Monday, November 21, 2005

poem for Sabrina 11/20: I wanted to bring you Neruda

I wanted to bring you Neruda

Something warm, yielding: page by page of vanilla paper a
Soft Something nourishing to your bed
Side. I considered John Donne and dismissed him
Out of turn, too wordy I thought, too pained.

Plath was out of the question.

I wanted to bring you Neruda.
Pages of light and lushness, plants to grow around tickling your toes
In the hospital bed. A forest of loving flowers lifting their faces to
Yours. I pushed aside Lacan and Freud for him…pulled
Volumes from the sunlit shelves bringing up wisps of dust.

He wasn’t by the bed side either
Where I had thought he might sit forlorn with the petals of a rose between
Ivory teeth of pages.

A volume of French Renaissance poets seemed dismayed.

I wanted to bring you Neruda.
But I couldn’t find him in the towers of paper lined up like messy soldiers by
The unkempt sofa.

I brought instead the words of a friend between green stiff covers
Because only a few can speak like Neruda of loves and of lovers
Of friends and leaves and light. I would have brought you Whitman
Had I come at night, but since a cold wind blew down the doors
Numbered in gold on Auburn streets, since the high blue sky of early winter
In purpose had no peer

I brought you Shakespeare.

Saturday, November 05, 2005

life, love and morning

so once upon a time i started something about what had happened in the past year...making the snowflakes fall or something like that. Last night I was sitting in my office, revising for my Urdu test on monday when I decided to re do the calender on the chalkboard since it was fast reaching the very end...we put it up in September with 2 and a bit months of information on there, and now it's November so. So i started wiping away the weeks of exhibition openings, the chocolate tastings, the little marker for my birthday, drew little cartoons on thanksgiving and christmas and began to feel quite odd. Christmas is coming soon! WTF???

Last Christmas i was embittered and tired, still with Will, by a thread. I remember sending a package on New Year's Eve of cds and hotchocolate and other paraphenalia. This was a package that he never received...all the cd cases lovingly sketchd with psychadelic patterns and a card with many kisses. It arrived back to me about half its original size from being around the world and wrapped with rubber bands and tape in June, i think, or august. It was a strange little visitor from the past. And now i wonder what would have happened if he had received it. would it have bought us a few weeks more?

What have I done this year. So many things. When I put the calender up i suddenly felt as if i had done nothing and was met by this gaping vaccum. but actually it's not true. So much has happened. It has to be said that this has not been a year of stellar academic acheivment but it has been a trip, to be sure. Poetry readings and activism, falling into depression, fancying people, falling in love, painting, fucking, writing.

and a partridge in a pear tree.

anyway. Now is the time to work on the CV and life and essays and hope to god it all comes together...but first....i think i will take a little nap.

Monday, October 03, 2005

Exhibition Case/Shop Window/Television Screen: CHina on Display week3: World's Fairs

Exhibition Case/Shop Window/Television Screen

About two years ago now I was laying in bed watching a late night documentary in a last ditch effort to try to sleep after a night up working, insomniac fashion. The program was called “Travels with a Gringo” if I remember correctly, and was on this occasion concerning our young and very socially conscious host’s trip to a silver mine in South America where a crew of miners daily crawled through tiny darkened tunnels and breathed in toxic fumes that were killing them not so slowly, crumbling away their lungs to nothing, in order to obtain silver for trade. The host and the camera crew duly followed the team into the pits of mountains where they would have to pause to try and breathe and discuss what was going to happen when they couldn’t get into the deposit line anymore. The tale was engrossing, sad, painful, but that wasn’t the part I remember. At one point the mining party and the camera crew that followed were sat in semi darkness in a tunnel deep in the mountain, bathed in sweat and gasping for air, chewing coca leaves while waiting for rocks to be moved so that the passage could be cleared. Our socially aware “gringo” turned to the miners and began telling them in Spanish that this film was going to be shown in Britain, in Europe, perhaps all over the world. The implication, I believe, was that people would see the program and care about their plight…that perhaps the lives of the miner could be bettered. One of the miners looked the camera dead on and said, “Do people like watching this sort of thing over there?”

What are we seeking to gain anyway? Is it a view of lives unraveling that makes us feel magnanimous if we offer a few dollars of aid? What the miner meant, I think, was partially about what the intent was of watching him and his friends struggle and die to eke out a living, what kind of vicarious thrill or sense of Schadenfreude was being enacted, or at least, these are the question that I thought of when I thought about what he had said, but also, why would people want to watch something that is just life? Just real life. Tragic, happy, drunken, confused, dangerous, dirty, dramatic, mundane. This is what made me think of this instance two years ago when considering this week’s readings.

In The World as Exhibition, Mitchell argues that Europeans and Americans sought endlessly to create a replica of reality, a picture that would encompass all in one imperious and imperial vision. This might also be thought of as a constellation of that “Universe of Symbols” discussed in the introduction to the discussion of the Louisiana Purchase Fair. It also makes me think of how the television functions in today’s society as both of these things, as a sort of constant world’s fair at one remove…pictures encompassing and representing with a conceit of reality by virtue of accuracy, trueness to life, and all this to such a degree that television and cinema like all truly circulating and potent cultural phenomena influences lifes expectations and the way we live, just as Mitchell argues the World’s Fairs altered the epistemological frames, symbologies and view point of Fair goers.

In thinking about our South American miner, as he looks through the TV and into the living rooms, that is, past the digital velvet rope that cordons “us” from “them” something else occurred to me in connection with exhibition and the World’s Fairs. Something about how the “natives” experience the fair, what looks were directed at the specimens of Europeans or Americans, perhaps just “the White Men” in their Native Costumes as they filed past conveniently for view. If the World’s Fair, as the grandest type of exhibition, the crucible of a universe of symbols that allows the existence of a certain sort of cultural order, has a narrative, can that narrative be read against the grain and if so how?

Mitchell’s article about the Egyptian view of the Europeans begins to consider this question, but I would like to know more about how those gazes functioned and how that dynamic worked…what of those Filipino guardsmen who strolled about with St. Louis schoolteachers? What did they think of the fair? What did they think of St. Louis? Or what indeed became of Columbus Chicago? This is one further aspect of the literature produced on the world’s fair as describe in Hinsley’s piece on the Colombian exposition…the extraordinary discrepancy between the scene portrayed and the interpretation given in the literature below in for example the “portrait” of the “turk” and his family. The caption is extraordinarily racist and strange, but even more it just seems so bizarre in reference to the picture. The man in the picture, although he looks posed, looks determined, half looks at the camera with a confronting gaze. The caption seems to be the American photographer reassuring himself from behind the lens as to the jocular, not quite real, not quite serious status of the “primitive” “brown man”…that is…unable to quite make the scene fit a picture by photographing it, he has to tidy up the edges with literature, place the image firmly into a “symbolic universe” so as to render it comprehensible.

All the talk of the camera and cameraman being the ultimate unseen, voyeuristically partaking in pleasures of the screen does raise one important additional point in this connection, however, before we throw up our hands and throw the camera out the window. All too often the anonymous male gaze of the camera is understood to be an imposing and dominating factor, a machine that changes behavior, changes images, renders them up to a (Western) god of photography/pictures for exhibition of a real that undermines the subjectivity of the people portrayed. I want to argue that while it is true that the cameraman often aims to go unseen in a fashion, to be unpresent, and to record people going about their business authentically there is indeed agency in the sideward glance, in the look away from the camera, and inn the getting on with your life that the “subjects” of the photograph rarely get credit for. A look directly into the face of the camera is powerful indeed, but are we so egotistical as to assume that this is the only way in which subjects can b rendered real?

Thus too an approach which does not conform to the requirements of the world’s fair can still be seen as an approach with its own agency and consciousness of power. The Chinese displays are endlessly contrasted with those of the Japanese contingent at the various Fairs of the Fair Fever at the turn of the 20th century, and the strategy employed by the Japanese curators is analysed and understood to be a political one. While it is true that the approach of creating a space incomprehensible to the symbolic order of the exposition did not necessarily serve US?chinese political relations well, the way in which those displays were mounted does warrant attention, in that they represent a different epistemological space, and perhaps can give ideas about alternate modes of exhibition and the understanding of same with regard to Chinese art. It is interesting too to compare the US political stance vis a vis China to former discourse about Japan. Endless articles appear today asking if “cChina is the New Japan?” (what an odd question) and by virtue of the question itself the conclusion is made to some degree, as before, we identify something of the “Yankee” spirit in the entrepreneurial dealing of the mysterious east…”with luck and pluck they may go into business for themselves”

That the “East” and particularly the ultimate other that is still so often constituted by the aesthetics and cultural values of China is still engendered as a market place in European and American pictures of “real” life should come as no surprise in the era of late capitalism, when the “imperial” gaze of the camera has become as ubiquitous for Indian and Chinese tourists as for travelers from the US. Paris, that endless labyrinth of mirrors, and maze of simulacra was host in 1997, I believe to an exhibition of Chinese goods at one of it’s major palais to commerce, Printemps, for example, and such eposition have it would seem, moved from the educational to the truly commercial sphere, or else frayed and bled into the kaleidoscopic pictures of television news. But if we acknowledge that the symbolic universe, and indeed the World’s Fair is, to some degree, alive and well at the dawn of the 21st century in the form of brothel holidays to Thailand, Fox News and the Department Store, what of the exhibition space, the museum. In the series of essays Cosmopolitanisms by Homi Bhabha et al. a convincing argument was made for rethinking the city, walking against paths, zig zagging across squares, walking on the grass in theoretical as well as physical terms. The same principles must be applied to exhibition.

Last week discussion of the trend for nostalgic curatorship was discussed in some of our readings…curatorship that would seek to create an exhibition as it really happened if such a thing can even be entertained. While there must be room for this kind of psychological play too, such a nostalgia would doubtless find it’s dead end in the curatorship of most Chinese art from before the late 20th century, besides creating of the past a picture, a cinematic other to be studied, and of the people who lived it objects to be viewed at a safe distance and with air conditioning. Taste makers, experts have always been at the forefront of defining the category of Chinese Art, or Japanese Art, and this is likely to remain a continuing trend, but to form a sort of heteroglossia of back steps, misreadings, rereadings, and gaps in this visual universe for the viewer to inhabit, and to acknowledge that the viewer makes the exhibtion as much as the exhibition influences the viewer, in a sense to put the viewer on display is perhaps the only way to circumvent the totality of hegemony in favor of personal agency. The viewer become the exhibition as they internalize it and it’s values long after the installation comes down and it’s pieces broken up, long after the Filipinos develop small pox and the “turks” (interesting to note modern usage of that word) are sent home because, after all, “some memories don’t fade”.

There are a great man questions that remain, as I have outlined above, but one that is particularly “beautiful and piquant” is this:

What would an anthropological exposition of Americans in their natural habitat look like?

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Thursday, September 01, 2005

New Poem: V for Vaudeville (draft 1)

The cinema died in celluloid swells that sparked my skirt,
Dyed in dyes that flaked off between my fingers where it made soft roses (hidden)
in the white of my hands. That dye like a butterfly.

From sepia canyons the light wove in throes and fits to hit hard the soft surface of a dirty mountain stream.
Not clean
Like some book or show but filled with mud, silt, sand,
leaves
feces.

I pulled my skirt up and ran the way that dogs do:

To Fro To Fro

Pell mell they say.
Oh hell.
Oh leather.

On the other side I saw the dark coming on like Dor-
othy, the Emerald city.

THERE IS: NO PLACE

Noplacelikethoserubylips noplacelikethoserubyslips
But as the clouds gathered green, I watched the sunset
Of the screen in waves of
Blink ing
light.

The cinema died that night with a one-two punch, a whispered kiss.
Pomp, Romp & Ceremony as I made it down the quiet hall alone, a weary traveller in some solemn steamy dream with no C for Cinema only V for...

The credits rolled a final time in step as, beautifully,
Tragically, with a car chase, a final sigh, a fandango, a top hat scream, dropofblood like a black pearl

(Perfect, never drying)
Cinema lay dying.

A silence. A cut.

It died then, in the moment I found you ,
down the town below
in those theatricals, hands singing like tough birds
Belly like fish, and the eyes of a shorn whore
Vellum Vaudeville reborn in fetish garb:
Oh hell.
Oh leather.

(Mary, Joe and Sade. A rebirth of entertainments gored, gone and dog-eared).

You whiteness, fleshed, no longer flat and light as light as light on screen had been.

You, the new god in stereo with a seraglio of cigarettes, rubbers and loves.

When push comes to shove you will make it XY XY XY: high, dry
the unlikely hero of flesh and blood.

No poison will harm you,
And your fingers burst through the gloves of some high fiction, as they reach through me.

This is not film
This is just Noir
This is not cinema
This is just verite

There may be dancing in the final scene but
That tango will be for you and me alone
For no eyes in space will keep time
When your eye look into mine.

And you light a cigarette in your own style
Forever undirected.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Interlude

cross

making the flakes snow: looking at a year part 1

there's a suitcase on my bed again.
I am making preparations to leave singapore, and go back to home, another home, again. i ws saying the other night that i feel like if i live somewhere...doesn't have to be a long time, just a few months, but if I LIVE there, i always miss it. that's my failing as a nomad. instead of having the home be inside me so that i never move, the ideal of the floating nomad life, i find that the world is my home...and there is always somewhere that i miss.

A year ago, august was all heirloom tomatoes and purple twilight. i was listening to vinyl with the windows open and a candle. Now i wonder...where did all the fireflies go?

Full of nervous energy
sleeping in the fold out bed, no furniture, new apartment, waiting for shipment, glossy wood floors and a pilow in front of the tv to watch Law and Order while eating roasted veggies in a wrap and a glass of white wine and later, to be sitting smoking on the porch in my towel...i love the feeling of drying off from a shower in the open air...hair up in a towel knot.

somehow the cigarette smoke was bigger before the furniture, the books...i wanted to let it out the back door.

I spent the days wandering around, and sitting by the pit, reading Bai Xianyong, i think...musicians, stilt walkers, madmen, drunks...i found home on the benches, in a movie of ease and elliott smith, the odd hard drunk. THe days were hot, and everybody said hi, you know, everybody said hi. i had to slow down just to go...take your time, miss. take your time.

When things started, when classes started i was walking through Harvard yard listening to tears for fears with the sun coming light, and a mug of joe from home, the co-op carry cup that i had picked up when i joined one august day after going off to watertown with a jar of homemade muesli for Fish and the Fam. I was listening to Depeche Mode that day..my jeans were rubbing out the tune to Personal Jesus from between my thighs. But, anyway, back to Harvard yard. I stepped through this shoal of people, it was the 80s all of a sudden...clean, bright, slightly vicious.

I was filled with love.and still being filled with love for my ex. I never thought i would speak of him as my ex. i was looking to the cleanliness of the wrought iron chairs, their happy picturesque position. and the T that sounds like elliott smith, the Decemberists, the pogues, the hidden cameras. always.

my grandmother died just as the air was getting colder.

and the speech between me and WIll was getting thinner and thinner, but what there was was boiling like tea on a mountain top. I remember he called me one time when fish was over and i had this sinking feeling as i sat in the red phone chair. my feet beat out a tune on the fridge..the words of the fridge poetry between my toes. "winter". "woman".

i took the plane home for the funeral after a week of being dazed. my grandmother had died in the time it took me to make and eat a bowl of oatmeal. I sat on the park bench in the island at the entrance to my development listening to Morrissey's "Our Frank" knowing that something big was ending. and it was even more than my grandmother's life. it scared me to kiss the smell of rot and shit in the crematorium, to cry so hard when i saw my own empty room where i had made love to will the last time. on the cream carpet floor in the summer lamplight. (you see, i remember. I remember the first time too)

in black i drank a black beer in the pub that was grey and low, surrounded by thick fingers in gold rings and hoarse voices and ploughman's sanwiches, everybody thinking of her great knees up, her G&T and her sense of style. her fuss, her jokes, Her sense of duty that was sharp as her photogenic nose.

I came home to cambridge and morrissey afraid that my last 18 years were being pulled out from underneath me.

------------------

I See Color Bars When I Come

the red sugar crystals on the cake sparkled in the candlelight. I was naked. It was my birthday after all and i was going to eat cake and run around and do my ironing at 3am like the sawn off bitch that i am. But, mate, with a heart of gold.

Halloween i set the fire alarm off and became an unpopular resident. But i went to Rocky Horror anyway in a gothy get up that (reminded me of the good parts of venice, before i woke up smelling like rotting on the inside from the most painful..no i never felt that way again...i washed so hard so long.) and Blue with a gold earring and an old slouch hat walked me home like a gentleman jim.

Sawhain round the table with new friends, a strange mix..a big sweet fairy running around granting chocolate to me and a little girl with dark hair. and my how we drank.

NOSFERATUNOSFERATU NOSFERATU.

i was painting. reading. so excited. so stressed. the snow began. the markets shut..but not without a few trips to buy groceries on fridays in freezing rain...thanksgiving was a haunting of a childhood hotel and thinking that Business Chinese was a drag. it was.

--------------------------

Monday, August 08, 2005

An Homage to National Day

O it is coming.

After hearing fighter jets nearly every day and crazy big groups of soldiers marching and entire highways blocked by files of pristine (as never used) tanks and artillery, Tuesday is finally...Singaporean National Day. yes. I know. You're THRILLED.

So Singapore is celebrating the big Four-Oh and this seems to be an enormous deal (and not without reason, i might add, BUT) it's like kids and Christmas where they start getting excited about the big day right after Haloween...is it almost here??? Is it??? Is it??? the military bouncing up and down tgging the sleeve of the whole island. this is like the big show to prove to all the wives and mothers that when you send your sons off for National Service they do actually learn how to DO something.

marching.


they're REALLy good at it.

thing is, there is a good side: No work. plus...and this has been the sweet part of the gearing up escapades....FIREWORKS. Now as a consequence of the hyperactive and yet overly cautious (read: must practise every weekend so as to make sure the show is RIGHT) pyrotechnics being's habits i have been party to some pretty nice fireworks shows on saturday nights this month...and the capper is...i can see them from my window. howzat???!!!

Pay $70 singapore dollars to squeeze inbetween a bunch of people painted red and white my ARSE. No. I am going to maybe take a stroll, see what kind of crazy thing people are getting up to afterwards, but as for the fireworks and that itself...I will be doing it in true Singapore style...with no WALKING whatsoever...sitting by the window of my apartment. i will salute this crazy place in the most fitting way i can think of...with cholesterol:

Singapore, i raise my Kaya toast to you!

kaya

(for those of you not familiar...kaya is a yummy yummy hainanese coconut spread with egg yolks in it that will kill you. really. But it's WORTH it.)

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

night vision

so i am drinking my jasmine tea concoction, listening to Arab Strap and trying to work out what digital camera to buy because i am going to india next week. Lots of saffron coloured smog i expect. i hope to be able to upload lots of stuff for you all to see...DIMACo should have pictures from Xinjiang soon too, i reckon.


I was going home in a cab today (left my metrocard at home...high heels...long story) and i realised how little i have explored in Singapore. What with all the web stuff for Dudley and the writing and what not i haven't gotten to nearly as many places as i would like. So this weekend is going to be hectic. I just saw all these interesting places fly by and just wished i didn't have to bring my mac into work everyday (the IBM has issues, and besides, i hate pcs) so that i could be more footloose and fancy free. the food i eat at lunch just about makes up for it...i travel a thousand miles through my tongue.

all kinds of projects happening now...new feminist journal could be starting, a real project...will write about that when i have more time, and i am trying to put an online exhibition together. If only i could design webpages properly!!

I will write more later, but i kind of needed to put somethng in as a marker between the present and the horrible bombings. Thankyou to all of you who signed my e-letter of solidarity. I plan to post it here and send it to SOAS and the BBC on the month anniversary of the bombing.

love you all and can't wait to come home to see at least some of you...some of you i will have to wait longer to love at close quarters...

SR65X

Thursday, July 07, 2005

london

what is happening? What IS happening? Bombs went off in London today, again i am out of the country when something happens in a place i love, and i have to thank god, but also to feel profoundly frightened. I was in Beijing when 9-11 happened, and now i am in Singapore. One of the bombs went off in Kings Cross where i lived between 2000 and 2001 and which i lived nearby between 2002 and 2004. another bomb went off at Russell Sq. the tube station where my alma mater is. My friends and teachers work and live in the area where this happened. i....

i don't know what to say at all.

TO all my friends in the UK. STAY SAFE. I miss you all and love you. Thank you to those of you who replied to my desperate email finding out if you were ok. It's good to know that you are all intact...makes me feel like i might have a chance at sleeping. sending all my love.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

like mate to check

Ok so here's another new poem...not finished, but...for your perusal.

------------------------------------------------------------------


In bed I fight with muscles move, against the mattress like mate to check
Make gestures, inspect the springs for signs of you
But your motions are printed into sheets split by time and time zones
Where your body lays and sways to whistling breezes in yours, the
State
Of Sleep/

I battle tangled sheets, the sails of dream-ships flying out to you,
Pull down the rigging, chart maps, your borders fine patrolled
Find the blind spots, soft points unwatched and slip in easy
Mounting my invasion by the light of the North Star.

Your arms embrace me like the harbor bar

Your lips salty with the light of morning

I never was a stranger
No alien here
As I step up time’s gangplank
Toes curled on ridges of days
Living the love to know your body’s home.

This is a morning

Where I approached you where you lay

So sweet so soft and drowsy
Put down my thoughts and sighed

This is a moment

Before you know I’m there.

In bed I fight with muscles move, against the mattress like mate to check
Whispering yet trade routes into the pillow’s ear, knowing that
The lights outside still blink e-ven e-ven be-fore the dawn

Turns

On

And I find myself spread in bed alone

Friday, July 01, 2005

moveon pac petition...please sign!

Subject: O'Connor is retiring. Take action to protect our rights.

Hi,

As you probably heard, Sandra Day O'Connor just resigned from the Supreme Court. This is an extremely important time for our senators to hear from us. They need to know that we are counting on them to stand up to President Bush and protect our rights -- because with a moderate like O'Connor stepping down and a far-right like Bush making the nomination, well, the stakes couldn't be higher. The Terri Schiavo tragedy showed us all just how far these people are willing to go.

MoveOn PAC has already started an emergency petition, and we're looking to get 250,000 signatures and comments to the Senate before Tuesday -- which is when rumor has it Bush will announce his nomination.

I hope you can take a minute to join me in signing this petition, so our senators know that, in what might be the fight of our lives, we need them to do what it takes to protect our rights.

http://www.moveonpac.org/protectourrights

Thanks!

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Go Ja Go Karta

Well, i am writing because tomorrow i am going to Jakarta Indonesia on my own on behalf of DBS, the company I am interning for out here in Singapore. My boss will follow on thursday, but i wanted to let you all know where i was becasue, well, i dunno...

THis week has been CRAzy so far. New friends on motorcycles, boss takes me out for thai food, marketing people actually really really nice and should open own design firm and stop being paid less than they are worth.

more later, promise...right now i have to go make sure i have everything and go to sleep crack of dawn flight tomorow. Up at 5am. ugh.

take care, all of you,

much love,

SR65

XXX

Thursday, June 23, 2005

in love with a view

my penultimate full day in korea. THis has been for me one of the ultimate holidays, in a way: I get to listen to really great lectures for free and commune with feminists and see really great art (more on that later) and then go and have amazing food and shop. i had planned to do a bit more museum going...there is so much to see here...but by today after three days of 8 hours of lecture sessions (more or less) i just felt like wanderng and shopping today, my day off.

Unfortunately i have an outrageous headache right now...probably from being out wandering in the sun.

I had the ultimate korean experience yesterday and today:

Yesterday I went to the conference as usual...there has been a lot of stuff there about the plight of the korean women taken as "comfort women" i.e. sexual slaves/forced prostitution/rape victims by the japanese army durng the second world war. I am sure that some of you are aware of the level of brutality that these women, now mostly in their 70's and 80's were forced to endure. on monday there was a meeting between Koizumi and the Korean leader (whose name escapes me, ugh) here inSeoul (and actally, i think at my hotel, at least in part...there were tonnes of riot police and what not here on monday...it was scary) and Koizumi categorically refused to acknowledge that these atrocities had occured and refused to rectify new textbooks that glossed over this and other war atrocities (the textbook has China's back up too...incidentally). So there ws a protest, actually the 67th (i think) on this matter yesterday, and i and many participants from the conference were pleased to take part and lend our suport to these brave women.

afterwards i went to some more lectures about gender in china and whatnot, and then to a rountable on women's new media art...i am thinking about putting an online exhibition together for Dudley!! I have another plot/plan which i will write about shortly and which i am really excited about...a feminista-journal-scrapbook-translation project (more on that later)

So i met some wonderful curators and artists and went out to dinner on my own, came back an looked at the films that were being shown through their work, and the work of EMAP (Ewha Media Arts Project). glorious evening...been walking aroun Seoul with my massive Bose headphones on listening to Van Morrison and Fairuz(the ones my parents gave me as hand me downs) looking very old skool. Funny thing...huge headphones attached to an iPod!

Today I started my day with a green tea an Sweet potato Latte at O'Shelloc ( swanky japanese influenced green tea boutique cafe) in Myeongdong (nearby fashionista lively shopping area) and walked to namdaemun Market which is HUGE and piled high with dried fish, fruit and veg, and fake gucci...as well as sundry household items, art supplies (?), costume jewellery wholesalers and dry goods as well as clothes in great heaps for no money (but not anything you would want, for the most part). Had lunch at a market stall in the midst of all of this, a quiet corner in the chaos (there was a demonstration going on on one of the streets at the edge of the market as well...no idea what for...signs all in korean) where i saw somebody eating something that looked tasty and i pointed an said "i'll have what he's having". Ended up with a huge bowl of vermicelli type noodles in an iced soup with kimchi in. it was absolutely delicious. I drank a bottle of iced green tea an ate what i could reading "The Opoponax" and the ladies working the stall were somewhat amused.

went on the Dongdaemun, another market in the shadow of one of the former city gates, except this is a whole series of huge fashion malls something like Xidan in Beijing, plus a big clothing warehouse market...more like Wujin Xing with hats and scarves and stuff. I bought some great stuff...and went off to look for some culture. BEcause even though i didn't feel like musuem hopping all day, i couldn't shop all day either.

wandered around the lovely buildings of the "traditional korean village" at Cheongmuro. big groups of chinese an japanese tourists. after getting dusty looking into the comfy looking wooden floored homes stocked with furniture and bolsters, i had a cup of citron tea (AmaZING.. a sweet marmalade like paste you mix with water to make a kind of tea) in the restaurant that is inside one of the traditional style buildings (xirca 19th C), just as the sun was begining to be a little gentler and a breeze was stirring up

Spent a couple of hours wandering aroun the Lotte Dept. store, one of the sawnkiest i have ever been in...really...rivals japan. sampled all different snacks, and bought some...seaweeds and crackers and encrused tea leaves (i think..it's tasty, so whatever) to bring home..and some of that citron tea.

now, probably due to being out in the sun, i have a raging headache...but it was worth it...i have one more day of conference tomorrow,,,an ihave to pack...get ready to go back to singapore...which is how i got the title of this entry. Because as good a time as i have had here, and as much as i like it...i actually miss singapore. I miss my apartment..i miss the sense of space and the cleanliness of the air in my room, the incense burning, the indian markets and the exciting prospects....most of all, i miss my view.

SR65X

Monday, June 20, 2005

the feminist and "the visit"

Ok...so it is in fact 11.30pm here in Seoul, yes..I am in Seoul, Korea for the International Interdisciplinary conference on women. And it figures that having stressed all night and then gone to be very late, getting up late too and scrambling into a cream coloured pants suit so that i can look all professional-like (he) when giving my prsentation i got to the opening ceremony late...not that it mattered. the kicker was that as I was standing out in the scorching sun after having been given a huge quantity of reading material and other ephemera in my very own "Women's Worlds" complimentary conference pack, i felt cramps starting and suddenly realised i was getting my period. Right now. I had anticipated this would happen. I am not one of those women who knows the ins and outs of her cycle intimately, and times her life around it. No. Mine is generally something that happens, i vaguely know when it is going to kick in. I missed last month...go figure, and i thought somewhere in the back of my mind...it is bound to come during the conference, it is bound to come during the conference. Because it shows up at the most innoportune times always. When I am moving. When I have exams. whenever there is a high stress situation it just has to come in and be the icing of annoyance on the proverbial cake o' stress. Anyway, i thought it was a rather interesting excercise to try an explain that i needed a tampon or other sanitary item to a helper at a korean women's university during the first 2 hours of a women's conference. Hilarious actually.

My presentation went ok, incidentally. One of the panelists didn't show up, and everybody was still just getting oriented on campus, so we only ha about 6 people, or 7. my paper was too long, but the Q & A session was great fun.


But what the hell. It's over. I did it. It goes on the CV and i have a week of cool lectures to go to, and i had Donkatsu for dinner (very bad for me, i know) while reading Wittig's "THe Oppoponax". And then a pair of drunken Koran guys eating ice cream asked me for cigarettes on my way home to the hotel and the one who had the less minimal grasp of english vocabulary kept asking for my phone number and putting his arm around me. I couldn't take him seriously enough to be worried, he was so silly, with an ice cream cone and a cheezy drunken grin.

I have spent most of my money and have nothing to show for it really, except for a catalogue of good meals. I am going to do more wandering and stuff starting wednesday. TOmorrow...more conferencing and my mom's friend is meeting me for dinner i think.

One more piece of news though. I signed up to read some poetry at the closing ceremony. what am i getting myself into?? I think i might red my new poem though...it is suitably feminist.

let me know what you all think,

missing everybody!!

love,

SR65X

Thursday, June 16, 2005

new poem: my pleasures are not illicit

My pleasures are not illicit.

They run run run fast and happy
ArminArm ArminArm like paper men down the highway
above
Past the clumps of trees that dream themselves to ideal forests
above
And for a path to the sky
The dappled light.

My pleasures shout marco polo

Smoke vines and get off boldly under bridges for shade where…

(A fat man runs with fat children at the yellow feet of the madhouse

That looks like a multi-storey-madman

Walking down the valley v)

…My pleasures do not hide.

Small: they shine and slide underbehindoverthrough doors, keyholes and cracks

Pick locks in broad day light where sun plays search lamp

To find you where you sleep, to hold you and your soul where you dream so deep.

My pleasures are a body whole:

whole in all its carnevale

Whole and hurting, hurtling down roads unknown

That body with silences, openings, moans
orifices, architecture and ordinary elegance, idiocies
(betises)
(betises)
(betises) bis.
bis.
bis.

Body bad that scuffs heel shone, shuns the step a step, shuffles a little, stubs its soft toe.

The hair the sweat the hole boned whole, like a tent made for loving low.
My pleasures are invincible

A superhero stream

Sprinting up your dark mountain screaming all the way
Ambling down your precipice

They may crawl through phone lines and swim the oceans green.

They

Live unseen in every breath (you breathe you) breath (you breathe)

Take keys brass under tongues, cross lovely hearts

And live the little death.

singapore view:1

singaporeview6

this is one of the views from my window. Will write more shortly...gearing up for Korea at the moment so rather short on time. Promise to be more prolific!!! Anyway...Enjoy, peeps!! P.s. My lunch was cooked in a banana leaf. Next time will take pictures of that!!

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

when in singapore

do as the singaporeans do, which it seem is basically: eat. A lot.

actually it's a bit more complicated than that.

And i know i haven't written in ages in here, and i apologise to all my faithful friends, and even to the unfaithful ones.

It's quarter to two in the morning here. Dark outside. a few cars going by on the network of highways visible from my twentieth storey apartment. The air conditioning is on, and Arab Strap is playing. a series of orange lights in rows and knots, skyscrapers, the lush trees invisible in the dark except for the rich darkness they create. I am sitting in the window sill, about a foot wide, right up against the window so that i feel like there is nothing between me and the space, the drop and the cleanness of it. I have a view of the harbour during the day which makes me happy when i sit here and wach the sun come up with a cigarette. I developed the habit of squishing myself right next to the windows of tall buildings when i was in Hong Kong the first time. I think i was 13 or 14. I was sleeping on a fold out bed in the living room section of a suite in the conrad hotel, probably more than 20 floors up. I became fascinated with the way the towers looked like crystals or spikes, needles emerging from the clouds of mist. I liked to look down into the mist and imagine the city afloat. Which is quite funny because it is as the author Xi Xi imagines the city in some ways. Anyway...

enough with the atmosphere

i got here monday morning at 7am and it was already 82 degrees

i am living in a service apartment here, a cross between a hotel room and a flat. the city is strange, a bunch of modern shopping malls that i have to say are exceptionally boring, except for the ubiquitous and bustling food courts, butted up against areas designated by the ethnicity of their inhabitants, Arab St., Little India, Chinatown. these are much more fun. Arab st. yesterday went by "dry markets" in the shadow of the mosque, selling spices and dried fish, shrimp, cuttlefish and etc. every size of dried shrimp you can imagine, and the little baby whitings, dried into little strings. herbs. bitter and salty under sheets of red plastic awning. textile shops, all manner of silks and ribbons, towered up in the windows, and perfumers, gold bottles and prayer beads. Little India was all jewellery, a lot of it gold, handicrafts, florists, sweets everywhere, and pakoras, roti, dosa. but i am going to be in india soon. It seems like incense is being burned everywhere, but each area burns its own incense. Indian masala incense and arabic style a litle heavier and big sticks of sandalwood scent in chinatown. which is where i was today.

i will write more tomorrow, feeling very tired.

take this as a first report from singapore, and excuse my laziness

love SR65

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

new look: hope you like it!

So, all this fiddling about and tweaking of my
  • my myspace profile
  • has taught me the tiniest tiniest bit of html, but you know i am stretching it as much as possible...so decided to give the mirror stage a bit of a face lift...or at least snazz it up somewhat although it is still my classiest internet incarnation. The painting now serving as background to the title is by Anselm Kiefer...my favourite painter. just lots of books. i thought it was rather appropriate. anyway...must get back to the final papers.

    SR65

    Saturday, May 14, 2005

    White Light: Complete poem in 3 parts, first draft.

    As I said before the graphical play is going to be destroyed on here...but anyway, here it is...tell me what you think, peeps.

    SR65x

    -----------------

    White Light


    1. that slick of your back
    put comma to curve make
    straight the way way way
    out there, it became an
    exclamation for me
    a cry from below

    put pen to paper
    make a line curve to line
    a swift motion that you
    can fill with phantoms

    that time you gave me your hand
    clench firm soft fingers tight
    make sparks make light light light the night
    and spread apart the sheets
    of days where we can hide
    like hibernation or honeymoon.

    put pen to paper

    and paint the inside

    out



    2. am. You’re winding yourself around me like a soft soft string/our arms/ great sweet knots of heat/ they pack our selves, a gift enclosed/

    I think

    I’d like to cut you open with passion and a slit, lick that knows only love.
    Hold picnics at the binding borders of your skin, make tiny bonfires of regrets
    Bring all that sugared sap up of you up to drink like fountains you will flow
    Put my hand inside your Glory: O it is B e a u t i f u l, your vicious soul. It will
    rain
    down
    warm
    in
    All
    the

    Pink movements of your lips, Great White hard hips you have, and a voice
    That speaks fit to burst blue blue upon an endless story, those details
    You thought long forgotten. Yes the trees that grow in your heart, the
    Grasses and the vines that line the way, the birds and fires and lightning
    On that path through you the lemon trees too, and sunny gardens, the Love and tomatoes. All of these I will tiptoe through, covered stealthy in your
    Spirit skins leaving kisses, bites for signposts. Because sometimes it is the
    Package that undoes the ribbon and
    Red Red Ridinghood that wears the wolf.


    3.
    You like an imperative:
    The force of it, as it sprays across my face
    Like all that fire hose pornography.
    5 alarm at 5 am.

    That’s when…

    You, like an imperative,
    Appear closersmoother, bend me
    To an X, with sex to center
    Make me on the cross of
    St. Andrew.

    You hold my body: flaming tinder,
    Tell me that’s not all I am
    But your eyes were a pilot light
    that night,
    So it’s a 5 alarm at 5am.

    Monday, May 02, 2005

    militant orgasm: female cumshot/human cumshot

    I am successfully avoiding doing much work...smoking. thinking.looking at the net, reading articles. suchlike.

    I have some interesting food for thought too...through the power of modern technology and the dirty mind of my new lover, i have been party to witnessing myself have an orgasm for the first time. Now this is weird...for those of you who have NOT seen yourself have an orgasm...it's a mixed experience. (God...do I really look like that??? UGH) Don't worry peeps, i am not going to go into too many dirty details, although frankly i am sure that some of you wouldn't mind swopping stories...

    just this: did anybody else know that people blush behind their ears and then that it spreads and then there's a blush across the belly when you come??? I didn't!!! I mean apart from the penchant for poppers in the 90s where everybody would be walking around red faced, vaguely horny and teenage, i hadn't realised there was an empirical pattern to the whole thing. and apparently this is universal. I think this is WELL beautiful. or indeed....VERY wow.

    and it brings to mind...

    one of the main points of Catherine Mackinnon's writings (and others) on Pornography concerns the displacement of female pleasure...the ubiquitous cumshot that stands for all sexual enjoyment, where the phallus is inscribed on the bodily penis as the primary symbol, and the primary symbol of pleasure, taking the place of the "invisible" female orgasm (whose existence is STILL apparently up for debate...double ugh). Now, recently in my adventures in sex (yay) I have been party to a lot of very interesting experiences...a lot of times lately where i feel like Fausto Sterling et al must be absolutely right...like Rubin says "men and women might be different to eachother, but they are more like eachother than anything else for example kangaroos and coconut palms" ( this is a sorta quote...i didn't consult, but I always loved that line, and it is very nearly correct if not absolutely). What I mean is that i have been looking at my lover and i have been recognizing the feelings and the expressions more..."male" pleasure always seemed to me to be somewhat delineated in opposition to the popular representations of and expressions of female pleasure (which, naturally we must remember are often bunk), but i think there may be, even within the currently fairly omnipresent binary economy (ugh) some potential to see the human, something utterly simple and simultaneously mainfestly complex. The bottom line is that there is potentially a unisex cumshot, something sexy, i.e. halfway between ugliness and grace, and utterly utterly human. I want to glorify this thing...it seems like a basis to a new visual erotic...an economy based on expression and body that glows.

    I guess it's a bit subtle. Not for everybody. But it makes us into neon strips/fireflies!

    But in any case, i am excited about it. Also, the whole shabang has given me ideas for art projects...to paint somebody up as if they were going through an orgasm, and take very clean photos of them doing ordinary things...shopping,in the library, housework, etc. (I dunno about the camera question...i suppose i should buy one soon. I miss my SLR. What i really want is the digital SLR out now...yummy) All you'd have to do is part the lips slightly and close the eyes...more like St. Theresa's ecstasy than bimbo with tongue slightly protruding as she rides latest billboard. Any volunteers for the project??? I want lots and lots of different types of people!! Orgasms for everybody!!! I am thinking this could be something for an exhibition with Vox Ominous (?)

    anyhoo. just a thought. or two or so. I am going to run along now and do work, awaiting breathy phonecalls and excited emails.

    SR65X

    Sunday, April 24, 2005

    Part 2 of New Poem: a.m.

    THe graphical stuff won't show up on here, there is supposed to be a tab gap after every seven syllables except the first long line and the "Rain down warm.." bit. It should create a little path through the poem. but anyway, this is the second part of what i started last time...needs more wrk, hmmm...

    SR65X
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    a.m. You’re winding yourself around me like a soft soft string/our arms/ great sweet knots of heat/ they pack our selves, a gift enclosed/

    I think

    I’d like to cut you open with passion and a slit, lick that knows only love.
    Hold picnics at the binding borders of your skin, make tiny bonfires of regret
    Bring all that sugared sap up of you up to drink like fountains you will flow
    Put my hand inside your Glory: O it is B e a u t i f u l, your vicious soul. It will
    rain
    down
    warm
    in
    All
    the

    Pink movements of your lips, Great White hard hips you have, and a voice
    That speaks fit to burst blue blue upon an endless story, those details
    You thought long forgotten. Yes the trees that grow in your heart, the
    Grasses and the vines that line the way, the birds and fires and lightning
    On that path through you the lemon trees too, and sunny gardens, the Love and tomatoes. All of these I will tiptoe through, covered stealthy in your
    Spirit skins leaving kisses, bites for signposts. Because sometimes it is the
    Package that undoes the ribbon and it is
    Red Red Ridinghood that wears the wolf.

    Friday, April 22, 2005

    white light white heat

    So the romantic sagas continue. Listening to Mojave 3 (remember "Return to Sender" in Beijing in all those little bars and people's houses and stuff...that was so beautiful...I miss you all!!) and thinking that things are on the move move move. Making tough decisions...attempting to be practical despite myself, and yet finding myself in that extraordinary land of the exception. a grand and strange place to be... having been in this weird interstitial space between Will and the rest of humanity i feel like i am beginning to breathe again. beginnings. spring. you get the picture. Yup. I am seeing somebody new (remember the white contacts?) and in a healthy manner to boot although i still have to work out the details...my late night jaunts to the bar of late (tuesdays and fridays...much mayhem, free booze and philosophy) with my crazy crazy bloke-previous are being re considered, if not cancelled.

    THings are, hmmm...Bright white and bright orange and full of sexy images...

    here's the beginning of a poem...i need feedback please....Ed, if you're listening, throw me a line.

    SR65X

    -------------------------------------------------------
    white light

    that slick of your back
    put comma to curve make
    Straight the way way way
    out there, it became an
    exclamation for me
    a cry from below

    put pen to paper
    make a line curve to line
    a swift motion that you
    can fill with spirits

    that time you gave me your hand
    clench firm soft fingers tight
    make light light light the night
    and spread apart the sheets
    of days where we can hide
    like hibernation or honeymoon.

    put pen to paper

    and paint the inside

    out.

    Thursday, April 14, 2005

    An Apple Saved My Life.

    An Apple Saved My Life.

    These notes are nearing now the
    Edge, by crook and minute
    By slow percentage. I don’t ask you questions.

    At some hour of lone morning when the
    World is still dark I wonder where you are.
    You are ok, you’ll make it, as a leaf on water

    Maybe not happy or sad or lost or found
    But floating and wandering round on currents
    And sounds that push you. Push you further

    Down the street where you will wait for me
    Although I don’t know what it is for which you wait.
    Because, You thought I was a different girl last night.

    So maybe things are not right, and cannot be.
    There are walls and castles, moats to your grief
    And I have no tools to scale them. Petals

    Of the flower you picked are on the table.
    They are dried into the lips of love, and I will let
    Them rest there, unbothered, as I must let you have

    Your pain, that drugs do not dull. In bed
    We, as comets arch the sky, with tails of talk
    And moaning. Out of it, and in the soup of shifting

    Society you frame your phrases bereft of the pillow's
    Soft edge. I can only put my forehead to yours and wonder:
    Because there is something burning there, but what it is…

    Oh Mama, If only.

    That apple saved your life, you said. Funny.
    These sins of his that man puts on like make up every morning
    Save you for the day ahead, a mask perhaps, of sugar.

    Ask of me and I shall give you all the breaks that breach
    Between my sanity and in, and every apple in the fridge.
    But you want not to be the page of some bound book

    And I don’t blame you.

    Thursday, April 07, 2005

    HI HO!

    Yes, it's off to work I go. No, not my normal pottering about learning about chinese literature and freaking out about papers and going to conferences and all that jazz...I am talking about my internship this summer. The latest buzz is that I am going to be doing a lot of travelling...india, indonesia and malaysia!! So exciting!! I dunno what I am going to do for anybody, but I am going to be trained, programmed and put on that crazy Singaporean assembly line, so...we'll see! But it's pretty cool, no?

    anyway, that's my news. I have to get on with the normal day to day stuff now. Ugh.

    I have had an odd couple of days filled with random drunken flamboyant romantic gestures, toast at 5am and Japanese puppet theater...Bunraku rocks! Maybe I will see some puppet theatre in Indonesia...who knows?

    SR65X

    Wednesday, April 06, 2005

    Blues for 2am

    New poem...
    -----------------------------------------

    Blues for 2am

    Blinded by the front room rug
    Construct cat’s cradles of day to day.
    With tea and memory I am PunchDrunk, honey

    &

    Reeling from a swift kick * lifting * and sick
    Over body and soul. My man rocked me with one sturdy roll/
    But not now no.
    Now floating I wait for the gravity that brings hip to hip & lip/ to /lip.

    Swallowing smoke rings, it is 2am.

    Swallowing smoke rings

    Swallowing smoke

    Binding the blind light of hate to
    The belly of this. As numb as nowt. As hopeful as knickers before a night out,
    The hope that knows better…

    But does it anyway

    But does it

    But does.

    So I do it anyway.
    In a river the colour of lead he said, Find
    Ways to Feed the Dead. Ways to re-animate re-instate
    But not Now, no.

    For now I am leaving you, that corpse floating, on which I cut my teeth
    Cut them to the nerve, and to the quick.
    Because you never showed me how to do your trick, you
    Kept it secret

    Kept it

    Kept.

    Because it used to be said that I made the best jelly roll in town,
    That I made waves like an earthquake in the eiderdown
    I am sitting in the cold talking to eyes of downcast blue
    Planning an epicenter.
    But You, No.

    You never saw it

    Never saw it

    Never

    I raze you with silence from the sentence,
    will level your temples, make cities new,
    Arches in the honor of my reconstruction
    Even as the bitterest hollows of my heart still love.

    He lies in my bed a piece of white light embroidered
    Hard With sleep, stretching his smooth belly along the sexy bed sheets
    Like a snake and like you with his eyes just open, always watching.

    He made of me a new religion,
    Called me a goddess, bitchin’/
    I said "Make unto me an idol

    Baby,

    But not now."

    Wednesday, March 30, 2005

    white eyes and food for thought

    hey, so before i go to bed like a good girl...if i don't get too into Moby Dick and end up sitting awake reading for hours and hours (god that book is good!!)....i went to the Anarchist Coffehouse at the Zeitgeist tonight and it was interesting. Some really great stuff some really weirdly bad. But the net effect was good and the people who run it are really nice, so i reccomend. Every tuesday at 9pm...(now going to be also a poetry thing between 7 and 9 same day,, but not an open mike, more of a show and a wee bit expensive at 7 bucks, the coffeehouse is a pay if you wanna kind of gig) and there is lots of food provided by Food Not Bombs, for free but you are supposed to make a small contribution, which personally it think is more than fair when they put on a kind of spicy african veggie spread. nice!

    there was a cool guy there wearing white contact lenses. nothing more to be said, it's just kind of an interesting image, no?

    anyway, trying to get it together here.

    lots of love,

    SR65X

    ugh

    Humour me people. I know this is not very good, and at the very least is far too long and in need of loads of work, but i need to express...grr. I have been feeling so horrible lately, hence not posting much, trying to get it together, honestly. So let me spew. And then i will feel a bit better and maybe get back on track somewhat.

    love,

    SR65X

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------


    On the gulf between sanity and in.

    On the high lands I say: Where was that switch inside you?

    I thought I had turned that light ON, but maybe it was just the sun through the window streaming like a torch or some blaze of falling stars. I thought I had it between finger and thumb…something I had found behind your teeth those nights I reached into you: a little square, a bump, not hard or soft, a little point that was the centre of you, your only filling you might say, in those rows of perfect tiger teeth…but she makes fireworks.

    But She
    Makes Fireworks.

    MORE PROPERLY:

    Where was that switch inside you?

    Now I shouldn’t go on throwing my mind/Straight over my body and laughing the nights out from under my eyes, lying on the couch, yes, contemplating space. I should be kind, waking, and /Focus/ Focus/ Focus/ on all there is:

    the he the them the one the many:

    Polysemy, poly-semi, polly-semi semi semi

    semi die semi be semi you semi me semi land semi see semi hear and semi say

    Semi wave the fears away.

    These days I think we met somehow. Maybe I saw you eating a sandwich in a station when I was out my head one day, under pale light at King’s Cross that looks like the face of a kid grey with raving all night. That dry feeling from the glass between the iron girders, ribs of some great whale: a corpse in central London. I think maybe on some school trip. Yeah…You were there leaning with your smile and your long hair, you had long hair then, my Samson.

    (Remember when we were kids
    :Shiny foil
    :Cold morning
    :Cool for Cats
    :Blazer blazer bus is here.

    You started up that sexy car and dreamed your dreams of beachy head:
    Punk that sea side town make the rock stand on end, YOU straight thru, where the beer and the sea taste like England. In Blue, you made it to school where sweat stank and laughter resides on benches where your feet tucked up to friends. Sneering my man, sneering with your blue eyes. I was thinking different thoughts by bus light, dreams wet with turpentine, a thousand pages of flesh bound in blood I rang the bell, smoked a fag in that white tunnel like a giant cigarette inside out; drank music and was, like you, always late.

    But we were right on time.

    When we found each other years later your fingers were a melody by themselves! White and moving keys on a vast player piano.
    When we found each other the nape of your neck was velvet: Snatch you up by it like a kitten! Swallow your sweat and bite new beauty marks!
    Between my teeth you felt no pain. Oh my ideas!
    Lay flat and let me fold you fold into origami shapes.
    Make me a crane to fly away, a cup to hold your water.
    In the light of a candle my thighs could be a fortune-teller. 1-2-3.

    We built things, CONSTRUCTION! pieces of a chandelier, and mirror, we were magpies. Things that could shine and cut. I kept dreaming in heat, I dreamt of fights…cut brow at 5,6. Once you woke up screaming. In the dark I remembered where it was in the park that I hid that jewel when I was 7…in that cherry tree we found it waiting. Two somnambulists in Knightsbridge. The police didn’t catch us.

    In the ditch by the bed we built and sheltered, built and sheltered,,,told stories…whispered. two children camping. Test the air with a finger, chew plants that could kill and could make the world spin like the wheel of fortune, jackpot on your belly. Musk foxes stalked dust bunnies in that glorious green, and we lay Ink soft, and sweat at night when we couldn’t sleep for the heat between us.

    We were a world.

    You made me a hemisphere.

    But she makes fireworks.

    I can’t fuck for fun because of you running
    Round my head like the ghost of a kid on fire
    Lit up with no pain just setting things off
    Let me tell you,
    You little arse-onist.
    Let Me tell you.
    I tried. I cried, It
    Finished.

    The pain went undiminished and there was always the threat of something worse.

    Was it hidden under your hair?

    I am trying to think of where I could have looked for it.
    I am praying to St. Antony like they told us in school.
    Here, under the desk, when I lost my pencil.
    When I lost my head.

    You on your side and me on mine, our love came crashing down like a comet with such a lovely tail, but its crater is a (s)mile wide.

    Monday, March 21, 2005

    SUMMERS: CAST YOUR VOTE

    Quoting Zoe Trodd, at the GSC. THose of you who are Graduate Students please cast your vote!!
    ----------------
    Last Tuesday the FAS faculty voted "lack of confidence" in President Summers. On Monday and Tuesday GSAS students will have the chance to vote on the same question. Harvard and the world want to know what thousands of graduate students think about their university president.

    Log on to the weblink below to cast your anonymous vote. It's a quick and easy process.

    http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~gsc/qa/

    Polls will be open from 7am Monday (March 21) to 5pm Tuesday (March 22).

    The two questions are those offered to faculty at their vote last week.

    The results are vital to the ongoing debate, and graduate student opinion is of great interest to faculty and the press.  

    yours

    The Graduate Student Council
    gsc@hcs.harvard.edu

    Friday, March 11, 2005

    rib

    RIB

    White
    Explosive
    Flesh Fresh, delicious
    Was your hot
    PowderSkin

    Powder keg.

    Rubbed right thin into air.
    Dissolved
    in a Flash
    of Passion.

    Worn clean.
    Burned Back to Bone.

    To be now quiet.
    Blank like snow blankets.
    Minute
    & shivering
    muted inside from where there is no sound.

    Nor can be. Where sound runs only to well
    deep at the dam of lips
    And flows NO FURTHER. You look in the mirror.
    The face of the thing,
    a supple question

    Stares you in

    And the answers
    Stand in lines beneath eyes,
    Those ripples of the
    Happened to;



    Dropped

    Responses
    Of the bath where you feel your own form,
    Solid, like that stone (plunk) but
    Push hips out
    Boned Phrases rise
    Like steam and fat.

    I was on the verge of…
    Because I meant to…

    Half-desires, apologies so Hollow
    Half-hide that ache to know:
    You are a body of words/
    /Breath across
    An empty bottle lip.

    Tip Soft, sealed and sterile
    Room, room yes
    Soft with Simple noises.
    Here No Nouns or verbs
    That speak without, without
    In corridors unspecified.

    They run along
    Like children… behind you!
    Always saying something else.
    Always leaving things unsaid.
    Did they mangle the phone
    Lines in Cat’s Cradle games?

    Or were we a Quick toy in the
    Palm of God, grotesque and shaking?
    Played upon and played out, in lines carved there?
    Or did we hide instead, shutting it all out
    Like fingers folded over?
    Close with night
    and secrets: the crease between each finger a
    Witness blind greased
    And dusty, thick
    With blinking light.

    It was more than a physical
    Conversation
    That we had in that place, prison or womb: the
    Questions of your
    hands on me
    seemed to stop up
    all fear.

    Now white worn away to the rib of Adam.
    But a fist is (inside) quiet, warm
    And Red.

    Wednesday, March 02, 2005

    watch your mouth

    watch your mouth
    watch your mouth,
    originally uploaded by SiRen65.
    DonQ has been at it again. Cheesy bumpersticker type image with a kicker of a message...all hail the Thin-King!

    Come one Come all: OPEN MIC FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

    Attn: MUSiCIAnS! POETS! WRITERS! ARTISTS!
    Refreshments provided!

    F***NISM
    Is
    Not
    A Dirty
    Word

    Join us and share your words or words that inspire you at: “Woman’s Word”: a poetic open mic’ lounge on women, gender & feminism
    MARCH 8th, International Women’s Day, @7.30pm, Dudley House, Café Gato rojo. Email: dfeo@fas.harvard.edu for details & early sign up
    A project of Dudley Literary and the Harvard Anti-Sexist coalition
    Sign the petition at: http://www.petitiononline.com/ashncls/petition.html
    Can’t make it so late? Go to the Harvard anti-sexist coalition open mic on inequality & Gender at the Ticknor Lounge, Boyleston Hall, 5-6.30pm for a more political flavor, or just COME TO BOTH!!

    Tuesday, March 01, 2005

    "what can I possibly say.

    I guess that I miss you..."

    I can't begin to put how I am feeling about ending my relationship with Will into words. I don't understand the whole thing. People keep telling me that at least we have a bank of great memories. I want to scream when I hear that. It's partially because we have a bank of great memories that I wanted to keep working on the relationship, and it's because we had (is there a "we" anymore?) such amazing times together that I am going ot find it so hard to find anybody even tolerably close to being as wonderful as he is/was to have a serious relationship with. I realize that what lays before me is a lot of comfortable, ok things, but nothing that just sings the way we used to together. How can he not see that??

    ugh.

    Now I feel like it was all my fault, and I look back at how I was in the relationship and I just think the whole thing was probably intolerable for him right from the start. I don't know. I made a lot of mistakes, I think I learned a lot. I thought we were headed in the right direction. It took effort but every hurdle we went over brought us closer together. I could have worked harder to keep everything fun, but we were both working so hard when we were together that we often just wanted to be safe. Maybe I should say I did. Maybe that is the whole problem.

    he has changed a lot too since he's been in China working. Now I don't know how I feel about going back at all. I feel like my whole life got turned on its end.

    I have the flu. It is bginning to go away, but it can't go soon enough as far as I'm concerned.

    I have so much going on right now that I don't even have time to be depressed about all this...I am too busy coughing my brains out or doing something for some project or other.

    so humor me. Get excited for me about my projects and stuff, because I really can't do anything right now except throw myself into things to take my mind off where I am at.

    SR65X

    Saturday, February 26, 2005

    wwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!

    Ok.

    I am a mess. I just broke up with WIll. Somebody call me.

    help.

    if i had a hammer

    if i had a hammer
    if i had a hammer,
    originally uploaded by SiRen65.
    love this. cheered me right up.

    Friday, February 25, 2005

    MYSTERY BRUISE & Activist poetry news

    So it wasn't foot cramp after all...It was a MYSTERY BRUISE!!! how did I get a big bruise across the top of my foot??/ please send responses on a postcard with a self adressed envelope to...etc.

    I have a piece of news though, this is in the pipeline peeps:

    OPEN MIKE FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN"S DAY:
    "This Woman's Word" (tentative title), at Cafe Gato Rojo Dudley House 3/8, a Feminist Space project.

    Come and read something of your own or something that inspires you in your everyday life or in your activism.

    We've had Vispo, now we are going to have Actpo!

    OH my aching FOOT

    So last night, after the open mike...which was kind of in two parts...the first part being somewhat awful (solipsistic moanings on guitars of the "why don't you call me" school) and the second part being rather good, (naturally I was in the second part) I trudged home through the snow behind two people who took pity on my rather drunken state and led the way. It was so strange out. And beautiful. Cold and soft. Feathery. Sparkly.

    I do not have a hangover, but I do have foot cramp. Go figure.

    Somebody remind me never to get drunk, I always regret it. I wasn't tooo bad last night, but still. It always makes me upset...I feel my wig slipping, and always think I have made some huge mistakes. Sometimes I do. THe room didn't spin, I stayed upright and I didn't throw up. Nor did I go home with someone entirely unsuitable. So all in all I came off pretty lightly. I finished Venus as a Boy (Luke Sutherland) yesterday. And that plus the poetry and a panoply of romantic rejection of late I think just sent me to drink. TOasting Hunter S Thompson.

    BUT...

    I came back and found out I got the Dudley Arts Fellowship. WOW. YAY!!!

    Then I made myself two fried eggs and some toast, watched a cartoon and went to sleep, but not before pestering friends at 1/40am...sorry.

    So I have to work today. And work I shall. I also have to wait for my atm card to arrive, and sort a whole bunch of other things out.

    P>S> Nota Bene Peeps: For all who do not know: I have a piece in the Visual Poetry Exhibition (whose title this year is: "infinity") at Dudley House, which will be opening on thursday at 7pm, so please come along for free booze and a fun evening. email me for details.

    Wednesday, February 23, 2005

    PROTEST! My speech from yesterday/Speech in full

    Yesterday's demo was great...we are already getting a lot of recognition which is wonderful. I gave an edited version of this speech, but here is the whole thing.

    It would appear that, like a lot of people, Mr. Larry Summers has a dream. Although we may speculate as to the true contents of such a dream, from his comments we can as he is wont to do “observe” that despite his reticence in releasing the transcript of his comments and despite his eventual apologies as to the pickle he has placed women faculty members in, his stated aim was to provoke, to incite others to challenge his claims within the confines of an “objectivity”, an “empirical” process that he himelf would define. This is a mental landscape wherein a history of systematic discrimination can be and has been righted as much as it can be by applying the medicament of 25 years of women’s passage to the halls of academe, albeit often through the back entrance. We might say that we are here then, to begin the process of realizing this stated aim of his, of revealing other sides of the argument on the reasons for women’s lack of tenure at Harvard that are markedly absent from Summers’ consideration. Indeed if this is his aim, President Summers should rejoice in his own demise. I am also here to challenge the arguments in terms of quality that are presented within these remarks because the scientific field they represent is far from complete, a fact of which I feel it is paramount that the population of Harvard be reminded.

    I am not a scientist. Nor am I an expert in the field of gender studies by any means, but like President Summers before me I will not let this hinder me. It may well be the remit of the president of Harvard to discuss tenure and diversity as Mr. Summers’ did not “feel” like doing on the 14th of January, but one may well ask his qualifications for making statements that run the gamut from the sociological and the psychological to the biological. His defense in his comments at that time and beyond is one of his speaking unofficially, as a private individual. As I said I too am speaking about something I am no expert in, but the differences between the two positions-his and mine-are many: I can simply represent myself, which is what I am doing: I am affiliated with no political party or organization whatever, I receive no salary linked to my saying this, not saying it, or how I say it. Mr Summers claims to be speaking in an unofficial capacity in these remarks are really rather extraordinary: after serving in the Clinton administration, his claimed ignorance to the impact of his speech within the setting of a conference on diversity must strike us as disingenuous, especially when taken together with his aim of provocation. Mr. Summer’s “non-normative” (i.e. anecdotal) “hypotheses” on causes of declined tenure for women display a number of errors, flaws which no doubt if present in the work of a Harvard student would result in round and justified criticism. Mr. Summer’s asks throughout whether he might be wrong; the answer to such a question would in my opinion be that he certainly is not right. This has nothing to do with the opinions he represents therein per say, and everything to do with the misuse of authority to promulgate ideas UNFOUNDED or at the very least, QUESTIONABLE as FACTin the guise of a level of informality that for the President of an institution like Harvard cannot exist within the confines of any academic conference. We should carefully examine the assumptions that lie at the heart of Larry Summers’ comments because they are his and because they are NOT his alone: he speaks of his ability to simply act as an observer cooly unimplicated in judgement or social process, the significance of which he speaks of fairly derisively, unhindered by subjectivity and reliant upon a body of “ clear” and “empirical” scientific data. Summers’ views are symptomatic of a socio-biological trend in academia, not least at Harvard which, despite its potentially racist and sexist uses must be allowed to exist, but must not however be allowed to exist uncontested, or be presented as existing uncontested. Such a presentation abuses pedagogical privilege to hegemonic ends.
    In a rhetorical flourish Summers’ speaks about “one”, the ostensibly neutral observer, and the simple truth of the data he cites, and at the same time bemoans the “fetishization” of objectivity. It is interesting too that while he downplays the role of discrimination and socialization significantly, what he views as his most convincing argument for the lack of women with tenure, the absence of desire to work the magical “80 hour week”, would, by many people be thought of as social. We must ask then, if such a desire is separate from social factors, the lack of childcare and equal sharing of family responsibilities, what in Mr. Summers view would account for this. Throughout his argument Larry Summers defines a fairly broad dichotomy between the nurture that for example has him buy toy trucks for hi twin girls, and the nature that in his view WILL OUT, the transformation from truck to “daddy truck”. If the lack of willingness to participate in what he calls “high powered” jobs, a conclusion in itself highly questionable, is not social than what is it? If women are naturally predisposed to want to take on the lion’s share of domestic and family duties, what would be the merit in providing them with greater opportunities?
    The “revolution” in “behavioral genetics” that Mr. Summers has apparently been witness to is controversial, questionable and inconclusive, and certainly does not tell us without doubt that a great many trends that were thought to be impacted by societal factors are in fact biologically determined as he claims, and most certainly in those cases that Mr/. Summers discusses the outcome is far from clear. The same style of data that he presents, the use of standard deviation hypotheses that emphasise the greater number of exceptional men (as opposed to women) has been used in diverse publications (such a the Bell Curve”) to justify racism and sexism, and is inherently flawed since it asks no questions as to why this data should appear as it does, and whether as the work of Fausto Sterling, Koeske and other scientists have shown, the question and the questioner have an impact upon this. This data presume absolute objectivity. On this score Mr. Summers’ lack of academic rigor must again be remarked upon. Whether he agrees with other views of the state of the sexual landscape or not, such convincing alternative views, concise and cutting analyses do exist, and the field is by no means whatever mapped, charted or concluded; for every article on the innate lack of scientific ability that girls display there is one that debunks it, for every Wilson & Wilson study there is a piece by Anne Fausto Sterling.

    Summers claims to be saying something new, to be challenging the status quo and what to him is a foregone and natural human predisposition to locate the source of discrepencies within the social sphere. It may be interesting to examine Mr. Summer’ comment against the following quote. ”there did not appear to be any social prejudice againt women engaging in scientific work….it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that there is an innate sexual disqualification”
    James McKeen Cattell, “American Men of Science” 1903

    • Mr. Summers’ comment is about excusing himself by redrawing the field, limiting the discourse that can be used against him carefully, but even within these confines, he is sorely lacking, for reasons of disingenuousness and incompetence I commit my vote of no confidence.

    Wednesday, February 09, 2005

    HApPY NeW YeAR!!!!

    The Rooster in Love, 1947-1
    The Rooster in Love, 1947-1,
    originally uploaded by SiRen65.
    Happy New Year everybody! Yes, it is now the year of the Rooster...MY YEAR!! YAY!

    Wishing you all the best of health and happiness this year, and welcoming rooster friendly messages!

    SR65X

    Tuesday, February 08, 2005

    hell and high water or jacuzzi and sauna?

    Well....I have a choice it seems. THe marvellous "Art and Violence in the Cultural Revolution" class is forcing me into a decision of conscience...to take the overwhelmingly scary course with huge amounts of hard work, or to not """""? I hate backing down from a challenge, I don't believe I ever have, certainly not in academic terms, but do I really want to do 4 6 page papers in characters, and oral presentation and a final exam???? hmmm.

    More to the point will I give myself some kind of mental hernia if I do so?

    double hmmm.

    any and all opinions peeps.

    Wednesday, February 02, 2005

    old poem reworked: Harley Street Scene

    Harley Street Scene

    Now the sun is come
    Out into a cold world
    Casting shadow
    More blue more cold,
    Deepening its grip on
    The pavement.
    It reaches up between the
    Buildings and we soak it
    Up like sponge
    We plunge our beings
    Into the light to rest the
    Blackest form:
    The dark quarter of
    Despair.

    And now the Sun has come
    With the smell of bleach and
    The White smoke of White
    Cigarettes.
    The shadows steeped in clouds of
    Perfume of
    Worried women pacing
    In Fur coats sunglasses eye patch

    High heels and crutch.
    Glamorous up to the last.

    Babies and children
    Worried walking
    We are the sad soldiers
    Bastions of the insane
    Inner worlds
    As we step in square
    Patterns, mumbling before
    Great Glossy Doors.

    A thousand languages
    In the sunshine that falls
    Relentlessly picking out the
    Gold cufflinks, the shimmer of
    Stethoscope the bone
    Shining through Skin.

    Between the buildings the
    Sun has come,
    Flooding tiny ancient
    Detail, the shine of tiles
    That face nowhere, the
    Beautiful internal
    World: the part
    They cannot touch.

    The Soul that Swims Free...

    Tuesday, February 01, 2005

    In the belly of the beast

    Two hands for two blogs. Now, I just need to conjure that other "me" from the petri dish and the experiment will be complete.

    Monday, January 31, 2005

    What Goes Around

    Snow is waist high outside my door, but the sun is shining and for once the icicles seem to be dripping rather than just hanging there like the teeth of a winter that will never end...but not feeling all that grand today...at least I have a good saturday in my pocket. Weekday, corner pocket, watch it sppppppin.

    So I had the weirdest day on saturday...I went out to work on a piece for the Visual Poetry Exhibition at Dudley House at the gallery where I rent and found a poetry workshop in my space. I happened to have all my poems with me for the purposes of the piece and so decided to join. And the guy who teaches the class is very cool and writes great poetry and has a blog and so I am putting a link to it, he did the same for me. So Instant Karma. What can I say. His name is Edward J. Carvalho, he is working on a masters in creative writing, I believe, and is generally talented and sound, writes stuff with great poise and just a wee bit of rock. His blog is The Outlaw Goatee, it has lots of truly beautiful poems and musings, and pictures of him with abundant facial hair.

    After that I went and worked for a bit and jsut before I was to start hacking up my poems a reading begins to get under way upstairs so I ended up reading at that as well...odd happenstances galore on saturday eh?

    Now contemplating what courses to try out...think it's going to be a lot of theatre this term...YangBanXi (Beijing Opera of the Cultural Revolution) and maybe a Japanese Traditional theatre course? Noh and Kabuki...zoweee.

    any opinions?

    Wednesday, January 26, 2005

    Arab Strap

    This is Act of War. It is beautiful. Listen to it. Or else.

    this is an audio post - click to play

    Belated RIP

    I know I live in something of a bubble at Harvard, but I just JUST found out the most awful news: John Peel is DEAD!!!

    WHAT THE FUCK???? WHAT THE FUCK????? WHAT THE FUCK???????????

    How can I NOT HAVE KNOWN THIS??????

    I feel like nelson's column just fell over. The man was a GENIUS, and so fantastic. I remember when jane used to send faxes to him and he would talk about her zine on air. He was an institution, the most amazing institution: not only was he just cool all around, not only did he have this amazingly soothing voice and then would crank out amazing music, he promoted and did soo much for the careers of so many of my favourite bands: he helped THE FALL for fuck's sake. And the Wedding Present. Joy Division. and most of the bands I was friendly with. Good GOd .

    RIP. I feel so stupid that I hadn;t heard. god.

    PLEH
    PLEH PLEH
    PLEH PLEH PLEH

    Sunday, January 23, 2005

    Hopscotch

    When I was a little boy I found a pearl,
    Round, perfect, shining in a roll/shift/roll Shift along
    the bottom drawer, making a rattling route:
    A smooth world curved, turned inside out
    In the no man’s land between socks and sweaters.
    It lived like a moon in miniature.

    Made its own adventures.

    I licked it, put that small reflection right up
    To my eye, squinted. It was the loose lost eyeball of some
    Firebird, some fairytale fish, its odd soft hardness
    It’s rough smoothness. It looked at me with no purpose,
    I put it in my mouth. Tasted its taste of the sea.
    Rolled it behind my teeth with my tongue.

    Savored the clattering noise the clicking between those
    Little curved ivories. Piano keys. Stepping stones.
    Hopscotch. Don’t step on the CRACK or you’ll
    breaK your mother’s…
    …It glided down my throat, loose loose in the sinew.

    Loose to think of the tooth I swallowed
    In a spoon, white and flat, on my 6th
    Birthday when I was a little girl. tooth
    And pearl sat, whispered a shanty, sea of two together
    One Beside the other in my belly,
    One daring the other to be the first to grow.

    Roots dug int’ me. Loose, Loose skip to my…
    Made paths searching out sap and blood,
    Inhabited a hot hole between my legs,
    Pearl and tooth Skipped Upright in gum-skin.
    The bone the flesh the tissue.
    Buds of teeth in head, pearls in every vein.

    Don’t STEP on the…

    Loose, Loose: years were Scots in London:
    Walking up Shoot-up-Hill and skipping down
    Hillhead. All the catholics, bike chains, wind-chafers,
    Cheap whisky, postage stamps. Friction against sheds on grey days.
    Boys dressed by C&A with radar in their fingers.
    Cum tastes like chicken soup, cock like communion wafers.

    Pin point eyes, sweet sweat and smoke:
    Fry-up, Gig pass, Mayfair, Cum stain, CharleyZebraX-ray, Don’t step.
    White. White skin sweating before the mirror.
    The guys at the bar saw the teeth in my eyes. Extra shot.
    No Mixers. Subconsciouss swill. Aye and a bag of chips.
    Going mad today. Going mad today. Going mad today, CharleyXray.

    …Desire Desert…in the rift…rift/crack….

    …CRACK or you’ll break….

    I vomited pearls.

    Phasing like the moon.

    Greasy spoon, mate, (ash balancing), Kick hir out of bed.
    (S)he’s the pearl girl I found drunk in the park.
    (S)he’s the tooth boy put her fingers inside her.
    (S)he had a fight with the lead singer.
    (S)he bit his neck and it shot out pearls.
    (S)he’s got a poem stuck in hir throat.

    Melting drifts of sheet in the silver slick of morning,
    Making dry islands in the sea of Saturday shops.
    Crazy Paving. Praying to the angel of Turnpike lane
    Pieced myself together. Strung myself about my neck:
    CharleyFoxtrot. Extra shot. No Mixers.
    Sister Ray. No Problem. No TV. No time. No time atall

    Now mint tea and be
    Mother to me.
    Polish that tooth
    Nurse that pearl knee.
    Living on smooth roads.
    Sinking no ships, fearing no fall.
    This was Just a little...
    Hopscotch
    That’s all.

    Monday, January 17, 2005

    Happy MLK, Goodbye ZZY

    So Happy Martin Luther King Day, everybody.

    I think this is the first time I have celebrated, or observed MLK Day since I was 6. It's a good holiday. I am glad it exists. Martin Luther King had all kinds of faults but he was still an amazing amazing man and as an orator was in a class all his own...Don Q has an MP3 of MLK speaking about Vietnam at a meeting of church leaders to which I am giving the link here...


    MLK Link


    it is such an amazing speech, because it is so apt to the moment...he could just as well be talking about now.

    truly sobering stuff.

    I also wanted to take the opportunity to remember Zhao Ziyang, who died today in Beijing. Zhao Ziyang was Chairman of the Communist Party of CHina for a brief time after the death of Hu Yaobang. Hu's death was the catalyst for the 1989 protests, with tens of thousands of students, workers and ordinary beijingers takng part at various times in protest parades, democracy walls, public meetings, hunger strikes and of course, the occupation of Tiananmen Square, which lasted several weeks. Zhao Ziyang was indeed a member of the communist party and a believer in socialism and communism, but he was on the more liberal side of the split that divided the CCP at the time, and he by and large sided with the students, bravely standing up for them even though he was aware that storms were brewing. He famously addressed the students in the square before he was obliged to leave the country on a political engagement. In his absence the massacre occurred, and upon his return he was ousted from the party and placed under house arrest where he remained up until his death.

    I wrote something on the BBC comment board on this subject, I am not sure it will get posted, but I just wanted to say that the thing that Zhao, and MLK for that matter, was not afraid to do was to criticise a country and political system that he ulimately had some faith in because he was afraid of seeming like a traitor. He believed that that examination and criticism of corruption and wrong practises "strictly according to the facts" (ru shi) would yield a better CCP and a better China for all. I beleve this is the great lesson to be gained from the more notable parts of his political life, especially here in the US, and for all of us, perhaps. Introspection, striving to do better, be kinder and fairer, avoiding the same mistakes, or trying to. THis is precisely what MLK talks about in his speech when he is speaking of the need to think about the position of those brothers we call our "enemy". It is something quite powerful, and somthing that though it exists as a strong theme in the christian world is not confined to it by any means.

    SR65X

    Saturday, January 15, 2005

    Chavela Chavela Chavela again

    So, here it is....click and fill your homes with Chavela Vargas singing "Macorina" as only she can...no-one can make "caliente" sound as "CALIENTE" as Chavela!!! how much better can it BE???? SR65X

    this is an audio post - click to play

    Thursday, January 13, 2005

    chavela chavela chavela

    chavela1
    chavela1,
    originally uploaded by SiRen65.
    Finally got the Chavela Vargas stuff I ordered ages ago...having a fag working on stupid projects, but Chavela's voice is grinding deliciousssssly through the apartment...makes me think of my Great Aunt Margarita, missing her much (she was a passionate skinny frame, with a brilliant smile...a great letter writer), and all the others too, of course...so many to miss...and Chavela is nothing if not gut wrenching. Will put audio blog of her on tomorrow...now gotta go back to work, but just had to share the picture.

    Hope you are all well. thanks for the round of emails...really cheered me up...exams and etc. not doing me a good turn at the mo'...

    Keep on that train to victory,

    SR65X

    Tuesday, January 04, 2005

    THERE"S TOO MUCH LOVE

    Beautiful Belle and Sebastian thing from "Fold Your hands child you walk like a peasant"...Have listened to it several times today..:

    "I could hang about and burn my fingers
    I've been hanging out here waiting for something to
    start
    You think I'm faultless to a "t"
    My manner set impeccably
    But underneath I am the same as you

    I could dance all night like I'm a soul boy
    But I know I'd rather drag myself across the dance floor
    I feel like dancing on my own
    Where no one knows me, and where I
    Can cause offense just by the way I look

    And when it comes to blows
    When I am numbering my foes
    Just hope that you are on my side my dear

    But it's best to finish as it started
    With my face head down just staring at the brown
    formica
    It's safer not to look around
    I can't hide my feelings from you now
    There's too much love to go around these days.

    You say I;ve got another face
    That's not a fault of mine these days
    I'm honest, brutal and afraid of you.


    this is an audio post - click to play


    Have a good dance about, everyone!!

    SR65X

    Chronotope Chronic: The Night Fell.

    the night fell Green
    again on manhattan.

    again
    In the shadows were seen
    bare arms of black trees
    opened silently to a sky
    held aloft fragile high
    by
    columns
    so much
    Taller
    so much
    Bigger
    than they.

    again
    the White arches:
    lincoln centre a flash
    of candles fading in the half
    light…a festival of flickering
    bones leaning like a rib cage
    curving in to tuck a space in Red, a rage
    of motion, a flight
    of feet and
    an ocean of light
    to swim in, to
    wish and swish in:

    an arena for the twilight.

    again
    in a whisper it was said
    that swallowing the seas
    would do no harm, that lives
    were not tandem but arrived
    at like
    knots on
    string.
    that there
    was nothing
    to be done at the
    base of other White columns

    but piss

    again
    on the pavement was heard
    a hum of a thousand glories
    glittering in the grout, like chips
    of Gold, like sails of flying ships, but
    there is
    scraping by
    the broken heel
    some shit
    scraping by
    up with
    scraping by
    which i
    scraping by
    will
    not
    put.

    limping politic clatters
    through the night

    a near burnt bulb in the heart,
    a wave about to crash….

    this was the dry land
    that was the wet
    this is the mainline coming.

    this the place we
    dance in dust
    and do not see the warning.

    the night fell Green
    again on manhattan

    once more you were miles
    away stretching out your smiles
    like towels. i was walking by
    lincoln center in a measured aisle
    of beauty
    before
    the end, my
    friend, I
    in the Green
    light of a rich
    night, that Green
    of leaves,
    of money
    and of graves...