Tuesday, November 22, 2005

machines and animal kingdoms

no, i did not yet see the new joaquin phoenix-cum-johnny cash flick yet. no, i did not yet brush my teeth today. no, i have no advice. BUT, i did have another wacked dream.

this time a growling gigantic epoxy gray and black behemoth truck-van thing was revving its engine like some sort of four-wheeled beast standing on its hind wheels. it was competing with half a dozen motorcyclists whose tinny sounding engines (like the sounds of fat flying flies amplified close to a thousand times) popped wheelies and rode high and higher up the half pipe wall set up for such displays. as the beast wound down, its front end settled into the ground with a resounding crash-bounce-bounce, while the white pleather-suited and shiny blue-helmetted cyclists winnied their way down in a sea horse frenzie, scooting to and fro, up and down, maniacally, as if when their wheelies died so too would their living breath.

as i woke and tried to pull these notions out of my dream and into the world i imagined seeing the freaky orange cat who actually belongs to the previous owners of our house but who never leaves our back door. i imained that he strolled nice as pie down our hallway settling himself comfortably outside the bedroom door.

any questions?

any idea wtf?

Monday, November 21, 2005

ain't i sumpn? just ain't i?

is this the sort of mentality it takes to be a famous writer? a famous french male writer? famous frech lover? famous? french? what? where do people get their hubris?

August 15, 1846, letter of that gustave flaubert guy to his wife louise colet:

"
I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to
yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports... When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them.
"

where art thou edward

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by edward albee has to be one of the 10 or so best things ever written mostly in the english language. but who can count these things. it's tough to number the sublime.

some "facts" about this play about truth and allusion (among other things):

1
when the play was denied the pulitzer in 1962, two members of the committe resigned and no play received the award.

2
the play's original title was to have been The Exoricism.

3
what's-his-all-american-blue-haired-blond-eyed-face robert redford turned down the film role of nick in the highly acclaimed mike nichols' directed 1966 adaptation. psh. he always was shooting to be the effectual one wudn't he? (george segal took the role. he was smashing, no?)

a few years ago in a basement theatre on the campus of wayne state on a friiiiiigid january night i dragged vin to see albee's Seascape (which did garner him the pulitzer). too little too late is what i said. P.U. is what vin said, who has no respect for the absurd - when it's onstage. put it in the middle of our kitchen, living room or back deck in the middle of a bunch of guests and he's all over that shite, though.

i mean, let's look again at the words of george (the main dude, not segal) shall we...

but first a word on george and martha. george. martha. get it? america's first couple. setting up house. disorderly. disgusting. mythic. ready to tumble. and then george says (at nick, not to him) [remember nick? he's the ultra good looking biology phenom who's primed to take over the department. he's youthful, rational, rarin to go. but also a smidge underhanded, which is why redford turned down the role if you ask me]:


"You take the trouble to construct a civilization . . . to . . . to build a society, based on the principles of . . . of principle . . . you endeavor to make communicable sense out of natural order, morality out of the unnatural disorder of man's mind . . . you make government and art, and realize that they are, must be, both the same . . . you bring things to the saddest of all points . . . the the point where there is something to lose . . . then all at once, through all the music, through all the sensible sounds of men building, attempting, comes the Dies Irae. And what is it? What does the trumpet sound? Up yours. I suppose there's justice to it, after all the years. . . . Up yours."


lest you think the whole thing is soliloquy...it's not. it's mostly sick and disturbing and funny as hell. wife picking at husband, husband protecting himself. horribly to-the-bone hurtful. and funny as hell. but i repeat myself.


"And the west, encumbered by crippling alliances, and burdened with a morality too rigid to accmmodate itself to the swing of events, must . . . eventually . . . fall."


these are about the only two outright political things albee says. mostly it's allusion and perry and twist and marriage and infidelity and hide-and-seek with truth. all set inside game-playing. kids with wickedly sharp wit and tongues.

always seemed to me sneaky smart people are scarier than weapon-weilding stupid people. not because weapons don't eviserate. smarts just has truer aim.

thanks for the pain, edward a.

i am an innocent bystander, says the dreamer of her dream

this morning's dream contained the dream version of my dad and one of my brothers. the dad told the brother that he(the brother)'s got to do better. the brother didn't like this news. he gaffawed, which is male-dream-brother code for cried into the crook of his blue flannel-shirted arm. the brother said something that sounded like: rootbeer!? then he walked away shaking his head not understanding why the dad would want him the brother(the son) to accept or welcome a friendship with the stepmom(she does not make appearance in the dream)'s foresaken love. (in the dream it is understood that, pre-dream, the stepmom has given up a lover in order to marry the dad.) none of this makes any practical dream-or-otherwise sense to the brother. he does not want to attend a birthday party. he does not want to extend a welcoming hand to a foresaken lover who is not even real. he does not understand the dream father's thinking at all. not at all.

what goes on in our heads? how do we become such bystanders in our own lives?

Sunday, November 20, 2005

performance art and haircuts

about noon i woke up shaking off the last moments of my last dream. i was back in my home town at a local arts auditorium/gymnasium. don't know why, just >poof< and i was there. the performance contained some well-sculpted student athletes or artist types. difficult to tell how old anybody was - including the me that was implied in the dream.

there was a particular performer i noticed down there on the court. see, all the seats were above, as with all small towering stadiums. the stage was a court, with mattresses or inflatable barriers for the performers to rebound and ricochet offa when they flew into it or were tossed or body slammed into it by other performers. it hit me all of a sudden that these performers, mostly men, were wearing basketball warmups and jerseys. there were even some basketballs floating from hand to hand, under legs and around backs as dancers pivoted, slid, high jumped and flew over each other. think globetrotters meet martha graham.

it was choreographed, but not. it was messy but beautiful. it was violent but elegant. one guy, the one i had been watching got bumped out of center court where he was holding court. he slammed into the bumper padding and grabbed his shoulder, grimaced. his cornrows barely moved but he was shaking off the shock to his system. or was he acting? one of his mates, glistening white, looked back worried for a second. or was he acting? the scene was turning into something from Rollerball (remember that movie with james caan? a guy ends up a vegetable in the end). before all hell broke loose the whistle blew. half-time. nobody seemed too bad off. the dancers slinked off stage and headed to the locker rooms for their pep talk.

i waited in the lobby so i could stretch my legs. a woman, tall and slinky with sexy nappy hair stuck very close to her head struck up a conversation. i agreed that yes, exhilirating athleticism, yes a suprise to see art mimic b-ball, yes they sure can fly. jordan, nureyev, baryshnikov's got nothin on them.

the performer i'd been eyeing came out from behind the locker room door marked M-E-N and stood close to her, his head bowed into hers. she introduced us. his black skin glistened. the bleach white towel slung around his neck stayed dry. will you be here for a while? he asked me. depends, i said, feeling myself blush. i'm getting my hair cut, you may not recognize me later, i said. oh, in that case, he responded, i may not be around later. he smiled, flirtatious.

he disappeared again behind the locker room door. the woman -- she seemed to me now his sister -- called quietly to him in her husky honeysuckled way. the door stayed closed. she raised an apologetic eyebrow. he was born in a barn, she said. then she smiled, flirting. her teeth were big. flourescent light shining out of the ceiling grates glinted off them. then i woke up.

i said, hey vin. you wake? can i tell you my dream? sure, he said. and i did. and he said, see honey. it's a sign. you don't really want short hair again.

see, i was thinking after my hair cut i'd like to see some ballet - or a pistons versus san antonio game.

funny, until today i had always maintained that i disliked basketball. huh. goes to show what i know.

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