem. I hope you'll consider it as much as I have...



sway with me

sway with me, everything sad --
madmen in stone houses
without doors,
lepers streaming love and song
frogs trying to figure
the sky;
sway with me, sad things --
fingers split on a forge
old age like breakfast shells
used books, used people
used flowers, used love
I need you
I need you
I need you:
it has run away
like a horse or a dog,
dead or lost
or unforgiving.

Double Hitter

But no homerun, yet.

Adjusting, Re-adjusting, Maladjusting, Digesting, Undertaking, Overwhelming, Exhausting, Projecting, Cleansing, Looking, Seeing, Trusting, Mistrusting, Not trusting, Understanding, Thinking, Knowing, Not knowing, Wondering just when I'll shake it off, and start to feel at home again.

Back in Michigan. More news to come soon.

Things That Can Be Seen

Are Not Always Known.

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I took some photos a few weeks back of this old key I found in my apartment and a magnifying glass. Mostly playing with macro settings, various exposure adjustments to work with shadows and natural light, and post-processing graininess, I came out with the image above which I didn't dislike, so here I am posting it. Title = "Meditation." The more I look, the more I see that what interests me photographically approaches (or sometimes is the mirror image of) what interests me with literature, or with writing, with theorizing, with thoughts on cinema, on history, on culture. I suppose until I can figure it out, or approximate some sort of "figuring it out", I'll keep taking photographs, watching films (my latest obsession), writing.

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And, because it has also been an obsession as of late, Mongo will read poetry again. This one from the lovely and captivating Gerard Malanga.

New Art

for Andy Warhol

_________________________

Of the sidewalk covered with blood

A light puts up signs--a road

A disc the music begins.

The night it began.

So is this car

Out into the roads of the city

Eastern shore

What we the speed

Energy that tribute was dazzling

That follow my eyes

I cannot move away from these paintings

Itself a decision that instinct makes

Choosing more that the machines

Can do. The day over the table

Disturbed in his lunch

He reaches for repetition

With which he'll be passive and safe.

Walls reflecting

Observe the crushing of fenders

Into concrete eyesight can't keep.

***

Though I had always come here

This factory

We make it several times of the year

The floors lined with sheen

The traffic still goes

We don't kill

And I am possessed

Of these terms in our lives we don't want.

The electric chair in a room made silent by signs

Over the door,

The flames coming toward us--

Accidents of some future date.

We sit on couches, but the sleep

And ideas persist

Knowing we gain from it,

To fall apart again.

Some simplicities first

Then nothing--night

The secret, visible late next day. Or next week.

On the telephone. The film.

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(Originally published 1971. Taken here from No Respect: New & Selected Poems 1964-2000)

Images are thoughts already spoken. Seen and unseen.

Looking For

the key.

"if only i could find the right door"

original photo by mongo (yours truly)

Writing these days is slow. Madrid is beastly hot. I've been sitting here for hours, pondering the uses and abuses and layers and density of procrastination. yesterday was shifting. today is leaning. tomorrow may be better yet. Here's a poem, another one by the beautiful Gerard Malanga. Another one that I've fallen in love with, again and again.

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Lost Time

There is a passage by Walter Benjamin I cannot locate.

There is a street in Paris that this passage describes

lost in time.

There is a shop window reflecting back

what I see for the last time.

The affiches have long since disappeared from the tunnels.

Among the photographs in my head are some I have never taken.

--Gerard Malanga--

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(originally published in a collection of poetry called Memory's Snapshots 1990-2000. quoted here from No Respect: New & Selected Poems 1964-2000.)

Mísia

Last night I took Mike and JD to see the stunning Mísia at Madrid's Teatro Albéniz.

We listened to two sets: traditional fado songs and her "Drama Box" music which included more contemporary fados, popular Spanish songs a la Almodóvar, boleros, and tangos.

In a word: tremendous.

At intermission, I asked JD what he thought and with a slight hesitation he took a drag off his cigarette and asked "how did you hear about her?" It took me a few minutes to recall where or how or when the name Mísia first made its way into my plane of view, making its way past my otherwise touch and go, oblivious and mostly stunted relation to the world. I couldn't remember, and still can't. Not exactly. But I do know that whatever song I first listened to, I knew I had to have more.

In a recent NPR interview, when asked about her love for fado music Mísia replied: "For me it is the only way to be alive, and to put outside what I have inside. The only way of... cleaning my ghosts and shadows."

It's amazing to me how we like things before we even understand why or how. I only remember that this music was powerful, overwhelmingly so, the first time I listened to it and that it resonated with me somehow back then...and still does now.

Melancholic. Dramatic. Intense. Glorious beyond belief.

Meat is Murder, Jamón is Flesh

Walking down Madrid's one and only Calle Fuencarral the other day, JD and I stumbled upon the following poster advertising the Centro Dramático Nacional's latest theatre production, what appears to be a very interesting version of Tennessee William's Suddenly, Last Summer:

For those wondering, the image above is, yes, pieces of ham carefully placed on a naked man's body, head hooded, weehoo practically in plain sight.

And, for a closer look, I present the "zoom shot." Don't be alarmed. Once again, it's only ham gently carressing a naked dude's flesh, so as to appear as flesh, that is, in the end, ham (?) I wonder just how many Spaniards salivate as they walk past all of this perfectly good jamón york just lying there wasting away!? The horror...oh, the horror.

Based solely on my tenth-grade love for The Glass Menagerie and this poster, I will be going to see this play.