Genet, Genet or Genet? Prepping a review of The Thief's Journal, I did a quick image search for "Genet." I expected an image like this:



Or maybe this?



(Janet Flanner, American journalist in Paris who wrote under the name Genet)


But who'd have thought that I would get, instead, this?



Really, though, what sort of animal would be more appropriate for a figure as graceful and bestial as Genet?  ¶ 12:19 PM 0 Comments

  One Year Later This poor blog has been left feral so long, tied to a toilet in the attic. All it can speak is "No" and "Shut Up," the only two words that I screamed out as it asked for supper.
You get to the point where you ask: feed it or let it starve? If it were a plant I'd simply cut it back. Well, baby girl, we'll let you live a bit longer...  ¶ 1:37 PM 0 Comments

  Castoff from my New Story It didn't fit, and it's too bad.

It's a fucked-up thing to write, and in some ways I feel better not including it. But it's stuck in me, all the same. So I give it a little home here.

"It's funny the way that the head and the hands float like an aura around the rest of the body—the vulgar body under those three high points. When I was a kid I drew a picture of a naked corpse—a woman's body—missing its head, its hands, its feet. Actually, it would have been fine to keep the feet. It was an overtly sexualized picture—one of my first—as well as a first stab at desiring women in the ways I’d seen it done in movies (naked, dead, left only to body.) I knew the picture was wrong, so I kept it hidden. I didn't like it at all. Eventually I must have thrown it away, or hidden it so well that I lost track of it."  ¶ 3:57 PM 0 Comments

  Mayflies on radar dense enough to look like rain If you're a believer, this is the stuff that keeps you faithful. If not, this is the stuff that at least helps you understand the sensation of god-fearing.



Their genus name, ephemeroptera, means "one-day wings." It's a hell of a day. In the adult form, mayflies' mouths have become vestigial. Flight and mating are their final acts, and their bodies are built for nothing else. You live your life under the water for a year as an ugly sea-monster, and are given grace and starvation in equal measure.


Image from The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, via Boing-Boing.  ¶ 10:59 AM 0 Comments

  Your Morning Baudrillard from AM 1090 news (Seattle's local Air America affiliate)...

Regarding the recent attempt for a Coke employee to sell formula secrets to Pepsi, John Stusser of the Beverage Digest said:

"Anybody with some money and access to a high-tech chemistry lab could probably decipher the ingredients of Coca-Cola. What makes Coke valuable is the brand and the trademark."

Ingredients? Who Cares? We're drinking image-objects.  ¶ 4:24 PM 0 Comments

  Denied Patent

A device is proposed for the subcutaneous insertion of grace, in
liquid. Grace will form a blister under the skin, as it is not soluble
in blood. Grace can be held, in this way, closer to the body. The
subject administered to must be careful not to jostle the blister,
however, for fear of breakage. Grace is unstable, and quickly decays
to its constituents—mostly water and trace elements.

  ¶ 2:31 PM 0 Comments

  Predictions

The cripple sun will snap its spine in a bad wreck.
In the sky it will hang at its neck, and the sharp angle of the drop
will tell us that something is terribly wrong. We will fit the sun in
a halo, but the screws at the temples will melt.

We will outlaw the seagulls turning overhead. We will outlaw anything
with eyes and access to air, excepting the artificial eyes of devices.

Heat will blister the dry dirt. Heat will flake the dead ground like
crust. It will fall in waves, in curtains, from the broken sun.

There will come a tiny girl dressed as an old man. She will hold milk
in her hands, and it will not drain through her fingers. We will ask
to drink from her cupped palms, and she will whip her threadbare cloak
about her, and tell us to wash out our indecencies before touching our
vulgar lips to her. We will know, then, that our mouths will always
be vulgar, that our breath will always carry disease, regardless of
the washing of the teeth or the tongue.

Anger will manifest visibly as white pearls. They will cling to the
skin, they will compound, until the angriest grow their own white
reefs across their fists.

In change will come regret. We will never regain what we have
transformed, but we will dress ourselves in the flimsy vestments held
so long in dressers and attics, and we will remember.

Even in death we will not escape what we have destroyed.

  ¶ 2:01 PM 0 Comments

  glory, glory I had a dream the night before last that I'd been asked to be in a parade. It was divided into ten thematic sections--I was in the last, which was "youth." There were a dozen or so other people in my group--all of them young black women around fourteen or fifteen. We bunked togetherr. We shoved all of our beds together to make one mega-bed and stayed up late talking about what good friends we'd become. All the same, I felt a bit distant.

We were never given much direction as we prepared for the parade--we knew we were to be paired with, and to somehow perform with, another group of young businessmen. But what we were to do and how we were to do it was never fully explained. I grew more and more anxious, and more and more resentful, of the organizers--whom I never met or saw.

The parade itself was actually in a giant stadium--it ran in a circle around the outside track. There were dozens of celebrities around--though Travolta is the only one I remember solidly. Lots of people in fancy dress. The first few sections were over-the-top: huge, dramatic, well-funded. Section 4 was actually a display of military might, completely separate from the track, in the form of a fly-over of jets and helicopters. And the whole time, the girls and I had not really planned what we would do. Obviously we could not compete with jets and celebrity.

I remember seeing group 8 go down in a giant freight elevator--they were being led by someone whom I used to know. I think it was a guy named Glenn. He looked terrified. The kids just kind of skipped around the track. But they were spread very evenly, at least. At that, I just walked away.

I woke up in the morning still upset, resentful. It's a position I absolutely hate being in. I'm actually organizing a reading soon, and I'm playing the role of the Organizers. I don't want to draw a corollary, though--I think I'm being a bit nicer.  ¶ 10:38 AM 0 Comments