We face climate disasterYuri”s NightMobile ChernobylHills Like White ElephantsInside HamasAlpha-Thujone (546-80-5)On A New List Of Categories–one giant evolution; one gargantuan organism from singularity to epochnone are reinventedall are reusedall are the basis for new constructioneveryone lives forevercode reuse! code reuse! “class organism {}” “class universe {}”history is not thought; history is matterthought is matter; matter is thought; both are energyrules are simply the lack of mastrygod does what he does because he cannot do otherwisegod did not reinvent the wheelwe did not reinevent the wheelwe are inept at extracting knowledge from matter, just as the programmersare; god is a programmer; god is ineptis knowledge extractable, or is the process irreversible?matter is the “waste” from the “combustion” of essencewhat can god do but follow the rules? His lack of mastry! The beauty ofthe “code” is rather incredible, but also precious, like hellgod as the tragic geniusinevitabilityhow did hegel know? how did plato know?einstein is in my monitor! what a concept!everyone understands, but doesn”t realize!is subconscious understanding merely a part of existence?life? death?”a little bit of him lives on in…”what about god?what about god?truth?–I had never been all the way to the edge of the lake before, but I had been told that the northeast shore was the most mercilessly bleak place on the face of the Earth. Standing there as the sun set, shivering, with the smell of salt and decay in my nostrils, I understood. The countless acres of black sand on every side seemed to squirm and shift, teeming with mosquito larvae in the fading light. The thick, cold shallows just in front of me stretched out forever into the lake itself; they were littered with dead gulls and pigeons, many of them partially submerged and covered in worms. Above, the sky took on a grim, colorless appearance and the freezing wind did little to alleviate the stench. Over the sound of invisible waves on the other side of the lake somewhere out of sight and over the low moan of the wind across the desert floor, I began to notice a steady rustling noise all around me. I squatted to look at the ground more closely and immediately stood up again, wiping my hands on my legs and shivering in disgust. Squinting in the last moments of remaining visibility, I could see eddies of dried, dead larvae bodies shifting endlessly above the surface of the writhing mud, carried by the breeze.–Maniac Sinatra. Maniac Sinatra.Maniac Sinatra.

I am in the red chair in the morning. In front of me, there is a triptych of clouds. Fluffy, blue clouds. They are hurtling recklessly to the east. I suppose that’s toward the lake. I woke up early in order to shop a class. I thought I would see at least a couple of people that I know. But there were only three people there. I won’t be staying in the class. It only went fifteen minutes. As unpleasant as it was to sit through it, I was still counting on rather more than that, in order to keep me occupied and eat some of my day. I require forced distraction in order to behave, maybe even in order to survive.

Now it’s 11.00 in the morning and I’m at a loose end. That’s a good indication that something is amiss.

The Pub doesn’t open until 4.30 and I won’t go at that time anyway because it’s so early as to be loserly and I’m unwilling to be a loser (yet). Other options: drink my own… go downtown and ???… go back to I-House, crawl into my hole and go to sleep… No way I’m gonna work on anything.

Not anything that I have here, anyway.

It’s been a long time since I had “something I’m working on” that mattered to me. I don’t know what the last thing was, even. Probably the chapbook I was trying to put together way back in the late ’90s, when I was more certain of things. But I look at it now and think it’s shite.

I really want to write. What does it mean when you’ve had five years of writers’ block? Did I ever really have anything to say anyway? When I was younger, it really felt like I did. Only now when I look at what I wrote back then, I can’t make head or tails of it. It’s like hundreds of pages of nonsense. I didn’t have the skill to say what I was feeling then. I might now… but now the feeling has passed…

—

I’ve lost my anger at the world, or at least ninety percent of it. I’m in one of the world’s great cities, but I’m bored. I’ve seen all of this before. Art galleries, ballets, operas, museums, grand lakes, pubs, clubs, shows. The world full of people either a) starving, b) getting bombed, c) working or d) off work, spending money, waiting to work again. Is there nothing more to life than this?

This is what happens when you have no God. Everything takes on a kind of futile quality. There is no cosmic importance in any of this; in a few billion years this planet will be swallowed up anyway, and long before then every last one of us, and the animals, plants, and trees, will have become extinct.

I wanna hit the road again. The only thing I want to do, the only thing I ever wanted to do, is to see for myself before I die, a kind of hoarding of impressions. Only there is no travel in sight now.

Less than a twenty-four hour bounce before the ennui is coloring everything again. I’m sleeping (or not sleeping, as it were) alone; it’s like a neon sign, like a voice on a loudspeaker. It’s everywhere.

I can’t stop thinking. Chicago has a vice grip on my head. Or maybe that’s just reality.

Three things I know about reality: 1) I know absolutely nothing about it; whatever I think I know is either a lie someone else has told me or a lie I’m telling myself, 2) I’m probably gonna hurt again sooner or later, and 3) it’s really beautiful, even though it’s hell.

—

I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors anymore I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes
I see a line of cars and they’re all painted black
With flowers and my love both never to come back
I see people turn their heads and quickly look away
Like a new born baby it just happens every day
I look inside myself and see my heart is black
I see my red door and it has been painted black
Maybe then I’ll fade away and not have to face the facts
It’s not easy facing up when your whole world is black

No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue
I could not foresee this thing happening to you
If I look hard enough into the setting sun
My love will laugh with me before the morning comes

I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors anymore I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes

I wanna see it painted, painted black
Black as night, black as coal
I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black
Yeah!

—

A Major Miscalculation

Sitting in a small room, November outside the window, they conjured with the consequences and decided that to know was as painful as not to know, that to have had a role to play was as painful as not to have had a role to play. He decided it was time to go.

—

I can’t say what’s in my head because everyone in the world reads this and I can’t control how everyone in the world will respond. I want them to think what I want them to think and feel what I want them to feel before I can be honest about anything. Or maybe I don’t want that at all, because it would be a miserable drag and really lonely (be careful what you want?) to control everyone like little chessmen, but as a result I have to just eat everything. It’s been pickled up there in my skull so long, I don’t know what I would say if I was to be honest anyway.

—

It feels like I’ve spent most of my time fighting life, like I’m rejecting existence itself, refusing to cooperate with inevitabilities and things-which-already-are. Somewhere underneath it all, I’m nobly vowing to somehow win someday, like the underground man, like Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

(Non-atheists may replace the Cervantes reference with the similar Milton reference.)

Every now and then I have a reprieve. It’s sweet. But always shortly thereafter, it’s over. I don’t want to read any more books. I don’t want to have any more facts. I don’t want to know any more things. I want to grow a beard and paint on the ex-commune and get shingles. (I want to idealize everything and rationalize everything away.)

—

Nausea.

—

There are birds outside. Maybe my new seagulls will be back already. It’s something to hope for. It’s something (dare I say it?) real. Real.

—

Gimme.